Donna Has Left the Building

by Susan Jane Gilman

  “‘Oh, Smedley, dahling,’” she said in her old, parodic British accent. “‘Thank you ever so terribly for retrieving my dry cleaning.’ Listen,” she said, switching back. “Donna, this whole Joey thing—this is serious shit. So can I give you some advice?”

  “So you will do a tarot reading for me?” I said a little too quickly, a little too enthusiastically. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, milady.”

  “What I was going to say is: Sweetie, I think you should go to a meeting.”

  “Oh. C’mon, Bren. I hate those things.”

  “Look. You showed up reeking of alcohol, Donna. You said yourself you came this close.” Reaching over, she squeezed my hand. “I want to help you. But you know you’ve got to help yourself first. Start with the tried and true. And then, okay, I’ll break out the cards.”

  Chapter 8

  “Hello. My name is Donna. And I’m an alcoholic.”

  “HI, DONNA.”

  It was always a shock to hear so many strangers bellow my name as if it were a surprise party. In my cheap pants and ANTHRAX hoodie, I felt like a bumpkin. I was sure I looked like one.

  “It’s been five years, six months, and sixteen days since my last drink. The first time I got drunk I was eight.”

  I glanced at the roomful of faces turned toward me like sunflowers.

  “One night, while my mother was at work, my dad and one of his buddies were blasting music in our basement. I came downstairs in my nightgown, crying because it had woken me up. It was smoky, I remember, and the music was really loud. Hendrix or something. My father was slumped down on this old couch we used to have. ‘Daddy, I can’t sleep,’ I said. He had this weird, sloppy look on his face, and he pulled me toward him and said, ‘Here, baby girl. Try this.’ And he tilted this can to my mouth. Ballantine beer, I remember, because, you know ‘Ballantine’ rhymes with ‘valentine.’ I swallowed as fast as I could, but a lot of it spilled down my chin. His friend was laughing insanely, saying, ‘Jerry, man, you’re crazy.’ But my father, he kept pouring it, and he was winking at me as if we were performing this magic trick together. And he was my father, so I just kept gulping it down. It was really bitter, but I liked the way my father’s large hand felt cupped at the back of my head. He so rarely touched me. And he smiled down at me from beneath the tangle of his beard and mustache, and his eyes were pink and dreamy and approving. Almost instantly, I felt floaty. ‘You like that?’ he prompted. ‘You want another sip?’ Since I had the idea he wanted me to say ‘yes,’ I nodded.

  “By the time I was eleven or twelve, I was partying with him in secret and also with some kids from my middle school,” I told my fellow alkies. “I used to steal six-packs from the ‘backup’ cooler in our basement, thinking no one would notice.” I cleared my throat. “By the time I finished high school, my dad had been committed. My mother had died of cancer. My brother and I, we’d become legally emancipated. We were probably already alcoholics, too, though who knew—when everyone else was partying.” I shrugged. “I know it wasn’t just how booze made me feel physically. Anytime I drank, I know it made me feel subconsciously closer to my father. Duh. It’s Freud 101. Whenever I took that first sip, I felt that one twisted, blissful moment of his love.”

  Abruptly, I sat down. A few people glanced over at me sympathetically and nodded.

  “THANK YOU, DONNA.”

  But all I felt was numb. And callow. Because the story I’d told was a set piece. Yeah, technically, it was true. It had been my dad who’d first gotten me drunk when I was eight years old. It had been our secret: chemical incest. But I’d recounted that sordid episode so many times as an adult at so many meetings that it felt stale and rote and leached of all emotion by now. As I’d recounted it, I’d even sensed exactly when to pause for maximum impact. I was like a one-hit wonder performing my top-ten hit for a tent full of nostalgic fans. I hadn’t said a single truth about my sobriety now, of course, or my stash of pills. But why should I? In my dirty little heart, I felt a perverse need to thwart the whole AA enterprise. Yeah, it had gotten me sober, likely saved my life—blah, blah. But still, I resented it. Couldn’t I be defined by more than what I’d given up?

  Being with Brenda was a far more valuable use of my time than emotionally prostrating myself before a roomful of alkies.

  As soon as the group finished chanting, “Work the program, it really works!” I dropped the hands of the people on either side of me and fled.

  Brenda was waiting for me on the steps of the church. She was typing on her phone, a half-eaten waffle cone clamped between her teeth; Eli jiggled up and down beside her, his mouth bracketed with remnants of vanilla ice cream and colored sprinkles, his backpack hanging off his shoulders as he animatedly related how a kid in his class was double-jointed (His thumb, it goes all the way back! Like this, Mom! Look! Like this!).

  Her eyes fluttered over me as I emerged. “How’d it go?”

  “Good. Great. Wow, did I ever wow the crowd.” I attempted a laugh. “And. Tah-dah. Still sober.”

  But I was thinking that just one day earlier, I had been teetering in a pair of red stilettos in my pantry back in Michigan, shrieking and beating Joey with a spatula. And now, here I was with Brenda, running around picking up dry cleaning and visiting hospitals in a parallel domestic existence. What the hell was I doing? The Adderall was making my veins vibrate beneath my skin. I need. I want. Fill me. What I needed was clarity: What I needed was a plan.

  Back at the apartment, Eli and I uneasily bided our time together in the living room while Brenda ordered dinner online. I tried asking him what his favorite Harry Potter book was and who was better, Spider-Man or Batman—a subject of lengthy and impassioned debate when Austin was that age—but Eli’s eyes remained fixed on an Iron Man action figure he kept walking along the edge of the sofa—no mistake, I was being boycotted—thanks, kid—though what finally engaged him was when I asked if he knew how to disable the “Find My iPhone” feature on a phone. Immediately, he picked it up to demonstrate. “What’s your passcode? No. Don’t say. It’s secret. Do you know what’s the most popular password in the entire world?” Without waiting, he announced. “1-2-3-4. Never, ever, do 1-2-3-4 as your secret code. It’s like giving your information away.”

  I thought of my passcode and winced: 6-2-9-2. Joey’s and my wedding anniversary. In fact, all of my passcodes were variants on our wedding anniversary, plus his birthday, or those of our children. The we of us was everywhere.

  “Okay, so. You go here.” Eli swiped my screen. “Where it says ‘Extras,’ then open this icon—”

  When I was seven, I didn’t even know what the word “icon” meant. I could barely plug in a night-light; I was scared I’d get electrocuted. My generation was constantly accused of being “helicopter parents,” and ceding too much of our power to our kids. But how could we not? They were the only ones who knew how to operate the damn electronics.

  As dinner arrived, I slipped into the bathroom. Okay, okay, I told myself. Just one more Adderall, so I don’t pass out in my plate. Austin would not miss it given the vast supply. Yet I probably shouldn’t have taken it on an empty stomach, because throughout the meal, I felt shivery and accelerated and unfocused. Beyond all else, I felt my dirty little heart beating: Brenda, would you please, please, please perform a psychic reading for me—travel back with me in time—give me a clue how to survive this mess of my marriage, repair the wreck of my life.

  When she finally stood up and stretched and announced to Eli, “Okay. It’s someone’s bedtime,” my pulse fairly exploded.

  I’d forgotten how baroque it could be coaxing an eight-year-old to go to sleep. The epic teeth-brushing, the precise arrangement of stuffed animals, the negotiated number of stories. Finally, finally, Brenda and I were sitting cross-legged on her bed, facing each other atop her duvet cover just like we had back in college. Trains rumbled by in the street below, rattling the bedroom windows in their casings. The city seemed to bear down on us. Brenda spread a t
riptych of cards before her. “Sorry,” she murmured as I stared between her and the Tarot anxiously. “I’m a little rusty.

  “I feel compelled to offer a disclaimer. All of this is merely a tool for interpretation, sort of a Rorschach test, okay? Nothing more.”

  “Of course. Of course.” I nodded vigorously.

  She flipped over two cards with intricate stained-glass designs, rods and pentacles, and a figure in a boat, and studied them. “Well, I am seeing a betrayal here. A broken legal contract or a pact.”

  I scootched closer. “Yuh-uh. Absolutely. That makes total sense. What else?”

  Fwup, fwup. Three more cards. Her pursed lips twitched from side to side. “You have a guitar with you. Any particular reason?”

  I shook my head. “I just bought it last night.” Was it possible to still become a rock singer at age forty-five? “Oh my God. Why? Do the cards say I should start playing again?”

  “Nuh. Just asking.”

  She could see I was disappointed, because quickly she turned over two other cards and pointed to them the way you might to distract a toddler on the brink of a meltdown. “Now, these suggest a journey. A serious one. To places you’ve never been before.”

  “So I won’t be going back to Joey?”

  “Why am I seeing water?” Brenda murmured.

  “This journey, is it good? Or dangerous?” My heart was going wild in my chest now.

  She flipped over another card and placed it definitively on top of the others. Two beautiful figures on it were intertwined erotically. Even from where I sat, I could see the words “The Lovers.”

  Brenda stared at it for a long time. A pigeon alighted on her windowsill for a moment, dark wings flapping.

  “It says ‘the lovers’ there, Bren.” I pointed.

  She squinted intensely, shaking her head. She turned over another card, wholly absorbed. “Hmm. Well, this journey does seem to take you toward a new love—”

  “So, not back to Joey?”

  She frowned. “I’m getting a new love, but with an old face—but it’s not what you’d—”

  “Like, someone from my past? Or just, like, literally, someone old?”

  “Give me a minute, Donna, will you?”

  “‘Past’ as in past-life past, Bren? Or someone here, now, who I’ve already known?” Already, I had an idea. In fact, the clarity of it gripped me like a seizure. I was certain exactly who it was. “Oh my God. Bren. I’m supposed to go find Zack, aren’t I?”

  “Now, hang on. I haven’t said—”

  “But you see it! It’s right there! Oh my God. Maybe I wasn’t even meant to marry Joey at all, Bren, was I?” I leapt off the bed. “That’s what you saw the first time you did a reading for me, wasn’t it? Remember how you froze all of a sudden? Oh my God. It was! It was! I know it! You saw it, Bren, way before! Joey was never my greatest love—it was Zack—and you knew this in your heart, and you saw it in the cards—this ‘midlife marital crisis’—and how I’d have to ‘stretch’—that was your word—but you thought Joey was a better guy—and he and I had signed that lease already—so you didn’t want to say—either you were afraid—or protecting me—or, I don’t know—jealous—”

  With a sudden motion, Brenda swept up the cards.

  “I’m sorry. I am not doing this anymore, Donna.”

  “But you’ve just confirmed everything you once predicted for me, Brenda. My life coming apart? Between forty and fifty? And now, you’re telling me to go find Zack.”

  “Donna, like I’ve said. This is just a reading.”

  “But you’re a psychic, Bren. You have a gift.”

  “Look, Donna. Sweetie. You need help. Get a marriage counselor. Call a life coach. Keep working the program. Call in the reinforcements.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing here, Bren.”

  “Oh, no, Donna. I will not be your shaman or your enabler or your shrink.”

  “But you said it yourself, twice now, Bren, that my life would fall apart when I was middle-aged. And now, that’s exactly what’s starting to happen. And the cards are saying right here that I’m destined to embark on this journey to find my great love. ‘An old love in a new face.’ It makes total sense! So I just need you to confirm, please, is it someone I’ve actually known in the here and now, or in the ‘past-past,’ like ancient Babylon? Or eighteenth-century Paris? Or, didn’t you once tell me I died in Panama? But he wouldn’t be Panamanian now, would he—that just doesn’t make sense. I mean, my ‘past’—it has to be someone from high school, right? I mean, Dry Lake, Michigan, makes a lot more sense than Borneo or Central America.”

  “Donna, do you hear yourself?”

  “It’s Zack, Brenda. It has to be! It has to be. I mean, c’mon. First, I reunite with you—then, next, him! It’s a pattern! Don’t you see? You know that he was my great love of all time. But when we met, we were way too young, and—”

  “Donna, I need you to listen to me.” Brenda stood up. She finished knotting up her tarot cards in a silk scarf. She dropped them in a sandalwood box and slammed it away in the drawer of her nightstand. “This is exactly what I don’t want to be doing.”

  “I think that, no—I’m not supposed to just turn back around and try and patch things up with Joey—I am supposed to go out there and find Zack. It’s my destiny, Bren. All the signs are pointing to it. Maybe every single crazy thing that’s been occurring has been just to set this in motion—like, if that guy in Vegas hadn’t choked on that fig, I wouldn’t have come home early, and if I hadn’t come home early, I never would’ve caught Joey—And maybe the whole reason Joey himself was cheating on me, it wasn’t ultimately for himself, but for me, to free me, to help me find my great love.”

  “Donna. Do I have to throw this glass of water on you? STOP.”

  Contritely, I sat back down on the edge of her bed.

  “Now look. I’m going to tell you this, and then, we are done here, do you understand?”

  She waved the air around me. “This”—she made an airy-fairy-spell motion with her fingers—“is not going to get you what you need. Combing back over the past, running around looking up some ex-boyfriend or driving off to meet him, or whatever—”

  “But you told me, Brenda. I’m not making it up. Twenty-five years ago—”

  Brenda shut her eyes.

  “Okay,” she said loudly, “since you’re so stuck on cards and predictions and psychic powers, I’m going to give it to you straight. You want me to tell you what I really see as a psychic, Donna?”

  She made a wide, circular motion with her hand. “I don’t see any of this going well.”

  “You mean with my trip? Or Joey?”

  “No, Donna, with the world. With things far bigger than you, milady.”

  “Okay. Now you’re just scaring me.”

  “You wanted the truth, Donna? You wanted a prediction? Well, here it is. I see a lot of ugliness out there. Extremism. Divisiveness. Obama being our president—I’m sorry, but that has not ushered in a golden age of equality.”

  She stared at me. “You know, when I was on the Channeling Channel, all the time, I’d get these white callers—I’d do a reading for them, and just as they were hanging up, they’d say, ‘I love all your predictions, Madame LaShonda. Just as long as you don’t tell me that Barack Hussein Obama’s gonna be our next president, ha-ha.’ Or they’d start mimicking my accent, or trying to talk like a rapper. I had one guy ask me to channel his dead mother just to reassure her in the afterlife that he’d never marry ‘a Jew, a black person, or a Mexican’—though you can bet, he didn’t use those words. We had to bleep him. Live, on-air. I was, like, ‘Excuse me? Can you not see me right there on your television screen?’ It is out there, Donna. Real hatred and ignorance and fear. And I’m talking, like, right outside my front door in Manhattan. The way I see Eli get treated at his school? Where he is the smartest kid in the class?” She threw up her hands.

  “So you want a prediction from me? I see us, Donna—all
of us—needing to get our houses in order. The world is going to need grown-ups. Gardeners and builders and healers. People who stand up, fight for real justice. Not some middle-aged white lady driving around in her Subaru chasing down an ex-boyfriend based on a tarot card.”

  “Wow,” I said, with more than a little anger and hurt. I glanced away.

  “Look, I’m telling you this, Donna, because I’m your friend. I know you’re going through something emotionally brutal right now. But you need to be your strongest, best self—and this? This is not it. And who knows. Maybe you and Joey will work your shit out. There’s been a lot of love there between you, for a lot of years. People have reconciled with far less.”

  “I can’t trust him, Brenda! You said so yourself.” My eyes were wet and hot now with tears of frustration and anger more than grief.

  “Okay, and that’s a biggie.” Brenda exhaled. “But tell me, Donna—have you yourself been so perfect? Have you never betrayed someone, even a little, because of your own bullshit?” She looked at me, hard.

  Her phone pinged and buzzed. I wanted to smash it with a hammer. She glanced at the screen.

  After a moment, she said wearily, “Listen, we’re both exhausted. I’ve got to get some sleep. And so should you.”

  I nodded faintly. Yet I found myself unable to look at her. A fissure had formed between us, two tectonic plates cleaving. We each stood there, on opposite sides of her bedroom, me staring at the floor, Brenda out the window.

  “Brenda, I’m sorry. This is not how I’d hoped to reconnect with you,” I said quietly.

  “Well, look. You’re in a bad situation, Donna. And my life is just a cyclone.” She sighed. “It’s a lot more complicated now than it was at eighteen.”

  Her saying this, I knew, was an olive branch. She was smoothing it out for us a little.

  “I really appreciate your letting me stay here tonight,” I said.

  “Sure, sure. Do you need help making up the bed?”

  “No, no. I saw the sheets. I’m good.”