Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife (12 page)

“Looks like the poor old guy wet his drawers,” Bill said, shaking his head.

“Yep.”

I’d ditched Kelly’s thirty-ninth birthday party for this. Candy was hosting a chardonnay-tasting party for Kelly, but the homeless shelter had been on my calendar for two months before Candy invited me. I snickered to myself. Oddly, I preferred being here.

[Saturday, April 19]

We went to Reed and Liv’s for happy hour to meet Reed’s family, who are in town from Des Moines. I had a tennis lesson, so Charlie and the boys went ahead of me. When I drove up, Kelly and Joel’s SUV was parked in front of their house. I yanked my tennis skirt down and walked in. Kelly eyed me up and down. The strain between us is palpable. Reed poured me a LaCroix and I sipped fizzy water while everyone else had cocktails. Reed’s mother, Celeste, eyed my water. “You don’t drink?” she asked.

“I quit four months ago,” I answered. “I decided to take a break.”

“I quit for a year,” Celeste said.

“Really?”

“My friends said I couldn’t do it, but I did. Lost a lot of weight, too.”

“But you decided to drink again,” I said, nodding toward her martini. I was instantly filled with hope that I might successfully enjoy a martini a year from now.

“I started drinking white wine spritzers,” Celeste said. “I just wanted a little something. I started drinking them a month ago. But I decided to have a martini tonight.”

A lot of people at meetings talk about how they controlled their drinking after a relapse, but then their alcoholic pattern kicked in and cranked up.

Reed’s grandmother sat next to Celeste and sipped her martini. “Liv tap danced for us last night,” she said. “She’s very good. Have you seen her?”

“Yes,” I said and smiled.

I walked into the kitchen and refilled my glass with sparkling water. Reed was at the counter refreshing drinks and Liv walked in and stood next to him.

“Will you put some music on for me?” she asked. “Your grandma wants me to tap dance.”

Reed stared at her. “No.”

[Sunday, April 20]

We had Easter brunch at our house, and the first thing my father said when he walked in was, “You got any beer?”

“No,” I said. “But we have vodka in the pantry.”

“You drinking again?” he asked hopefully.

“We had Reed and Liv over for dinner and Charlie picked it up for them.”

“You buy booze for other people but not for me?”

“We buy booze when we’re having people over for dinner. It didn’t occur to me to buy you beer for brunch.”

“What about having us for dinner? We watched Van when you were in Savannah.”

Apparently he didn’t remember the night Charlie and I got back. I’d invited my parents over for dinner after my dad stopped screaming at me. My father had said, “I’m not driving out here for dinner. You can cook for me at my house or take me out to eat.”

“You’re here for brunch,” I told him and took my blintz soufflé out of the oven.

My dad got a glass out of the cupboard, filled it with ice, and grabbed the half-empty liter of Absolut from the pantry. When he left, the bottle was empty.

I called my cousin, Mike, when the kids were in bed for the night and wished him a happy Easter. Mike moved to California right after we moved to the suburbs. His wife, Susan, had moved to Los Angeles a year before him intending to divorce him. She’d supported Mike in Chicago while he drank and blew off writing his dissertation. When he moved to California, they’d reconciled and Mike landed a good job as a financial analyst. But for some time, Mike’s been teetering near the deep end. He’s always settling a score with someone, and right now he’s out to destroy his next-door neighbors because he believes they catnapped his beloved Patches.

“Before Patches disappeared, my neighbor’s fiancé, Nancy, tells me I shouldn’t let my cat out because coyotes will get her,” Mike said. “So Susan lets Patches out one Saturday morning and Patches disappears. So I’m upset, very upset, and I’m asking all over the neighborhood if anyone’s seen Patches. I see Nancy and she tells me she’s sure coyotes didn’t get her. Later, at a party, my neighbor Dale pulls me aside and asks me, ‘If someone wanted to return your cat, how would they go about doing it?’”

“Weird,” I said.

“Yeah. So you know they took her. So I tell Dale, ‘They could just bring her to my door, no questions asked,’ but no one brings her home. So I confronted Dale. He denied it. Brenda, I know they took her. I even went to a pet psychic and the psychic substantiated my suspicions.”

“No way! Really?”

“She channeled for Patches. Patches told me she was catnapped by two guys whose descriptions fit Dale and his friend. Patches said she was taken somewhere in a car and let out and that she’d tried to get home but was run over by a car. Brenda, she’s dead.”

“Wow,” I said, feeling really bad for Mike on many levels.

“I called the cops and reported Patches’s catnapping,” Mike said. “I told the police Dale appeared to be involved in drug trafficking and offered them my house for stakeouts.”

“Do you really think they’re selling drugs?”

“No,” Mike laughed. “Dale and Nancy think they’re getting married on Valentine’s Day, but that wedding’s never going to happen. I know the church and I’m booby-trapping it with stink bombs.”

“I’m really glad I quit drinking,” I told Mike, changing the subject. “It’s great waking up without a hangover. Reality’s way more interesting than being comatose. You should try it sometime.”

“Well, good for you,” Mike said.

“You really need to let this thing with your neighbor go for your sake, not his,” I said. “You’re allowing him to consume your thoughts, make you miserable, act crazy. Let it go. Move on.”

“That’s what my shrink says,” he said. “But I can’t. They have to pay.”

[Tuesday, April 22]

I took Emily out to lunch for her birthday. She and her husband, like a lot of my friends, are having midlife problems.

“You know what Scott did instead of spending Easter with us?” she asked. “Went to Vegas with his friend. I’m tired of going to social functions by myself. He barely talks to me. I don’t want to spend the last half of my life like this.”

I told Emily about my friend Bea, who left her husband right before Christmas. Somewhere around Thanksgiving, Bea started boxing up her stuff, her children’s things, and sent the boxes to her sister in Texas. Remy, her negligent clueless husband, never even noticed. Remy went to a medical conference in Wisconsin and while he was gone, Bea hired movers and she and the kids flew to Texas and moved in with her sister.

“Wow, that’s harsh,” Emily said.

“Remy deserved it,” I said. “Bea was going to leave him eight years ago when she found out he was having a weekly date with a hooker. She was pregnant at the time. But they were involved in a car crash that left Remy partially paralyzed, and Bea felt like she couldn’t leave him.

“Remy got deeply religious after that,” I continued. “According to him, everything he does is God’s will. He left his medical practice to work part time so he could minister. When the bills piled up he told Bea, ‘God will take care of us.’ Then he got into computer porn. Bea confronted him and each time he’d tell her, ‘It’s in the past. I made it right with God,’ even if it was only ten minutes ago.”

“Oh my God!”

“He’s a piece of work. Bea started complaining about Remy’s bad career moves, and he told her she was going against God and siding with Satan. He told their daughter her mother was a tool of the devil. ‘See how your mother’s trying to divide the family? She’s going against God and me.’”

“Oh my God!”

“And Remy hasn’t been to Texas once to see his kids. Bea served him with divorce papers, but he doesn’t believe they’re going to get divorced because it isn’t God’s will.”

“I don’t think my marriage is so bad after all,” Emily said.

“Happy birthday,” I said and clinked her water glass with mine.

[Thursday, April 24]

I went downtown to have dinner and see the Joffrey Ballet with Hope. I felt normal until the waiter asked if we wanted a bottle of wine and Hope and I declined. He raised his eyebrows, sniffed, and walked away. I don’t know why I should care if a waiter thinks I’m a goober who doesn’t know how to enjoy a good meal by ordering the right wine with it. The bastard just wanted to fatten the bill to get a better tip. I looked at the other tables and almost everyone else was drinking wine. Not drinking wine with dinner still feels very foreign to me.

[Friday, April 25]

My friend Libby invited me out with her lesbian pals to see their friend Claudia Allen’s new play at Victory Gardens Theater. Libby lives in Nashville, but she lived in Chicago for a time and we became friends while writing for magazines owned by the same publishing company. Libby quit drinking shortly after we met and when anyone asked her why she quit, she’d give one of two clipped answers: “It was just time” or “I just decided to quit.” Her answers annoyed me. She gave nothing away. I wanted an I-knew-it-was-time-to-quit answer I could apply to myself to confirm I was fine. That was thirteen years ago.

I drove to the B&B that Libby and her partner, Nanette, were staying at, and Nanette popped open a beer and offered me one.

“No thanks,” I said. “I quit.”

“Why?” Nanette asked, looking bummed.

“I was uncomfortable with the amount I was drinking,” I said. “And I was sick of the hangovers.”

“That’ll do it,” Libby said.

Nanette wrapped her bottle of beer in a piece of newspaper and chugged it as we walked to a restaurant down the street. Before we walked in, she scanned the sidewalk for a garbage can, sucked down the rest of her beer, and tossed the bottle in. The hostess at the restaurant showed us to a large table full of women. Libby and Nanette sat opposite each other and I sat next to Libby. After a while I nudged Libby and said, “You quit drinking on your own, right?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I went to some meetings, but I didn’t like them. I know a lot of people who go, though. An old girlfriend of mine called me up to make amends once. It was two years after she dumped me. She told me she was sorry for treating me badly. She said she was young and selfish at the time and that was it. I never heard from her again. I don’t know what that was supposed to do for me. She just came out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere. It was too little, too late.”

[Monday, April 28]

I took Kelly out to lunch for her birthday. She started griping about Joel. She’s angry he’s not freshening up his career skills. She’s pushing him to start a side business setting up personal computers and sound systems and she’s angry that he’s not doing it.

“He’s unhappy and unpleasant to live with, and I’m not going to live like this much longer,” she told me. Kelly sipped her iced tea and moved on to the night I went out with Libby and the Bacchanal Dinner Club group went to Bin 36 without Charlie and me.

“It was so weird without you two,” Kelly said, “but we had the best time ever. The guy from
The Bachelor,
the Firestone guy, was there along with almost every unattached woman from Lake County. The place was packed. You couldn’t move. We were smooshed into the bar and they gave us free appetizers. We didn’t end up eating until almost ten thirty. We had the best time. I just love Liv and Wendy!”

“Great,” I said.

“Whose turn is it to host the next dinner party?” Kelly asked, knowing it was mine.

“It’s my turn,” I said.

Kelly cocked an eyebrow. “Do you think you can handle us?”

I wanted to smack the bitch.

[Tuesday, April 29]

I was supposed to hook up with Eve and go to a meeting, but she blew me off. I went alone and when I got there Tracy announced, “Deidre’s in jail.” Everyone gasped. We all knew Deidre could go to jail, but I never believed it would happen.

Deidre was the woman in my First Step meeting who had shaken her finger at me and had said, “In the back of your mind you’re planning your next drink.” She’d known what was in the back of my head because the same thing was in the back of hers.

Deidre started attending meetings because she was court ordered to. She’d smashed her car into an automobile with two teenage boys in it. The boys weren’t wearing seat belts and they’d rocketed through the windshield, lacerating their faces and wrenching their spinal cords. The boys’ parents had attended each of Deidre’s court dates and she was convicted. During sentencing, the judge gave her two options: She could go to work during the day and get locked up at night for three months, or she could stay in jail around the clock for twenty-four days. Deidre chose the latter.

“Deidre’s been incarcerated for three weeks now,” Tracy said. “She was so depressed the first week that she was put on suicide watch. She’s been writing me letters on ruled notebook paper she decorates with flowery drawings to make the paper look like stationery. She says she’s made some friends in jail—no one she’d hang out with on the outside—but having friends has helped. If all goes well, she’ll be released in a few days.”

On the outside, Deidre looks like a regular suburban mom. She’s involved in her kids’ schools and activities. She always looks good and has a nicely decorated house. Looking at her is like looking in a mirror. I could be sitting in jail. It scares the shit out of me. Deidre is a tall woman you wouldn’t want to pick a fight with, and she’s on suicide watch. I’m a five-foot-four, 115-pound blondie. I’d get eaten alive, literally.