by Sam Harris
The screen went to black. Lights up. The Grand Room looked even less grand in fluorescent lighting.
I turned to my only acquaintance and said, “The ending could be a little cheerier, but I’m seeing Sundance.”
Nothing.
No one here thought anything I said was funny. I couldn’t wait to see Liza. She’d think I was funny!
The man who’d told me to shut up approached me and I was sure he was going to slap my wrist again.
I hated this guy.
“I’m Bob. You’re Sam Harris, aren’t you? I recognize you. Big fan.”
I loved this guy.
“We’re going to take a van to the cafeteria and you can join Clara for lunch.”
“Clara? I’m here for Liza,” I said.
“She’s registered as Clara here. We didn’t want it to get out to the tabloids.”
“But it’s already out.”
“It would be confusing to change her name midway through treatment.”
“For who?” I asked, a bit confused, then, “Never mind . . . How’s she doing?”
I was more eager for information than Clara-fication.
“Great! I think we’ve made some real breakthroughs. It’s all about honesty here.”
“Except for the name thing . . .”
I entered the cafeteria. A dozen 10-top round tables were mostly occupied and a line of people with trays were being serviced by net-headed women with closely packed perms, doling out grub by the glutinous poundful. I suspected cream of mushroom soup was in every gummy dish. They wore white T-shirts, none of which bore slogans, but the stains on them spelled “inedible.” I scoured the room for Liza and our eyes met. She screamed, “Schmoolie!” and ran across the room. Our embrace was longer than usual, solemn and warm as a fireside.
I took her face in my hands. “Are you okay?” I asked, looking deeply into her eyes for the truth.
“I’m really, really good. I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” I replied. And, finally, I was.
She dragged me to her table of mostly younger residents.
“Everybody, this is my best friend, Sam.”
A girl in her early twenties offered, “Clara’s told us so much about you.”
They were all in on the name thing. The food looked grotesque. Heavy-duty carbs, like what I imagined they served in prisons to keep the inmates lethargic and sedentary. I wasn’t hungry. Liza and I walked around the room, hand in hand, toward a plate glass window overlooking immaculate powdery-white hills.
“Do you have a fake last name too?” I had to ask.
“Cobb,” she replied. “As in corn-on-the. I was having dinner and it came to me.”
“Clara Cobb. Awful.”
It was one of the qualities I loved most about her—the ability to move through obstacles with ridiculous humor. I was with my friend. My hysterically funny, simpatico, brave, scary friend.
“Schmool, it’s been really good. We have sessions all day. They call me on my stuff. I have chores. I make my bed. It’s empowering. Everybody here is just like everybody else.”
Suddenly the twentysomething girl screamed out, “Look!! Out there in the field. There’s a guy with a camera!”
Liza dove under the closest table, taking me with her. We crouched low on our haunches and, through the yellow poly-cotton tablecloth, we could see a rush of shadows forming a human barricade to shield our hideout from view.
“Goddamn it! Those sons of bitches!” she yelled. After a minute, she poked her head out and asked the girl, “Are they still there?”
“I don’t know,” the girl reported. “I’m not even sure what I saw. Maybe it was a hunter.”
Liza thought we should stay under the table for a while just in case. My legs were starting to cramp. We both settled. Dried chewing gum grazed our hair. Then she poked her head out again and asked the girl, “Baby, can you get me another piece of the banana cream pie? Schmooli, do you want one?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Make it two,” she said, and pulled her head back inside the fort.
The girl returned a few moments later with our order.
And there we were: Liza and me, sitting together, cross-legged, eating banana cream pie, under a table. At rehab. In the middle of nowhere. Our own private sanctuary in a room brimming with alcoholics and addicts and overly permed counselors with cliché-emblazoned T-shirts, all gorging on too many carbohydrates.
Liza and I have always had a saying about our lives in show business: “The Glitter, the Glamour, the Gutter.” This moment firmly fell into the latter category. But there was also something wonderful about it. The irony and the absurdity and the bond. We devoured our pie and she swiped whipped cream from my cheek and sucked it off her finger as she unfolded the details of her two weeks there. Her eyes were bright and clear. She was at her most present.
Our first rehab family class together was starting soon, so we finished our pie and Clara and I crawled out to begin the work.
• • •
My memory of the following week is a hodgepodge of images—like pieces from a dozen different puzzles, most of which don’t fit anything:
Role-playing exercises—acting out the disease and each other.
Letters to the disease.
Not sleeping.
Lists of all the ways in which alcoholism affects loved ones.
Horror stories from other residents. Spouses who seemed more damaged than their alcoholic counterparts. Children who wanted their parents back. Parents of troubled children who couldn’t face their part in the situation and stormed out.
Classes on detachment. “Do not prevent a crisis if it is the natural order of things.”
Still not sleeping.
Tearing through my bags and realizing my sleeping pills had been confiscated. Those fuckers.
Needing a drink.
“Let Go and Let God.”
Eat me.
Confusion.
A “Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes” T-shirt.
My disdain of stupid T-shirts.
More confrontational classes.
Salivating at the thought of a drink.
A desperate need for sugar.
Jumbled thoughts.
My inability to find or form words.
A growing interest in glutinous cream-of-mushroom-soup-based carbohydrates.
Itching.
Waking with my arms bloody from scratching in my sleep.
Stuffing the bloody sheets in a hallway trash can.
Shaking.
Confusion.
Really needing a drink.
Chicken fried steak with gravy.
Liza getting better.
Me getting worse.
The “Butt Hut,” where we stood in the freezing cold between classes or meals and sucked down one cigarette after another.
Trying to put on a good face.
Trembling hands. Not from the cold.
“I’m sorry I’m putting you through this,” she said, lighting another Marlboro and offering me one.
Taking it, I replied, “I thought we were going to have little lunches with finger sandwiches and take rowboats out on the lake.”
“It’s the dead of winter.”
“. . . go ice-skating out on the lake.”
The fluorescent light of my tiny bathroom, making my face appear a pale green. Wondering if it really was.
Watching people change. Watching my friend open up.
Watching families reunite.
The closing ceremony at the end of the week, where residents and loved ones joined together in a church.
The middle-aged Irish New Yorker priest who spoke in the parlance of a black man. “Hey, ya’ll, wassup? Halle-lu-jah!”
Listening to some of the younger residents recite poems or sing original songs.
Liza inspired to get up and sing “I Can See Clearly Now.”
My horrifying fear that she was going to try to get me to sing.
Liza introducing me as her best friend and the greatest singer in the world.
Liza handing me a microphone.
Whispering “I’m gonna kill you” to her through gritted teeth.
“Just sing.” Liza looking at me insistently.
“I can’t.”
“It’s what we do.”
“I’m exhausted. My throat is bad. Please, please don’t make me do this.”
Liza encouraging the crowd to applaud as if I am waiting to be coaxed.
Me taking the mic and standing up before the crowd.
The voice in my head telling me: Never decline a request to sing.
Knowing I just couldn’t.
“Thank you, Liza. Clara . . . Everyone here is so amazing. I am overwhelmed by what goes on here. I’m just a visitor and I don’t really . . . it’s not really my place to . . . good luck to you all.”
I sit.
Polite applause.
A young, fat girl with purple hair and lots of tattoos getting up and singing an operatic Italian aria with an overwhelmingly honest, clear, pristine, passionate voice. She is an angel. She is mesmerizing. The package doesn’t fit the packaging.
Nothing makes sense.
Things are not what they seem.
The crowd explodes with applause and Liza takes the girl in her arms.
Everyone is crying.
Except me.
I cannot feel anything.
• • •
I had agreed to stay in New York a couple of days for Liza’s transition back into real life, and on the drive there, her infectious optimism finally scratched through the surface of my numbness. She put the Chicago cast album on the CD player, blared the volume, and we sang at the top of our lungs: “Me and my baby, my baby and me!” The driver was either in horror or heaven, I couldn’t tell which. At last we crossed the bridge and I was grateful to be in the city.
Upon arriving at her apartment, we were greeted by Bill, who worked in New York as an extension of the rehab center. Liza gave him a kiss of familiarity and he gave her a nod. He had gathered her assistant, housekeeper, houseman, and lawyer for a meeting and they sat in the living room, waiting, like the von Trapp children. A chair had been placed for Liza to face the group and I sat with the others. She was prepared.
“It’s good to be home,” she said. “I am strong and healthy and clear. We will be reorganizing work times, setting some boundaries . . .”
She talked on, straightforward, lucid, and indisputable.
I noticed that Bill was watching me, not her. I realized my legs and feet were twitching and I thought he was asking me to stop being so distracting. Then I realized he was gesturing for me to meet him in the kitchen. Once we were alone, he asked if I wanted to go for a coffee, explaining that she’d be a while and it wasn’t necessary for us to be there. We bundled up and walked two blocks to Neil’s Coffee Shop. We settled in a window booth and ordered coffee and bagels from our unshaven Italian waiter. Bill knew how close Liza and I were and I presumed he wanted to get the inside scoop on her actual emotional state.
I happily obliged. “She seems good. I know she’s been through this before, but I think it’s different this time. I’m glad you’re going to be here. It’s hard for her to be alone right now and I’m leaving in a couple of days.”
He asked how Family Week was. I told him tough, but she did really well. “She’s dealing straight on.”
I told him I was encouraged to lay a lot of things on the table and it was good for our relationship.
“How about you?” he asked.
“Me? I’m fine.”
“I mean how was it for you?” he dug.
I sat for a moment. “Honestly, it brought up some stuff . . . I don’t know if I never adjusted to the time change or I’m coming down with something or . . . I may have a drinking problem . . .”
What? What am I saying? How did that come out of my mouth?
Bill showed no signs of, well, anything. “Oh?” he said flatly.
And it was on.
Out of the blue.
“Well, I pretty much drink every day. I have since I was about sixteen.”
“How much?” he asked.
“In the past ten years, two or three bottles of wine a night. And vodka. No drugs. Ambien. I don’t sleep well.”
Bill looked at me with knowing eyes. “For me using wasn’t the problem. It was the solution. Until it wasn’t. Until it stopped working.”
I wondered if he was wearing an “Easy Does It” T-shirt under his sweater.
I focused on my coffee and stirred it with my finger.
I flashed on all the nights I had sat alone, drinking, surfing porn on the Internet, never making plans because I didn’t know what condition I’d be in. Or because I did.
Lugging trash bags of empty bottles to neighbors’ trash cans so garbagemen and homeless recyclers wouldn’t judge me.
The isolation. The thoughts of suicide. The good-bye letters I’d written to loved ones.
The smallness.
I continued. “When my partner’s out of town it’s pretty much full-time. Blinds are drawn. I don’t answer the phone. Sometimes I do things I don’t remember. Or say things or . . . I’ve just been so . . . sad.”
“Do you think you’re an alcoholic?” he asked simply.
“I don’t know. I’ve never used that word. I mean I know I drink a lot. But a lot of people are worse off than me.”
I remembered packing for our move from New York to Los Angeles. I’d come across an old journal of Danny’s and, naturally, had read it. It said: “Sam is such an alcoholic. I don’t know how much longer I can take this.”
I remembered carefully removing the page with a box cutter and tossing it away as if it didn’t exist.
“I work,” I continued. “I’ve never been drunk onstage. I haven’t been arrested or lost my savings or my relationship or my car, so . . .”
“When was your last drink?” he asked.
I flashed on sneaking down the fire escape stairwell in my boxer shorts and hoisting myself through a window and breaking into a restaurant. For a drink. Was this a dream? No. I had not given this episode a second thought until this moment, and it occurred to me that this behavior was . . . unusual . . . but not necessarily for me.
“Last week.” I left it at that.
Bill handed me his card. “If you’re an alcoholic, you’ll find out. If you’re not, well then, cheers.” He dropped a ten-dollar bill on the table and we slipped into our coats and scarves and trod over the slushy sidewalk back to Liza’s apartment building in silence.
Snowflakes the size of packing material wafted and floated down. There was a stillness. No breeze. It was quiet for New York. Considerate. Bill told me he would be back later that night but had some work to do. I politely shook hands with this stranger whom I’d practically vomited honesty to. He said our conversation was just between us. Then we parted as he started up toward Lexington and I toward the building. After three or four paces I stopped and turned around.
“Bill?”
He turned and we stood, staring at each other for a brief, endless moment.
“. . . I’m an alcoholic.”
As gently as the snow falling around us, he walked to me and gave me a short but dedicated hug. Then he walked away.
I took the elevator to Liza’s apartment and let myself in. The staff meeting was over and everyone was gone. It was a Sunday after all. Liza yelled out from her bedroom, “Schmooli, is that you?”
I walked down the hall and to the doorframe of her room. And the dam broke. All of the tension of the last week, the last years, the last life, had culminated in this single moment of release. I couldn’t speak. Liza remained in her bed, knowing somehow to let the moment stand.
“What is it? What happened?”
I somehow managed to move one foot in front of the other and made my way to her bedside, sitting on the edge next to her. She took me by the shoulders and stare
d deeply into my eyes. I collected myself and took a breath.
“I’m an alcoholic,” I said, and burst into tears once again.
She smiled and pulled me close and cradled me in her arms, rocking me back and forth, pushing the melting snowflakes from my brow and wiping the endless stream of tears from my eyes.
“I know, baby. I know.”
14. Bullies and Heroes
On my last night of being twelve years old, I dreamt that there were spiders, thousands of them, crawling all over the floor of my room and I was trapped in my bed. The dream was so real that when I woke on the morning of my thirteenth birthday, I wasn’t sure if it had happened or not. The floor was clear, no sign of arachnids, but I was afraid to venture out. Afraid of being thirteen. The day was here.
Beginning years before, I had been warned by my father, with increasing regularity, that if I didn’t “change” by the time I was thirteen, I would be in great trouble. I think he saw thirteen as the transition from boy to man—the time to relinquish forgivable childhood eccentricities before it was too late. He never specified what it was I should change or what trouble I would be in. However, without giving it a name like chicken pox or the measles, I knew that I carried an unspoken affliction, which I’d been reminded of at every turn, in sometimes overt but more often in subtle, nonspecific ways. It had been left for me to figure out and fix. Today I knew for sure. If I wasn’t a normal, red-blooded American boy who liked normal, red-blooded American things, including normal, red-blooded American girls, all would be lost. It appeared all was lost.
I pulled back the blue corduroy bedspread that had protected me in my twin bed during the night and gingerly lowered a toe to the green shag carpeting, then scampered across it, knowing the spider nightmare was just that, but hedging my bets just the same. I ran to the single tiny bathroom, shared by the entire family. The pale blue tile floor was covered with a damp bath mat, and multiple, variously colored towels were hung over the sliding glass shower doors, providing the only privacy. The policy in our house was come-and-go-as-you-please save for my mother, who was the only one of us allowed to lock the door. One of her Carol Brady blond-streaked shag wigs sat on a Styrofoam head atop the toilet tank. I turned its pocked face toward the wall and removed my pajamas and stood before the mirror, naked, to give myself a careful and thorough inspection. Thirteen.
