by Neal, Toby
Yes. This was still me.
It was a weird new landscape ahead, and I didn’t have anything to navigate with but an internal compass—my intuition—saying yes and no. The difference was, I was finally listening.
I filled the mug with black coffee and headed back into the living room. “Did Hector go out?”
“Hear the blessed silence?” Bruce asked.
“Yeah, he has a way of making his needs known.” I sat down on the leather armchair this time.
Bruce looked rumpled, his slacks creased. He’d taken off the short-sleeved button-down he’d had on when he arrived but had kept on a thin white undershirt. His thick, muscled forearms were propped on his elbows as he two-finger typed onto a laptop. I spotted a couple of tribal tattoos on the insides of his arms, and I found that intriguing, wishing I could see what they were—and where they went.
“I’ve found three possible rehabs for you. One’s on Maui, two on Oahu.”
“Oh.” That was a cold shower on my momentary interest. I took a big swig of coffee, promptly burned my tongue. My eyes still felt gummy in spite of the shower, and my head throbbed rhythmically with the beat of my heart. “I’m fine. I can stop drinking anytime. I just haven’t wanted to. After last night’s debacle, I want to. No need for all that.”
“I seem to remember that we had a deal.” Bruce looked up. He had a big square head and his neck was nearly as wide. The brown of his skin contrasted with the silver of his buzz-cut hair. He narrowed hard cop eyes at me. “You go, or you get fired.”
I opened and shut my mouth a couple of times. Heat flooded me in an ugly flush—I knew what it looked like when that happened, great crimson blotches mottling my fair skin, beginning on my chest and rising up my neck into my cheeks like the mercury on a thermometer.
“Fuck you,” I whispered. “I don’t deserve this.”
“Yeah, you don’t. But it happened anyway—your husband left you, your son went to college, and you’ve developed an alcohol problem. I care about you, Caprice—or I wouldn’t be here sweet-talking you into doing the right thing.”
“Sweet-talking? Shit!” I exclaimed. I wished I could pace around, maybe throw something, but I felt limp and kind of like a Chihuahua barking at a bull mastiff. I buried my nose in my coffee cup, trying to think of something smart and psychological to say. “I think you’re projecting your mother issues onto me.”
He just snorted, turned the laptop for me to see. “That all you’ve got? Pick one. You’re going.”
“No. Let me do it on my own.”
“You’re too far gone. I’ve got years of experience with this. I know what I’m talking about.”
“I see. You do have mother issues. Was she an alcoholic?” Old psychologist trick—deflect attention from self with something angrifying. Sure enough, his big hands tightened on the laptop like he wanted to throw it at me.
“I’m referring to my experience as a police officer dealing with hundreds of alcoholics through my years on the job,” he said, every word measured out and pinched off. “You’re too far gone to do it alone. Pick one.”
I was trapped. But maybe I could wriggle out of it if I went far enough away. I hate anything institutional, always have. I’d been on too many boards at those rehab and treatment places—there’s no mystique. I just couldn’t see myself believing the propaganda at the meetings and filling out little worksheets about my triggers.
“Okay. Maui. Always wanted to see Haleakala,” I said. “You know that means House of the Sun.”
He went back to typing, then working his phone, and before I quite knew what was happening, I was in the bedroom packing a bag with the four or five clothing items I could find in the closet that felt like the “real me,” and I was getting into a taxi.
“Wait!” I stopped, the taxi door open. “Hector!”
“I’ll take care of him,” Bruce growled. “I’ll come out to this crazy-ass haole house and take care of him. I’ll keep an eye out for your stalker while I’m at it.”
“Oh my God. Thank you.” I trotted back and hugged him. I’d never done that before. His big arms closed over me, and I felt warm, safe, and tiny. I leaned my cheek on his chest, and the sound of his heart was big and slow and had a swish to it.
I never wanted to leave the sound of it.
“You have a heart murmur,” I said. “You should come. Do a spa treatment or something, take off some weight.”
“Sassy, you,” he said, and turned me, pushing me toward the taxi. “Call me and tell me how it’s going in a couple of days.”
In the taxi, I finally looked down at the paper he’d ripped off and stuffed in my purse with the particulars of the rehab place. Called Aloha House, it was a mixed-gender treatment facility in the “gracious natural environment of Upcountry Maui” and boasted “medically assisted detox, counseling, classes, and meetings.”
Screw that.
I could do this. I had another plan in mind entirely, an idea that had popped into my mind the minute I’d said “Maui.” Richard and I had always talked about a trip to a very special destination there, but we’d never actually made the time for it.
I turned away from a last sight of Bruce with Hector beside him and the melted flagpole fallen over into the driveway like a lost erection. Fortunately, I’d been able to squirrel a bottle of Grey Goose into my carry-on, and a little hair of the dog began to take the bite of the hangover away. After a few medicinal sips of vodka, I called Chris, needing to hear his voice.
“Hey, Mom.” He sounded right next to me, not thousands of miles away at University of California, Santa Barbara. I immediately pictured him on the campus, my old alma mater and that of the ex. Where we’d met, in fact.
“Hey, hon.” I injected my voice with mom-cheer. “How’s it going?”
“Fine.” He’d taken a reasonable first-year load, and now in the second semester, seemed to be finding his stride. “I’m on the way to practice.” He’d joined the water polo team, his comfort in the water a gift from growing up in Hawaii.
“Oh. Okay. Well, I just wanted to let you know I’m going to Maui for a week or so.”
“Oh yeah? You never go anywhere for fun.”
I cleared my throat. “I might start. Anyway, this is a little—medical thing. I’m getting something done.”
“Boob job?”
“Chris!” I exclaimed.
He laughed. “Hey, why not, Mom? You’re still young. Why should Dad have all the fun?”
Why indeed.
His careless words burned like a whiplash. I wanted to hang up on him, but I didn’t. I breathed through it.
“Mom, you okay?” He seemed to be really tuning in for the first time. “I’m sorry. That came out wrong. I just don’t like to think of you alone . . . you know. Working. Feeling sad.”
“Well, that’s why I’m taking some time, taking care of myself,” I said carefully, wiping tears off my cheeks with little flicks of my fingers. “You’re right. I deserve some fun too, so I’m going to have some. I’ll call you when I get back.”
“Love you, Mom,” Chris said. “Dad is an asshole.”
“Yes, yes, he is,” I said. It was the first time I’d openly agreed with anything like that statement.
Chris had said things like that before, had refused to see his dad at Christmas or meet the Acrobat. In return, the ex had quit paying his half of the college tuition, landing it back on me. I was fighting that one with my lawyer. Ever mindful of putting Chris in the middle, like a good little psychologist, I’d refused to hear Chris’s anger or encourage it. I’d told him to “work it out” with his father.
Well, the ex was an asshole, and cutting Chris off only proved it in a whole new way. I was done being Dr. Feelgood over the whole thing.
“Hey. Can you come visit me at spring break?”
This was February. Spring break was next month. I crossed my fingers that I’d have the money. “Of course. If you want me to. Or I could bring you home.”
�
��I’d rather stay in Santa Barbara. Show you some of my favorite hangout places.”
Santa Barbara. Smells of eucalyptus. Glassy green ocean, squeaky white beaches, date palms and red tile roofs, hikes along the cliffs. Oh, I had favorite hangout places there too.
“I’d love that, honey.” I felt a new closeness to my boy—a child who’d always tried to please his father and come up short. A child who was, in personality, a little introverted, artistic, but with a quick mind tempered by a sense of humor and bone-deep athleticism. He was born running, swimming, and climbing.
He’d love what I had in mind. Maybe I’d take him someday—someday when I was strong and sober. Whoever it turned out I really was, after the divorce dust settled.
“Love you, Mom. I’ll look forward to seeing you then.”
“Love you too. Talk soon.” I punched the Off button.
For the first time I felt like I really wanted to stop drinking. Chris’s heart would break if he knew what had happened to me last night, how close I’d come to being crushed by that flagpole or cutting my wrists with a sickle, like a genuine loony tune.
Like one of my clients, in a dark night of the soul.
Somehow I’d fallen into my own very deep crisis without realizing how bottomed out I was. It was time to take back my life, beginning now. I’d show Bruce. I’d show myself. But I’d let myself have one more day of drinking. The withdrawals were going to be bad when they started.
Just one more day of drinking.
“Hilo Airport, Aunty,” said the young local driver, pulling up at the curb. I looked at the familiar low building and felt a hit of optimism buoy my energy.
“Thanks.” I tipped him extra for calling me “aunty,” a respectful title for older women in Hawaii. On the half-hour flight, I managed to put away three Bloody Marys by ordering one drink but three of the little liquor bottles.
I picked up a Dollar rental when I got to Maui and found my way to a Sports Authority in the main town of Kahului, where the airport was located. I parked in the busy lot and made my way into the football-field sized superstore. Just the racks of hiking boots made me dizzy, and I remembered something I’d loved about Richard—he was a careful researcher of any purchase.
He’d read Consumer Reports and shop out of season to get the best prices. He’d always taken care of things like this for me, had even bought me a new tennis racket just the week before he left me—as always, it had been just right for my grip and ability level. He’d always taken care of me in this way, and I missed him all over again. I was sorely out of practice doing my own shopping, not sure what I needed, and I felt paralyzed by too many choices. I sat down abruptly on the padded bench used for trying on hiking boots.
I realized I’d been trying really hard to focus on what an ass he’d been and not all the many ways we’d cared for each other in twenty years of marriage. I might not have been passionately in love, but I’d loved him. The father of my child. My partner in life, my male counterpart.
Shit. Now I had to figure out my own goddamn shopping. I blinked hard. I was done crying. I waved a sturdy young saleswoman over.
“I’m hiking Haleakala Crater. I need pretty much everything.”
She beamed. “Let me take care of you.”
I bought everything she recommended from the skin out. Now was not the time to skimp on the charge card; this was rehab, and rehab cost a lot.
Laden with plastic-wrapped hiking gear, I spotted a Liquor Barn across the parking lot. I bought a bottle of vodka and ate a solid lunch at the food court. Then I got into my bright red Ford Fiesta rental and headed for the top of the world.
Chapter 6
Maui is the second largest of the Hawaiian islands, though it’s still dwarfed by my home island, nearby big sister Hawaii. Maui’s got some great features, and Haleakala, the volcano that dominates one side of its figure-eight shape, is one of them. Haleakala, unlike the Big Island’s volcanoes, which are still active, has been dormant for two hundred years. The depths of the crater on top of the volcano is a world-class hiking area accessible only via foot or horseback.
This was the trip Richard and I had talked about for years, and now I was going alone and on a mission. It felt bittersweet, inevitable somehow, as I drove the narrow, winding, breathlessly scenic road higher and higher through rolling pastures and stands of eucalyptus.
The air is thin ten thousand feet up, at the top of Haleakala. Standing at the residential-looking check-in station of Haleakala National Park, I had my first glimmer of doubt. This trek might not be a good idea, but I’d been able to reserve two cabins, the first one for four days and the second for three, on the floor of the crater. A week should be long enough to get through the worst of the withdrawals.
The ranger, a fit-looking older Japanese woman with the kind of sun-struck skin that reminded me of the neck of a turtle, took a copy of my driver’s license.
“Emergency contact?” she asked. I gave Chris’s number, realizing in that moment that no one in the world knew where I was.
“Do you have any health conditions?”
“No,” I said stoutly, thinking of the nausea, chills, shakes, and hallucinations that might be ahead. Well, maybe it wouldn’t be that bad. After all, I hadn’t been an alcoholic for long—no more than a year, tops. “I’m in pretty good shape.”
She did a long, slow blink, but didn’t outwardly disagree as she finished the paperwork. I looked down at myself. I was still in the yoga pants and shimmery blue tee from the night before, with a pair of sandals on my feet. I knew I’d lost weight in the last few months and hadn’t been doing yoga or playing tennis, as was my habit—but a lifetime of fitness would surely carry me the mere six miles downhill to the first cabin. Mercifully, I’d left my hiking gear, still covered with plastic and tags, in the rental—I could well imagine her scorn on seeing it.
“You’ll need to carry out everything you take in, including toilet paper,” she said. “We have a ‘Leave No Footprint’ video for you to watch.”
“Okay.”
“You sure you want to do this?” she asked suddenly. “This is a long time out there you have planned. It would be better to go with someone.”
I felt a twinge in the region of my heart that reminded me of the thousand unfulfilled dreams of my married life that I was burying on this trip. “If I had someone to go with, I’d be with someone. Sometimes you just need to go do it.”
She must have seen something in my eyes because she finally smiled and gave a little nod. “Good for you. Well, there are frequent hikers through the crater, so if you get in trouble, just wave someone down. We also have ranger patrols that go through every so often to check everything’s working in the cabins. We’ll keep an eye out for you. You won’t have any phone reception in the crater, so make any calls you need to before. Remember to boil your water; there’s plenty of it, but it’s untreated.”
That and the Footprint video and I was ready.
Back at the car, I stripped all the tags and packaging off of the backpack and the pair of hiking boots I’d bought. I slathered some sunscreen on my face and arms and put on the billed hat with the detachable sunshield that covered my neck. I packed the backpack with all the food, my last bottle of vodka for a week, and two liters of water, which I figured was enough to get me to that first cabin six miles down the ominously named Sliding Sands trail.
Because I’d heard the Sliding Sands was difficult to ascend, I’d decided to park the car at the other end, the Halemau`u exit of the trail. This meant I had to go park it where I wanted to exit, then hitchhike to the summit with my pack—the first leg of my journey.
Driving to the parking lot at the Halemau`u trailhead, I kept craning my neck at the incredible views. I was now well above the clouds, above the island spread below like a throw net over a lush reef. Maui was as enchanted-looking in shades of green and turquoise as that first glimpse of Peter Pan’s Neverland when the clouds parted.
As I was getting out of the vehicl
e, a sharp breeze, thin and blue as skimmed milk, cut through my clothing. I dug out the parka I’d had enough presence of mind to pack that long-ago morning. I took a hit off my water bottle, ignoring the craving for a hit of vodka as well, and hoisted the backpack.
It was heavy. Very heavy. Probably thirty-five or forty pounds of heavy that I was ill prepared to carry a hundred yards, let alone six miles through sand. Oh well. Let the hell begin. I beeped the rental locked and began the trudge to the main road.
My new boots were technically the right size, but there was a telltale tightness in the toe box. Hopefully thinner socks, which I had, would take care of it. At the main road, I stuck my thumb out and was surprised by the feeling of vulnerability and rejection that swept over me as each vehicle passed me by. God, to be doing this at my age and stage of life—humiliating.
Hitchhiking was not an endeavor for the faint of heart or those with any other choices. I reminded myself I was not faint of heart, and I didn’t have any other choices (unless I wanted to hike back up Sliding Sands, which I’d heard equated with Dante’s eighth ring.)
A few more cars passed, and then a couple in a rental SUV pulled over. I got in the backseat, out of breath with the effort of trotting to catch up with the car and carrying the backpack from hell. “Thanks,” I panted. “I’m going to the summit to hike the crater.”
“We can tell,” said the driver, a beefy man in a red shirt that proclaimed he’d survived the road to hana. “Seems like a big backpack for a little lady like you.”
“I’m going in for a week, so I had to bring a lot of supplies,” I said. “Where are you folks from?” Old psychologist trick—deflect interest from self by asking more questions.
“We’re from Canada,” the wife said.
I got their entire social history and family dynamics and was mentally composing my evaluation by the time they pulled into the main summit parking lot. “Good luck with your hike!” the wife said.
