The Bird Market of Paris (23 page)

Part Three

 

Chapter 19

Walden and I sat in my third “beginners” meeting in as many days, held in a tiny, stifling church kitchen near Times Square, fans whirring as people filed in. Someone spoke at the front of the room about how he used to drink, how terrible his life had become, and how much better his life was since he had found the meetings. I cried the whole time, head down, and someone passed me a pack of tissues.

Walden nudged me when it came time for newcomers to say their day count. I froze. If I said I was an alcoholic these people would think I
was
an alcoholic, and the proverbial jig would be up. The person at the front pointed in my direction. I had to choose.

I said, “I'm an alcoholic, and I have three days sober.” The syllables felt like poison in my mouth … but people applauded. I looked at the smiling faces aimed at me. I hadn't done anything to warrant applause.

Walden nudged me again, and leaned into my ear. “I'm proud of you,” he whispered.

Proud
of me? I couldn't remember the last time I heard those words. I'd heard, “Hey, get off of the table” and “Get out of this bar” and “You're cut off.” No one had said they were proud of me in a long time.

Walden and I walked into Times Square after the meeting. I looked into the faces of people on the street as if I were seeing the world for the first time, noticing how the light hit the buildings in the afternoon, smelling car exhaust and the perfume of roasted peanuts from a nearby vendor. I attended a meeting with Walden every day. I lost twenty-five pounds in three months. My hands stopped shaking in the morning. I freelanced enough to quit my job at the publishing house and write full-time, which allowed me to attend recovery meetings day and night, and go to movies and to the all-night diner with other recovering alcoholics in between.

The compassionate people in the meetings taught me that self-esteem comes from esteem-able acts: doing good, helpful acts and learning new skills builds self-esteem, and self-esteem is one of the foundations of sobriety. I accompanied other alcoholics to meetings at detox wards in hospitals, where we told our stories and hoped we reached someone in the dark place where the disease's gnarled roots had grown.

I took drum lessons from a private tutor a few blocks from my apartment, and each time I nailed a Van Halen drum fill, I left feeling good about myself, drumsticks jutting from a back pocket in my tight jeans, earphones on my head, Rush's
2112
album blaring, giving me aspirations.

Walden gave Jesse back. I took Jesse everywhere with me, even into the shower. At my mailbox one day, I opened an envelope to find a greeting card with a panda bear on the front—it was from Richard Blanco in Miami, with these words written inside: “I miss you. I love you. We need to talk.
Besos
.”

The other recovering alcoholics in the meetings talked about God. They said I should have a Higher Power, but that my Higher Power didn't have to be an old man in the sky or a guy on a cross. I didn't have to believe to stay sober, but they recommended it; they said it was easier to follow the program with a little faith. Some members had difficulty with this, but for me, God felt like a long-lost friend. I thought that sobriety entitled me to the red-phone connection to my Higher Power.

I chatted with God. Did He want me to be sober? Was this my path? Maybe these meetings were only a speed bump, and I could continue drinking once I learned to control it better? I didn't want to quit drinking, but I liked the attention I received in the meetings. It made me feel visible for the first time in years. But drinking was my habit—my companion—and the sober people were trying to take it away.

One hot, summer day early in my sobriety, I decided I wanted a beer, and the compulsion pushed me to the corner deli instead of a recovery meeting. Alcoholism is a complicated disease with a schizophrenic quality. It talks with many voices. For me, it often spoke sweetly, like a kind schoolteacher, telling me it would be OK to have
just one
. Why not? Who was it going to hurt? Was I always going to be the kind of sheep that followed the herd to the shearing station? Or perhaps, on a hot summer day, I could indulge my thirst. No one would know.

I wrapped my hand around the silver handle of the cold beer case. The door's suction relented and I reached my hand toward a cold Rolling Rock. As my fingers curled around the bottle's emerald neck, someone tapped my shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

I turned around, beer in hand. It was Richie, a guy I had met in the meetings who lived on my block. He spoke with a heavy New York accent, had a tattoo on his neck, and looked like he'd kill you if you annoyed him, but he was handsome, with a giant smile and shimmering eyes, and was serious about his sobriety.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Why are you holding a beer?”

“Oh, is this a beer? I was here for a soda.”

“You're standing in the beer cooler,” he said, peeling the bottle from my hand.

“I was going to drink a couple beers,” I admitted.

“Well, you're not now.” He pointed to the door with his thumb. “Get out of here.”

A few weeks later I bounded toward the liquor store, jilted by another newcomer in the meetings who liked another girl instead of me. This time the voice ordered me to have a drink, said it would calm the knocking in my chest and lighten my emotional backpack.
The guy will be shamed that you drank because of his cruelty
, the voice said, and I believed it. I wanted to drink
at
him. As I turned to walk inside, someone tugged my sleeve. Richie.

“Where you going?” he asked.

“Into this liquor store?” I said.

“For what?”

“I was going to drink.” I couldn't lie to this guy.

“Well, you aren't now. You're coming with me to a meeting.”

“Damn, what are you, my guardian angel?”

“I might be.”

Richie blocked me every time I wanted to relapse. I started testing the theory that Richie was my tattooed, motorcycle-driving guardian angel. If I felt close to drinking, Richie appeared. God didn't want me to drink, and Richie was His messenger. Once, I was on a date with a cute guy when Richie walked into the restaurant and both my date and I said hello to him. I was “counting days,” unable to date according to the precepts of my recovery program, and my unknowing date had already earned years of sobriety. I had to admit my position as a newcomer to him. My date apologized, paid the bill, and left, leaving me at the table alone. Richie laughed and said not only was he preventing me from drinking, he was keeping me honest, too.

I scraped together six months of sobriety, but it wasn't easy, mostly because I wanted to earn sobriety
my
way, not by listening to the simple suggestions in the meetings. Healing a damaged nervous system takes a long time, and much of that time for me was spent wanting to return to the comfort of my habit. I spoke to God hourly, asking for signs directing me toward every little decision, becoming angry if the signs didn't appear. “Should I have a turkey sandwich?” I'd ask God. If a turkey didn't fall from the sky, I'd wonder why God was ignoring me.

In December 2000, a representative from the National Endowment for the Arts called to say that I had earned a grant in poetry, a prestigious award that came with a $20,000 stipend. I had applied for the grant with a ten-page poem about chickens that I had written in Indiana. I should have been thrilled, but I was uncomfortable. I felt like I didn't deserve the award. I was sure the NEA would call me soon and say they'd made a paperwork error. Or, someone I knew would call and laugh that they had pranked me. I paced my apartment, the fear of the inevitable rising, waiting for the phone to ring. I needed a drink to tamp down the dragonflies in my stomach—and maybe to celebrate.
Go ahead
, the voice said,
you deserve something stronger than a milkshake
.

If I could duck Richie, I could drink. I didn't want to ditch recovery; I just needed a break. It wasn't about the NEA grant. I hadn't been practicing the principles of the recovery program; hadn't cracked the blue book they gave me, which contained all the information I needed to stay sober; hadn't asked anyone to be my sponsor, the person who would guide me through the rough terrain of early sobriety. In short, I did what people in the program called “half measures,” which, according to what I heard in meetings, would avail me of nothing—not half of something—
nothing
. Sobriety was supposed to be a miracle, but in this program, if I couldn't commit to the steps I needed for recovery, sobriety would just be a pretty concept, an interesting topic to discuss over drinks.

I told God that if He didn't want me to drink, He could put Richie in my way. Before heading to the liquor store, I sat in a meeting and raised my hand and told everyone about my plan, giving God a chance to stop me, since we'd had that chat. Richie wasn't there. A guy turned to me and said, “Hey, if you want to drink, go drink. We'll refund your misery anytime you want.”

If he had said, “Hey, don't drink, it's not worth it, you're better than that, go to another meeting,” I may have considered that a sign. Instead, I had received consent.

I prayed again, concentrating on beaming the words into the sky. “God, if You don't want me to drink, send me
another
sign.” I shuffled to the liquor store and waited for Richie. I stood in front of the store's window for a few minutes, looking at my reflection in the glass, the huge display bottles calling me inside. I purchased a bottle of Malibu rum and hustled home in case Richie saw me. I placed the bottle on the counter and sat on the couch and stared at it, giving God one more shot at stopping me. Maybe He needed more time. I'd wait for Ritchie to materialize, and continue if he didn't.

I turned on the TV and
The Simpsons
appeared: the episode where the town drunk, Barney, goes to recovery meetings with Homer's help and sobers up. He celebrates his sobriety by taking helicopter-flying lessons. I came into the episode near the end, but I'd seen it before: Barney is flying a helicopter to save Bart and Lisa from a forest fire. Barney and Homer land the helicopter near a Duff Beer truck, which has spilled a six-pack into the road. Barney wants to drink the beer, but Homer won't let him.

“I won't let you give up now!” Homer yells, as he guzzles the entire six-pack so that there's none left for Barney.

“You brave man, you took six silver bullets for me!” Barney says.

I reached for the remote and clicked off the TV.

Nothing but the hum of my table fan. Jesse didn't even flick a wing. I sat there for a few moments before walking to the counter and cracking the bottle of Malibu. It hissed open, and the smell of coconuts displaced the stale air of my apartment. I breathed in the beach, rainbow umbrellas, and suntan oil, Poppy smacking a little ball toward me with his old wooden paddle, ankle-deep in the clear water of the Atlantic.

The blackout wasn't extraordinary. I woke up wearing only socks, shivering, lying on the floor under my loft bed's ladder, vomit in my hair.

The phone rang. It was Walden.

“Get up, we're going to a meeting,” he said. He sounded way too energetic for so early in the morning. I looked at the clock. It was past three p.m.

“Who is this?” I croaked, blinking in the half light.

“You drunk-dialed me in the middle of the night, along with most of everyone else we know,” he said. “If you don't want this program you don't have to do it, but drinking isn't working for you.”

“I asked God to show me a sign if He didn't want me to drink, and He didn't, so I drank,” I lied.

“God isn't Santa Claus,” Walden said. “You can't give Him orders and lists of things you want and expect them to appear. That's not how prayer works. Get dressed.”

 

Chapter 20

I sat at my tiny desk and held the $20,000 NEA check to the light when it arrived in early 2001, making sure it was real. The artistic project to go with my National Endowment for the Arts grant came to me as quickly as birds bolt from thunder: Go to Paris. Find the bird market. Buy a caged bird and release it at dusk over the skyline of Paris in memory of the hurricane birds and Poppy. Become redeemed. Write about it all: every feather, every wing stroke caressing the marigold sky, every blink of every eye following the bird soaring over the chimneys and out of sight.

The people in the recovery meetings said it was too soon in my sobriety for an overseas trip alone, with just a few months clean, but I became obsessed with the idea of
redemption
. Maybe finding the bird market and freeing a bird was the grand gesture that could liberate me from the grief and remorse that I believed fueled my drinking. I arranged for lodging in Paris through a travel exchange website. A French girl would stay in my apartment while I stayed in her parents' bed-and-breakfast for the first month; I would spend the second month in her new apartment in the center of Paris. Walden agreed to take Jesse while I was away.

My seat, over the airplane wing, was next to a woman wearing an expensive floppy straw hat with a polka-dotted scarf tied around it, a sheer polka-dotted camisole in the same shade of chocolate brown as her scarf, and pricey taupe designer mules. I perceived her as an Upper East Side socialite type because her clothing was so well coordinated—my outfits were always offbeat, ill-fitting, and peculiar because most of my clothes were from the Salvation Army. Her immense straw purse filled my seat, and she asked me not to sit there. I told her the airplane was full and she grunted, asking me to put her bag in the overhead compartment.

The other people settled into the aircraft, stowing away their bags, plopping their butts into the cramped airline seats. I played with the little screen installed on the seat in front of me, but it didn't work. I fumphered through my bag for the bottle of Valium my doctor had prescribed when I complained about airplane anxiety. I wasn't afraid of flying so much as I was afraid of pilot error, explosions, and engine failure. I'd never flown in adulthood without having guzzled significant quantities of alcohol.