Unknown Man #89

with her fourteen-year-old daughter: the unbelievable language she used, screaming at the child, Mommy in one of her finest scenes. The next morning she wanted to die. But she called a friend in the program and went to a meeting that night. She had come to meetings Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and she was here tonight and was going to keep coming.

The guy next to Ryan leaned close to him, reaching for the ashtray, and said, “What does she want, a fucking medal? She doesn’t have any choice.”

When the guy’s turn came to speak to the table, he said, “I wasn’t an alcoholic, like the rest of you drunks. Hell no. In a two-year period I got fired from three jobs, my wife divorced me, I was arrested twice for drunk driving, I smashed up the garage and five cars, but I wasn’t an alcoholic. I was a heavy social drinker.” There was laughter and some nodding heads. Ryan smiled.

Everyone at the table had been there.

“Cats slept in my car,” a woman said. “It had so many holes in it from smashups.”

Ryan remembered scraping the side of his sister’s house pulling into the drive, ruining the flower bed. He remembered picking up the strip of molding and throwing it in the car while his brother-in-law ran his hand gently over the brick wall, like the scrape mark was a wound.

“I wouldn’t, the way I was, I wouldn’t go anywhere unless I was sure I could get a drink,” the woman was saying now. “I’d be at a school PTA meeting, I’d say excuse me, like I was going to the bathroom. I’d go out to my car. I always kept a couple of six-packs in the trunk.”

In a cooler, Ryan remembered. Unless it was winter. Open the trunk like it was a refrigerator. Drive with the can between your legs. He looked at his watch.

Nine o’clock. Another half hour. The room was close and he could feel himself perspiring. All the hot coffee and cigarettes. The ashtrays around the table were full. Walk into a room like this anywhere, and if everybody was drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes it was an AA meeting.

A man was saying that two years ago, when he and his wife were in Europe, they’d taken a boat trip down the Rhine. He didn’t see much, though. The only thing he looked for along the river was liquor stores.

The table leader said to Ryan, “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name. Would you like to say a few words?”

Ryan had lighted a cigarette, getting ready, knowing his turn was coming. He said, “Thank you.” He paused. The people at the table waited.

“I was going to pass,” Ryan said then, “or make something up… but I might as well tell you where I am. I’ve been in the program three and a half years.” He paused. “I’m Jack, and I’m an alcoholic. I got drunk yesterday and the day before, and I thought I’d probably keep going a few more days. Why I started drinking again, I don’t know. Maybe because my car needs new shock absorbers. Or it was King Farouk’s birthday. The reason doesn’t matter, does it? I slipped-no, I didn’t slip, I intentionally got drunk-because I’ve stayed away from meetings too long, four months, and I started relying on myself instead of the program. I forgot, I guess, that when you give up one way of life, drinking, you have to substitute something else for it. Otherwise all you’ve done, you’ve quit drinking, but you’ve still got the same old resentments and hang-ups inside. You’re sober but you’re miserable, hard to get along with. You’re what’s called a dry drunk. Sober, but that’s all. Well, I’ve been very happy the last couple of years. Not only because I’ve been sober and feel better physically, but because the program has changed my attitude.” He paused. “A friend of mine has a sign on the wall at his office, it says No More Bullshit. And that’s the way I feel, or want to get back to feeling again. I know I can be myself. I don’t have to play a role, put up a front, pretend to be something I’m not. I even listen to what people say now. I can argue without getting mad. If the other person gets mad, that’s his problem. I don’t feel the need to convince everybody I’m right. Somebody said here tonight, ‘I like myself now, and it’s good to be able to say that.’ I had fun drinking, I’ll admit it. At least, I had fun for about ten or twelve years and, fortunately, I didn’t get in too much trouble or hit bottom and sleep in the weeds. But once I realized I was thinking about the next drink while I still had one in front of me-once I started making up excuses to drink and got drunk every time I went out-I was in more trouble than I realized. You know what happens after that, drinking not to feel good but just to feel normal, to get your nerves under control. What I’m saying, I’d be awfully dumb to go back to that when I can feel good and be myself-that’s the important thing- without drinking. I don’t know where we got the idea we need to drink to bring ourselves out.”

Ryan paused again, not sure where he was going.

“I’m glad I’m here and can tell you what I feel,” he said then, “instead of sitting in a bar thinking. The best thing we can do, besides staying out of bars, is try to stay out of our heads.”

It was a good feeling, coming out instead of beating himself down. He picked up his empty coffee cup, and the guy’s cup next to him, and went over to the urn and filled them up. When he sat down again, a girl at the end of the table was speaking.

She was saying she thought the sign was a great idea. No More Bullshit. Because that’s what the program, to her, seemed to be all about. The idea, quit pretending and be yourself… a way to self- awareness that everybody, not just alcoholics, seems to be more interested in today. That’s what had surprised her most about the program, the positive aspect of it. Not simply abstaining from alcohol, but as Jack said, substituting something positive for it, a totally different way of life, not inner-directed anymore, but outgoing.

The girl stopped.

Ryan was sipping his coffee.

“I’m sorry,” she said then. “I started talking-I forgot to say I’m Denise, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Ryan lit another cigarette and leaned forward with his elbows on the table, watching her. It couldn’t be the same girl. But now the voice was familiar.

“I have the feeling everything I say you’ve heard before,” Denise said, “but I guess that’s part of it too. We can empathize, put ourselves in each other’s places.”

The nose was the same. Her face was different, it seemed narrower, smaller. Her blond hair was much shorter. It fell in a nice curve close to one eye, and she’d brush it away with the tips of her fingers.

“I reached the point finally, I guess I did think about killing myself, but even then I put off thinking how I would do it, whether to go off the bridge or turn the gas on or what. I’d think about it tomorrow, after I finished the half gallon of wine.”

The empty Gallo bottles on the kitchen floor. The girl lying on the daybed with her hair in her face. Hair and lint on the dark turtleneck. Ryan remembered it. The greasy blue jeans and pale white unprotected feet. Moving her foot and not knowing someone was there watching it move. The girl at the table would be about the same age, twenty-eight. She wore a navy-blue sweater with the collar of a print blouse showing. She looked fresh, clean.

“It was a feeling that I wanted to get out of myself. Do you know what I mean? Every once in a while I’d see myself, what I’d become, and I’d say, ‘What am I doing here? This isn’t me.’ I couldn’t stop thinking. Do you know what I mean? Going around in circles, afraid of not particular things but everything.”

The voice on the phone had said to him, “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be inside me, but I can’t get out.”

“I had some help. Right at the end, when I didn’t know what to do. I remember someone tried to help me.”

She was looking this way, but her gaze might be directed past him, or at the table leader a couple of chairs over. Ryan wasn’t sure.

“But I guess my pride screwed things up. I had to do it myself, so I ran away. Which is a pretty good trick, running away from yourself. Then I got the idea I was going to go home, the little girl wanting her mommy. But I didn’t do that either, thank God, which was probably a good thing. If I’d gotten the lectures and all the shoulds and shouldn’ts, and Mother taking my screwing-up as a personal affront, trying to hurt her-I didn’t need somebody like that, who wouldn’t even begin to understand the problem. My mother’s idea of drinking-well, never mind.”

Good, Ryan thought. It would’ve been a bad move.

“Somehow I got to a meeting. It was at Holy Trinity in Detroit, you know, in Corktown, and there was a real mixture of people there. I remember a black woman who kept referring to her higher power as God Honey. That was my first meeting. I’d find a meeting every night somewhere, and finally I came out here.” Denise paused. “I got a job, I start Monday. I’m living in Rochester in a very nice place and-the amazing thing, it seems like such a long time ago, and yet it’s only been three or four weeks. I’m still a little fuzzy about periods of time.”

Three and a half weeks, Ryan thought. Twenty-five days.

“I just hope it lasts, the good feeling.” She paused again and looked at the table leader. “Thank you.”