Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife (17 page)

“At the last book club I mentioned that Little Carl’s Little League team was crushed after they lost their first game,” Fiona said. “Carl coaches it, you know. Little Carl loves that his dad is the coach. Carl is great with the kids. The kids love him. They were on this huge winning streak and when they lost their first game, the kids were really bummed. Some of them cried. Carl pulled the kids together and told them they were great in the field but their hitting was off. He scheduled an extra hitting practice and you could see that it made the kids feel better. I mentioned this at book club and Kelly rolled her eyes and cut me off and said, ‘God, they’re only nine!’ Later, we were talking about something else and I started to say, ‘If that was me …’ and Kelly cut me off and said, ‘This isn’t about you.’”

I told Fiona a few of my Kelly stories. It felt good to commiserate with a fellow sufferer.

“I’d been wanting to say something to you for a while,” Fiona said. “But you and Kelly were always such good friends. Then at book club I noticed things were off between you two.”

“They were off, all right,” I said. “They’ve been off for a while.”

“I feel like saying something to Kelly,” Fiona said. “I want to ask her, ‘What’s going on?’”

“I’ve been wanting to do the same thing,” I said. “But a friend of mine who’s a therapist told me it wouldn’t do any good. She said Kelly would just get defensive and deny any mean intentions. I think she’s right.”

“Probably,” Fiona said. “But I want to know if I’ve done anything to start this behavior.”

“Well,” I began hesitantly, “since we’re having this conversation, Kelly told me she invited you and Carl over for dinner and you cancelled on her a few days later. She said she went to Rosy’s house and saw that you and Rosy had dinner plans on the calendar for the night you cancelled.”

“Absolutely not!” Fiona said angrily. “That’s not what happened. Kelly and I talked about a tentative dinner date two months earlier. She was supposed to get back to me and never did. A week before the date, Kelly called to confirm, but I’d made other plans. Kelly knows what happened. God, I just don’t have time for this stuff!

“I noticed Kelly began acting different when Rosy and I started becoming better friends, like it bothered her,” Fiona continued. “I don’t know why she would be like that. She has so many friends. When you and Fay and I started seeing movies, she got cool and distant about that, too.”

“Kelly didn’t like it when I became friends with Liv, either,” I said. “Then BAM, Kelly decided to make Liv her new best friend.”

“I totally noticed that,” Fiona said.

God, it felt good to be validated.

[Saturday, June 14]

Charlie and I went to Ravinia, a swanky outdoor concert venue, for Latin Jazz night with Kelly and Joel and Liv and Reed. Wendy and Tom bailed. It was my way of hosting the Bacchanal Dinner Club without actually hosting it. We all got lawn seats and I brought a picnic-basket dinner of poached salmon with a dill-and-chive sour cream sauce, grilled asparagus, and raspberry pie. Most concertgoers sitting on Ravinia’s lawn bring snooty little picnic dinners. Kelly brought an appetizer, Liv brought a salad, and everyone brought their own booze. The food was good, the music was great, but it was cold and miserable. It was only fifty-some degrees and windy.

Reed and Joel had driven their motorcycles with Liv and Kelly on the back. As we sat and listened to the music, Kelly and Joel started pawing each other like two horny teenagers. Whenever Charlie and I went out to dinner with Joel and Kelly, they held hands under the table, made goo-goo eyes at each other, rubbed each other’s legs, and God knows what else. They never acted like a couple who’d been sharing the same bed for eleven years and had a child. It was creepy. This evening, Kelly and Joel reclined on a blanket, entwined their legs, and kept rubbing up against each other. I looked at Charlie sideways. It felt like I was back in high school sitting in the front seat of a car with my date trying to ignore my friend and her boyfriend getting it on in the back seat.

When the concert ended, I desperately wanted to ditch everyone. However, Liv and Kelly asked for a ride home because they didn’t want to get on the motorcycles and freeze their asses off. They made inside jokes and giggled in the back seat. It sucked.

[Sunday, June 15 (Father’s Day)]

The kids spent last night at my parents’ house while Charlie and I were at Ravinia. This morning, I drove to my parents’ house and picked them up. My father was out fishing, so I tossed his Father’s Day card stuffed with Tony Bennett tickets on the dining room table, hung out with my mom for a while, and left. Back at home, Charlie and the kids and I went to the town carnival and had a ball.

[Tuesday, June 17]

I went to my home group meeting tonight and Tracy gave the lead.

“My neighbors have been irritating me,” she said. “We’ve had issues ever since I put up a fence they don’t like. They ignore me. They go out of their way to ignore me. And I’ve been dwelling on them and their behavior way too much. I have to remind myself not to care about what other people do. What other people think of me is none of my business.”

What other people think of me is none of my business. I love that!

Liv and Wendy are cohosting a jewelry party for Kelly to peddle her beadwork. I don’t want to go. Liv and Kelly together bug the shit out of me. And it bugs the shit out of me that it bugs the shit out of me. But like Tracy said, I have to not care about what they do, and what they think of me is none of my business.

[Thursday, June 19]

I had an unbelievably bizarre experience with the teachers at Van’s preschool. Today was field-trip day, and I’d signed Max and myself up to be chaperones at the farm/petting zoo we were visiting. Max, Van, and I arrived at the preschool ahead of time and found it odd that the kids were already boarding the chartered school buses. I hurried my kids into the building to hook up with Van’s class, and his classroom was empty. We high-tailed it out the front door and watched as the buses barreled down the street.

I hustled Max and Van into the director’s office and told the athletic director, “We’re here for the field trip. I thought we were here early, but the buses just left.”

“They changed the time,” Randy said. “Didn’t they tell you?”

“No.”

“They didn’t? Wow. Um, I think they put an announcement on the sign-in sheet clip board. Let’s see if I can reach one of Van’s teachers on her cell phone. Maybe I can get a bus to turn around and come back.”

About a week ago, I had overheard Van’s teachers, Isabel and Casey, griping to each other about parents not reading their memos. They were always complaining about something or other, and I usually ignored them. Apparently, I shouldn’t have. Isabel and Casey had decided to clip a time-change memo to the sign-in sheet in the front hall to reward those who read their memos and punish those who didn’t. I’d spoken to them numerous times about Max and me chaperoning, and not once did they breathe a word about the time change.

“I can’t reach either of them on their phones,” Randy said and frowned. “Tell the program director about this. Please.”

“We’re not going?” Van asked sadly.

“We’re going,” I told him. I looked at Randy. “You can bet I’ll be talking to the program director about this.”

The kids and I drove to the farm and pulled into the lot just as Van’s friends were climbing off the bus. Linda, the newly appointed assistant program director, rushed toward us.

“I’m so sorry,” Linda said. “I told them to stop the bus. I was sitting all the way in the back with the kids, but they wouldn’t stop the bus. I’m so sorry. I should have gotten up and made them stop. I should have done that. I’m so sorry.”

I began picturing what happened. Casey and Isabel hated Linda because Casey wanted Linda’s assistant director job. Surly, condescending, short-tempered Casey didn’t get it. I visualized Linda yelling, “Stop the bus!” while Casey and Isabel smirked at each other and told the bus driver to keep going. As Linda apologized, I began staring daggers at Isabel and Casey. Neither would look at me.

Our group made our way to the cow-milking shelter. Marie, another mom who was chaperoning, grabbed my arm and pulled me aside.

“I just have to tell you,” Marie said, “Isabel and Casey purposely left you. I got to school a few minutes before you did. I didn’t know about the time change either. My son and I got on the bus in the nick of time, and the kids started yelling, ‘Van’s here! Van’s here!’ and Isabel and Casey told the bus driver to leave.”

I glared at Isabel and Casey throughout the day. They both looked really uncomfortable. Not once did they glance my way.

As the kids and I were driving home, I remembered Eve and I were supposed to play tennis. I was never going to make it. I fished around in my purse for my meeting directory, dug it out, flipped it over, and scanned the list of phone numbers I’d written on the back.

“Call before you drink …” Max read out loud as he looked at the heading on the back of my directory. “Why is that on there, over these numbers? Drinking wasn’t a problem for you.”

“It’s just something the No Alcohol Club gives everyone,” I told Max, feeling prickly heat on my neck and face. “It doesn’t mean anything.” I called Eve and left a message. I started thinking,
You know, maybe Max is right. Maybe I don’t have a drinking problem.

When we got home, Eve had left a message on my answering machine saying she wanted to meet me at a meeting.

I arrived at the meeting and sat next to Cece, a woman about my age. I told her what Max had said about my not having a drinking problem in the car.

“Wow,” Cece said. “Isn’t that great he wasn’t affected, that he didn’t notice? My daughter knows. She knows I have a drinking problem.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It didn’t occur to me to be grateful. You know where my mind went? ‘Maybe I’m not an alcoholic.’”

“Typical,” Cece laughed.

After the meeting, Eve and I went to Liv and Wendy’s jewelry party. It was actually fun. Eve left an hour before I did and as I was getting ready to go, Kelly asked, “Why doesn’t Max come over tomorrow and play with Ryan?”

“Okay,” I said.

“Good. And why don’t you come for lunch?”

“Yeah, okay, thanks.”

[Friday, June 20]

Sara came over this morning to go over the First Step questionnaire she’d given me to complete. One of the questions was, “As you have been working on this booklet, you have probably had some strong feelings. What are some of the feelings you are having?” I wrote, “Surprised at how bad I sound on paper.”

The booklet had a section titled, “Dangerous Behavior,” where I was supposed to list dangerous deeds I’d carried out under the influence. I listed, “Goading my boyfriend to speed down hairpin turns on Lookout Mountain, which caused us to flip the car and almost die.”

My boyfriend, Trey, and I were freshmen at Southern College in Tennessee. We’d been hiking and smoking hash all day, and I’d gotten into Trey’s car, rolled down my window, cranked up the volume on his stereo, and told Trey to drive faster. He accelerated. I filled my hash pipe, took a hit, passed it to him, and shouted, “Faster!” Trey obeyed. I don’t know why I did it, but I kept egging him on until Trey took a corner way too fast and rolled his Honda Accord almost off the mountain. The car flipped onto the passenger side, rolled onto the roof, teetered there on the edge of the mountain, and fell back onto the passenger’s side. If it had rolled over on the driver’s side, we’d have dropped off the side of the mountain.

When the car dropped back onto the passenger side, it pinned my right hand between the top of the window frame and the asphalt. My head smacked the road pretty hard, too. My hand hurt like hell and I started moaning, “My hand, my hand.” Trey climbed out of the driver’s side window like it was a submarine hatch, walked behind the roof of the car, squatted down, wiggled his fingers under the window frame, yanked it up a little, and I pulled my hand free. I don’t remember getting out of the vehicle, but I do remember sitting on the edge of the road next to Trey as a pickup truck pulled over.

“Ya’ll all right?” the driver asked.

“I think so,” Trey answered.

“Hop in back,” the driver said. “I’ll gitchya to a hospital.”

I vaguely remember the emergency room and being told to watch for signs of concussion. And I don’t know how Trey and I got back to school.

I hated that school. My parents had taken me to Southern College, an Adventist college, the fall of my freshman year. We drove there towing a U-Haul crammed full of my stuff. I sat in the back seat with my sister, occasionally unzipping my purse and looking at the gooey, fragrant brick of hash I was bringing. I knew I was going to need it.

My high school friends were all going to state universities and an Adventist college was the only away-from-home school my mother would send me to. My friends wrote me letters detailing the great parties they were going to while I was incarcerated in an Adventist prison. Sunday through Thursday night, I was on lockdown in the women’s dorm at ten thirty. On Friday night, the Sabbath, I had to attend a mandatory church service before lockdown at ten. On Saturday, I had to go to church again, but was allowed to go out on the town after sundown until a whopping midnight. However, I couldn’t go anywhere near a nightclub. School employees combed the parking lots of local nightclubs on Saturday nights looking for Southern College parking stickers. The cars they found were reported, and the students who owned them got in big trouble.

I sniffed out other malcontents like me, and Trey was one of them. Trey’s parents sent him to Southern College hoping their wayward son would straighten out and find God. The poor guy didn’t stand a chance after he met me. I had several run-ins with the dean, and the dean and I came to an understanding: He would let me collect my credits, and I would leave at the end of the semester. Near the end of the semester, I dumped Trey. While we were going out, I had extolled the virtues of dropping acid, and Trey, in a misguided attempt to win me back, began sucking on hits of acid like breath mints. Trey left at the end of the semester, too, in bad shape.