Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife (42 page)

Rotting in the ground for years was little comfort to my father. He liked my thoughts on death a lot better.

“You should go on your trip,” Paula said. “You can keep in touch until you start hiking down. If you need to turn around and fly home, that’s what you’ll do.”

The pastor from my mother’s church anointed my father’s head with oil the next day. It was Saturday, the day before Father’s Day. The kids and I showed up shortly after the pastor left.

“Paula and her kids are coming to see you tomorrow,” I told my dad. Noises were agitating him now, and I knew four children would be hard on him. “Would it be too much if we all came?”

“I think so,” my dad said.

“Then we won’t come,” I told him.

It was the last time I saw him alive.

I sent up a prayer as I drove to my parents’ house in the dark. “If you could let me feel something, anything, to let me know my dad is out there, I’d appreciate it,” I whispered. I whizzed down the empty road, slowed down as I approached the red light at the entrance ramp to the highway, then stepped on the gas and blew off the light. I started laughing. My father would have sped through the light, too. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I felt a presence in the passenger’s seat next to me. “Thank you,” I whispered.

I pulled in front of my parents’ house behind a huge white van. I walked in the house and hugged my mother. She introduced me to a social worker who had just signed my father’s death certificate.

“Two men from the funeral home are here,” my mom said. “They’re outside in that van. I asked them to wait until you got here.”

“I’ll leave you two alone,” the social worker said and walked out of the living room into the kitchen.

I walked over to my father’s gaunt ivory-colored body. One skinny arm was partially raised. His mouth was slightly open. His eyes were visible through thin slits. I felt no connection to his body at all. He had left it.

The social worker asked my mother if she should ask the guys from the funeral home to come in, and my mother said yes. The social worker suggested that my mother and I go into the kitchen so we wouldn’t see my father’s body being bagged and hauled out. After everyone left, my mother and I sifted through my father’s belongings until the funeral home opened. At lunch, my sister joined us and helped select flowers, then I went home and Paula stayed with my mother. I sent a few emails asking friends to pass on information about my father’s funeral and went to bed.

[Tuesday, June 19]

My cousin and old drinking buddy, Mike, flew in from California. He put his stuff in Max’s bedroom, and we sat outside on my deck with a bottle of tequila, a container of orange juice, and a bucket of ice. Mike poured himself a drink, and I licked my lips as he drank it. I wanted one bad. I grabbed the orange juice and poured seltzer water in it and had that instead. By the time Mike was on his eighth drink, I was hugely happy I wasn’t messed up like him. I kissed him on the cheek and went to bed, but Mike stayed up and drank.

[Wednesday, June 20]

My family met at the funeral home an hour before the wake started. We sat in the parlor with my father’s body and Mike, gripping a rocks glass filled with ice and bourbon, made frequent trips to the Lincoln Town Car he’d rented to freshen his drink.
Fuck it,
I thought. I sat next to Mike and started to tell him I wanted to go out to his car when two guys from my 7:00 a.m. recovery meeting walked in. One of them was Kent, my new sponsor.

Kent had become my sponsor when my relationship with Sara got weird. I had started writing
Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife
and Sara didn’t like it. She had asked me to write her bipolar/alcoholic story. I started teaching yoga and she didn’t like that either. “We don’t do things without checking with our sponsors first,” she told me.

Not wanting a puppet master but feeling conflicted, I went out to lunch with Playboy Pete and asked him what he thought.

“When you don’t know what to do, do nothing,” Pete said.

“Really?”

“Turn your problem over to your higher power and do nothing until the answer comes.”

“Cool,” I said. “I like that.”

A week later, I told Sara I felt disconnected from her and needed to find a new sponsor.

“Oh,” she said, sounding surprised. “I’m sorry to hear that. But, well, I think you need to do what you need to do. I wish you well. You know you can still call me if you want to.”

“Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been great in so many ways.”

My relationship ended with Vivian after I told her I was going to teach yoga, too. Vivian wanted to be a yoga teacher as well and was in a training program. I hadn’t entered a formal training program yet, but I’d been practicing for years, been encouraged to teach by fellow yogis, and was presented with the opportunity to teach. I invited Vivian to dinner at the Indian restaurant she, Darcy, and I had eaten at to pick her brain about liability insurance. I sat at a table and waited for her for twenty minutes, then called to see if she was coming.

“I’m almost there,” she snapped. “If you’re hungry, eat without me.”

When Vivian showed up, she threw her bag on the floor, slammed down on her chair, pulled a three-ringed binder out, and shoved it across the table at me. She opened it to the section on insurance, and I started jotting information into a notebook.

“That notebook is too nice,” she said, snatching the notebook from me and pushing it down the table. She dug around in her backpack. “Write on this,” she said, thrusting a dented piece of loose-leaf notebook paper at me.

My phone rang. It was Charlie calling to tell me that Sturgis, my sweet old senile dog, had wandered out of the yard and couldn’t be found.

“I have to go,” I told Vivian, grabbing my stuff, slapping a wad of cash on the table, and bolting. I drove around my neighborhood looking for Sturgis. I called the police, and they told me a veterinary clinic near my house had picked him up and put him in a kennel for the night.

Vivian called the next day to apologize for her bipolar behavior and ask about my dog, whom I sadly had to put down months after that. I accepted her apology but was done with Vivian. Had we been lifelong friends, I would have put up with her crap. I felt bad, but we hadn’t been friends long enough for me to do that. I ran into Vivian only once after. We were at a meeting and she pulled me aside. She told me she left her husband and had moved in with a psychic who was a much older gay woman.

“I’m done with men,” Vivian said. “I think I’m a lesbian.” Then she told me her daughter, Nancy, was still using.

When I asked Kent to be my sponsor, he said, “Hmm, I’m going to have to ask my sponsor about this.” A day later, Kent said yes. It’s unorthodox for a woman to ask a man to be her sponsor, but Kent was the sanest, most spiritual person I knew. When Kent walked into my father’s wake with Ethan, a recovering crack addict who liked hookers, my heart sank. There went my drink. But the next second I was flooded with gratitude. They’d saved me. I got up and gave both of them a big hug.

Kat walked in. My friends from book club arrived with the exception of Kelly. Joel had left Kelly for another woman and, after many miserable months, Kelly started dating. She was in Napa Valley with her new boyfriend. More of my girlfriends showed up. Deidre, who still couldn’t stay sober, gave me a big bear hug. The place was packed and I was relieved I wasn’t drunk. I caught sight of Hope and Audrey, who were talking to Mike. Audrey had divorced Nehemiah and moved back to Chicago. When she saw me looking at her, she walked over. “Your cousin is really messed up,” she whispered. Audrey partied with Mike and me when we were much younger, and she and Mike had gotten intimate once. Mike was propping himself up against a wall and swaying. Liv, Reed, and Seth walked in. Seth, who’d gone to my parents’ north woods cabin with us two summers in a row, glanced at my dad in his coffin. Liv teared up and Reed kissed my cheek.

When the last of the 300-plus guests left, I told Charlie I was going to drive Mike and his rental car back to our house. At home, Mike cracked open a new bottle of bourbon.

[Thursday, June 21]

“I hear you’re leaving for the Grand Canyon tomorrow,” my cousin Peter said at my father’s after-funeral lunch.

“Yeah,” I answered. “I’m glad to be getting out of here. We’re looking forward to it.”

“Max isn’t,” Peter said with a grin.

“Yes he is,” I said.

Peter shook his head and chuckled. “He just told me, ‘We’re driving 2,000 miles to a big hole in the ground.’”

“You’re bullshitting me.”

“I’m not,” he said, laughing. “Go ask him.”

I pulled Max aside.

“I’m not thrilled about camping in a stupid hole for five days,” Max admitted.

“But we’re all looking forward to this,” I said.

“You’re looking forward to it. Not me or Dad.”

“Dad doesn’t want to go either?”

“Ask him.”

“I can’t believe you’re calling the Grand Canyon a hole in the ground,” I said stalking off.

Driving home I said to Charlie, “Max tells me you don’t want to go to the Grand Canyon.”

“I want to go,” Charlie said. “I’m just not sure I want to camp down there.”

“It’s the trip of a lifetime,” I said.

“I’m sure it will be great,” Charlie said.

“A trip of a lifetime for you,” Max said.

When we got home I began packing up the car, grateful I had something to do other than cry. Mike showed up a short time later with a bottle of tequila.

“Do you have to do all this now?” Mike asked. “I could push my flight back a day or two.”

“Got to go,” I told him. “We’re on a tight schedule.”

Late that night I sat on the deck with Mike, who was sloshed. “Thanks for coming,” I told him and kissed him on the cheek. “My dad really loved you. I love you, too. I have to go to bed now. I’m about to collapse.” I gave him another kiss and left him to drink.

[Sunday, June 24]

We woke up in Frisco, Colorado, and drove west through the Rockies into Utah and headed east. The ride through the Rockies and eerie windswept desert monuments was stunning. The landscape was swallowing me, and I loved it. I looked at the map and noticed a skinny gray road in the southeast corner of Utah that was a fairly straight shot to where we wanted to go. I directed Charlie, who was driving, to its rock-and-dirt entrance.

“This has got to be it,” Charlie said. “But I don’t know.”

“Let’s ask at that general store we passed,” I said.

An older woman and a teenage girl running the store looked out the window at our Trailblazer, which we’d bought after selling the Jeep. It didn’t look like another person was around for miles.

“You got four-wheel drive,” the woman said. “You’ll make it. It’ll shave half an hour off your trip and it’s a pretty drive.”

“Do people use it?” I asked. “In case we get in trouble?”

“Oh, cowboys take that road all the time.”

We drove back to the dirt road and took it. We bumped along, twisting and turning, grinding up steep inclines, inching down declines, and sidling up to cliffs and rock formations. It took two hours to get down the gorgeous but boulder-strewn road, and by the time we crossed the Arizona border and pulled into a gas station, it was pitch black. We fueled up and headed for Flagstaff.

[Monday, June 25]

Our guide called and said he and his girlfriend, Amanda, were running late.

“You’re unlikely to see us before ten,” Todd said. “Meet us at the trailhead. We’ll sleep in our cars and start hiking down around three, three thirty. We want to start before the sun comes up and avoid hiking in the heat as much as possible. Eat a huge dinner tonight because you’ll need the fuel.”

We left downtown Flagstaff and drove through brown barren land to the Grand Canyon National Park. As we entered the east gates I asked a Native American woman collecting entrance fees if the dirt road at the south rim would take us to Havasu. Todd had told me not to take that road, which was direct, because it didn’t go through. He told us to take the roundabout three-hour way instead. But having taken the unbeaten path through Utah, I felt like maybe we could handle it. The woman looked at me like she wouldn’t mind sending me down the bad road but gruffly said, “No, you can’t get through.”

We wound our way through the park, pulling over at scenic overlooks. The kids and Charlie, thank goodness, were awestruck. We exited the west gate, stopped at a gas station to fill our water bottles, ate a big steak dinner, and headed for Havasu. We drove up a stretch of Route 66 dotted with neon signs for tiny motels before entering total darkness. Eventually, we turned onto a road that ended at the trailhead in sixty miles. Charlie began driving at a snail’s pace. Mule deer, cattle, and jackrabbits jumped onto the road, eyes glowing in our headlights. At eleven we pulled into the parking lot. It was surprisingly packed with cars. We drove slowly along the canyon wall, lighting up people sleeping in their vehicles and shoving gear into backpacks. We turned around at the end, headed back, and Todd appeared in our headlights. He directed us to a parking spot next to his car, and we unloaded our gear into bags that would get tied onto horses that would bring down our heavy stuff. Max and Van unrolled their sleeping bags and went to sleep in the back of the Trailblazer. Charlie and I reclined the front seats, opened the sunroof to the stars, and slept in the soft breeze blowing through the windows.