Catching Caitlin (14 page)

“She ‘was’? She still is!
Look at your hand. That’s all the proof you or I need. You’re still wearing
that damn ring.” He hid his hand in his pocket and frowned. He lowered the
picture.

“I just don’t get it,” I
confessed. I fell onto the bed, feeling utterly defeated. “It feels like you
don’t love me.”

“I do love you Caitlin.”
He joined me, sitting next to me. “But I can’t stand here with you while you’re
drinking. You’re killing yourself. Wasn’t the hospital last night proof
enough?”

I stared at him.

He continued, “But, I
can’t watch another person die. I can’t have that on my hands. I thought you
were going to try and get better. I never wanted to say anything before but —
maybe you do have a problem. Maybe I have a problem, too.”

I slumped my shoulders
and stared in the mirror. There wasn’t anything I could say. He was still
looking at me, his face soft, his eyes watery.

He continued, his voice
growing cold. “I can’t do this with you anymore. I want to be with you, but I
can’t watch you kill yourself. I can’t watch you die.”

He stood up and faced me,
waiting for a response.

“So... what now?” I said.
“You going to take me back home?”

“Yes. I can get you a
plane back tonight.”

“Fine, you might as well,
since you want to get rid of me so badly.” My eyes burned and my hands were
shaking. I looked around the room, feeling frantic and lost.

“Caitlin. I want to love
you. I want to take care of you, but I can’t fix you. I want to experience life
with you, but I can’t do that if you’re never sober. ” He shrugged and threw
his hands down. “If you’re not present.” He touched his ring, “and maybe if I’m
not either.”

I shook my head, almost
refusing to believe I wasn’t dreaming.

“When you’re ready to go,
I’ll call you a cab. You won’t have to see me again.”

I groaned, and broke down
again. I tried to choke back my tears, but it was no use. I felt like my whole
world was collapsing, the sky was shattering, and nothing mattered.

As he left the room, he
squeezed his ring, before slipping the picture of Marcia in his pocket. He
walked away quietly.

Hugh was leaving me.

I felt like throwing up.

We didn’t speak again
until I left. All he said was “Good luck.”

I was going to need it.

A
fter landing in Bangor,
I dried my face and got ready to deplane.

I met James before I went
into the terminal, and he looked consolatory.

“I’m sorry to see you go,
Caitlin.” I was surprised that he was wasting the time to talk to me
personally.

I shrugged with a pitiful
smile. “It happens. Thanks for flying me back home James, you really didn’t
have to.”

“Good luck,” he said. He
saluted me and I deplaned, feeling a little better that he sympathized with me.

The airport wasn’t very
crowded, just a bunch of small groups of people clustered around some of the
middle gates. Those were the more popular outbound flights, heading to New York
or going up into Canada.

I felt sick, that stale
air becoming a little too familiar. I sighed and pulled out my phone, psyching
myself up to confess to my dad. Every time I talked to him, my gut reaction was
to think of him as a drunk, so it was always refreshing being reminded that he
wasn’t anymore. It was almost a little surprising when I was reminded of
reality.

“Hello, Dad?”

His voice was loud and
clear, “Hey, kiddo, how’s it going?”

“Not great. I need a ride
from the airport.”

“You’re in town?” His
tone changed, and he sounded consolatory. “Not great huh? I can come get you in
about ten minutes. Just sit tight, I’m visiting your mom so I’m kind of close.”

“Okay, I’ll see you
soon.” I hung up. I was standing at one of the terminal windows, overlooking
the numerous planes. Carts full of luggage zipped across the tarmac. A handful
of aviation flaggers were having a coffee break.

***

F
ifteen minutes later, I
headed out into the baggage claim and found my dad. It was always easy to tell
if someone was looking for something, that searching and distant look in their
eyes. He was especially obvious, always putting his hand on his forehead like
he was shielding his eyes from the sun, even if it was dark outside.

I surprised him by
sneaking up behind him, and saying “Hello,” a bit louder than I needed to.

He jumped and turned, a
smile spreading across his face.

“Hey!” he yelled, “I’m
not thirty anymore! You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

I was grinning, but it
faded all to quickly when my feelings boiled back up to the surface. I felt
like crying, and I’m sure he could tell.

“Let’s get you home,
alright? We can talk about it in the car if you want.”

I nodded, and followed
him out into the steaming and hazy parking lot.

***

O
n the drive home, I
decided to spill my guts on the whole situation. To try and make it clean.

“Hugh thinks I have a
drinking problem.”

“Is that why he isn’t
here?” My dad put on his turn signal, the gentle ticking barely audible over
the oldies radio station. He turned the volume down a bit to listen to me.

“I — I think so.” I
swallowed hard, trying to keep my voice from cracking. “Well, I know it is. I
don’t know why I’m avoiding it. He told me he couldn’t be with me if I was
going to keep drinking.”

My dad hissed like he
just cut his leg. “That’s... harsh. But it’s hard...” he seemed to be choosing
his words very carefully. “What brought that up?”

I realized I hadn’t told
him about my hospital stay yet. For a moment, I thought about withholding it,
but what good would that really do me? If I came back here and just kept up my
lies and kept myself an arms length from my parents and my friends, could I
really change?

“I ended up in the
hospital a couple nights ago.”

“What?” My dad looked
away from the road and stared at me. I wished the seat would swallow me whole.

“I had alcohol
poisoning.”

He was silent, and he
turned to watch the road. I couldn’t tell if he was mad or not. I tried to
explain, “It hasn’t happened before, but I was under a lot of stress,” I groped
for the words, “Hugh still wears his wedding ring from his wife. He’s a
widower. How am I supposed to deal with that? He proposed to me, Dad. He’s
weird and distant, and I hate that I feel like I can’t be with him.” I broke
down, and lost it. “Like I’m not important.” My dad turned into our
neighborhood.

My dad’s jaw moved, as if
he were silently formulating a sentence. “I think,” he began, “that’s hard. I
know it’s hard, Caitlin.” After he pulled into our driveway, he lurched the car
to a stop and put it in park.

He turned in his seat to
face me, resting his arm over the steering wheel, and his knee bumping against
the console. “Caitlin. I’m an alcoholic. It was really hard for me to come to
terms with that, but I did. Even though I’ve been sober, I can’t drink. For the
first year, I couldn’t even be near people who were drinking — every single day
was a test of my will power with your mom.”

“But didn’t you stay at
home?”

“I didn’t. I mostly
stayed at friends houses and motels in town for the first six months. I
literally couldn’t be around your mom because of her drinking. I don’t know if
that made her worse, but I had to do it for myself.”

I was silent. He wasn’t
with my mom for that long? I hadn’t even known.

He continued, “He won’t
let go of his wife, but he proposed to you? Do you think he made a mistake?”

I squeezed the seat and
stared out the window. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense to me to wear
your wedding ring and propose to other people. I think I was just confused.”

“Everyone deals with
grief in their own way.”

“So he just proposed to
me as part of his grief? He didn’t actually care?”

“He didn’t have to say
anything to me when he saw me. He could’ve just walked away. He approached me.
It isn’t my fault.” I felt like I was burning holes into the windshield.

“Forget him, Caitlin.
He’s not here, and that’s over. You can’t fix him and he can’t fix you.”

“I didn’t ask him to fix
me, I just wanted...” I cringed, “something good in my life.”

“You can have something
good in your life. But you have to start with cutting out the bad, getting rid
of the rotten parts. If we’re not going to put him aside right now, let’s look
at it this way.”

I perked up a little bit,
feeling like I was finally being listened to a little.

He said, “If what you say
is true, then you guys weren’t doing well together. It sounds toxic.” My dad
looked at the house. “It is toxic. It was with your mother and I, but we stuck
through it.”

I cringed, shuffling my
feet. “I tried. I tried to help him.”

“I knew even though your
mom wasn’t sober, all she needed from me was to try and be there for her. She
told me at the hospital before you showed up. If I wasn’t around and clean, she
wouldn’t be alive anymore.”

“So you fixed her?”

“No, Caitlin. I didn’t.
When I got clean, I realized I
couldn’t
fix her, I could just support
her.”

“So I could support Hugh,
couldn’t I?”

“I couldn’t support her
when I was a drunk. All I could do was enable her, or push her away. Neither of
those things are what she needed.” He sighed, his eyes looked tired. “I should
have pushed her harder to get sober sooner, but she wasn’t in the right mind,
she wouldn’t have listened.” He rubbed his temples. “I wasn’t either.” He
smiled at me, and added, “I’m glad you’re home again, Caitlin.”

We sat in silence for a
little bit, and he finally shut his car off. I didn’t want to move, trying to
let it all sink in.
I’m not healthy, and I can’t help Hugh if I’m like this.

My dad climbed out of the
car and grabbed my bags out of the trunk. He disappeared in the house.

I sat in the increasingly
hot car and thought about what my dad said about Hugh and I being toxic.
“Damaging, dangerous, lethal, fatal...”

Definitely not the things
love and cure-alls were made of.

After some time, I
finally went into the house. I found my dad making food in the kitchen, and
almost forgot that my mom wasn’t home.

“Can we visit Mom later?”
I said. He turned away from counter with a bowl of salad he was mixing
together. He dried his hands and answered me, “Yeah. We can visit her tomorrow.
She’s getting better every day. Tomorrow should be really good for you to see
her, you’re going to be amazed.” He turned and topped off the salads with
tomatoes, before mixing them in.

***

T
he next day, we got up
early in the morning to go see my mom at the clinic.

We sat in the makeshift
lobby while the nurses made sure my mom was ready to have guests.

The clinic wasn’t
stylized like a traditional clinic. The building obviously used to be an old
house that was renovated to meet the needs of the business, but while retaining
some old charm. Decorations and paintings lined the wallpaper, and fireplaces
seemed to be spread out into every single room. It was cozy, and not nearly as
sterile and whitewashed as I expected it would be.

A nurse peeked her head
out of the entryway and looked around. “Daniel Winters?”

My dad elbowed me and
stood up. The nurse nodded and asked us to follow her.

At the end of one of the
wings of the house, the nurse leaned over to open a door to a small bedroom. My
mom was sitting on the bed, looking bright and a lot less miserable than when I
last saw her.

“Oh my god, I didn’t
expect to see both of you!” She cheered, looking excited and bright. She
smiled, standing to meet us. I hugged her, holding her tight enough to squeeze
the air out of her in a gasp. She laughed, and gestured to two chairs that were
facing the foot of the bed. “What pleasure do I have for a visit today?”

My dad chuckled a little.
“I was just here yesterday, Tammy.”

“Yes, but she wasn’t.”
She pointed at me. “You’re back from Reno already? Where’s Hugh at?”

“He’s in Reno,” I
answered. I gnawed my tongue a little, “Things went south.” My mom raised her
eyebrows.

“What happened?” I was
surprised to see so much energy in her. The only other time I remembered her
being so vibrant was when I was in elementary school, when she’d take me to
soccer practice. I gathered my thoughts.

“A lot of things...” I
didn’t want to go over it again. “Is it stressful here?”

“Oh no, I’m fine. If
anything, I’m a little bored. I’ll admit, it’s weird not having a drink first
thing in the morning.” She smiled a little. “But when I woke up this morning,
it was like I just discovered life again.”

“Wow — that’s fantastic!”
I leaned forward. “You look good too, not nearly as...”

“Run down? Old?” My mom
laughed, a kind of chortling laugh that couldn’t decide if it was a belly laugh
or not. “It’s okay, I was run down, ragged, and spent. I thought that was just
what life was for me.”

“But it isn’t,” my dad
said. “It’s crazy how when you start drinking, you think it’s your ticket to
really enjoying life — you get all fun and uninhibited, and it softens the edge
on the harder things. Then you realize you aren’t enjoying life at all
anymore.”

It felt more like he was
talking to me than her. My mom nodded heavily, and reached across the table and
took my hands.

“It’s good to see you
again Caitlin. You’re just here to visit me then?”

“Yeah, I really wanted to
see you. It’s been a hard couple of days.” I glanced at my dad, and he nodded
as if to say, ‘tell her.’

“What’s wrong?” my mom
asked.

“Hugh and I broke up.” My
mom’s expression faded, so I quickly added, “But the reason why is the big
deal. I had alcohol poisoning the other night, and Hugh broke up with me
because he said he couldn’t watch me die.” I lifted my hand, miming a drinking
motion. “Drink myself to death.”

My mom studied me, her
expression growing more serious. “Why?” she asked.

“Is that a trick
question?”

“No, but I’m curious.
Until I ended up here, I know I thought about it; ‘Real drunks are homeless
aren’t they?’ I told myself. I just agreed to come to the clinic, hoping that
maybe if I just went along, things might get better.” She laughed, covering her
mouth for a moment. “I even thought that they might tell me I didn’t belong
here! Isn’t that ridiculous.”

“I thought that too,” my
dad confirmed.

I steeled my nerves. “I
think about drinking more than I like. Sometimes I’ll just want one right after
I wake up. I tell myself it’s just to get going.”

“Sounds about right,” my
mom said. She looked at my dad, who nodded in turn. “You can’t beat yourself up
though, Cat. Going to an AA meeting probably wouldn’t hurt... they’re having
the weekly one tonight actually.” She let go of one of my hands and gripped my
dad’s hand.

“That... I don’t know, it
sounds hard.” I suddenly didn’t want to be there anymore. I felt like I was
being pressured, pressured to do something I didn’t want to. What if I didn’t
have a problem? What if I was normal and everyone else was just messed up?

My dad chimed in, “Do you
ever feel like there’s a weight constantly pushing against your chest?” He held
his hand against his heart. “Wearing you down, killing you slowly.” He held his
hand there, and I watched it. “I still wake up somedays and I want to drink,
Caitlin. But I have a new life now, I have all these reasons to
not
drink. That being sober keeps me sane is one of the big ones. Being a rock when
needed for you mom was another.”

“Okay...” I clenched the
table, as if I was fighting myself to say the words. “I’ll try.” It was
probably one of the hardest things I had to say, because of what it meant.
“Anything has to be better than what I’m doing now. Nothing makes sense, and I
feel... sick inside.”

“No one is making you,”
my dad said. “We just want to see you succeed, to be happy.”