Best Kept Secret (37 page)

We do what we’re taught, I suppose, unless life comes along and gives us a chance to change direction. Getting sober is my chance. And now I need to consider what kind of example I’ll be for Charlie. I could give in to this disease I have and teach him what my own mother learned—that a bottle of wine is more important than his life—or I can step up to the plate and learn a new way to live. A way that teaches my son that while his mother is fallible, she is also strong and capable of turning her life around. I’ll never know how my mother’s life could have been different, if my grandmother had found a way to get sober. But I do know I’m determined to undo any damage I’ve done to my child. I’m determined to teach him his worth.

O
ver the next few
weeks, a natural rhythm evolves to my days. On the days I work at the cafe, I rise at around five o’clock so I can make it to my shift at 6:00. I slip on a swishy, black skirt and white, button-down blouse, flip my hair into a quick updo, and head out the door. The morning shift is decidedly unglamorous, but I love it.

“Let me set up your caffeine IV,” I joke with the surly, sleep-deprived customers as I pour coffee into thick, white restaurant mugs. This comment almost always earns me a smile and at least a twenty percent tip. Le Chat Noir is popular among the nearby business set; on a good day, working both breakfast and lunch, I go home with a couple hundred dollars in my pocket.

“You’re a natural,” Serena says. “Like you’ve been doing this all your life.”

“I’m just acting out the part of sassy waitress,” I tell her. In that sense, I suppose I
have
been doing it all my life. Acting out my part. The good daughter, the good student, the good wife. Whatever the situation demanded of me, that’s what I became. The situation I’m in demands I find a way to pay my bills, and writing wasn’t cutting it.

“I feel really strange about it,” I say to Vince one night after a meeting. “It’s everything I’ve ever worked for. But I just don’t think journalism is really what I want to do.”

“It’s okay for you not to know what you want to do with your
life,” he tells me with a grin. “Just as long as you’re not sitting on your ass drinking.”

As soon as I get the yard cleaned up and all the painting done, Derek gets my house listed for sale and we begin looking for an appropriate townhouse or condo for me to buy. I spend my Wednesday nights with Charlie, and the weekends he is with me we work on sorting through all our things in preparation for an eventual move.

“I want to keep
all
of my toys, Mommy,” he says.

“We won’t have room for all of them, sweet boy,” I say, reaching over to touch his soft cheek. “You can fill these two boxes with everything you really, really want and the rest we are going to give away to other little kids who don’t have
any
toys to play with.”

“And that will be a very nice thing for me to do,” he says, repeating what I’ve already told him.

“Yes, it will.” I give him a big hug. “I’m very proud of you, Charlie. You are a
very
nice little boy.”

“Yep!” he says with a confident smile, and he puts another toy in the box.

When I get home from my shift at the cafe on the Thursday in the second week in July, I call Scott to ask if Mr. Hines has sent over his report. “I haven’t seen anything from him yet,” Scott says. “I promise to call you the minute it lands on my desk. You have Charlie this weekend?”

“Yep,” I say, my cell phone tucked between my shoulder and ear as I rinse out my coffee cup, glancing out the kitchen window at the newly flowering forsythia in the corner of my yard. A true Northwest summer has finally tiptoed in—slightly overcast mornings balanced by bright and sunny afternoons, verdant foliage, and sweet, cleansmelling
air. I’ve heard it said that if you don’t like the weather in Seattle, just wait a minute and it will change. A little bit like my moods. “Charlie’s coming here,” I tell Scott.

I hear the shuffling of papers in the background. “Have you heard anything from your own mother? I haven’t gotten any notes from Mr. Hines about their meeting, either. It was yesterday, right?” There is an edge of panic in his voice.

“It’s tomorrow, actually. And she’s coming over for brunch with Charlie and me on Sunday. I’ll talk with her then, okay?” I set my mug upside down next to the sink to let it air dry. My mother sent me an e-mail earlier in the week, asking if she could bring Charlie and me breakfast “so we could talk.” I am trying not to take it as a foreboding sign that she didn’t just call me and tell me what she was going to say to Mr. Hines.

“You can think of it however you want to,” Nadine said when I called to talk with her about it. “You can imagine the worst or the best. It’s your choice.”

“Everything’s always a choice,” I said, a little annoyed she didn’t offer me the comfort I’d been looking for.

“Ah,” Nadine said. “
Now
you’re starting to get how this whole program works.” I hung up slightly irritated, but with a smile, which was becoming par for the course at the end of my conversations with my sponsor.

“Sounds good,” Scott says now. I hear more paper being shuffled, someone whispering to him in the background.

“I’ll let you go,” I say.

“Sorry if I’m distracted,” he says. “I’m due in court in an hour. You’re doing great. I’ll talk to you soon.”

I hang up, then immediately call Alice’s house. I want to tell my son I can’t wait to see him. I drop into my chair, listening to the phone ring and ring. No one answers. I set my phone down on the desk, maybe a little more forcefully than I should, resentful that I’m not part of his daily schedule. I don’t know where he is or what he’s
doing. There is something inordinately wrong with a mother not knowing exactly where her child is at any given moment. I say all of this to Andi later in the afternoon during my individual session.

“Holding on to resentments is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die,” she says after I’ve had my little tirade. “That kind of anger is a luxury an alcoholic can’t afford to have. It’s toxic.”

I throw my hands up in the air, then drop them into my lap. “Great. I’m not only an alcoholic, I’m a
toxic
alcoholic.”

Andi shrugs, tucks the sheet of her long black hair behind one ear, showing off sparkling silver hoops. She doesn’t appear impressed by my first time admitting to her that I am an alcoholic. I hoped for a little more hoopla, considering how long it took me to say the words out loud. I imagined the swell of violins in the background, a dramatic, emotional crescendo reached as I finally find the courage to admit the truth about who I am to my treatment counselor. No such luck. “Well,” she says instead, matter-of-factly, “you know what happens when you take the alcohol out of the alcoholic, don’t you?”

I shake my head almost imperceptibly, gritting my teeth. “No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“You’re left with the ‘ick,’ “ she says, then tells me my time is up.

W
ith my mother due
to arrive any minute the following morning, Charlie and I cuddle on the couch, him sitting between my legs, leaning up against me, using me like a lounge chair. I sip my coffee over the top of his head while he giggles at the easy, educational silliness of
Go, Diego, Go!

“Mom?” Charlie says.

“Hmmm?” I lean down and kiss the top of his head, still slightly matted and warm from sleep. God, he smells so good. I wish I could bottle it and keep it with me always.

“What’s an alcoholic?” He asks this the same way he has asked me to define a thousand other things: an accordion bus or an avocado. My child, simply seeking explanation.

Still, my head lifts. Where was this coming from? Martin, I assume. It has to be Martin. Or Alice. The two of them, talking about me in front of my son. How do I answer this? Truthfully, I decide. Always the safest route to take. “Well, honey,” I begin a little shakily, “it’s kind of like having an allergy.”

“Like Anya’s ’lergic to peanuts?”

“Kind of. Only an alcoholic is allergic to alcohol. They have one drink of something like beer or wine and they can’t stop. That’s
their
allergic reaction.”

He twists his head so he can look up to me. “Like you drink wine?”

I tap the tip of his nose with my finger. “How I
used
to drink wine, yes. I’m not doing that anymore, remember?”
Oh God, please tell me he doesn’t talk to Alice and Martin like I’m still drinking.

“Oh yeah!” he says, reaching up to touch my cheek. “That’s good. I didn’t like it when you did. Remember that time you spilled that bottle all over the floor?” He turns back to the muted television. “You swore. A
lot.
The F word, even.”

“You’re right, I did.” I pause, remembering that day, not too far from the night Martin came and took Charlie. I was in the kitchen and had just opened what would have been my second bottle of the night when I turned and knocked it with my elbow off the counter and onto the floor. It didn’t break, but it did make a horrible mess. And Charlie is right—I dropped enough F bombs to destroy a small nation. “I’m sorry for doing that. Mommy shouldn’t swear.”

He shrugs his pointy shoulders against me. “It’s okay. Daddy does it, too. It makes Omi mad.”

I smirk at this, probably taking more pleasure than is healthy for me imagining Alice dressing down Martin regarding the evils of profanity. I take a final swig of coffee, then reach over to set my empty mug down on the table next to us. Just as it touches the surface, there is a sharp rap on the door. I carefully disengage myself from my son, who wraps his arms around my leg and mockingly threatens to not let go. Another rap at the door.

“Just a sec,” I call out, lightly bopping Charlie on the top of his head. “Lemme go, buddy. I need to get the door.” I swing open the door and there stands my mother, smile as bright and wide as ever. She should have it patented. She wears jeans, a red knit sweater, and black boots.

I tuck the errant curls popping loose from my ponytail back behind my ears. “Hi, Mom.”

“Nana!” Charlie exclaims as he leaps off the couch and into my mother’s arms. My mother hugs him close, covers his face with kisses.

“Hello, baby boy,” she says, stepping into the house. Charlie
clings to her leg now. Her movements are awkward, weighed down by a five-year-old boy. She gently detaches from him and closes the door behind her. She sets down a bright red Macy’s shopping bag. “I brought breakfast,” she continues, surveying the living room as though she was seeing it for the first time. I can’t remember when she was last here.

“What did you bring us?” I ask, trying to keep my voice light.

She reaches down into the Macy’s bag, pulls out a brown paper sack, and hands it to me. “Bagels and cream cheese. Nothing fancy, I know, but they’re still warm. I picked them up at the PCC.”

I open the bag and the warm, yeasty scent wafts up into my face. I breathe in deep. “Mmmm,” I murmur. “They smell great.” Closing the bag, I hold them out to Charlie. “Can you be a big boy and take these into the kitchen for Mommy? We’ll be right there.”

He snatches them from me. “Can I have one? Can I make it myself?”

I smile. “Sure, honey. Just be sure to use one of your safe plastic knives and not one of mine, okay?” I’ve always encouraged Charlie to be as independent of me as possible, to learn to do things for himself. He already ties his own shoes and picks out his own clothes. He races off and I am left standing in front of my mother, who is squinting at me like she doesn’t quite recognize me. “What?” I ask.

She presses her lips into a thin line, shakes her head. “You just look good. Healthier, I guess. Like you’ve lost weight.”

“I wish. But thank you.” I’m less puffy, I suppose, now that the alcohol aftereffects are working their way completely out of my system, but I haven’t dropped an ounce of fat. Even with all the running around I do at the restaurant, my flesh grips on to each calorie I feed it with the same vigor that I hold on to Charlie. It professes no plans to let any of them go.

My mother and I are quiet a moment, listening to the noise of Charlie in the kitchen, opening and closing drawers, the squeal of his pulling out a chair from the table. The air is heavy with unspoken
words, weighting down the moment more than I am comfortable enduring. I can’t make small talk. I can’t pretend there isn’t an elephantine issue smack in the middle of the room. I decide to make the first offering, step directly into the fire. I have to unclench my teeth in order to speak.

“What did you tell him?” I ask.

She twists around, sending her arm out as though she was reaching to do calisthenics, setting her purse down on the table by the front door, then back to face me. A muscle above her right eyebrow twitches rapidly as she speaks.

“Honey, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what I was planning to say to Mr. Hines. I honestly didn’t know myself, so I thought that saying nothing was the better way to go. You seemed so . . . angry. I didn’t want to upset you any more than I already had.”

“I understand why you’re having such a hard time with this,” I say, pulling my arms back to cross them over my chest. “I get it. And I feel for you. But waiting . . . I’m not going to lie, Mom. It’s been hard.”

She sighs, leaning her head toward her shoulder while crossing her arms over her chest, too, rubbing her biceps up and down, a soothing self-hug. “I wish I could have figured it out and told you right away. But I didn’t want to tell you one day I thought Charlie should stay with you, and the next day say something different.”

Charlie screeches another kitchen chair around in the kitchen—likely moving it back from the counter where he stood to prepare his bagel. I experience the vague sensation that this might not be the best time for me to be having this conversation with my mother—I should be spending time, every moment I have, alone with my son—but I have to see this through. I have to tell her how I really feel—it’s taking up too much space in my head. My mind can barely hold another thought.