Drunk Mom (24 page)

There he is, my boyfriend with his glasses on. I still never think of him as someone who wears glasses, so I’m startled again by this new incarnation. I notice he’s maybe slouching a bit too, shoulders slightly more inward.

The baby is on the floor, playing. My boyfriend approaches him and the baby looks up. My boyfriend picks him up. The baby’s face is turned toward the door but he can’t see my face in the tiny window, he has no idea to look there for me.

I don’t want to knock. Not yet.

I just want to watch them, love them from outside, keep them the way they are, undisturbed by the chaos that I bring with me. I miss them both so much, although the baby I miss beyond missing. It’s like half of your face gone, your mouth and eyes.

I stand and watch them. I can’t cry. But I want to.

When I can’t take it anymore I knock on the door. It opens and then it’s a blur of shouts and hugs and kisses and tears—theirs—and the only clear thing is the baby’s weight against my body, which makes me feel immortal and, at the same time, completely disappointed that I am not.

T
wo months later, I’m drunk, again.

I don’t understand.

The next day, my boyfriend is silent, cold. We don’t talk. I don’t remember. I hold a fist to my mouth to stop myself from vomiting. The vomit is pressing against every single pore in my body. I am so thirsty I would drink vinegar if it was offered to me.

I have to leave the house before I fall apart completely, so I pick myself up, put on a dress and walk into the hottest day in May in the history of the world. I walk and stop and retch, not so discreetly beside the stroller.

I surface. My monster slobbery face, eyes bleeding, looking at Frankie looking at me from the stroller. I’m trying to smile, trying to tell him that Mommy is really okay, sweetie, it’s no big deal.

I also have the worst stomach cramps, so I have to run into various fast-food joints along the way. Once, I don’t make it in time and a bead
of something too liquid slides all the way down my legs. I wash the back of my dress and dispose of my underwear in a random bathroom stall.

These are the indignities of a chronic drunk.

I spend the rest of the morning sleeping in the park, sleeping off my hangover, the baby sleeping in the stroller.

I wake up with grass blades engraved in my face. There’s a car parked nearby, a guy sitting in the car, watching.

I feel better after my nap. I let the baby out on the grass and he tries to push the stroller. He pulls my hat off my head and puts it on his. Now that I’m not feeling so sick, I am hungry, and we walk toward a park restaurant. I put the baby back in the stroller. He’s babbling to himself and laughing. We lose my hat somewhere but that’s okay.

After I eat, feeling slightly more human, I dial my boyfriend, desperate to tell him how much I love him. I need to see if things between us are okay despite what I don’t remember happened the night before.

He answers the phone and I can tell he’s mad but he says nothing about last night. We make small talk about what we’re going to do later on. I can tell he wants to go but I’m scared I’ll lose him. I am losing him already. I take a deep breath.

I tell him there was a scary guy watching us, just sitting in the car.

What scary guy? Are you okay? Do you need me to come and get you guys?

I exhale.

No, I think he’s gone. I’m fine now.

He cares.

On my way back from the park I walk into a liquor store.

I don’t even pretend that I’m
not
going to go inside. I just go inside. I don’t make any stupid jokes or comments about having a big party or anything like that. They can all blow me if they have a problem with me drinking while caring for a baby.

I should go home and stick this wine and the vodka in the fridge, not even bother pretending that I didn’t buy it. By now my boyfriend probably knows all of my hiding spots anyway.

A
few weeks go by during which I put myself on a painful schedule of drinking only twice, three times a week tops. On the days off I stuff my schedule chock full of mommy-baby activities, visit galleries, draw, write novella-length emails, watch endless TV reality shows. When I drink, I go back to my old routine of drinking after everybody goes to bed and passing out.

But unlike in the winter, it’s harder to confine myself and my drinking to home, and I start to crave social interactions—places where I can showcase the extreme wit and charm that I sometimes believe myself to acquire after a gallon of booze. Nothing in my most recent history testifies in favour of this belief, but—perhaps because of the warm weather, the sense of renewal—I suddenly get the rock star feeling of being invincible, get back into that
Cosmo
-woman fantasy that tells me that I do really well on booze. I’m sentimental too, like any drunk. For example, I’m still hanging on to one of my favourite memories of myself at
twenty-one, wandering some city in Europe, in a blue dress, unwashed, drunk on vodka, hair full of sun and cigarettes, laughing with close friends who at night would turn into accidental lovers. We were going to live forever, of course, and we were always going to be drunk and it was always going to be summer.

Even after all my winter misery and rehab and sadness at home, this memory and all my other delusions are what seem to drive me. When the first summer invitation comes my way, I accept it immediately and convince my boyfriend that we should go.

On the day of the party, I’m walking toward the venue, a gallery, where I’m supposed to meet my boyfriend. I’m with the stroller and I’m wearing a tiny hat with feathers, and a blue silk dress. I look great. I’m bombed. Actually, I’m so bombed I can barely walk in these new stilettos, but holding on to the stroller supports my wobbling perfectly.

Hey, someone says behind me, I remember you.

I turn around. Someone familiar. Short, stocky, with round, happy cheeks.

Hey, it’s me, Rob. The manly voice confuses me for a moment but then I remember. It’s the AA lover from the harm reduction group. The one who reminded me of a middle-aged woman and who I’d nicknamed “Lesbian Man” to myself). I stifle laughter; it comes out as a loud snort.

He says, What? What is it?

Nothing, nothing, I giggle, How are you?

I’m great, I’m great! Lolita, right?

Not quite. His mixing up of my name stops dead the giggles. I hate it when people get my name mixed up with Lolita.

Jowita. Rob, right? Or Bob. Rob? Rob. It’s Rob.

Rob.

Yes. How are you? Are you well?

I say, I’m great.

Great. Great. Where are you off to?

I wonder if he can smell it on me. I doubt it.

I smile, Oh, I’m just going to this party. Which is why I’m wearing the funny hat, see? I poke myself in the hat, say: See? See?

He finally looks, blushes and nods. Nice hat.

How’s Jesus doing?

What?

You know, AA?

He blushes again.

I went to rehab, I tell him. It got worse. But now things are fine. Everything is so great.

Okay. Yeah, well, it’s one day at a time, you know.

Oh, yeah I just love those slogans, love them—I squeak loudly enough for my son to squeak in response from his stroller.

It’s okay, sweetie, I assure my son and try to aim for his head with my hand to pat it, it’s okay.

Is this the famous Frankie?

I don’t like him knowing Frankie’s name. I wish I had lied about Frankie’s name in those meetings. I wish I had called him something like Arturo or Hugo. Too late now, I guess.

How ya doing, big man? How are ya? Rob-Bob says to Frankie. How are ya, buddy?

Bob.

Rob.

Rob, right. I gotta go. I’m going to be late for my thing.

Keep well.

Yes.

Great. I wish you another twenty-four hours.

At first I can’t figure out what he’s talking about. Then I do. Twenty-four hours. Right. I have a couple of those if you add up the days in my scheduled week.

I smile at him. Rob.

He’s just standing here.

I smile again. I’m starting to feel a little clearer.

He says, Oh, before I go … Do you know the story about the snake?

There’s a tiny bit of a headache creeping into the back of my head.

I shake my head no. I should know better but I can’t help myself. Someone says “story” and I’m all ears. I’m a sucker for stories. So I have to hear this stupid story.

Rob says, There was a little boy and he came across a rattlesnake. The snake said, ‘Please, little boy, can you take me across the river?’ ‘No, snake. If I pick you up you will bite me and I will die.’ And the snake says, ‘No, I’d never bite you. Just take me across the river.’

A group of friends of friends walks by. One of the girls recognizes me and gives me a little wave. I’m sure they’re on the way to the gallery where the party is. Oh, how I wish I was walking with them instead of being stuck with this freak. But screw them. Screw this girl. I should own this situation and this freak. I wave back, but they’ve turned around already. Screw them.

Sorry?

He carried it right across the river. The rattlesnake.

I thought he wasn’t going to do that.

Yes, but the snake promised him it wouldn’t bite him.

Jesus fucking Christ.

Rob says, So the little boy walked all the way across the river, holding the snake to his chest. And right before he put it down on the ground, the rattlesnake turned and bit him in the chest. And the boy yelled, ‘Why did you do that? Now I will surely die!’ The rattlesnake
looked up at him, smiled and said, ‘You knew what I was when you picked me up.’

Rob-Bob is blinking at me.

What? Oh. Right. He’s done his story now. Wow, excellent, I tell him. I really have to go now.

It’s good to see you.

You too. You too.

You know, it’s like the snake.

What is?

Alcohol.

Of course. Just like the snake. Nice to see you.

It’s great to see you. It’s a great hat. God bless you.

I’m now half-sober. I think my walk improves, I can feel it strengthen and I don’t even have to lean on the stroller so much. Frankie is babbling away inside it. I think I need another drink before I can face the cool crowd, the girl who waved and all those other friendly, nonalcoholic people. My boyfriend.

I think about cautionary tales, snakes, their heavy-handed meanings as I walk into a bar right next door to the gallery I’m going to.

A
fter rehab I kept getting phone calls to sign up for the follow-up group, or aftercare as the people who phone from the mental hospital call it. I like that name; it makes me think of us as precious flowers, addicts like orchids that need to be attended to even after their time in a glasshouse.

The next time someone calls to ask if I’m interested in going, I finally give in and tell the nice lady on the phone that I’ll come to the upcoming meeting. This is shortly after running into Rob. Perhaps his snake story made some impression after all.

So here we go again. Two months after rehab, I’m at yet another addictions group, held in the same college-like building as the harm reduction group was before. It’s even on the same floor, and when I walk up I’m greeting the familiar photographs of sunsets and forest fauna in the
staircase. The room is different than before—much larger and on the east side of the building, so out the window you can see all the addicts hanging out on benches, smoking.

We go around in a circle. Naturally. Same thing. Bunch of fidgety losers. Thumb-twirlers and leg-twitchers. Addicts. This person lectures everyone, that one is lying, another one makes me want to scream with her passive sheep face.

Our new counsellor is overweight with lots of curly hair. She looks like someone who should be running a children’s TV show. She addresses everyone in the manner of a children’s TV host, as if we were all living in a Muppet land. I never remember her name.

Once in a while if I feel particularly inspired I say something to stir the shit. Irritatingly so—and believe me, I am irritating myself—I bring up a lot of stuff I learned in the past, say things like: you can’t modify your alcohol or drug use, minimize it or control it. I say that I know that only abstinence works. Moderation is bullshit.

There are a couple of people in the room who claim to practise moderation, so they look to the counsellor to fight me on this and she kind of does. Or doesn’t, really. She’s probably used to my type. She’s probably just humouring me. She tells me to keep an open mind.

That’s a slogan in AA, did you know that? I ask her.

She says she didn’t know that. She says it works for some people, moderation.

Okay, fine, I say.

A lot of people in this particular group know each other; there are lots of inside jokes going around. Some people have been coming here for more than a year, as the aftercare groups can go on for as long as there’s interest. The long-timers know each other’s histories, ask questions about each other’s families. I don’t interact much with the group itself. Perhaps part of me is jealous, even though I don’t want to know
them. This is so typical of me to feel this way, be jealous of something I don’t want and dislike. In any case, eventually I stop trying to challenge the counsellor and the moderation bullshitters. I run out of steam and show up at the group only to avoid my boyfriend’s nagging.