One thing that happens when you have an alcoholic for a parent is you grow up the child of an alcoholic. For those of you who aren’t children of alcoholics, hear me now and believe me later: It’s the single determining factor in your personality. I don’t care if you get straight As, marry a saint, and break the glass ceiling in a male-dominated profession, or if you bounce around from failure to failure with pit stops in cults and nuthouses: if you were raised by a drunk, you’re above all the adult child of an alcoholic. For a quick trip around the bases, it means you blame yourself for everything, you avoid reality, you can’t trust people, you’re hungry to please. Which isn’t all bad: perfectionism makes the straight-A student; lack of trust begets self-sufficiency; low self-esteem can be a terrific motivator; if everyone were so gung-ho on reality, there’d be no art.
An added bonus of having a drunk for a father is that in order to survive, I became freakishly attuned to subtle body language and inflections. Joe calls this heightened perception my “witchly powers.”
And right then, to anybody else, “You’re back!” would have meant Nice to see you! It’s been a while. But to the child of an alcoholic with witchly powers, it meant Joe told us the three of you were out of town.
And that’s when my day really began.
Ruthie, in the way back, spotted us. Ruthie the office manager and Luz the scheduler were a pair of evil cats. Placid eyes, grins seething with calculation, they worked in tandem with a single purpose: to protect Joe.
Ruthie, the mastermind, was sixty, blond, with a dancer’s body. She always wore beige. Today’s ensemble was a silk top, pointy four-inch heels, and slacks with a crease down the front that could slice you in half.
I wanted information. If I tipped Ruthie off, she’d run straight to Joe. My witchly instincts told me that whatever this was—Joe telling me he was at work but the office he was out of town—I needed to low-key it.
Evil cats versus the adult child of an alcoholic. May the better animal win.
“This is a surprise,” Ruthie said, revealing nothing.
“We’re back,” I said, safe ground, as I was merely repeating what Luz had just said.
Two workmen walked through the back hallway. Propped against the wall, a roll of carpet.
“New carpet?” I said.
“We never have a whole week!” erupted Luz.
A whole week? Hmm.
Ruthie put her hand on Luz’s shoulder. A signal to say no more? What was that I sensed from four feet away? Could it be Ruthie’s heart rate dropping? Had the kitty cat checkmated me?
“I parked in the garage,” I said.
Then, in a prison move if there ever was one, I reached across and rifled around Luz’s desk, touching as much of her personal shit as I could.
An appalled Luz turned to Ruthie, who coolly opened a drawer and handed me validation stickers.
“Take the whole book,” she said.
Timby was up on a chair with both hands in the aquarium, swishing his fingers through the fetid water. “Whee!”
“Let’s go,” I said.
Out in the hallway, I found a wall-mounted hand-sanitizer dispenser. Trembling, I pushed the button. It squirted on the floor. I scooped up the puff of foam and knelt down to scrub it into Timby’s arms.
“Oh no,” he cried. “Was that water dirty?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Smell the soup, cool the soup,” Timby said.
“Huh?”
“It’s what they teach us in school when we’re upset. Smell the soup.” He took a deep breath in. “Cool the soup.” He blew out. “Come on, Mama, close your eyes.”
I stood up. Eyes closed, I smelled the soup. I cooled the soup. My arms rose slightly at my sides; my palms turned inward on their own; my fingers curled like fortune-telling fish.
“I think I need moisturizer,” Timby said, his arms pink from the alcohol.
“We’ll get you some, baby.”
I dialed Sydney. “Eleanor again. This really is the last time. But I do have to cancel. Call me so I know you got this message.”
I turned to Timby. “Me and you.”
“Really?” His fragile hope just about put me away.
“What do you want to do?” I said. “Anything. We can go paddleboarding on Lake Union. Get a sandwich to eat at the top of Smith Tower. Fly kites on Kite Hill. Watch the salmon swim upstream at the Ballard Locks.”
“Can we go to the Gap?”
To the Gap we walked.
“This is all about you, baby,” I said.
Timby tore up the Lucite stairs to the kids’ section. I followed him, my mind barely there.
Husband caught lying = husband having an affair. It felt like a first idea; it felt pat.
My friend Merrill told me that on the first date, a guy without realizing it will tell you why the relationship will ultimately fail. He’ll say he doesn’t want kids, or he’s not the type to settle down, or he’s in a fight with his mother. On our first date, Joe presented himself as the kind, curious, principled man he turned out to be.
Only one thing struck me as odd.
I don’t know how it came up. But he said his coping style was that he takes it, he takes it, he takes it, until he can’t take it anymore. “What does it look like, when you can’t take it anymore?” I’d asked. “I don’t know,” he’d answered. “It hasn’t happened yet.”
The previous guy I’d dated was still hung up on his ex. The one before him was fifteen days sober. If the worst Joe could say about himself was there’d be unspecified wall-punching in the future, sign me up! (And even that didn’t materialize! Twenty years and nary a call to the drywall guy.) More than anything, Joe is ethical. I once pointed out the irony of him constantly railing against the Catholic Church when he is in fact a walking advertisement for the decency and honesty they preach. (“When they’re not pumping you with lies and self-hatred,” he’d retorted.) No way could he be cheating on me.
On the other hand, I wasn’t giving him enough sex. I had to get on that.