Drunk Mom (21 page)

Isn’t the human condition a post-traumatic stress disorder? I ask the counsellor.

She says, In a way it is. That’s a good way of seeing it.

Really.

Post-traumatic stress disorder or not, I’m able to appreciate the photographs of my son for their aesthetic value. He’s a beautiful child. In my mind he is exactly the way he is in those pictures—two-dimensional, perfect, silent. Not real. Before falling asleep that night, I try to imagine some other details to make the picture a little fuller: how his chubby feet smash against the floor when he’s excited.

There are two phones downstairs where the women are. Both phones are occupied constantly between meals and activities. Donna the white-toothed crack addict is on the phone the most, especially in the evening when her lover is back from work. She enters the women’s lounge with a glum face every evening after she finishes her calls. From the beginning, she’s been missing meals and even some group meetings to answer the phone, which seems to be ringing for her all the time. Her man is calling and threatening to take up with someone else if she doesn’t return to him soon. He’s doing coke all the time, she cries. I’m not sure if the crying is for him or for all the coke being done without her around.

He doesn’t know how to take care of himself, ya know? she explains further, and nobody thinks this is weird.

I do. I think it’s awful and weird because if she goes back to her man to serve him, she’ll be dead soon. She takes the dressing off her chest on that teary evening too and reveals to us her “special friend,” an IV catheter in her chest.

I had cancer. It’s for chemo, she explains.

What do you mean? asks Tina, the alcoholic. They put the chemo drugs in there?

Aha, she says.

Did you ever put—?

Oh yeah, Donna says, I didn’t want them to remove it, ya know?

The phone calls from her man increase throughout the day, right before the weekend. He’s now calling the front desk, we find out from my roommate, who knows everything. He calls the counsellors and he calls both phones available to us on the women’s floor. This creates lots of tension because suddenly nobody else can get through and we use the phone calls to break the monotony of the day. Donna apologizes all the time. But we all grow sick of her and her apologies and her crazy boyfriend.

She leaves that evening, on Friday. Sade says something about this Friday being the social assistance day.

What do you mean?

Her welfare cheque? The cheque came, he wants her to cash it, buy rock, goodbye, so long, she giggles. Sade says Donna’s man came to pick her up.

The women meet in the lounge to talk about what happened with Donna. Donna has written on the blackboard in the lounge that she’ll never forget us and that she has learned a lot in these past few days, more than she had in years.

I don’t believe for one second that she’ll stay clean. She learned nothing. We addicts often learn nothing. Which is why we keep going back. Or die.

I
t’s the morning after Donna leaves and I find her absence at breakfast jarring but also hopeful. We can leave here. Of course we can leave here. One of the counsellors says that Donna’s leaving like this is a normal part of recovery. Overconfidence is a normal part of recovery.

After breakfast, from the cafeteria, I watch the lake and its shimmering grey-blue waters. It’s a sunny day and there are people walking on the boardwalk. Couples and families. I’m sure there’s at least one alcoholic or drug addict among them. There must be at least one mother pushing a stroller, a mother who’s also sipping discreetly out of her coffee mug, eyes darting side to side. Perhaps not. Perhaps I was one of a kind and it’s all sweet and proper on the other side of the fence. I sit by the window and watch the tiny people move about as I peel orange after orange—they have the most amazing, delicious oranges here at the New Hope centre.

Alex the teenage escort has meltdowns all the time. In women’s groups she’s mostly quiet but then will burst into tears or swear at the counsellors—but not really
at them
, it seems; it’s more of a general fuck-off with her emotions playing out briefly on her tiny anorexic face, big mouth quivering before she suddenly shuts down. Once she shuts down, she’s calm, almost comatose with blank eyes. If asked a question she shrugs—that universal teenage movement intended to crush everyone around her. I’m dying to hear her escort stories—I feel bad about it but I’m dying to hear them nonetheless—but it seems she’s unable to formulate sentences that go beyond, “This is so fucked” or “I fucking hate this shit.” Even after coming off the Oxys she seems to be in a fragile state, hands still hidden in sleeves, eyes outlined in so much black she looks like a sick panda. My roommate tries to get her to talk but even she gets discouraged after too many grunting answers.

I wonder if she has brain damage, but I know she doesn’t because I’ve heard bits and pieces of conversations she has at the dining room table during meals, stuff about music she likes, and she’s surprisingly eloquent.

She only talks to guys, I mention to Sade.

Yeah, she’s young, dumb and full of cum, my roommate says.

Since she’s the youngest girl in here, perhaps she’s just acting the part. She and I share a counsellor, but I never get to see my counsellor because Alex is in her office crying all the time. One time I watch her throw her MP3 player on the floor in the counsellor’s office, then pick it up and throw it with more force so that it smashes. The counsellor sits in her chair and watches this. She looks up. Our eyes lock, and she gives me a sad smile.

Well, at last it’s entertaining, I think to myself, though I’m still pissed off that the little bitch is stealing my time with the counsellor. That’s how bored I’m starting to get—I begin to look forward to my one-on-one sessions with a counsellor.

I entertain the thought of grabbing a couple of oranges from the kitchen and going downstairs to the basketball court and then throwing them at the counsellor’s window. Alex could go on smashing things inside her office and I’d do it outside. Maybe we could drive the counsellor to drinking or using Oxys.

Because I can’t get to see my counsellor again, that night I go to the group meeting, where we’re told about a test we’ll be doing to see how best we can get along with each other. This is interesting because by now we all know each other and it’s not like we need any more icebreakers. I bring this up and am told that I can always use True Colours results in the real world.

We’re given sheets of paper and are told to answer yes or no to statements such as: I prefer my desk to be organized, I enjoy meeting new people. I write in my own statement, perhaps inspired by Alex’s bratty behaviour: I shit only when absolutely necessary.

After the questionnaire, we look at pictures that are supposed to represent us and our values, badly done drawings of mimes (you like art!), chessboards (you are analytical!) and such. After all of this is done, the counsellors promise, we’ll be assigned a colour, which will correspond to our personality and suggest possible alliances and potential landmines in each other. I find out I’m Green-Blue. Sade is Gold and she’s very proud of herself, is shouting to everyone that Golds are the best.

We are given worksheets where we have to draw a line, from the time we were born to age one hundred. I look at the line and see that in my case I can look forward to sixty-eight years of possibly clean, happy life if I stay with the program and die at one hundred.

And it makes me think of now—the hours of boredom, the hours of obsessing over dumb teen bitches, the hours of personality tests. The
now
, it’s so tiny, I can’t actually subtract it from all the time in the rest of my life that I will get to spend with Frankie. It’s nothing, barely a speck on the lifeline.

See? my counsellor says, when I finally do get to see her the next day. If I hadn’t gone to rehab I could have even more days to subtract, perhaps even years. In retrospect—she promises—this will seem like a small sacrifice for a much greater reward.

I know, I know, I tell her, but I still can’t justify finding out that I’m Green-Blue—analytical, composed, artistic, loyal—on a personality scale while my breasts swell up with milk.

Where’s Frankie now? she says, and it feels like blasphemy to hear her say his name, as if she actually knew him. I try to guess if she’s being mean, or if she truly doesn’t know. She smiles encouragingly. She wears the peace symbol around her neck.

With his dad.

And how is Frankie?

Fine, I’m sure.

Of course, of course. She pats my hand quickly and lets go.

Do you have any kids? I ask her, and she says she does: a boy and a girl.

This counsellor’s office, like every other counsellor’s office, is decorated with inspirational sayings and words carved out in wood plaques.

She asks me what I would like to work on from this peculiar one-on-one menu: Relapse Prevention, Daily Living or Managing Stress?

I don’t know, I say.

I’ve noticed you’ve been looking at the words on my wall. Is there one you’d like to talk about?

I want to talk about one word that I see on her wall. I say, Believe.

What do you believe in?

I believe that I can have a regular life. I believe I can be a good mom, I can repair my relationship, get back to doing things I enjoy.

She looks so pleased. That’s so great, she says. And how about another word? How about Hope? What do you hope for?

That I’ll stick to it, that’s all. But I’m scared that I will get tempted again. I think about alcohol a lot. I miss it.

And that’s an okay feeling, the counsellor says. Thank you for your honesty.

I miss it a lot, you don’t understand. I think I’ll be able to have a glass of wine or two, fine.

You’re still in love with it, she says.

In love?

It can be like a former husband or an ex-boyfriend, don’t you think? That guy that you never got over?

I try to think of guys I never got over. I was drunk every time. They all blend into some kind of Godzilla-guy monstrosity I never got over.

I suppose, I say. There’s always a tiny sliver of hope that we’ll get back together, alcohol and me, even if for just one more naked weekend, just one more night. This can’t be over, can it?

Well, that’s up to you, certainly. You don’t have to answer all his calls.

Whose calls?

Your lover’s. The one who got away.

Right. I don’t. But what if he keeps calling? I change the number and he keeps calling. I hang up on him, and he calls me right back. That’s the kind of guy he is. But even if he were to finally give up, I myself have a hard time with finality, I don’t want things to just end. Or, worse, to pretend that they’ve ended. I don’t understand how that happens—something
is
but I have to pretend it
isn’t
. Like the alcohol is always there. It
is
. It’s not
isn’t
.

The counsellor nods.

Like the teenage Alex, I’ve given in to strange anger here in this office, with this grown-up nodding smilingly at me. I think: She’s not the most attractive woman. She’s got eyelashless eyes, the face of a stunned bird.

I immediately feel guilty for thinking that and think of saying something that will please her. So I say, I guess I can just
pretend
that it’s not there. One-day-at-a-time thing, right?

That’s the idea, she says, if you can get your head around it, or even if you can’t, you can just choose not to try to get your head around it for one day. Just tell yourself you’re going to think about it tomorrow and until then stay sober. And then you can go through the same routine the next day. And the next.

I’m lost again. How do I not think about it in the first place? Like, is there a way to just erase that first thought?

You might have to start first thing in the morning, she tells me. That’s why a lot of people pray first thing in the morning. You’ve no defences when you first wake up, so you quickly say your little mantra, a prayer, whatever you say, and then you’re set for the day. It’s like you’ve built a wall for the day. And it’s harder for those sorts of thoughts to penetrate that wall.