Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife

by Brenda Wilhelmson

  I told Eve, “I’ll call you when the meeting’s over. Maybe you’ll feel like eating then.” I hung up and started thinking about my high school and college days when I’d go to parties, get drunk, and throw up, and whatever guy I happened to be with would be waiting for me to wipe the vomit from my lips so we could resume making out. One summer night, I was at a rugby party staggering around in tight jeans and stiletto heels. I was talking to a cute rugby player and drinking beer after beer from an enormous plastic cup. All of a sudden, besides having the urge to pee really bad, I knew I was going to get sick.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I told the rugby player and began staggering toward a row of portable toilets. The rugby player followed me. “I’ll be back in a minute,” I said waving him off. He kept following me. Long lines of people were waiting for the toilets so I took a turn down an alley, braced myself against a brick wall and began vomiting. I finished, wiped my mouth, and unsteadily turned to leave. The rugby player grabbed me and forced his tongue down my throat.

  I went to the four o’clock women’s meeting and told Sara what was going on with Eve.

  “Don’t go over there,” Sara said. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” I said, trying hard not to laugh. “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You don’t go over to someone’s house when they’ve been actively drinking like that,” she said. “If you take her to a meeting and go out afterward, that’s fine.”

  “She’s in no condition to go out. She’s shaking like a leaf.”

  “You know how many meetings I went to shaking?” Sara asked. “Eve’s been around long enough. She knows. And the fact that she’s calling you and not someone who’s been in recovery a long time … Don’t go.”

  “So what do I do?” I asked. “She’s expecting me to call.”

  “Call her and tell her you can’t come over. Tell her you’d be happy to take her to a meeting, but you can’t come over.”

  I took a big breath and sighed. I got into my Jeep, pulled out my cell phone, and called Eve.

  “Hello,” Eve answered, sounding drunk. Apparently, things hadn’t gone too well with her sisters.

  “Eve,” I said, “I’ve been thinking. I really care about you and what happens to you. I want to do what will help you the most. So I’d like to take you to a meeting and maybe go out afterward. I can’t come over without doing that first.”

  “I understand,” she said, slurring. “And thanks. Thanks for caring about me.”

  “Do you want to go to a meeting tomorrow?”

  “Why don’t you give me a call?”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Sara was still standing in the parking lot talking to someone. I rolled down my window as I drove past. “I did it,” I said.

  “Good,” Sara said. “Are you going to Caribou for a little bit? Some of us are going for coffee.”

  “Uh, I could.”

  I drove to Caribou and spent the next forty-five minutes with six unbelievably boring women who talked about nothing besides drinking and getting sober.

  [Sunday, June 8]

  I didn’t call Eve. I didn’t feel like it.

  [Monday, June 9]

  Sara came over this morning for coffee. She was supposed to be here at ten but showed up just before eleven. I don’t know how she runs the adolescent substance abuse program she’s in charge of. She’s habitually late and in a fog from her bipolar meds. Sara and I talked about my issues with Kelly, which are starting to bore even me. I can only imagine how damned boring my bitching and moaning must sound to Sara. I told Sara I wanted to confront Kelly.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “To let her know how I feel. To let her know she’s been hurting my feelings.”

  “We don’t do things that way,” Sara said, shaking her head. “You have to think about what your motives are. What you want to do is make yourself feel like the better person, superior, make her feel bad. Do you really think you can change people?”

  “Yeah, in some situations I think what I say might change someone’s behavior.”

  Sara shook her head with a condescending I-know-more-than-you-know smile. “So you’re not there yet,” she said. “You’ll get there.”

  Her smugness irked me. But I don’t really believe confronting Kelly would do any good. Just recently Kelly told me, “Hey, I just went out to lunch with Charlene. She’s my new best friend. I hate to tell you Bren, but Charlene is a better singer than you are.”

  “If you were one of my patients, I’d be an inch away from kicking you out of treatment,” Sara told me.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because of all the old friendships you’re maintaining, the socializing you’re doing with them.”

  It bugs me how so many people in recovery think you can’t hang out with anyone who drinks—like we can’t be in spitting distance of alcohol. I don’t want to hang out with only recovering alcoholics. A good number of them are loony bores who can’t talk about anything other than their alcoholism. I just want a normal life.

  [Wednesday, June 11]

  The boys and I went to my sister Paula’s house for lunch. She spent much of the time bitching about my father because Father’s Day is coming up, and she’s pissed at him for screwing up Mother’s Day.

  When my sister and I asked my father what we should do for Mother’s Day, he said, “She’s not my mother. You take her out. I’m going fishing.” My sister and I planned a girls’ day out, but when the weather turned foul, my father asked, “So what are we doing for Mother’s Day?”

  My sister lives in a far southwestern suburb of Chicago. It’s an hour-and-twenty-minute drive from my parents’ house as well as mine. I had suggested that my sister and I take our vegetarian mother to a vegetarian restaurant near my parents’ house before my father horned in.

  “Mom loves that restaurant, and Dad won’t take her there because they don’t serve steak and cocktails,” I said.

  “Why do I always have to drive the farthest?” my sister complained. “Why can’t we meet halfway between Mom’s house and mine? Oakbrook has nice restaurants. Mom can find something to eat without meat.”

  “It’s Mother’s Day,” I said. “Let’s go somewhere she can eat anything off the menu. Oakbrook’s kind of far for Mom.”

  “Evanston’s far for me. I’m a mother, too, you know.”

  “I already asked Mom if she wants to go to Blind Faith Cafe, and she wants to go.”

  Paula emitted a long, huffy sigh. “Next time we do something by me.”

  “Want to take her to a movie before dinner?” I asked.

  “If I have to drive all the way to Evanston, we can’t meet for dinner,” Paula said. “I have to wake up early for work the next morning, so I want to go to bed early.”

  “You could be home by eight.”

  “We’ll have to do lunch.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll let mom know. Max has a soccer game at nine thirty in the morning in Wilmette. Maybe I’ll drive to the game separately and go straight to Mom’s since I’ll be right around the corner. Actually, she might want to come to the game.”

  Another huffy sigh. “I guess I’ll go to Mom’s early. We could give her our presents before we eat. Maybe we could see a movie after lunch.”

  So that was the plan until my father decided to can his fishing trip.

  “Why don’t you, Paula, and your families come over here for dinner?” my father asked when I was talking to him on the phone.

  “Why, so Mom can cook and clean on Mother’s Day?” I asked.

  “She doesn’t mind.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “We could order Chinese food.”

  “She’d still have to clean up.”

  “Then why don’t we go to your house?” he suggested. “I don’t want to go to a restaurant. I’ll end up paying the bill.”

  “Cheap ass,” I laughed. “I could make dinner, but Paula’s going to have a problem wi
th it. She’s not going to want to drive to my house.”

  “I don’t want to drive to her house,” he said grumpily. “We can have an early dinner at your house.”

  “You tell Paula then.”

  “I’ll have your mother call her,” he said.

  My mother called my sister. My father, overhearing my mother agreeing to Paula’s suggestion of going to her house for lunch and mine for dinner, picked up the phone and began yelling. Then he called me.

  “Why don’t you have everyone over for lunch?” my dad yelled. “I don’t want to drive all the fuck the way out there!”

  “Fine with me,” I said and called my sister.

  “He’s spoiling everything!” Paula said and began crying. “Dad’s ruining Mother’s Day. He never wants to come to my house. Mom and Dad go to your house more than mine. Why should I always have to be the one driving the farthest? I’ll just spend Mother’s Day alone. Mom and Dad can go to your house, and I’ll spend Mother’s Day alone. No one wants to come here.”

  “I’d rather not have to cook,” I said. “Let’s have lunch at your house.”

  “Okay,” Paula said, instantly sounding happier.

  “What time do you think?”

  “Eleven thirty. Then we can eat at noon.”

  “Max’s soccer game ends at ten thirty,” I said. “By the time he gets out of the locker room, it’ll be eleven. We won’t be able to get to your house till after twelve.”

  “Rick made plans with his family,” Paula said testily. “If I have lunch any later, we won’t be hungry when it’s time to eat with his family.”

  “I am so sick of this,” I said.

  “Yeah, why did Dad have to ruin everything?”

  “Have Mom and Dad over for lunch,” I said wearily. “I’d actually prefer spending Mother’s Day with just my kids,” I lied.

  “Yeah, that will be nice,” Paula said. “Yeah, wow, that’ll be really nice for you.”

  And that’s how Mother’s Day went.

  “I’m not going out of my way to do anything for Dad on Father’s Day,” she said, plopping a bowl of salad on her kitchen table.

  “He usually wants to go fishing with his friends on Father’s Day, so that leaves us off the hook,” I said.

  “It wouldn’t occur to him to take his family out on the boat for Father’s Day,” Paula said.

  “I’m just going to give him a card and a gift,” I said. At that moment, I decided to give my dad the two tickets I bought for Charlie and me to see Tony Bennett. I breathed a sigh of relief. It couldn’t be simpler.

  [Thursday, June 12]

  Fiona called and we made a date to play tennis.

  “I’m not sure if I’m going to read The Notebook,” Fiona mentioned casually.

  “I read that drivel years ago,” I said. “I already told Kelly I couldn’t make her book club because I’m going to be in Michigan.”

  “Kelly and I have just not been on the same page lately,” Fiona said.

  “Same here.”

  “Things have been kind of strained between us,” she added.

  “Really? Between us, too.”

  “She’s made comments that have been kind of mean.”

  “What’s she said to you?”

  “At the last book club I mentioned that Little Carl’s Little League team was crushed after they lost their first game,” Fiona said. “Carl coaches it, you know. Little Carl loves that his dad is the coach. Carl is great with the kids. The kids love him. They were on this huge winning streak and when they lost their first game, the kids were really bummed. Some of them cried. Carl pulled the kids together and told them they were great in the field but their hitting was off. He scheduled an extra hitting practice and you could see that it made the kids feel better. I mentioned this at book club and Kelly rolled her eyes and cut me off and said, ‘God, they’re only nine!’ Later, we were talking about something else and I started to say, ‘If that was me …’ and Kelly cut me off and said, ‘This isn’t about you.’”

  I told Fiona a few of my Kelly stories. It felt good to commiserate with a fellow sufferer.

  “I’d been wanting to say something to you for a while,” Fiona said. “But you and Kelly were always such good friends. Then at book club I noticed things were off between you two.”

  “They were off, all right,” I said. “They’ve been off for a while.”

  “I feel like saying something to Kelly,” Fiona said. “I want to ask her, ‘What’s going on?’”

  “I’ve been wanting to do the same thing,” I said. “But a friend of mine who’s a therapist told me it wouldn’t do any good. She said Kelly would just get defensive and deny any mean intentions. I think she’s right.”

  “Probably,” Fiona said. “But I want to know if I’ve done anything to start this behavior.”

  “Well,” I began hesitantly, “since we’re having this conversation, Kelly told me she invited you and Carl over for dinner and you cancelled on her a few days later. She said she went to Rosy’s house and saw that you and Rosy had dinner plans on the calendar for the night you cancelled.”

  “Absolutely not!” Fiona said angrily. “That’s not what happened. Kelly and I talked about a tentative dinner date two months earlier. She was supposed to get back to me and never did. A week before the date, Kelly called to confirm, but I’d made other plans. Kelly knows what happened. God, I just don’t have time for this stuff!

  “I noticed Kelly began acting different when Rosy and I started becoming better friends, like it bothered her,” Fiona continued. “I don’t know why she would be like that. She has so many friends. When you and Fay and I started seeing movies, she got cool and distant about that, too.”

  “Kelly didn’t like it when I became friends with Liv, either,” I said. “Then BAM, Kelly decided to make Liv her new best friend.”

  “I totally noticed that,” Fiona said.

  God, it felt good to be validated.

  [Saturday, June 14]

  Charlie and I went to Ravinia, a swanky outdoor concert venue, for Latin Jazz night with Kelly and Joel and Liv and Reed. Wendy and Tom bailed. It was my way of hosting the Bacchanal Dinner Club without actually hosting it. We all got lawn seats and I brought a picnic-basket dinner of poached salmon with a dill-and-chive sour cream sauce, grilled asparagus, and raspberry pie. Most concertgoers sitting on Ravinia’s lawn bring snooty little picnic dinners. Kelly brought an appetizer, Liv brought a salad, and everyone brought their own booze. The food was good, the music was great, but it was cold and miserable. It was only fifty-some degrees and windy.

  Reed and Joel had driven their motorcycles with Liv and Kelly on the back. As we sat and listened to the music, Kelly and Joel started pawing each other like two horny teenagers. Whenever Charlie and I went out to dinner with Joel and Kelly, they held hands under the table, made goo-goo eyes at each other, rubbed each other’s legs, and God knows what else. They never acted like a couple who’d been sharing the same bed for eleven years and had a child. It was creepy. This evening, Kelly and Joel reclined on a blanket, entwined their legs, and kept rubbing up against each other. I looked at Charlie sideways. It felt like I was back in high school sitting in the front seat of a car with my date trying to ignore my friend and her boyfriend getting it on in the back seat.

  When the concert ended, I desperately wanted to ditch everyone. However, Liv and Kelly asked for a ride home because they didn’t want to get on the motorcycles and freeze their asses off. They made inside jokes and giggled in the back seat. It sucked.

  [Sunday, June 15 (Father’s Day)]

  The kids spent last night at my parents’ house while Charlie and I were at Ravinia. This morning, I drove to my parents’ house and picked them up. My father was out fishing, so I tossed his Father’s Day card stuffed with Tony Bennett tickets on the dining room table, hung out with my mom for a while, and left. Back at home, Charlie and the kids and I went to the town carnival and had a ball.

  [Tuesday, J
une 17]

  I went to my home group meeting tonight and Tracy gave the lead.

  “My neighbors have been irritating me,” she said. “We’ve had issues ever since I put up a fence they don’t like. They ignore me. They go out of their way to ignore me. And I’ve been dwelling on them and their behavior way too much. I have to remind myself not to care about what other people do. What other people think of me is none of my business.”

  What other people think of me is none of my business. I love that!

  Liv and Wendy are cohosting a jewelry party for Kelly to peddle her beadwork. I don’t want to go. Liv and Kelly together bug the shit out of me. And it bugs the shit out of me that it bugs the shit out of me. But like Tracy said, I have to not care about what they do, and what they think of me is none of my business.

  [Thursday, June 19]

  I had an unbelievably bizarre experience with the teachers at Van’s preschool. Today was field-trip day, and I’d signed Max and myself up to be chaperones at the farm/petting zoo we were visiting. Max, Van, and I arrived at the preschool ahead of time and found it odd that the kids were already boarding the chartered school buses. I hurried my kids into the building to hook up with Van’s class, and his classroom was empty. We high-tailed it out the front door and watched as the buses barreled down the street.

  I hustled Max and Van into the director’s office and told the athletic director, “We’re here for the field trip. I thought we were here early, but the buses just left.”

  “They changed the time,” Randy said. “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “No.”

  “They didn’t? Wow. Um, I think they put an announcement on the sign-in sheet clip board. Let’s see if I can reach one of Van’s teachers on her cell phone. Maybe I can get a bus to turn around and come back.”

  About a week ago, I had overheard Van’s teachers, Isabel and Casey, griping to each other about parents not reading their memos. They were always complaining about something or other, and I usually ignored them. Apparently, I shouldn’t have. Isabel and Casey had decided to clip a time-change memo to the sign-in sheet in the front hall to reward those who read their memos and punish those who didn’t. I’d spoken to them numerous times about Max and me chaperoning, and not once did they breathe a word about the time change.