Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife (13 page)

[Friday, May 2]

Eve relapsed. Her on-again-off-again relationship with her boyfriend is off, business is bad, and her sister is dying of breast cancer. Maybe I’d drink, too, if I were her.

Eve and I met for breakfast this morning. She said she blew me off Tuesday night because she was getting hammered. My brain began wondering, “What kind of booze did she drink? What did it feel like to buy alcohol after sitting in all those meetings? Did the first sip feel wonderful?” I felt ashamed and confessed my alcoholic thoughts to Eve, hoping she’d give me a vicarious thrill, and she did. Eve said she bought a bottle of vodka and it numbed her up just like she wanted it to.

Sometimes I really miss the numbness vodka gives me. I miss the icy burn on my tongue and the back of my throat. I miss the “Ah” feeling that spreads through my body on the first sip. I miss my wine. The next time I go to Europe, I’m drinking wine. I’ll just quit drinking again when I get back home.

[Monday, May 12]

I rented the movie
Monster’s Ball
and began watching it after the kids went to bed. The scene where Halle Berry blows up at her fat son for sneaking chocolate, calls him a porker, pushes him, and makes him cough up his candy bar stash hurt to watch. It reminded me of my bad behavior toward Max when he began wetting the bed and peeing on himself during the day when he started first grade. Max had been potty trained since he was three, but for reasons no one ever figured out, he started having accidents—and his accidents went on for more than two years.

I’d taken Max to a pediatric urologist at Children’s Memorial Hospital who set us up with an alarm device to pin in Max’s underwear. But the alarm would go off at the slightest hint of wetness, like whenever Max sweat, so we didn’t use it much. I eliminated certain foods from Max’s diet that I learned were diuretics, like cantaloupe, watermelon, and soda. I prevented Max from drinking anything after seven at night. Max eventually got to dry, but it took a while getting there.

I knew Max couldn’t help it when he wet the bed. If I found him and his bed wet in the morning, I’d peel off his pajamas, strip his bed, and do a load of laundry. But after four or five mornings in a row like this, I’d sometimes snap. I’d call Max “Baby” and “Pee Pants.” I’d make him strip his own bed and carry the sheets downstairs to the laundry room. If he wet his pants during the day, God help him.

Once, when we were in Blockbuster renting movies, Max began fidgeting and wiggling like he had to urinate and I asked him, “Why don’t you go to the bathroom?”

“I don’t have to go,” he answered. He didn’t want to stop playing a video game on display.

“I think you should go,” I said.

“I don’t have to go!” he insisted.

As we were standing in the checkout line, Max really began fidgeting and said, “I have to go to the bathroom, bad.” I got the restroom key from the cashier, turned around, and on the front of Max’s pants was a huge wet stain. I drove home in a rage. I made Max strip off his clothes in the bathroom. I made him wash his pants by hand in the tub. There was a dinner party for his soccer team in a couple of hours.

“I wonder what your teammates would think if they knew you peed your pants? Should we go? Should we tell them? No, I think you better stay home in case you wet your pants again.”

I kept referring to the pee incident all night, rubbing his nose in it. I knew better, I wanted to shut up, but I kept spewing hurtful words. I was afraid Max’s classmates and teammates would eventually notice his wet spots and ridicule him mercilessly. So I beat them to the punch thinking my ridicule would stop his wetting problem. I was out of ideas, powerless, frustrated. And I was sick of cleaning up urine.

I continued watching
Monster’s Ball
and the phone rang. It was my friend Jason, who owns an art gallery downtown. Jason told me he’d kicked an obnoxiously drunk business associate out of his gallery when the guy began pushing his girlfriend around. A day or so later, Jason sent the guy an email telling him he suspected he had a substance abuse problem. Jason offered to help him, confessing that he himself was an addict who’d sobered up. The guy, outraged and humiliated from being kicked out of Jason’s gallery, posted his version of events on the Internet along with Jason’s I’m-an-addict confession. Jason was worried sick about it.

“There are a lot of addicts in the art world,” I told Jason in an attempt to comfort him. “Who knows, it may help someone else. That guy made himself look like a whack job posting it.”

“That guy was scary,” Jason said. “He reminded me of me when I relapsed. I was never abusive like that, but it was really bad. I almost died.”

“I’ve heard a lot of people say they’ll die if they use again,” I said. “But I don’t believe drinking will kill me. I think I’ve got some drinking left in me if I want to do it.”

“I go to this really huge meeting where, like, 150 people show up,” Jason said. “There’s always a story about someone relapsing and dying. Personally, I’ve known people who’ve been sober, like, twenty years and started drinking again and were dead in a year. Those people go really quickly. It’s a progressive disease, even if you’re not drinking.”

I have heard alcoholism advances, whether you’re drinking or not. As a result, I’ve contemplated drinking again to keep an eye on my alcoholism and avoid jumping off the deep end should I start drinking years from now.

Right after I told Jason I thought I had some drinks left in me, Deidre popped into my head. I started thinking about all the times I could have killed myself or someone else while driving in a blackout, like the time I was headed for the Ravenswood neighborhood on the north side of Chicago and found myself driving downtown on Lower Wacker Drive, a road that snakes around under the city.

Ordinarily, I didn’t drive drunk with my kids in the car. If they were in the car while I was loaded, it was for a short distance to and from a friend’s home. Our playgroup, which used to plan field trips to the fire station, bakery, and random parks, had evolved into a moms’ happy hour thanks to me. As the kids got older and their interests diversified, I decided to throw a playgroup cocktail hour, and it caught on.

“I dressed up my drinking,” I told Jason. “I drank good vodka and good wine out of nice glasses, but I was just a drunk.”

“You don’t know how much that helps me to hear you say that,” Jason said. “My mom and dad are alcoholics, but because they drink the right kinds of booze at the right times of day, they don’t think they have a problem.”

“My playgroup friends seemed perfect,” I said. “They were perfect moms living in perfect houses raising perfect kids. I tried to look like them, too. I thought those five o’clock martinis were a sophisticated release.”

“I can’t even talk to my parents,” Jason said. “I can’t have an honest conversation with them even when they are sober. I haven’t talked to them in months. Look what you’re doing for your kids. It’s awesome.”

[Tuesday, May 13]

I’ve been judging Kelly. I think of her as a petty, manipulative, self-centered control freak, and an insecure whacko who needs to believe everyone likes her best. She collects people and tries to be everyone’s best friend. She spreads herself around like manure.

The last time I talked to Kelly, she said, “I don’t think Fiona likes me. I’ve been trying to invite her and Carl over for dinner and something’s wrong with every night I suggest. I went to Rosy’s yesterday and just happened to look at her calendar. She and Fiona have dinner plans for the same night I tried to make dinner plans with Fiona. I asked Rosy when they made those plans, so I know I asked first. I guess Fiona likes Rosy but not me.”

Fiona would never slight anyone, so I know there’s more to this story.

“Rosy’s friend, Sandra, doesn’t like me either,” Kelly continued. “When I was there yesterday, Sandra was over and she seemed irritated, like I was crashing their little party.”

Kelly actually told Liv that Liv’s twelve-year-old son, Pete, didn’t like her.

[Friday, May 16]

I got the kids and dog in the car and made it to Lakeside, Michigan, by two this afternoon. I’ve never been to the cottage without Martha. Charlie and his sibs inherited the place when she died last summer, and this is the place I fell off the wagon eight years ago.

I pulled the Jeep into the driveway and started feeling off kilter. Martha was not sitting on the front porch smoking a cigarette and drinking a martini. I loved hanging out and partying with Martha. I’d drive up, and Martha would pour me a stiff one. I’d unpack and we’d sit on the front porch and I’d bum smokes off her. We’d talk and laugh and drink the weekend away.

When I walked into the cottage, the first thing I noticed was a martini cart, a martini shrine, really, that wasn’t here the last time I was. Martha must have set it up last summer—silver tray, shaker, triangular glass—before she’d called Charlie’s brother, Chris, and asked him to come to the cottage and take her to the hospital. She had spent a month at the cottage painting for an upcoming art show and had started having difficulty breathing. Charlie drove with Chris to get their mother. Chris drove Martha to Northwestern Hospital in Chicago and Charlie drove Martha’s car back to her apartment. Months later, Martha died of lung cancer.

I looked at the martini cart longingly. I missed Martha. I missed my martinis with her. I began weighing my options: I could go to the corner store and pick up a bottle of vodka, or I could call my sponsor.

“Let’s go to the beach,” Max said.

“I want to go,” Van said. “I want to go to the beach.”

I handed Max a bottle of bubbles, a huge bubble wand, and a dipping tray. “Take Van outside and make some bubbles,” I said. “We’ll go to the beach in a couple minutes.” I looked in the cabinet under the sink. There was a bottle of cheap vodka with a shot or two left in it. I shut the door and called Sara. She didn’t answer. I left a message on her voicemail telling her I felt like drinking but was going to the beach. I filled Sturgis’s dog dish with water, grabbed some sand toys, and walked to the beach with the boys. Van and I filled pail after pail with sand, and I dumped out crude castles that he promptly smashed with his feet. Max dug a huge trench with a garden shovel. As far as the eye could see, the boys and I had the lake to ourselves.

It was beautiful and peaceful, and I was content. I wanted to freeze us in the moment. Later, when we walked back to the cottage for dinner, I no longer wanted a drink.

[Tuesday, May 20]

Back home, Sara and I met at Starbucks. She told me I needed to go to more meetings.

“You should go to your favorite meetings every week so people get to know you, expect you, worry if you don’t show up,” she said. “Don’t schedule things that conflict with them.”

I used to go to a Monday night meeting I liked, but I ditched it for a yoga class. I also blew off the Saturday meeting I used to go to for tennis lessons.

“Hit at least four meetings a week,” Sara said.

I don’t know about four.

I decided to make the women’s meeting tonight my “home group” and I went with Eve. “Is there anything affecting anyone’s sobriety that they wish to discuss?” the chairwoman asked. A woman introduced herself and started crying. She said that her mother was in the hospital dying of alcoholism.

“If she lives, if she pulls through, I wonder if she’ll get it,” the woman sobbed. “I don’t understand why some people can get sober and others can’t.”

“Sobriety’s a gift,” one woman said. “Nobody knows why some receive the gift and others don’t, but for whatever reason, we’ve been chosen.”

“I’m grateful I’ve been chosen,” a woman named Kate said. “I’m grateful I’m an alcoholic. When I first got sober, I’d hear people say they were grateful they were alcoholics and I’d think,
What?! You’re crazy!
But I wouldn’t have this program if I weren’t an alcoholic, I wouldn’t have the tools to live the good life I have today.”

Deidre, fresh out of jail, said, “I drank last Tuesday. Things were going good, too good, so I sabotaged myself. It felt like good things were happening to me at the expense of other people.”

It felt like the air got sucked out of the room.

“Deidre, your going to jail scared me straight, or at least straighter,” I said. “What happened to you could have happened to me. It still could if I drink again. I might not be lucky if I drive in a blackout again. I felt untouchable before, but I don’t now.”

“I’m glad my jail time did you some good, Brenda,” Deidre joked. We all laughed, but Deidre’s eyes looked sad.

“I still want to drink, though,” I continued. “I was at our cottage last weekend and I came close. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t.”

Iris spoke next. “You know what’s strange? We feel comfortable telling people our drinking war stories, but we’re uncomfortable saying we’re sober and in recovery. I work in an emergency room and some drunk came in passed out, some young guy. He was a John Doe for a while because he had no ID. When he came to, he had no idea where he was. The nurses were scratching their heads about this blackout thing and I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that happened to me all the time. I’d wake up and not remember how I got where I was.’ They were like, ‘Really?’ But never in a million years would I have said, ‘But I don’t drink anymore. I work a recovery program.’”

That’s the paradox. If people know you’re in a recovery program, you’re sick, but as long as you’re still partying, you’re okay.

“I’m having a Memorial Day kickoff meeting at seven thirty Friday night, at my house,” Tracy said. “Everyone’s invited.”

Eve and I got into her car. “Why don’t we go to Tracy’s?” she said. “I know how to get there, sort of. I’ll ask Darcy to come. She knows how to get there.”

“I’ll drive,” I said.

“Pick me up at six thirty.”

[Friday, May 23]

I was getting dinner ready when the phone rang.

“Hi, Brenda,” Eve said all slurry. “How are you?”

“Fine,” I said warily. “How are you?”

“Well, I’m not going to the meeting tonight,” she said.

“No?”

“No. I, uh, I’ve been drinking.”

“I can hear it in your voice.”