Drunk Mom (10 page)

She dances a little in the small room, as much as she can, really, in this room. She has to manoeuvre around the bed. Dancing, she thinks
about the time long ago when she used to date a very rich guy who would take her to hotels like this. He would leave at one in the morning to drive back to his wife and daughter. And she would sometimes wake up too early, very thirsty suddenly, and she would crack open the mini-fridge. Those hotels were like this one—all wood, sometimes all glass, ambient techno in the elevators and faux Deco decor.

When she finishes her bottle of wine, she puts on more lipstick and goes downstairs to the hotel restaurant, which is arctic blue and black with skating-rink-shiny surfaces that seem to be made out of onyx. She orders a glass of wine. The glass costs more than the bottle she drank upstairs but she can’t think that way—people like her don’t have to think that way. It never occurs to them to be thrifty.

The girl behind the bar is very beautiful. The woman tells her this and the bartender girl says thank you. The woman orders another glass of wine and this time leaves a larger tip. The bartender seems so nice. The woman feels like talking so she starts a conversation with the bartender. It turns out that the bartender is a student at McGill, finishing the same degree as the woman’s younger sister. What a coincidence. The bartender has smooth, pharaoh-like features, accented perfectly by only a hint of makeup.

The woman’s purse vibrates and rings.

It’s my boyfriend: How is Montreal?

Montreal is great. I’m having so much fun, I say and gulp the last few drops, gesturing to the beautiful bartender for another one. How is the baby?

He’s good. A little cranky. He slept in our bed last night. I couldn’t get him back to sleep so I let him. I guess all the sleep training just went out the window.

My boyfriend has some people over. Women friends. I ask him to list them. Among them is the friendly cougar who’s been pursuing him for months, someone he has had a drink with before (business reasons, of course), and this bothers me, but I’m suddenly in such a generous spirit I almost tell him that he could sleep with her if he really wants to. Why the hell not? People should be allowed to bang whoever they want. I know she wants to bang him. I know men like to sleep with people who want to sleep with them. So why not?

Stop being crazy. How was your day? he says, interrupting my thoughts.

I have a big sip of my wine and tell him about my hotel room and about the boring art I saw earlier. I don’t tell him that I had been counting down the minutes until it would get dark and I could give myself permission to get drunk.

We miss you, Mommy, he says and puts the baby on the phone. I listen to the squeals and piglet-like grunting and I imagine my baby boy’s little face with its giant inquisitive eyes, and his fists sometimes moving up to his eyes involuntarily, possibly trying to scratch them out.

I look at the rows of bottles in front of me. All the colours of glass and all that liquid; potions and lotions to make you big or small. The bartender’s back is turned to me now—she is pouring amber liquid into a row of tumblers. Her hair is black, shiny like the onyx surfaces around me. She probably wears matching microfibre-and-lace underwear.

One of the male waiters joins her behind the bar and she goes on her tippytoes to whisper something into his ear. I wonder if they are sleeping together. How do people ask to sleep with each other nowadays? I wonder how I would ask him to sleep with me.

I miss you too, guys, I say.

He wants to grab the phone, my boyfriend says. Oh, he’s grabbing it, trying to hold it against his ear. Frankie! I hear the baby make a giggling sound.

Frankie. I can’t think about Frankie right now. Hello? Hello? I say loudly into my cell.

My boyfriend says, Hello, hello, hello. What’s wrong? Can you not hear me okay? I can hear you fine.

Hello? Hello? I say again.

Hello? I can hear you perfectly clearly.

Hello? Hello? I hang up.

He is ruining my buzz.

This time she doesn’t go behind the hotel, back to the college-kid purgatory. Instead, she walks along Sherbrooke, passing the handsome facades, display windows and work-of-art staircases of expensive shops. She passes a couple of hotels with famous names. There are very few people out at this time. It seems that everyone has already retired for the night. A few hotel restaurants that she passes seem barely filled. It’s past suppertime. It’s getting chilly. It’s Sunday.

She realizes that she is a little hungry, which is annoying. She should’ve had something to eat before. Maybe even a sandwich that she could’ve smuggled into her room like the nice wine. Nobody needed to know.

She stops in front of a couple of restaurants and reads the menus. The prices are ridiculous. Yes, she wants to treat herself, and women like her eat alone in expensive restaurants all the time, but this is just a rip-off. It’s time to catch a cab and go down to St-Denis. There, at least, people are out on the streets and there are depanneurs everywhere, still probably selling alcohol at this hour.

One more place to check out. Last night on her way to the hotel she walked by this place and there was a big party inside a big white tent set up in the courtyard. People were all dressed up, and there were cameras inside, and a live band. There was wrought iron, possibly a fountain in the middle of all this, palm trees. It seemed like something out of
The Great Gatsby
.

The place is way less lively now.

She walks up to the restaurant’s massive front door with curlicue knobs. The menu is framed in an intricate art nouveau frame.

The door opens and a man says hello.

Hello.

Would you like to come in? He is dressed in a suit. He’s older than her but not by much. He’s okay to look at, tanned and dark-haired, which she likes, but somehow not her type at all. He reminds her of a nice guy she went on a date with once, and kissed out of politeness.

The restaurant is empty behind the man.

She isn’t sure what to make of it.

We’re closed but you can come in. I saw you walking up and I was hoping you’d come in. I love your tights.

She looks down. Her fuchsia legs. Behind her, the street is deserted. Why the hell not?

This is how magic happens, she thinks. You have a drink or two and magic just happens.

The man leads her to a table and explains that he is the owner of the place. He says, I want to cook for you. It’s not every day that such a beautiful woman just appears at my door.

She laughs.

Minutes later, she’s seated at a white table, suddenly surrounded by eager-to-please waiters, and the man is telling her about different wines they have and what is good. She tries to remember what kinds of wines are considered good. Her mind is blank and a little whirly. She tells him to choose. I trust you, she says, and that seems to please him.

What would you like to eat? I can make you a beautiful salad.

I love salads, she says.

It shows. You have an amazing body, he says.

It’s a little cheesy but she says thank you. Someone like her would always say thank you.

He jokes with the waiters, who call him “boss” and who are told to take out salad ingredients and leave them out for him in the kitchen. He wants to talk about her tights again. Her dress is beautiful too. What is she doing here, all by herself?

The wine is really good.

There is more of it.

She tells him he looks like an old friend.

A
good
friend? he wants to know.

An ex-boyfriend, she lies.

By then the surroundings are becoming seriously blurry. He looks like her ex-boyfriend, sure. Anybody could look like—or be—anybody. She keeps forgetting the man’s name and once calls him by the name of the guy that he reminds her of. He jokes about having his feelings hurt, reminds her of his real name.

Later on a college-age kid joins them. He’s wearing a pink Lacoste shirt. He was playing golf all day, he explains to the restaurant owner. He says he is enjoying himself after breaking off his engagement. They drink
to that. The kid is the restaurant owner’s nephew. They are Italian.

She calls them mafia and the restaurant owner laughs and the younger man rolls his eyes. The restaurant owner says he is going to go and make her salad now. It’s a good thing, she thinks—food—as she’s getting way too drunk.

The kid asks questions. He seems suspicious of her.

His suspicions make me nervous. I’m a mom, I finally tell him, losing my disguise.

A mom? And where’s your husband? the kid asks.

The restaurant owner comes back with the salad. There are strawberries in it and walnuts. It’s a strange salad, not very good, but at that point I would eat anything.

As I eat, the kid explains to the restaurant owner that I’m a new mom and the restaurant owner says that there’s no way I’m a mom. I don’t look like a mom.

Well, I am a mom, I say. Thank you.

Are we going? says the kid. They have plans.

Maybe not now, says the restaurant owner. He talks about my tights to the kid, who seems unimpressed.

What was your former fiancée like? I ask the kid. I try to picture the girl whom he dumped. She probably looked like one of those girls from the streets behind my hotel, from the night before. One of those puking-on-the-corner California girls. She probably had blond hair.

She was a knockout, the kid says.

Was? Is she dead?

He says, Yes, was.

Ah. Mafia. Where were you gonna go tonight? I say. I’m almost done my salad. I have more wine. The waiter brings another bottle.

I really want a cigarette. Can I smoke in here?

The restaurant owner doesn’t answer right away. Then he says to the kid, Look, see how much I’m into this woman? I’m going to let her smoke in here.

I light a cigarette. Where were you gonna go, guys? I ask again, and the kid laughs but nothing in his face looks smiley.

Clubs. You know.

Strip clubs? I say, because it’s obvious. I can come with you, I don’t care. I love them. I went this summer and had a great time. I got a lap dance and everything. I went for a friend’s birthday. Your ex didn’t deserve you, I say. My voice probably gets higher and I flap my eyelashes.

No, she didn’t. How was the lap dance?

It was great. The stripper was great. Beautiful. She looked like me.

I can get a driver to take us there. We’ll go to my club, the restaurant owner says, and the young man nods knowingly.

Do you do other things? I ask.

They both laugh. Like what?

Mafia things. Never mind.

More wine. I have another cigarette. The restaurant owner tries to kiss me after that and I push him away, playfully. He says, I’m getting you drunk. There is more wine.

And then there’s nothing.

I wake up in my hotel room. My underwear is off but my bra is on. It’s completely soaked through with milk. There is nothing missing from my purse. The restaurant owner’s business card is lying on the floor beside my tights.

I try to imagine the rest of the evening. Dancing? Falling?

Nothing seems to bring back any memories. Did I say offensive things to those men? I recall calling them mafia. I think I have one memory of passing out in the restaurant and them trying to wake me up … but this isn’t a memory; it is just something that I guess.

Did they carry me back to my room? Did they have to ask at the front desk which one was my room? Did we actually go to Rue Ste-Catherine and visit a strip club after all? Did I invite them here, both of them, and did we have a threesome? Did the restaurant owner undress me, roll down those dirty, fuchsia tights slowly and lovingly, take pictures of me, while his nephew watched, impatient and fed up with this drunken slob his uncle was so taken with? Did they both see my C-section scar and realize that I wasn’t the woman they thought I was? That I was indeed who I said I was—a new mom, staying in Montreal for the weekend, visiting art galleries and drinking too much wine. Why am I not wearing any underwear?

I don’t think anything bad happened.

Perhaps all that happened was wobbly, stumbly me getting walked to my hotel room, being let in, put to bed. Maybe I wobbly, stumbly walked myself to the hotel room, let myself in, put myself in bed. I took my own clothes off.

The end.

But the truth is, I don’t know for sure.

My blackouts are the perfect, absolute erasers of reality. There are no maybes, no grey edges. It’s pure temporary death. And not the death that ends with a warm light at the end of the tunnel. Not even flickering. No flashbacks coming back later, either.

People don’t believe in the absoluteness of blackouts. Perhaps because we simply don’t accept that we can be here, on earth, walking and talking and doing things without any of it being recorded somewhere, kept to be released later.

But no light comes on, ever. From my end this is what it looks like: An alcoholic drinks and drinks, she goes into a blackout and then it’s a long nothing and then she is waking up and it’s the middle of the day. The carnage of fuchsia pantyhose, shoes, underwear strewn all around her with no clues as to the sequence of events preceding this.

I’ve heard of extraordinary fits, of alcoholics travelling to different countries in blackouts. I’ve heard of an alcoholic judge who left his own wedding in Ontario and woke up in a bed in Alberta with two strange women. I’ve heard of a man who came to and found he was delivering his daughter.

It is terrifying shit.

I don’t think I was molested.

The end.

I decide to leave. I start packing. I find my panties in the bathtub. I throw them out. In the garbage there’s the dental dam wrapper. Perhaps I unwrapped it last night, looked at it. The end.

I check out nervously, worried that someone is going to make a remark about the night before, tell me that I had damaged something, that maybe I threw up all over the elevator, maybe tried to make out with the waiter from the hotel bar that I thought of sleeping with earlier.

Nobody says anything.

I drag my suitcase out onto the sidewalk. I’m too mortified to walk by the restaurant, so I catch a cab and get to the train station hours before my train leaves. I remember a liquor store nearby—I passed it on my first day here. I drag my suitcase all the way there and buy a mickey of vodka. Even though I’m not drinking it (yet), knowing that I have it immediately calms me down.