Drunk Mom (13 page)

Or is Chris waiting for me to go away, at the bottom of the hill, letting the bus drive off? Waiting so that she can go to the liquor store herself?

I stand in front of the store for some time.

I never stand in front of the store, I just go in—as if diving off a board.

But this time I stand in front of the store and I wait. First, I wait for Chris to show up. Then I wait not to go in.

I get tired standing in front of the store, so I sit on a concrete tree planter. People go in and out of the store.

I let my mind go while I sit there and wait for nothing. My mind flies all over the place, but mostly it swirls around the box or the bottle.

I’ve already decided to go in.

No, the decision was made for me; it was always there in the back of my mind. I was lying to myself about waiting for the decision to go away or change its course.

There is a sudden acceptance: I am going to go in anyway, always, because I have no choice. There are no decisions; the action will be prompted by an involuntary muscle, a breath going in and out; it is a natural process for me.

I get up and go in.

The relief once I leave the store, my fix on the bottom of the stroller hidden in the camera bag? Unreal. This is true happiness.

It is as if someone suddenly adjusted focus on the world around me, added an extra bounce to my walk, sang a sexy song to my hips, made me giddy with anticipation.

Should I get another one?

Chris’s not showing up at the liquor store, and probably just taking the bus and going home, is the one thought that bothers me that evening while I am still able to talk back to my thoughts.

M
y drink choices, they change, but vodka remains a staple. I believe it to have the least amount of odour. It looks clear, it smells pretty straightforward—it can’t possibly be that difficult to mask, can it? I do sometimes smell it coming from my pores, though. Unlike Scotch or beer, vodka seems too clean to leave a stink on the body. It often does, though, and then I have to invent stories about spoiled perfume and smoke like crazy all the time to stink up the stink.

My ritual is to buy my alcohol near the end of my daily walk with my son. It’s getting colder and colder outside, the winter is almost here now. This new degree of cold is wet, penetrating. I look inside the stroller. The baby’s blue hat inside the hoodie of his snowsuit barely fits him at all now, and the pompom is missing. His cheeks are bright red, scary red. I have to go somewhere inside to wait it out, this cold. It’s
dinnertime, we should be eating dinner. Normal people eat dinner now. But I’m not normal, nothing is normal. I have an urge.

I get dizzy as soon as I think about it. And I think about it all the time. I have an urge. No, not an urge, it’s not an urge. It’s a calling. An order from the sky or from the ground below me, or from the air around me, who knows.

It propels me and then everything feels like free fall. It can be stopped only one way.

I’m pushing the stroller but I want to abandon the stupid thing and start running.

I’m chasing the feeling of wanting to get high and I’m running away from it.

The urge has been planted even earlier. The urge is a plant and the seed has landed earlier in the day, or earlier in the month or in the year, or in my genetic makeup. It has forced itself into the deepest consciousness. It was the fastest-growing plant on my planet and now it’s a baobab, indestructible, strong and veiny with my own blood powering its roots. I’m overpowered by this plant—it crushes my insides with its insistent branches. Eventually, there’s no room for my insides, for my lungs. Which is why I breathe faster—I hear it, too, it’s louder, my breath—to make the breath last longer. I feel my body sweat. The good thing is that now I’m warmer. I’m no longer freezing, just wet and hot and crazy. I speed up. A map in my head indicates that there’s one close by.

Finally, I see what I’ve been looking for. I slow down. The world seems to slow down too. It’s as if we are in a film, getting to the climax, the part where the heroine arrives at the fountain of youth or whatever she’s after.

Yes. I’m here. I’ve arrived.

It will be nice and yellow and light inside. It will be warm. There will be rows and rows of colours. Beautiful ambers and crystal whites and tropical blues and deep, blood-pulsing reds. There will be golden plaques with impressive numbers stamped on them, and new-born flirty labels on wines, with names like
Ladies Night Out
that appeal to women, and
Fat Bastard
for men. There will be so much glass, a symphony of glass. I can’t wait to hear it.

The door opens soundlessly and we’re inside this wonderland. Frankie is awake and he scans the rows of colours and crystal with his big eyes. I’m sure it’s interesting, all the colours. His mouth is open as he looks and looks. He babbles quietly, under his breath. His head is turning left and right.

I don’t go to this particular liquor store often so I let myself relax and peruse the shelves a little bit. In my usual liquor stores I make this a quick in-and-out because of the guilt. I’m just being paranoid but I think that people remember me. I think that people tend to remember the that-doesn’t-belong-here thing: the stroller.

I explore a little. I’m always amazed by all the new alcohol that has come out since I got sober. I check out the new diet beers and Scotches and vintage wines that share a birthday with me.

And vodkas!

All these flavoured vodkas: orange, tangerine, grapefruit, raspberry, strawberry, blueberry, vanilla, blackcurrant, chili pepper, cherry, apple, cinnamon, cranberry, peach, pear, passion fruit, pomegranate, plum, mango, white grape, banana, pineapple, coconut, mint, melon, rose, buffalo grass.

I go for the plain. Vodka-flavoured vodka.

At the cash register, Frankie smiles at the store clerk and I feel paranoid again, paranoid enough to mumble something about having a party. She coos to Frankie and nods to me while giving me the correct change. I want her to scream that she should report me to Children’s Services or something, but, really, I don’t want her to even notice that I’m here.

Around the same time, in the fall, I move my drinking times counterclockwise. I occasionally drink when it’s still light out. I suppose I miss summer. I miss its light and the carelessness of it, the bike rides, the way you can just throw out a bottle without worrying about wet fingers getting stuck in the freezing cold metal mouths of garbage bins. It is perhaps because I miss summer that I go on a sparkling-wine kick. It’s also because I still have it in me to pretend that I’m not drinking things like straight vodka on a regular basis that I decide I should drink sparkling wine in order to slow down a bit. It tastes better than beer, it has a low alcohol content—but not too low—and it smells kind of like juice. I also imagine that it will put me in just the right mood—not too sloppy and not too blacked-out. It will put me in the champagne mood, which is where I would like to be at all times. It will put me right back in the summer.

The popping cork is, of course, a problem. And the bottles are big, thick and clunky. I bring them home, but I’m so nervous about being caught. Early on, a bottle is discovered on the deck, by the boyfriend, and he brings it wordlessly to me, as if it was a baby I had abandoned on the deck, his eyes are that serious.

Why were you on the deck, were you snooping around? I shout.

He doesn’t shout. I’m the shouter in the family. We are a family.

Snooping for what? He tells me to calm down. He says I will wake the baby. I calm down. Then I make up some lie about how the bottle must be left over from an a deck party—maybe when Frankie was born and all those people were coming over with booze—and he pretends to believe me.

After that one bottle is found, I drink my sparkling wine away from the house. I develop a new ritual.

My ritual involves going to the grocery store first to get formula, followed by a visit to the liquor store to get sparkly, and then getting a bottle of Sprite in a convenience store. Next, I march to the nearest grocery store or coffee shop and lock myself in the bathroom. I have the perfect excuse too for staying in there for a long time: I always ask about a changing table.

In the bathroom, I first fill a couple of baby bottles with formula. Next, I empty the bottle of Sprite into the sink. Then I gently tap the cork of the sparkling wine and twist it while holding it. It always makes the loud, hollow popping sound, of course, but nothing so crazy you’d have to make up stories. I usually remember to flush the toilet at the same time, just in case.

What a loud shit I just had.

The baby is fascinated by what’s going on—all those purposeful movements, the opening of formula cans, the popping of the bottle, and liquids being poured in, out and in while I talk to him.

I tell him that he’s a very, very good baby. This is all for you, baby, I say and I go on with my performance until the bottle of Sprite is filled up again. We can go now, I announce, and we go.

I imagine a pimply-faced teenage grocery store employee discovering the empty formula cans, the bottle of Prosecco in the trash, forced
to suddenly think all kinds of suspicious, troubling thoughts about her boss.

After the bathroom I can go for a nice final walk in the cold, taking big sips out of my Sprite with stiff, freezing lips until I’m ready to go home and do whatever I do there. If it gets too cold I smuggle it into a coffee shop. In the chaos of strollers, coats, hats and boots, nobody ever notices the little sips.

People wandering around like me—are they, too, locking themselves in the bathroom, mixing their concoctions? Are they looking to discreetly throw out their empties? Are they hiding things in the linings of their purses and strollers and coats?

Can they tell I do it too?

How could you tell?

Because if you were to look at the evidence tape you’d see me and I look nothing like a drunk. I look good. In fact, if you’d known me before I relapsed, you might even think that I seem better than ever, and that motherhood serves me really well. Example? I’ve lost some weight. You can see my cheekbones.

Still, I keep looking for cues in others. When I’m out on my walks, I watch other moms. The city is filled with them, rain or shine—the days belong to new moms. We are an army of stroller pushers. We all push equally—the healthy-looking yoga ones and the ones who are like rock stars with tattoos and lipstick, the butchy ones, and the ones who, like me, treat these daily outings seriously and dress up for the occasion in fur vests, killer dresses and hats. And I just know that many of them are carrying empties in their diaper bags. And some of them are walking around with open cans of beer or sparkly wine mixed with Sprite secured in the stroller’s cupholder. Or they’re
cooing to babies in coffee shops while taking discreet sips out of their bottles of Sprite.

Right?

I look in their faces and a lot of them smile back the way first-time moms do to one another when we recognize our common plight, new children and all the pushing.

I look for signs of secrets, but I can’t read anything into all these smiling stranger faces.

And this makes me feel as though I’m the only one. This makes me feel so alone. And so superior the way a secret makes you feel, even if it’s a bad secret, even if it’s killing you.

I stop and take a big sip from my bottle of Sprite to calm my nerves.

B
esides drinking and thinking about how lonely I am, I devote my free time to further self-care. The baby is still sleeping a lot, and I try to keep busy so I don’t drink too much during the day now that I’ve begun that scary phase. For now, I manage to count between drinks and never go beyond my limit. I’m a day sipper, an evening drinker. I’m a night drunk.

To kill the time that stretches between my drinking rituals, I get regular haircuts and facials. I shop. Being a mother now, I finally feel entitled to small luxuries. I buy my first fur, first Marc Jacobs.

I tell myself this is because I deserve it. I had the Pain. Twenty-three hours of it and eighteen staples in my stomach to prove I’ve earned my place in the pantheon of being a grown-up. I’m a grown-up. I’m just like the other mothers I pass.

But it’s not about being a mother. And of course, I’ve decided, I’m nothing like the other mothers because of my awful secret.

The truth?

This is not about deserving some luxuries. It is not about being a grown-up at all. But it is with the grown-up stuff that I’m covering the rot. Underneath all this dress-up I’m falling apart. I’m gluing together all the pieces that are falling off with all that nail polish and fur and other crap. Nothing stays put. Even though it looks put.

There are less gracious looks, like the one in the middle of a snowstorm, one of those dark winter months, December, that doesn’t want to ever go away.

Again, me with the stroller. The baby inside it, warm and cozy in the blankets. Me with a lost glove, frozen right hand clutching a can, big Sorels with laces wrapped around the ankles, winter jacket flopping open: this late at night, I don’t feel cold anymore. I’m fine. I sing. I walk.

I forget how I got to nightfall because I left the house relatively early. After I left the liquor store, I had lunch at some bar. It was still light outside. And when we came out of the bar, the sun was still hitting the snow, making everything look like an overexposed photograph.

How is it that it is suddenly late and I’m woozy with drunkenness?

The baby wakes up and I coo to him. I love you so, so much, I tell him. You’re awesome. He is just so awesome. You’re the awesomest baby in the world, I say to him.

I want to eat him. Instead, I find a bottle of formula and stick it in his wet, rose-red mouth. He sucks on the bottle energetically, his huge brown eyes—my eyes—roaming all over my face.

I look down at my boots, sloshing through the melting snow, and the remains of the day still sparkling, reflected in all that dirty water around my feet.

My phone rings and rings and when I pick up it’s my boyfriend textmessaging me from the new house where he’s waiting for us. I don’t text him back.