Best Kept Secret (16 page)

I felt myself flush, remembering that I’d been so hungover the morning of my last scheduled appointment, I’d missed it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been to see her.

“Not to worry,” she said, then consulted the chart she cradled. “Looks like your blood pressure is a little high.” She lifted her gaze to me. “Everything all right?”

I nodded, maybe a little too enthusiastically. “Oh, sure. A little stressed, I suppose. I’m not sleeping very well.” I went on to tell her how my thoughts twirled like batons the moment I tried to drift off. I kept it general, since Charlie was in the room, telling her only that I had worries about my diminishing career and the d-i-v-o-r-c-e.

And I’m drinking too much.
The phrase perched on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t speak it.

“Stress will do that to you,” she said. She scribbled in my chart. “Let’s try some Ambien and a few Xanax to help get you through the tougher spots, okay?” I nodded. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll talk about getting you on something longer-acting, like Lexapro.” She stopped scribbling and looked at me again. “You shouldn’t drink with the Ambien or Xanax. It’s a bad combination.”

“That won’t be a problem,” I said.
I’m telling her the truth,
I thought.
If I get my anxiety in check and I can sleep, then I won’t have a reason to drink.

“Anything else?” she asked expectantly.

“No,” I said with forced, glittering cheer. “Other than that, I’m all good.”

The holiday season passed in a muddled haze. Some days I kept to my two-glass limit, others a switch would flip inside me after a single glass and two bottles would disappear instead. I stopped being able to predict which it would be.

The phone woke me one cold, January morning while Charlie
was at preschool. Three days before, I’d decided once again that I was done with drinking. That was it. I’d stick to the Ambien and Xanax—the doctor had prescribed them, after all. I would never pick up a bottle of wine again.

By noon on the first day without any wine, I was sweating so profusely I had to change my shirt. My skin reeked of alcohol and itched as though it was covered in a million tiny bugs. My muscles shook and my head felt like it just might explode. Still, I didn’t drink. I was smarter than what I was doing. It was time for me to knock it the hell off.

“Hey, lady,” Jess’s voice chirped in my ear. Her pleasant demeanor felt like tiny daggers of ice slicing into my flesh.

“Hey,” I said groggily.

“What are you and Charlie doing later today? Want to come over for dinner?”

I paused, trying to come up with a reason to not see my sister. I was in no shape to socialize. “Um, nothing, I don’t think. But I’m not feeling well, really, so I probably shouldn’t be around the twins.”

“Is it the flu?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said, faltering. “Just some kind of bug, I think.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d spent time with my sister. I was too scared to be around her very long, afraid she might see what was wrong.

“Okay,” she said, drawing the word out with an edge of doubt. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

I hung up, and the phone rang almost immediately again. This time it was the bank, an automated voice message. “Your December mortgage payment is more than thirty days past its due date. Please make this payment at your earliest convenience or you will be contacted by the loan processor within the next twenty-four hours.”

I slammed my cell shut and shook my head, as though to clear it of thought. I hadn’t slept more than two hours at a time in three days. I couldn’t deal with this kind of shit. I had the money in savings, I’d just
forgotten to transfer the payment. I’d take care of it later. I dozed in and out for another hour, setting my alarm to make sure I didn’t miss picking up Charlie, then managed to drag myself out of the house.

“How are you, Cadence?” Brittany inquired, waving at me from the driver’s side of her cobalt blue Lincoln Navigator.

“Fine,” I said, waving back at her as I secured Charlie into his booster seat.

“We miss you at play group,” she said.

“Thanks. I’m just really busy, you know?” I was suddenly conscious of the fact that I was wearing a gray T-shirt stained with sweat and my hair hadn’t been washed in several days. I jumped into my car and drove off as fast as I could.

Even though he rarely took them anymore, once we got home, I led Charlie into his room and tried to get him down for a nap.

“Will you at least lie down with Mommy and rest? I don’t feel good, honey.”

“No, I don’t want to. I want to go to the park.” My son crossed his arms over his tiny chest and set his face in a stubborn expression similar to the one I’d seen on his father’s face a thousand times before.

“Not today, baby. I’m sick.”

“You’re
always
sick,” he said.

His words felt like a kick in the gut. My guilt sparked and caught fire in my chest.

“You will take a rest, young man, whether you like it or not.”

“No!” He pushed his body into a rigid line, then screamed at the top of his lungs, “You’re mean!” I left his room, slamming the door behind me. He shrieked and pounded on the wall for another half an hour before finally quieting down.

I went to the kitchen and stared at my too-long-untouched laptop. A pulsing, electric discomfort coursed through my body. What was I going to do? I was running out of money, I couldn’t write, and my mind spun like an out-of-control carnival ride. I felt trapped,
hopeless, unable to see a way to fix any of it. And yet, I’d brought it on myself. I
chose
this life. I was the one who convinced myself I was a strong, capable woman who could be just fine on my own. If I couldn’t do it, the only person I had to blame was myself.

“God
dammit
!” I screamed, pushing my computer across the kitchen table and into the wall.

Fuck it,
I thought.
I need a drink
. My entire body trembling, I stepped over to the counter and poured myself a rather hefty goblet of ruby-hued cabernet. I drank straight through the dinner Charlie threw on the floor and I had no appetite for, waiting for relief to fill me. To my dismay, I remained stone-cold sober. The wine wasn’t working anymore. It had lost its desired effect. I opened another bottle.

“Sorry Mommy yelled earlier,” I said an hour later as I lay in Charlie’s bed, finally relaxed, tickling the bare skin of his back to help him go to sleep.

“Will you come to my house and tickle my back when I’m married?” he asked instead of replying to my apology.

I smiled, my eyes filling with tears. “I don’t think your wife would like that very much, baby boy.”

He turned his head to look at me. “Well, will you show her how to do it, then?”

“Yes,” I said, and I kissed him on the forehead.

The next thing I realized, Charlie was shaking me awake. “Mama!” he said. “Mama, the bathroom floor’s all wet.”

I attempted to pull myself upright. The room spun around me and my stomach bent in on itself. That second bottle had sent me for a loop. I patted Charlie on the head. “ ’S okay, honey,” I slurred. “Everything will be okay.” I blinked at him heavily and he shook my arm again.

“Water’s all over the floor,” he said. He yanked on my arm and I groaned.

“Okay, I heard you,” I said. I braced myself against his bed and pushed my body into a standing position. The clock read midnight.
I staggered down the hall behind Charlie and stepped into a swamp in the bathroom.

“What the hell?” I exclaimed, jumping back out of the mess of water, toilet paper, and poop.

Charlie scrunched up his face and began to cry. “I had to go potty,” he said. “And I flushed the way I’m s’post to and all the paper got stuck and the water and poop went over the top.” He looked at me with wide, glassy blue eyes. “I’m sorry, Mommy. I didn’t mean to do it.”

“Don’t cry, baby. I’ll clean it up. It’s just an accident. Mommy’s not mad.” I didn’t have the energy to be mad.

His bottom lip trembled. “Really?”

I wobbled where I stood, and braced myself with a flat palm against the wall. “Really.” My head bobbed and I felt like I might pass out. “You go on back to bed. I’ll come tuck you in in a minute.”

“ ’Kay,” he said, and padded off down the hall. Bleary-eyed, I snatched a huge stack of towels from the linen closet and threw them onto the mess on the floor. Tiptoeing across them, I managed to adjust the toilet so it stopped running and went back to its normal level. I dropped to my hands and knees, swabbed the floor until the towels were soaked, and then took the entire smelly armful to the washing machine by the back door.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” I whispered. The tears swelled in the back of my throat. “Please. I can’t do this anymore. Somebody help me.”

There was no one to hear my cries. I took several deep breaths, grabbed the bottle of bleach, and stumbled back to the bathroom to splash some over the floor. I would have to clean up this mess on my own.

A
s I turn into
my driveway after dropping Charlie off with Martin, I eye my cozy, red-brick 1920s bungalow as someone might upon seeing it for the first time. The structure itself was beautiful—rare, detailed, latticed brick found only in older Seattle neighborhoods, leaded glass windows, a convex wall making up the front of the house. A substantial weeping willow was the garden’s focal point near the sidewalk. Looking out from my living room window seat, I’ve always thought that the willow looks like the bottom half of a genteel lady, carefully lifting her hoopskirt.

I’m conflicted over Jess’s suggestion that I sell my home. My son spent his first five years here, but it’s also where I descended into the bottle and endured my darkest days. If we moved into something more affordable, I’d be leaving good memories behind with the bad. Then again, leaving the bad ones might be exactly what I need.

Once inside, I set my purse down on the entryway table and let my eyes travel to the living room shelves. The sight of Charlie’s Spider-Man action figures and Lego creations jars something loose inside me. My pulse races. Even though I’ve just left him, I feel disjointed and panicky without him here. It’s like my body is missing its skeleton.

Dropping to the couch, I blow a heavy breath out through my lips. I think about how I used to long for quiet—a leisurely meandering
through my days. The first few years of being a mother, especially, when sleep seemed like the fabulous sex you’d once had with a stranger and would never get to experience again now that you were married. I yearned for mornings without a screeching infant, mornings without a husband accusing me of misplacing his keys.

At one point, I remember wondering if I would be better off if Charlie never existed. This shadow of a thought, this brief turning over of my heart to the darkness that lay inside it, this is what haunts me now. Is all that resulted from my drinking some kind of cosmic retribution for spending one selfish moment wishing I had not become a mother? I didn’t mean it. Charlie is my gift, the best thing, hands down, that ever happened to me. I’d never heard other mothers discuss whether or not they were actually cut out to be a mother, nor did I have the courage to ask any women I knew if the question ever crossed their minds. The words were obscene enough inside of my head—saying them out loud felt unfathomable.

My cell phone rings and I see Susanne’s name pop up on the tiny screen. We’ve only talked once since I got out of treatment, and while she understands the basic outline of what has happened with me over the last couple of months, I am too embarrassed to tell her too many of the dirty details. She knows I’ve stopped drinking and Martin has filed for custody. For now, that’s enough.

“Hey there,” she says. “Long time no talk. What’re you up to?”

“Not much,” I respond. I gnaw on a hangnail on the outside edge of my pinky finger. “How are you?”

“Stressed. You want to go out for a drink?”

I pause, feeling awkward. “Um, I’m not drinking anymore. Remember?”

“Not even wine?” She laughs and I picture the bloodred curve of her lips. “C’mon, it’s medicinal.”

My mind flickers briefly on the feeling of a perfectly cool, spherical crystal goblet in my hand and what a swallow of wine might taste
like. I have to cough a little to clear the gag from my throat. “I can’t. Sorry.”

We’re both quiet for a moment, unused to conversation with each other unaided by the lubricant of wine.

“What’re you guys up to tonight?” I finally ask.

She sighs. “The usual. Bath with a screaming toddler, followed by an enormous martini with my husband. Slightly drunken sex, if he’s lucky.”

I don’t know how to respond. I’m suddenly hyperaware of everyone else’s drinking patterns. Andi assures me that “normies”—otherwise known as people who don’t have a problem with alcohol—don’t register how much wine another person leaves in a glass, or how many shots of scotch their friends knock back over dinner. She says it’s a reflection of an alcoholic’s obsession with alcohol, how he or she keeps track of other people’s consumption rates. I don’t think I have an
obsession
with alcohol—I think I notice it more because my problem with it is so recent.

“Well,” I manage to say, “I hope you have a good night.”

“You, too.”

After we hang up, I think about how much it disturbs me to hear about Susanne’s drinking. I can’t imagine what it would be like to sit down with her and watch her do it, to smell the wine and have it right there, within my reach.

I’m not sure I have it in me to say no to her when I’ve barely learned to say it to myself.

One chilly but clear January afternoon, I picked up Charlie from school and took him to Golden Gardens Park in Ballard, not too far from Alice’s house.
I’m going to be a good mother,
I’d decided the morning after the toilet overflowed.
I’m going to write and clean my house and play with my son.
How I was living was ridiculous. I wasn’t a victim. I was a strong, intelligent, and capable woman. I’d succeeded
at everything I’d ever set my mind to. I gave up the pretense of being able to stop altogether; instead, I once again limited myself to two glasses of wine a day. I was certain I could practice some measure of self-control. It was like going on a diet—all I needed was some discipline.