Ham (26 page)

I fell back onto one of the twin beds and it was so rock-hard that it stunned me. It had apparently petrified since the 1930s. The chipper attendant appeared in the doorway, clipboard in hand, and a young man brought in my suitcase. He was wearing a T-shirt that said “Quitting is for Quitters.”

“Find everything okay?” she chirped.

“I don't suppose there's a terry cloth robe behind that door,” I joked.

She stared back at me with a blank, overextended smile.

I tried again. “Or turndown service with a little Godiva chocolate on the pillow.”

“Okay then,” she clipped, and left the doorway.

“Or a minibar . . .” I muttered.

She reentered the doorframe in a flash, her eyes a little wider. “Beg pardon?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Okay then.” And she was gone.

I lowered myself slowly onto the stone bed, tired and hung-over. I closed my eyes. We'd been given no schedule and I could use a nap. Suddenly a bullhorn boomed, no,
blasted,
from just outside my door. I sat up in a start. The building must be on fire. The chipper attendant's voice blared, no,
trumpeted,
through the speaker: “Welcome, family members and loved ones. Please meet in the GRAND ROOM on the third floor. Please meet in the GRAND ROOM on the third floor.” The bullhorn sounded again to signal the end of her announcement. The first one wasn't enough.

Where the hell am I?
I pulled myself up from the slab and joined in the herd of slump-shouldered guests, shuffling down the stairs. No one spoke.

Like the misnamed Villa and Château, there was nothing grand about the Grand Room. It was a fake-paneled, stained-carpeted, forty-by-thirty room with a low cottage cheese ceiling and folding chairs facing a smallish TV on a metal stand. The lights were dim and I found a seat in the back row. An instructional video had begun, which featured a doctor, grimly facing the camera:

“. . . to give you a better understanding of what your loved ones are going through. Alcoholism is the great leveler. Rich, poor, young, old, presidents, and paupers. You are not alone.”

The woman next to me seemed exhausted, spent, barely functional. “Who are you in for?” I cleverly whispered.

“My son.”

“I'm here for a friend.”

I felt a tapping on my shoulder. It was a man in his midfifties, with closely packed, overly permed hair, wearing high-waisted jeans and a “It's alcohol-ISM, not alcohol-WASM” T-shirt.

“Could we please have quiet?” he said. “What we don't know
can
hurt us.” I smiled and nodded. Oh, brother. As soon as he was gone, I leaned in to the woman and spoke in a hush, barely moving my lips, like a ventriloquist. “I know all this stuff. My mother and my brother both went to Betty Ford . . . which is a hell of a lot nicer than this, by the way. They have swans.”

The woman politely smiled, but her eyes were empty. “We should probably watch this.”

Okay then. The video used animation to explain the way the brain responds to alcohol: little dopamine characters, pleasure centers, the alcoholic's need to drink more and more to achieve the same effect, just to feel normal. It ended with the doctor, in a close-up this time, saying, “It is a vicious cycle. One that, unless broken, can end in incomprehensible demoralization and even death.”

The screen went to black. Lights up. The Grand Room looked even less grand in fluorescent lighting.

I turned to my only acquaintance and said, “The ending could be a little cheerier, but I'm seeing Sundance.”

Nothing.

No one here thought anything I said was funny. I couldn't wait to see Liza.
She'd
think I was funny!

The man who'd told me to shut up approached me and I was sure he was going to slap my wrist again.

I hated this guy.

“I'm Bob. You're Sam Harris, aren't you? I recognize you. Big fan.”

I loved this guy.

“We're going to take a van to the cafeteria and you can join Clara for lunch.”

“Clara? I'm here for Liza,” I said.

“She's registered as Clara here. We didn't want it to get out to the tabloids.”

“But it's already out.”

“It would be confusing to change her name midway through treatment.”

“For who?” I asked, a bit confused, then, “Never mind . . . How's she doing?”

I was more eager for information than Clara-fication.

“Great! I think we've made some real breakthroughs. It's all about honesty here.”

“Except for the name thing . . .”

I entered the cafeteria. A dozen 10-top round tables were mostly occupied and a line of people with trays were being serviced by net-headed women with closely packed perms, doling out grub by the glutinous poundful. I suspected cream of mushroom soup was in every gummy dish. They wore white T-shirts, none of which bore slogans, but the stains on them spelled “inedible.” I scoured the room for Liza and our eyes met. She screamed, “Schmoolie!” and ran across the room. Our embrace was longer than usual, solemn and warm as a fireside.

I took her face in my hands. “Are you okay?” I asked, looking deeply into her eyes for the truth.

“I'm really,
really
good. I'm so glad you're here.”

“Me too,” I replied. And, finally, I was.

She dragged me to her table of mostly younger residents.

“Everybody, this is my best friend, Sam.”

A girl in her early twenties offered, “Clara's told us so much about you.”

They were all in on the name thing. The food looked grotesque. Heavy-duty carbs, like what I imagined they served in prisons to keep the inmates lethargic and sedentary. I wasn't hungry. Liza and I walked around the room, hand in hand, toward a plate glass window overlooking immaculate powdery-white hills.

“Do you have a fake last name too?” I had to ask.

“Cobb,” she replied. “As in corn-on-the. I was having dinner and it came to me.”

“Clara Cobb. Awful.”

It was one of the qualities I loved most about her—the ability to move through obstacles with ridiculous humor. I was with my friend. My hysterically funny, simpatico, brave, scary friend.

“Schmool, it's been really good. We have sessions all day. They call me on my stuff. I have chores. I make my bed. It's empowering. Everybody here is just like everybody else.”

Suddenly the twentysomething girl screamed out, “Look!! Out there in the field. There's a guy with a camera!”

Liza dove under the closest table, taking me with her. We crouched low on our haunches and, through the yellow poly-cotton tablecloth, we could see a rush of shadows forming a human barricade to shield our hideout from view.

“Goddamn it! Those sons of bitches!” she yelled. After a minute, she poked her head out and asked the girl, “Are they still there?”

“I don't know,” the girl reported. “I'm not even sure what I saw. Maybe it was a hunter.”

Liza thought we should stay under the table for a while just in case. My legs were starting to cramp. We both settled. Dried chewing gum grazed our hair. Then she poked her head out again and asked the girl, “Baby, can you get me another piece of the banana cream pie? Schmooli, do you want one?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Make it two,” she said, and pulled her head back inside the fort.

The girl returned a few moments later with our order.

And there we were: Liza and me, sitting together, cross-legged, eating banana cream pie, under a table. At rehab. In the middle of nowhere. Our own private sanctuary in a room brimming with alcoholics and addicts and overly permed counselors with cliché-emblazoned T-shirts, all gorging on too many carbohydrates.

Liza and I have always had a saying about our lives in show business: “The Glitter, the Glamour, the Gutter.” This moment firmly fell into the latter category. But there was also something wonderful about it. The irony and the absurdity and the bond. We devoured our pie and she swiped whipped cream from my cheek and sucked it off her finger as she unfolded the details of her two weeks there. Her eyes were bright and clear. She was at her most present.

Our first rehab family class together was starting soon, so we finished our pie and Clara and I crawled out to begin the work.

•  •  •

My memory of the following week is a hodgepodge of images—like pieces from a dozen different puzzles, most of which don't fit anything:

Role-playing exercises—acting out the disease and each other.

Letters to the disease.

Not sleeping.

Lists of all the ways in which alcoholism affects loved ones.

Horror stories from other residents. Spouses who seemed more damaged than their alcoholic counterparts. Children who wanted their parents back. Parents of troubled children who couldn't face their part in the situation and stormed out.

Classes on detachment. “Do not prevent a crisis if it is the natural order of things.”

Still not sleeping.

Tearing through my bags and realizing my sleeping pills had been confiscated. Those fuckers.

Needing a drink.

“Let Go and Let God.”

Eat me.

Confusion.

A “Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes” T-shirt.

My disdain of stupid T-shirts.

More confrontational classes.

Salivating at the thought of a drink.

A desperate need for sugar.

Jumbled thoughts.

My inability to find or form words.

A growing interest in glutinous cream-of-mushroom-soup-based carbohydrates.

Itching.

Waking with my arms bloody from scratching in my sleep.

Stuffing the bloody sheets in a hallway trash can.

Shaking.

Confusion.

Really needing a drink.

Chicken fried steak with gravy.

Liza getting better.

Me getting worse.

The “Butt Hut,” where we stood in the freezing cold between classes or meals and sucked down one cigarette after another.

Trying to put on a good face.

Trembling hands. Not from the cold.

“I'm sorry I'm putting you through this,” she said, lighting another Marlboro and offering me one.

Taking it, I replied, “I thought we were going to have little lunches with finger sandwiches and take rowboats out on the lake.”

“It's the dead of winter.”

“. . . go ice-skating out on the lake.”

The fluorescent light of my tiny bathroom, making my face appear a pale green. Wondering if it really was.

Watching people change. Watching my friend open up.

Watching families reunite.

The closing ceremony at the end of the week, where residents and loved ones joined together in a church.

The middle-aged Irish New Yorker priest who spoke in the parlance of a black man. “Hey, ya'll, wassup? Halle-
lu
-jah!”

Listening to some of the younger residents recite poems or sing original songs.

Liza inspired to get up and sing “I Can See Clearly Now.”

My horrifying fear that she was going to try to get me to sing.

Liza introducing me as her best friend and the greatest singer in the world.

Liza handing me a microphone.

Whispering “I'm gonna kill you” to her through gritted teeth.

“Just sing.” Liza looking at me insistently.

“I can't.”

“It's what we do.”

“I'm exhausted. My throat is bad. Please, please don't make me do this.”

Liza encouraging the crowd to applaud as if I am waiting to be coaxed.

Me taking the mic and standing up before the crowd.

The voice in my head telling me:
Never decline a request to sing.

Knowing I just couldn't.

“Thank you, Liza. Clara . . . Everyone here is so amazing. I am overwhelmed by what goes on here. I'm just a visitor and I don't really . . . it's not really my place to . . . good luck to you all.”

I sit.

Polite applause.

A young, fat girl with purple hair and lots of tattoos getting up and singing an operatic Italian aria with an overwhelmingly honest, clear, pristine, passionate voice. She is an angel. She is mesmerizing. The package doesn't fit the packaging.

Nothing makes sense.

Things are not what they seem.

The crowd explodes with applause and Liza takes the girl in her arms.

Everyone is crying.

Except me.

I cannot feel anything.

•  •  •

I had agreed to stay in New York a couple of days for Liza's transition back into real life, and on the drive there, her infectious optimism finally scratched through the surface of my numbness. She put the
Chicago
cast album on the CD player, blared the volume, and we sang at the top of our lungs:
“Me and my baby, my baby and me!”
The driver was either in horror or heaven, I couldn't tell which. At last we crossed the bridge and I was grateful to be in the city.

Upon arriving at her apartment, we were greeted by Bill, who worked in New York as an extension of the rehab center. Liza gave him a kiss of familiarity and he gave her a nod. He had gathered her assistant, housekeeper, houseman, and lawyer for a meeting and they sat in the living room, waiting, like the von Trapp children. A chair had been placed for Liza to face the group and I sat with the others. She was prepared.

“It's good to be home,” she said. “I am strong and healthy and clear. We will be reorganizing work times, setting some boundaries . . .”

She talked on, straightforward, lucid, and indisputable.

I noticed that Bill was watching me, not her. I realized my legs and feet were twitching and I thought he was asking me to stop being so distracting. Then I realized he was gesturing for me to meet him in the kitchen. Once we were alone, he asked if I wanted to go for a coffee, explaining that she'd be a while and it wasn't necessary for us to be there. We bundled up and walked two blocks to Neil's Coffee Shop. We settled in a window booth and ordered coffee and bagels from our unshaven Italian waiter. Bill knew how close Liza and I were and I presumed he wanted to get the inside scoop on her actual emotional state.