Walking on Broken Glass (38 page)

The sizzling steam of frying bacon met me at the back door to our house. If I hadn’t heard Dad's voice, I might have thought someone else had moved in.

“Come on in. Serving breakfast now,” Dad called from the kitchen as I pulled off my walking shoes.

“Did you get permission to—” Carl was drinking coffee and reading the newspaper, so he had to know bacon was splattering demon grease everywhere.

“How was your walk?” Carl closed the paper and folded it in half.

“Nice. Hot. But it was good to talk to Molly.” I asked Dad to fix me two eggs over easy. “So what time did you come home?”

“Probably right after you left for your walk,” he said.

“What? This morning?”

“We were at the club later than I thought we’d be. Didn’t want to wake you up, so I just went home with my parents. My father dropped me off on the way to his game.”

“Here they are, honey. Eat while they’re hot,” Dad said, and slid the plate with two fried eggs and wheat bread in front of me.

“That's so considerate of you, caring about not waking me up.” I broke the white tops and dipped my bread in the eggs.

“Don’t be like that. You know how I feel about your sarcasm,” he said, lowering his voice.

“And you know how I feel about you lying to your parents and to me, but you did that … twice.”

“Do you have to be so loud? We can talk about this later.” He looked at my dad and back at me.

We didn’t talk about it later, and I was the one who regretted it. I didn’t get too many answers from Carl because Dad had his own agenda. He heard us, of course, and told me I was “overreacting.”

“How did I do that? I’m not the one who sold me out.”

“Carl, she's right. You should have been honest with your parents, especially your dad, talked to him man to man. He could have told your mother. Heck, you could have just talked to her, if you didn’t want to talk to both of them. One could have told the other.”

Carl nodded. “I know. I know.”

“And Leah, all I’m saying is maybe, you know, you’re better now. Maybe you could have a drink every once in a while now that you know what to do. Moderation, isn’t that what they say?”

“It doesn’t work like that. Alcoholism isn’t cured. I’ll always be an alcoholic.”

Dad looked wounded. “Now, honey, don’t say that. You don’t know … ”

“No, Dad. I do know. I can’t drink like other people. I never did, I never will. But I’m a recovering alcoholic now. That's what matters. If I was suicidal, would you say I could shoot myself every now and then?”

“Now, baby, we both know that would be just stupid.”

“Exactly. It would be just as stupid for me to drink. It can kill me too. I just take it one day at a time.”

“I’m glad it's working for you. I’m glad. Besides, you have to take care of yourself. You’ve got that baby to think about. How about you, Carl? Awfully quiet, there.”

“Great, Bob. I’m great.” He put his coffee cup in the sink and walked outside.

A
s I had promised Rebecca, on the way home from taking my father to the airport, I brought up the idea of marriage counseling. The good that came out of the Great Dinner Disaster was that I used it as an opportunity to guilt Carl into agreeing to an appointment. Carl used counseling as an opportunity for penance. We were even.

Our first session with Melinda was the getting to know one another, let's make sure we’re comfortable introduction. After we’d arrived at her office, an unassuming cotton candy pink wood-framed house in an older section of the city, Bonnie, her receptionist, handed a blue clipboard to Carl and a pink one to me. “I know, sexist. Please fill these forms out, and no cheating, kids.” She smiled and sat back at her desk.

A few pages of the usual medical information requests, but other pages asked about our dreams and goals, strengths and weaknesses of ourselves, our spouse, our relationship, our opinions about money, education, sex, families, children. We finished within a few minutes of one another and handed them over to Bonnie. She took them into Melinda's office.

Carl and I sat next to one another like strangers on a bus. Carl picked up a
Sports Illustrated
. So reminiscent of Annie, who I’d not seen in weeks. I said a quick prayer for her and for everyone at Brookforest that I’d probably never see again. All those weeks our lives were intertwined by our shared weaknesses, and once we became strong, we unraveled from the group. God's way of binding us somewhere else?

Melinda walked out holding our clipboards. “Hi, you two. Come in.” I wouldn’t have known she was Rebecca's sister because they shared little in terms of their physical appearance. Only a few inches taller than I, Melinda had curly, dark brown hair past her shoulders. Her generous curves contrasted Rebecca's tall, sleek frame. But once she started talking, I had no doubt they were siblings. They shared an assertive sassiness and a warm, honest compassion.

Carl and I sat in separate chairs facing her desk while she talked about how she envisioned couples’ therapy, what she expected from us, and what we should expect from her. Carl asked about her experience with couples in therapy because of alcoholism.

“I’ve been working with couple and individuals for almost eight years now. Are they all alcoholics in recovery? No. Sometimes the addictions are food, drugs, sex, gambling. Some of my clients are the children of the others or the adult children of the others. We all have something that brings us here.”

She told us that, after today, the three of us wouldn’t meet until she’d met with Carl and me individually. Carl squirmed. I saw her eyes made note, but she kept talking. “When the three of us come together again, I’ll share what each of you want as the three most important areas to talk about here. After today, your chairs will face one another, not me. I’m not the one you’re here to build a relationship with. I have my own I need to work on.” She rolled her eyes, laughed, and pointed to a picture of a handsome, shiny-haired, black cocker spaniel. “People tell me Sigmund and I have an amazing resemblance. More than Becca and I, wouldn’t you say, Leah?”

We scheduled our next appointments, and she gave each of us a set of Scripture passages she wanted us to read before our next couple time together. “You need to congratulate yourselves for being here. The first year in recovery is tough. Most marriages don’t survive the first year, and the majority of those who relapse are going to do it the first year. Think there's a connection? Oh, yeah. If you had kept drinking, Leah, you could’ve shortened your life by as many as fifteen years. Now that's sobering, don’t you think, Carl?”

I didn’t have to tell her how Carl felt. His body language and monotone, clipped responses conveyed it all. She focused most of her eye contact his way, and when he responded to something she said, she rewarded him with a smile or nod.

Melinda sold me. Now if Carl could just buy in.

I expected my days as a sober person would be excruciatingly long ones involving teeth-gnashing, wailing, hand-wringing, and gazing with naked longing into liquor store windows. Time and circumstances controlled my drinking life. Like many with alcohol-crazed brains, I had my routine, my standards, my inflexible self-imposed tyranny.

WEEKDAY VS. WEEKEND RULES

1. No drinking earlier than five in the evening on weekdays.

2. No drinking earlier than ten in the mornings on weekends.

3. If the weekday was a holiday, then it fell under the weekend rule.

VACATION RULES

1. Weekdays and weekends shared the ten in the mornings rule.

2.
If
the vacation involved morning brunch, drinking before ten o’clock was acceptable (by definition, a morning brunch was breakfast where the following were available: a milk punch, Screwdriver, or Bloody Mary. If attending a Jazz Brunch, champagne was acceptable.)

OTHER RULES

1. NEVER, NEVER, NEVER drink at school.

2. No drinking before church services of any kind. (Since we generally didn’t attend, the ten o’clock rule applied.)

3. No drinking while driving. Unless in Louisiana, where this rule was suspended since “to go” cups were available when exiting a bar, and Drive-Thru Daiquiris provided acceptable locations for getting a drink “for the road” on the way to a party. (Rule amended to take into consideration new driving laws requiring covered drinks for drivers and passengers.)

4. After three consecutive days of raging hangovers or worrisome blackouts, there would be a three-day rule of ABSOLUTELY NO ALCOHOL. By the second day of the three-day rule, if no alcohol had been consumed, then it was assumed that no alcohol would have been consumed on the third day. In which case, a drink at five on the afternoon of the second day was acceptable since no drinking on the third day was assumed.

CONTAINER RULE:

CONTENT DETERMINES CONTAINER

1. Anything Not Clear: This is the preferred container. Required to disguise gin or vodka drinks requiring an olive as pure drinking water.

2. Clear Container: Use with caution.

1. If the gin or vodka drink necessitated a lemon, orange, or lime slice, a clear container was acceptable, because lemons, oranges, and limes are acceptable water fruits.
   
2. May be used any time drinking is acceptable under conditions outlined above under Weekday vs. Weekend Rules.
   

DISPOSAL RULE:

ABOVE VS. BELOW NEWSPAPER

(PRIOR TO CARL's ARRIVAL HOME)

1. Drinking alone on a weekday (see above), fewer empty cans (two or three) could be viewed in the garbage can.

2. If drinking on a weekend (see above), more cans were acceptable. Any cans above acceptable had to be placed under the newspaper.

In the name of everything holy, how did I ever find time to drink?

W
ell, look who it is,” said Dr. Nolan, who entered the exam room and looked at my file at the same time. “The little princess sprung from the big house. Life on the outside must be good.”

Carl sat across from the exam table. With her back to him, it wasn’t until I said, “Carl, this is Dr. Nolan,” that she realized he was there.

“Oh, I am very sorry, Mr. Thornton. I was so busy reading about Miss Leah here, I didn’t look where I was going,” she said. “Glad to meet you.”