Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife (24 page)

“Max had it right,” Reed said, leaning back in his chair and stroking his chin. Everyone laughed. Reed shifted uneasily and looked uncomfortable. I felt sorry for Reed and regretted sharing my story. I could tell Liv’s parents liked Reed as much as he liked them, and I didn’t want to help them gang up on him.

[Friday, August 15]

Today was gorgeous, hot, and sunny. Hope and I took the kids to a new water park, and as soon as we paid the entrance fee, Max and Sid took off for the big slides. Hope and Robin ran into the shallow water toward the water sprayers, and I helped Van slide down the tongue of a small whale. Time after time I sat Van at the top of the whale’s red tongue and caught him as he splashed into the water. My mind began to wander. I started thinking about Kelly and how it was Kelly who’d invited Max and me into playgroup when we moved to the suburbs. It was Kelly who’d helped me plant a lovely shade garden in our front yard. And it has been Kelly who’s been pursuing our friendship since I got sober. I stopped calling her, and she’s been the one reaching out and trying to stay in touch. If the tables were turned, if Kelly had been the one to quit drinking, I don’t think I’d be pursuing our friendship.

The last time Reed was at her house, he said Kelly answered the door looking like a wreck. He’d gone over to ride motorcycles with Joel, and when they left, Joel told Reed, “Kelly’s been crying her eyes out. This thing with Brenda and Liv has got her really upset.”

When Reed shared this information with me, I said, “She’s just feeling sorry for herself because she got caught.” But I know Kelly cares about me in a warped way, and I feel bad about the whole screwed-up mess.

Last year, I had season tickets to the Joffrey Ballet and took Kelly to one of the performances. Since then, she’s been bugging me to get season tickets for the two of us. When I got home from the pool, I called the Joffrey and got us tickets. I called Kelly and left a message on her answering machine, telling her that we were going to the ballet.

[Saturday, August 16]

I took Max to his swimming lesson at eight o’clock this morning and afterward, a guy who does carpentry work for my dad and his friends came over to give me an estimate on the damage done to our house from the microburst.

“Is the insurance company coming out?” he asked as we stood in front of my house looking at the soffit and fascia that had been ripped off.

“No.”

“How much over do you want the quote?”

“I have a $500 deductible that I’d prefer not to pay,” I said and immediately felt guilty.

I never would have batted an eye over getting my insurance company, a company we’ve paid megabucks to over the years, to cover the damage. But now I’m working a recovery program and trying to be honest all the time, and this is bothering me. I wish I could stop the nagging voice in my head telling me, “Your character defects may be your destiny.” Screw it. I’m going to push this thing out of my head and not think about it.

This afternoon, I chaired the women’s meeting I hate. The woman who was supposed to give the lead didn’t show up and since no one else volunteered, I was stuck being the talking head.

“What book should I read out of?” I asked the group. “Is there a topic someone wants to discuss?” I thought about making honesty the topic and discussing my carpentry dilemma, but then three women said they wanted a meeting on the First Step, which is the Step that we admit we’re powerless over our addictions and that our lives had been unmanageable. Since I’m seriously kicking around the idea of drinking in Budapest, I figured it was a pretty good topic for me, too.

During my lead, I fessed up and told the women that from the time I’d gotten sober, I’d planned to drink whenever I was in Europe.

“This back and forth thing—should I? shouldn’t I?—is driving me crazy,” I told them. “I went out to dinner with my husband and told him what I was thinking. He frowned and said, ‘That’s up to you. I’m not going to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do.’ But his face said it all. He doesn’t want me to drink. And I’ve been thinking that, no matter how good the bottle of wine is, no matter how expensive, I’d be selling my hard-won sobriety cheap if I took a drink. I haven’t had a drink in almost eight months and it’s been hard. There have been many times I wanted to drink but didn’t. I haven’t been numbing out every night with booze. I’m not drinking in front of my kids. I haven’t been hung over in a long time. I don’t want any of that back. If I drink in Budapest, I know I’ll find more good reasons to drink when I get back. I know myself. I’ll be right back where I started. So there, I’m glad I just worked that out. Thanks.”

I can’t believe how relieved I feel. There’s something very therapeutic about hearing yourself say what’s running around in your head. It’s cleansing and clarifying. It’s bizarre.

I went home and finished fixing dinner. We’d invited Liv, Reed, and Seth over and I’d made a beef tenderloin stuffed with a creamy horseradish sauce laced with bacon and mushrooms. I’d also purchased some nice red wine to go with it earlier in the week. Buying the wine had tweaked me a little, but uncorking it tonight didn’t bother me a bit. Watching Liv drink a martini and a glass of wine while Charlie and Reed got tanked didn’t bother me, either. I felt fine. Purging myself at that meeting had done wonders.

[Monday, August 18]

Max had his friend Walter over and the two of them spent a lot of time on the computer researching how to get a patent for a four-way pencil Max “invented”: four pencils of different colors poking out of a hub like spokes. After poking around, Max found himself on the Paper Mate site and clicked on a link to a patent attorney in Virginia. Ten minutes after Walter left, the phone rang.

“Hi, I’m looking for Max,” a man said.

“May I ask who’s calling?” I asked.

“I’m Steve Littleman, a patent attorney, and Max contacted me about a four-way pencil he invented and I’m getting back to him,” he said.

“Do you know he’s ten?” I asked.

“Ah, well, hmm. He did a good job filling out the patent form on my Web site.”

“Do you still want to talk to him?”

“Ah, I can talk to you,” he said.

In a nutshell, the attorney wanted $400 to do a search to see what other similar ideas were out there with patents pending. If we wanted to pursue a patent for Max’s pencil, it would cost about $3,000.

“You might just want to go ahead and do the search,” the attorney said. “It would be fun and educational.”

“I think Max needs to come up with a better idea if we’re going to spend four hundred dollars on it,” I said.

I told Max about my conversation with the patent attorney.

“God, what a rip-off,” he said, looking angry and disappointed.

[Tuesday, August 26]

Sara came over this morning, and we talked about starting my Fourth Step, which entails making a list of the people I resent and how I behaved badly toward them.

“I think you should wait until you get back from Budapest to do it because I don’t want it ruining your vacation,” Sara said.

I was actually jazzed about doing my Fourth Step. I have been treating myself like a science experiment, and I wanted to get on with the dissection process. I’ve glimpsed parts of myself I don’t like. I haven’t been as honest with myself as I thought I had. I haven’t been good at seeing myself for who I am. I justify and rationalize everything I do. I rarely examine my motives.

My grandmother used to tell me, “You’ve got an answer for everything,” and it was true. I also judge others to feel superior, make myself feel like Queen B. And Queen B’s about to find out what an insecure self-centered little shit she is, but not until I get back from Budapest.

Sara and I were sitting on my deck sipping tea and watching Max and Van play in the yard. Max climbed out of the sandbox, walked over to us, and asked if we wanted another pot of tea.

“Thanks,” I said. “That would be great.”

Max took the teapot off the table and disappeared inside the house. He came back a short time later and placed the pot on the table. I poured Sara and myself a cup. It tasted horrible.

“The tea tastes coffee-ish,” I told Max. “How did you heat the water?”

“I ran it through the coffee maker.”

“Ah,” I said, putting my cup down.

Max slid a piece of paper in front of me. It was a bill for $1.25. Under the amount, he’d listed all the things he’d done for me that morning: “Gave Van water. Put a video on for Van. Helped Van down from the monkey bars. Made tea.”

“What about all the things your mom does for you in a day?” Sara asked Max. “What would that list look like if your mom wrote down everything she did for you and came up with a dollar amount?”

“That’s her job,” Max said.

Later, Kat and I went to Playboy Pete’s house for a meeting. It’s Playboy Pete’s twenty-fifth sober anniversary. Twenty-five years without a drink. Unbelievable. More than forty people showed up to celebrate his anniversary with him.

I owe Playboy Pete. When I first started going to meetings, I felt like a fish out of water and I wanted to be a fish out of water. I didn’t want to be an alcoholic loser. I wanted to keep my distance. Playboy Pete came up to me after a meeting one Saturday night and asked, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” We both started laughing. He hooked his arm around my shoulders and started steering me around the room. He introduced me to a lot of people that night and jokingly avoided others saying, “You don’t want to meet that guy, he’s a, well, you don’t want to know what he is.” He invited me to go out with him and a group of people who were going to a steak house afterward, and it was the first time I felt normal in weeks. I didn’t feel like a sicko hanging out with other sickos.

[Wednesday, August 27]

Max started fifth grade today and, officially, I haven’t had a drink in eight months. I can’t believe it. It’s actually gone by surprisingly fast.

I took Sturgis, my arthritic thirteen-year-old dog, to the vet because his teeth are rotten and his gums are infected. My poor old boy can’t even eat now. I helped him into the back of my Jeep, drove him to the vet, and he limped into the vet’s office. The vet did blood work to see if Sturgis could survive being put under for dental cleaning and tooth extraction. She also wants to see if Sturgis should be on heart meds and steroids. I love that dog. I hope I can keep him alive and feeling better a while longer.

[Thursday, August 28]

I went to Liv’s house for book club tonight. Kelly just got back from a fabulous family vacation, and she and I talked about it for a good long time. It felt like we were back to normal. The entire book club meeting felt normal. It was nice.

[Friday, August 29]

I’ve been trying to potty train Van, but it hasn’t been going very well. After I worked out at the gym this morning, Van and I went to the toy store to purchase a potty-bribe present. Van picked out a Leap Pad, and I paid for it and we went home.

“Do a good job of going potty for one week and you can have the Leap Pad,” I told Van and let him watch me put the potty present in my closet. Van looked like he wanted to push past me and tear the box open. Experts say you’re not supposed to bribe your kids, but bribery helped me potty train Max, although he relapsed into pants-wetting behavior four years later.

Max wasn’t interested in using the toilet until I told him I’d buy him a police car with flashing lights and a siren. In three days, Max was using the toilet and playing with his police car. He had just turned three. Van will be three October fifteenth, so I figured it was time to get started.

“Do you want to go potty?” I asked him.

“No,” he answered.

“Let’s just sit on the potty and see if you can go.”

I sat Van on the potty and he peed a little. I asked him throughout the day if he had to go, and although he always said no, I’d sit him on the potty, remind him of the Leap Pad, and he’d go a little.

During dinner, I smelled flatulence coming from Van’s direction. I asked him if he needed to poop and he said no. I took him to the potty anyway and reminded him about the Leap Pad. Still nothing. We pulled up his pants, washed hands, and sat back down at the dining room table. Moments later, Van stood up on his chair, grunted, and loaded his pants.