The Lost Weekend (32 page)

Intoxication. Pifflocation. He remembered going to a movie with his mother so many years ago that he was too young to have been there at that kind of movie at all, but his mother didn’t know what the movie was about until they got into it; and then, during an awful scene in which a man reeled and staggered across the floor of an awful Western saloon and fell down and came to rest with his head on a spitoon, his mother laughed self-consciously and said aloud to a neighbor “He’s pifflocated,” making a lighthearted joke of it so he wouldn’t take the awful scene too seriously or think too much about it. Every time he had heard the word intoxication since, he thought of the other. Both words connoted something very unpleasant. Not nice. Something one didn’t mention. He had never identified himself with either of them.
Ever thought of himself, in any stage, as being one or the other. He honestly didn’t believe he’d ever used or spoken either word. Why say intoxicated anyhow when drunk was what you meant and said it better.

For that matter why think of such a thing now when you were so far from drunk that you could bridle at the term as you bridled at the other. But not far from drinking. How far depended on how fast he worked.

So Helen was going to ’phone at noon. He couldn’t not answer the call. She’d know that he heard it no matter how soundly he still slept, or that Holy Love would answer it if he didn’t and go in and wake him. The thing to do was not be here. But then he’d had that clear in his mind from the moment he opened his eyes. It was the only thing this morning that was clear.

He waited till he heard Holy Love go down the hall to the living room. Then he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and stood up. It wasn’t too good. He felt strong enough but uncertain. His whole body felt cool inside as if his blood didn’t run warm any more. He swayed slightly, and when he took a step he wobbled. Perhaps this would pass when he got some coffee in him. He opened the door to Helen’s closet, got out a wrap of hers, and put it over his shoulders. He went to the kitchen.

Sitting at the little enamel table drinking the hot coffee, he suddenly had the odd idea that somebody was standing behind him, towering above and in back of his head. He knew better, but involuntarily he looked around. He felt a pressure weighing on his spirit, an almost physical weight pressing down on him. He kept wanting to dodge the heavy hand that was about to be placed on his shoulder, or wheel around suddenly and stop the voice that was about to speak out and thunder his name. He bent down to the coffee again, getting right down to it so that he could sip it from the cup without picking it up.

These were not hallucinations. He wondered if they might not be something worse. He remembered waking up in his room
at the farm one morning and finding on his desk a volume of the medical dictionary open at the page describing what alcohol did to a guy. Shy Mrs. Hansen (shy hell!) who never would have spoken a word to him on the subject or admitted to his face that she even knew he drank, had looked it up, marked the passage, and left it there for him to see for himself. Amused, he read it through.

Furor. Delirium. Disturbed sleep. Mental deterioration. As for that natural affection disappearing, it was so damned true that
he was offended. He was far from amused when he finished the passage. For once in his life he got a scare. The only thing he ever feared was losing his mind or destroying the responses or functions of his brain, and it looked as if he might be doing just that. If anything could ever deter him from drinking, it would be this fear. Is that what was happening now? Or, if it was happening, would he realize it? Or would it sneak up on him without his knowing, make a babbling idiot of him all of a sudden, sometime, somewhere, without a moment’s warning? Was this weight, back of him, above him, on top of him, a premature sign? Could it be, thus, a blessing in disguise, a signal that there was still time if he would only yet use those waning wits to pull himself together before it was too late? Okay, Mrs. Hansen, but it’s been too late for years—and I’m
still
whole. For instance:

The pressure that weighed upon him, the feeling that someone stood behind him, spurred him also to gather his thoughts and map out his plan. What he did he’d have to do quickly. Speed was what counted today. He got up from the table and went down the hall to see how the land lay.

He stuck his head in the living room and said “Good morning.” Holy Love was probably thinking the worst (he and Helen had spent the night together) because she replied Good-morning without calling him by name or without looking up from her dusting. He went to the bathroom and, in passing, tried the door to the closet in the hall. It was locked.

He went into the bathroom and sat down on the edge of the tub. Helen had seen to it, of course, that the hall-closet was safely locked before she went to work. She never had any great supply on hand but one bottle would have been enough. There was a key to that lock somewhere about the place but where? Maybe Holy Love had it or knew where it was. He didn’t feel like facing her again but he could call. He stood up, looked at himself in the bathroom mirror, and called out “Holy? Would you open the hall-closet for me, please?” His heart sank at the sight of his eye.

“Sorry, Mist’ Birnam,” she said from the other room, “I don’t have no key.”

He pretended not to have heard. “I left something in there last night, and I need it.”

“Sorry, I don’t have no key.”

She was a liar, of course, but what could he do about it? He felt himself begin to sway and he hung onto the washbowl. Well, now he could only go back to the bedroom, try to dress, and wait his chance. If Holy Love should produce a key from her apron-pocket and open that closet door behind his back, God help her. God help him!

He pulled on his socks and his shirt and pants and then lay back on the bed. He had begun to breathe hard again and he felt a rising excitement grow in him, an excitement he couldn’t control or understand. Probably physical. He closed his eyes and tried to quiet the heavy breathing. He had to be calm in order to get out of here and on to what he was about. He thought deliberately of his objective and named it to himself: He must get back into that bed of his, his own bed at home, before Wick returned.

When he got back into the house it was going to be for good, this time, there was no getting around that. It meant bed for several days, bed and frightful hangover and shattered nerves. And it was something he wasn’t going to go through without liquor to help him, liquor to taper off with gradually, a few bottles cached here and there in secret places about the flat, aid that he could turn to when the mornings got too bad. He’d get half a dozen, somehow, somewhere. Nobody would believe, of course, that it was liquor to be used medicinally only. Nobody would believe that he would drink just enough of it and no more, just enough to keep his sanity. They’d be certain that it meant he was off again and that the long weekend was to stretch to another long week or longer. But he knew better. Knew when he was licked (temporarily). Knew when it was time to stop and recoup and get back on his feet and stay that way for a while. Knew that another such
day as yesterday (he couldn’t remember what it had been like but it must have been frightful—he knew that from past experience) would, at this stage of the game, knock him out entirely, pull his brain apart piecemeal, and leave him a lunatic staring in his chair not knowing himself or anybody else. Only way to stave that off was to have a supply on hand for the dreadful three or four days to follow, and then, with the aid of the drink as medicine, gradually work back to normal, taking fewer ones and smaller ones daily, till you didn’t want it or need it any more. Would anybody believe that? But did they ever believe you, ever, about anything? So pay no attention. They always made such a fuss, anyway, whatever you did.

He sprang up. He had heard Holy Love in the hall. She was just closing a door. He ran to the hall and saw her dragging the vacuum cleaner into the living room.

She certainly hadn’t got it out of the bathroom. She couldn’t say it had been in the medicine cabinet. He went down the hall.

“How about it, Holy?”

She looked up at him. “How about what, Mist’ Birnam?”

“Are you going to open that closet for me?”

“Sorry, I don’t have no key.”

“Where’d you get that vacuum cleaner!”

“From the kitchen.”

He went in and sat down on the sofa. He looked worse than undignified in his stocking feet but what difference did it make, she was treating him like a child anyway. “What’s the idea, Holy? Were you told not to let me in that hall-closet?”

She avoided looking at him from now on. “I wasn’t told nothing.”

“Then give me the key. I’ve
got
to get into that closet and get something
out!
”

“Sorry, I don’t have no key.”

“How did you get in, then?”

“Get in where?”

“You’ve got the key right there in your apron-pocket. Now give it to me! Do you hear?”

“Mist’ Birnam, if I had a key I’d give it to you. But I don’t have no key.”

Could you take it from her by force? He got up and hurried back to the bedroom and lay down on the bed again. If he had stayed there another minute he would have choked her.

He lay listening to the wail and hum of the vacuum cleaner. She wouldn’t be cleaning all day. She’d get through sometime and have to put it away again. From what he’d heard of Holy’s sloppy work she’d be through in five minutes. She was.

He heard the noise of the vacuum cleaner die out like a rundown record. He sprang up again and stood listening, every sense and nerve on edge.

Then began an idiotic duel over the hall-closet. Every time he heard her step in the hall, he passed through into the kitchen. Stayed there until he heard her again. Then back again to the bedroom. He moved noiselessly in his stocking feet but at no time did he catch her about to unlock the door. Once or twice she seemed to change her mind and went back into the living room as he returned again to the kitchen.

He was hot with rage. Angry with himself mostly for going through such an idiotic performance, for submitting to such an indignity, for ever being in such a position at all. He could have killed her without a thought.

He heard a step in the hall. He looked out of the kitchen. She was gone. The vacuum cleaner was lying on the floor in front of the locked closet door, and he knew it would go on lying there till Kingdom Come so long as he stayed in the house. He hurried into the bedroom and put on his shoes. He put on his tie, his coat and his vest. He found his hat and put it on his head. He was certainly going to go in and have a showdown now, have it out with her for good and all.

She was on her knees in front of the fireplace, her head in
the hearth, when he came into the living room. With a brush she was sweeping up the ashes of the night before. He stood looking down at her and wondered how best to begin this time. There was no sense in antagonizing her any further. She couldn’t be browbeaten. But it went against him to plead with her, begging for the key. He had demeaned and humiliated himself enough.

His eye fell on the bronze Romulus and Remus on the mantel.

It was a small statue about eight inches long and four inches high, a replica of the famous symbol of Rome, the mother-wolf suckling the two children crouched beneath her. The base was a solid oblong of bronze, with sharp corners. He had picked it up in Italy and brought it home for Helen.

His hand went out for it. He loved the little statue, had always loved it, had loved it when it was an illustration in his Latin grammar, had hunted for it in Rome on his very first day there, but he had never thought of it like this. All shaking was suddenly gone from his hand and arm and whole body. He was deathly calm and aware. He looked down at Holy Love on her hands and knees in the fireplace and saw her neatly-parted hair. His stomach went cold and he turned and fled back to the bedroom.

Melodrama! In all his life he had never been in any situation so corny, so ham. He felt like an idiot. His taste was offended, his sense of the fitness of things, his deepest intelligence. For once, the foolish psychiatrist had been right. The drunk will go to any lengths to get his desperately-needed drink. Any. But not
that
far.

He looked wildly about the room. He had to get out of here quick. Helen’s typewriter was gone from the desk. Had she taken it with her on purpose? God they thought of everything.

Not everything. Fitted over the back of the chair beside the desk was Helen’s short leopard jacket which apparently had just come back from summer storage. The furrier’s tag still hung on the front button. He snatched up the jacket and hurried into the hall.

Just as he slammed the front door and ran down the stairs, he
heard the telephone ring behind him. Ring ring let her ring now forever, or let Holy Love try to explain that one!