Girl Walks Out of a Bar (3 page)

“Yeah, I know,” said Russell. Then looked at me. “You OK?” I hugged him again and nodded into his chest. “Jess is with the kids,” he said. “No babysitter.”

“Sure, yeah,” I said. “I'm OK.” I tried not to sound disappointed.

Russell grabbed a glass of wine and sat on the couch next to Jerry, dropping the bag with his Karate gi on the floor. Sitting cross-legged opposite them, I leaned back against my heavy wooden bookcase.

“So, what's up with this?” Jerry asked me. “What happened, baby? You really think you need this?”

“I have to drink to get out of bed. I'm puking blood. I'm shitting blood. It's really,
really
bad.”

Jerry's eyes popped. “Oh my God! Why didn't you say anything? I had no idea!”

“Doesn't matter now,” Russell said. “We'll get her in today and she'll get better.”

I rocked forward and hung my head over my legs. It didn't seem real for me to be telling everyone the things I'd been so carefully hiding for so long. I felt sick and relieved at the same time.

“Shit. Did you call Devon?” Jerry asked.

Devon, a marketing executive at a financial firm, arrived shortly thereafter and was already crying before she hugged me. She was the kind of woman whose mascara didn't run when she cried. Devon actually looked great in a bikini—from every angle. And she could eat roast beef sandwiches dripping with mayonnaise and never gain a pound. My news had shaken her up, but not one hair in her expertly highlighted blonde bob was out of place. We had met in a shared beach house on Fire Island almost fifteen years earlier and had spent the first night bonding hugely over vodka sodas. Now she was here in my apartment, on a workday, getting ready to send me to detox.

Were it not for me in the crummy clothes I had changed into and Mark in his holey jeans, the room could have passed for a Wall Street happy hour.

“Hey, you guys! What did you know about this?” Devon asked Russell and Jerry, pointing a well-manicured finger in their direction.

Russell was looking at his phone. Jerry spoke up. “We didn't know anything, Dev! What the fuck? Why don't you get some wine and relax?” Jerry knew that Devon hated being called “Dev” and being told to relax.

“Clowns,” she said, shaking her head. “Where's the wine?” I pointed to the kitchen. “Here, I got this for you,” she said. She tossed me a little white stuffed tiger with black stripes
that she had picked up on her way over. It roared three times when you squeezed its middle. “Just in case you need protection.” My eyes teared. I never would have thought to do that for anyone.

The same question kept coming up in various forms: “Why didn't you tell us things were so bad?” What was the right answer? The lies had become so free-flowing that I hesitated to say the simple truth, which was, “There's something wrong with me, with the way I think. I've always known it. I'm not like you guys. I'm chasing a happy life, but I don't think I deserve it. I'll never be good enough. Every day I still feel like the fat kid in fifth grade. The only way I can stop that script in my head is by drinking and using coke. But now drinking and using coke have become all I think about, all I care about.”

I listened to the chatter that always sounded like family bickering among my friends, mixing in with the Talking Heads CD that played in the background. My mind zipped through the repercussions of what I was about to do. If I detox the booze out of my body, does that mean I never get to put any more
in?
What if I couldn't sit around and drink with these guys anymore? Would I have to just sit there and watch them drink? It was unthinkable. Sure, I was vomiting blood, but how do you live without drinking?

Suddenly I remembered all of us on Fire Island when we rented the beach house for the summer of 1992. The weekends when we could all leave the city for the beach were precious, and this had been a particularly good one, a perfect, clear bluesky Fourth of July.

We had all congregated on the wooden deck in the back, sitting in a circle of beach chairs around the grill. It was a Saturday, and we had invited some other friends to join us. The sun was setting and the air had that magic twilight quality that
emerges right at the beginning edge of a summer night. Most of us had just showered after a long day of laughing and sleeping on the beach. We walked around barefoot, letting our just-cleaned hair dry however the ocean air willed.

Jerry was hovering over the grill watching fresh clams open one by one and bopping along to the Grateful Dead's “Bertha,” that played out of the house speakers. As the clams opened, he plucked them off the grill with oversized tongs and dropped them into a large bowl. “Dude. These are amazing!” he kept saying, to no one in particular.

The salty sea air mixed with the smell of garlic powder melting into drawn butter. I could hear the whir of the blender inside as Russell yelled, “Frozen margaritas—two minutes!” Jessica, Devon, and I giggled and cackled as we remembered listening to a bunch of day-tripping teenagers on the beach talking about their evening plans. “We're totally getting into the Albatross tonight. It's gonna be awesome,” we heard one of them say. Our cigarette smoke trails crossed and we shook with laughter as we joked about a bunch of seventeen-year-olds with fake IDs trying to use pouty lips and cleavage to get past Bobby, the bar's grumpy, gay bouncer.

That's how it always was when we got together—it was comfortable. It was funny. It was easy. We were happy. And we were usually smoking and drinking. Now I was afraid I'd never fit in with my friends again. I was going off the rails and ruining everything. Another reason to hate myself.

Snapping back, I realized it was close to lunchtime. “Hey, you guys hungry? Should we order Chinese?” I asked. “Maybe we should eat and I'll take a nap before we go.” I was trying to slow the clock.

“Yeah, get a bunch of food.” Jerry said. “Don't know when you're going to get a decent meal again!”

After a full plate of spring rolls, sweet and sour shrimp, and broccoli with garlic sauce, I needed sleep. “You guys, I'm going down for a nap,” I said, staggering into the bedroom.

When I awoke several hours later, it was dark outside. For a moment I forgot the gravity of my situation, but as my eyes began to adjust to the light of my bedside lamp, my mind caught up on current events. I was about to slide back under the covers when Devon padded into the room, having long ago kicked off her Gucci shoes.

“I packed your bag,” she said. “You never know who's going to be in rehab, so I put some nice stuff in, too: good bras, a couple of short skirts, high heels. . . There could be rock stars there.”

“I doubt it's that kind of place,” I said.

Devon shook her head and rolled her eyes. “It's entirely possible, so you and your nice panties will be ready.”

I washed my face, brushed my teeth and walked back out into the living room where my support team remained gathered, still sipping red wine from large glasses. It was time to leave. All I had to say was “Let's go,” but instead, I flopped my still exhausted body down onto one of the club chairs. My friends stood up and began to put their coats on. They talked about who should share a cab, and I panicked.

“You know what, you guys? I'm feeling way better. Maybe I should just get more sleep and go tomorrow instead.” My leg was draped over the oversized arm of the chair, and I avoided eye contact with everyone.

Devon whipped around toward me. She was holding a little bag with my toiletries and pointed a tube of toothpaste at me. “Oh, no, you don't!” she said. “After what we went through
today? And what you told us you've been doing? You're going to detox, and you're going right now.” I looked to the guys for help, but all three of them were nodding in agreement.

Russell turned to me as we were walking out. “Why don't you give me a set of keys? I'll come back here with Devon and we'll make sure there's nothing lying around when you get back.” Russell was always two steps ahead of a situation. It was part of what made him so successful in law and in banking.

“OK, yeah, good idea,” I said, watching him drop my spare set of keys into his jacket pocket. Then I said, “Oh wait, you know what else? Take down all the sweaters on the shelves in the walk-in closet. Shake them to see if any stray bags of coke fall out,” I paused, thinking through my other stashes. “Oh yeah, and the boxes in the linen closet? You know, like where I keep Band-Aids and hotel shampoos? Better check those, too.” His expression didn't change as he nodded slowly, but I swore I could see him start to process the fact that I hid bags of coke between my sweaters and in Band-Aid boxes. “Oh yeah, and there's some really good pot in the box with the votive candles on my bookshelf,” I said, as if I had left something off a shopping list. “Give it to Jerry.”

There was nothing but support in my friends' eyes, but I felt as if I'd just told them I'd been selling crack to sixth graders.

We took two taxis to Gracie Square. I sat between Russell and Devon, my head resting on Russell's shoulder. I felt so tired and sick that there was no room left for fear or dread.

The front of the hospital was like none I'd ever seen. No bright lighting, no circular driveway for drop-offs and pick-ups, no fleet of idling ambulances waiting for their next 911 call. In fact, the building looked like the dreary corporate offices
of a company that time had forgotten. Russell, Devon, and I exchanged curious looks but no one spoke.

Jerry and Mark arrived in their own cab. “Yo, smoke 'em while you got 'em,” Jerry said, handing me a cigarette. “What the fuck is this place? Doesn't look like a hospital.”

“No idea. Give me your lighter,” I said, grabbing it with a shaking hand.

After stomping out my cigarette, I swung open one of the big glass doors and headed toward the receptionist who sat in a booth behind a panel of protective glass. A young, tired-looking security guard in a blue uniform sat at a wooden desk a little farther back in the lobby. Was he armed? We all looked at each other as if to acknowledge that whatever this place was, it was no New York-Presbyterian.

Devon raised an eyebrow and pursed her lips. “I don't like this place,” she said. I shrugged back at her, and she offered, “Why don't you let me call Silver Hill? It's a place up in Connecticut and is supposed to be nice. I think Billy Joel went there.”

Starting over didn't sound like a good idea at that point. I shut my eyes and said, “Let me just try it here. If it's terrible, I'll leave.”

The receptionist directed us to a large waiting area with hard plastic, burgundy chairs that were linked up in sets. After a few minutes, a tall, middle-aged man in khakis and a faded blue button-down shirt walked into the reception area, looked around, and approached our group. He had thinning brown hair, and he walked with the casual lope of someone unlikely to be surprised by whatever happened next.

“Hi. I'm Brad,” he said, clasping his hands together, perhaps an attempt at enthusiasm. “I'm here for Lisa.” I gave him a half wave from where I was slouched in a chair and leaning on Russell.

“Hi Lisa. I'm going to get you admitted and up to the detox floor. We need to go to the intake area. Are you folks Lisa's friends or family?” he asked the group.

“We're her friends,” Russell said before anyone else could speak. “We'd like to hear what's going to happen.” He was using the voice he probably adopted when closing corporate mergers. I nodded at Brad, and he pulled up a chair so that everyone could hear.

“OK, I'm going to explain a few things,” Brad said. “Lisa, I understand that you're here because you have an alcohol problem and are seeking a medicated detoxification. If you choose to do that here, you need to understand that this is a locked-down psychiatric facility, not a hospital where you can come and go.” I kept my eyes on Brad, afraid to look at anyone else. “If you agree to be treated, you must sign a consent that requires us to keep you here for at least 72 hours. You cannot leave before that, unless a written request is granted.”