Girl Walks Out of a Bar Read online

  But my parents needed to know. They lived in New Jersey and we had always had a close relationship. Still, as far as they knew, I was doing great. I had told them countless happy lies and called only when sober enough to have a normal conversation. But the bubble of deceit now had one breath too many blown into it, and this phone call would draw a clear line dividing line between “before Mom and Dad knew that I had lied to them for years” and “after Mom and Dad knew that I had lied to them for years.” The fact that I was an alcoholic would be less upsetting than the fact that I had been a fraud in our relationship. They believed they knew me well. They didn’t. The phone felt like a fifty-pound weight.

  “Good morning,” my mother said. I pictured her sitting at the kitchen table, drinking her coffee and trying to spot birds outside the picture window. It was her favorite time of the day, and she was probably wearing one of her cotton pajama sets with a soft robe and socks. She was a petite, beautiful woman, a mix of Eastern European Jew and Irish Catholic with deep brown eyes, short and perfectly coiffed reddish-brown hair, a delicate nose, and a smattering of freckles.

  “Everything OK?” she asked. I didn’t normally call this early. I tugged at my hair and felt sweat break out across my face and chest. There was still time to lie, but I was too tired and sick of it all. I took a swig of wine and spoke.

  “Not exactly. Are you sitting down? I have to tell you something.” I’d always thought that, “are you sitting down?” was the kind of line that belonged in soap operas and black-and-white movies. But I genuinely wanted her to hear this sitting down.

  “Ok. I’m sitting.” Then very quickly, “What is it? Are you sick?”

  “Um, I’m just going to say it. I’m having a problem with alcohol.” I decided to leave out the coke, at least for now. “It’s a big problem. I’m going to check myself into a detox today.” She was quiet, so I kept talking. “It’s OK, though. I’m going to be OK. I just need help.”

  When she did speak it was in a voice slightly higher than normal. “What? What do you mean check yourself into a detox? What does that mean?”

  “I’m going to go to a hospital, here in the city, just for a few days. They monitor you while you detox from alcohol. They give you medicine for withdrawal.”

  “Withdrawal? What are you talking about? How bad is this? You drink too much sometimes, but is it so bad that you have to be hospitalized? Couldn’t you just stop drinking for a while?” I could picture her face contorting in confusion. She was in that early phase, when you still think you can fix the situation with words. Tears began to stream down my cheeks.

  “No. No, I can’t just stop drinking for a while,” I sniffed. “I would if I could, but I have to drink all the time just to function. I’m sick all the time, my hands shake, my head throbs. I can’t concentrate. Drinking is the only thing that makes me feel normal. It sounds backwards, but it’s true. It’s bad and I need to go somewhere to make me stop. I just have to.” It was becoming difficult to keep talking through my tears, and I gasped for breath.

  “All right, all right, it’s OK,” she said, in the same voice she used when I was eight years old. By now I was sobbing. She continued, “It’s OK. If you need help, you’ve got to get help. I’ll go get dressed. I pictured Mom dumping the rest of her coffee down the drain and pacing in front of the wall phone, eager to hang up so she could start taking action. “Daddy and I will get to your apartment in about an hour. We’ll figure this out.”

  “No!” I half screamed. “No, really. You don’t need to come in to the city. I talked to Dr. Merkin and he gave me the name of a place that takes my insurance, and they’re already expecting me. It’s called Gracie Square.” Before she could respond, I tried to comfort her by blurting, “It’s on the Upper East Side!” I got off the couch and began pacing back and forth across the living room with my head still down.

  “Wait. If you really need this, shouldn’t we look at a few places? Peggy’s husband went somewhere nice in Connecticut for a month. I’ll call her now.”

  “No. I have to go today or I’ll lose my nerve. Plus, I can’t go away to one of those one or two-month-long places. I’m going back to work next week. This is detox, just a treatment so I can feel better.” The pitch of my voice was rising. “I don’t need to go anywhere that long. I’ll be fine. I just feel really sick right now and this will fix it.” I slumped back onto the couch. Then I was quiet.

  “Alright, OK,” she took another long pause. “Talk to your father.”

  There was a mumbling, scraping sound as she covered the phone receiver and then yelled, “HARVEY!” She must have been standing at the bottom of the stairs shouting up to the second floor. Both of my parents had weak hearing, so shouting was the norm in their house. I could hear bits of their back and forth as she relayed what I had told her. “Alcohol.” “That’s right.” “She said ‘no.’” “I don’t know. I don’t know!” Eventually, my dad got on the phone.

  “Yessss,” he said drawing out the word in his standard greeting. “We’ve got a little problem, huh?” Dad had never been one to discuss the intimate, emotional details of my life. A brilliant judge who had graduated from high school at sixteen and college at nineteen and had passed the Bar by twenty-two, he was much more comfortable in the intellectual realm. Whenever there was drama at home, Dad would joke that he wanted a t-shirt that read, “Leave Me Alone” on the front and “Buzz Off” on the back. Only once did I ever see him cry, after his best friend, Angelo, died from a brain tumor. My father’s face looked bizarrely different to me that day—changed by contortions and grimaces that scared me.

  “Yeah, we do. I need to go to detox for booze. It’s a problem.”

  “Alright, OK, so that’s what you’ll do,” he said. Dad was seventy-five, but he looked like a man in his early sixties. He had a semicircle of hair around his head and was tall and trim thanks to his routine of yoga and a diet dominated by fish and vegetables. When I was two years old, I’d wake up when Dad did, so early that just about the only thing on television was a show called Yoga for Life. Decades later I would come downstairs at my parents’ house in the early mornings to find him standing on his head, balanced against the laundry room door.

  My father never doubted my ability to deal with things. When I was five and terrified of having the training wheels taken off my bike, he quietly removed them in our garage, told me to climb on, and gave me a push. But he didn’t chase me to make sure that I didn’t fall. He said he wasn’t worried. When I made the Law Review after my first year of law school, he said, “Of course you did,” with a giant smile.

  “What are you going to tell your office?” he asked. I knew that he’d be concerned about that.

  “It’s already done. I emailed everyone to tell them I have a medical issue that came up over the weekend. If they ask me about it, I’ll lie. But they’re not supposed to ask about medical things. And I’ll be back on Monday.”

  “OK. Good, good. They don’t need to know this. Mom said you don’t want us to come in. Keep us posted, though. We’ll come if you want … at any hour …”

  “Thanks, Dad. I appreciate that.” I started crying hard again.

  “Hey, hey, don’t cry. This is the right thing you’re doing. You’ve got a problem and you’re going to take care of it. It’s OK.”

  After we hung up, I took a deep breath and tried to get my composure back. Why hadn’t I saved some coke last night?

  My friends were next. My inner circle was tight, and we spent a lot of our time together with drinks in hand, but I’d made sure that they had no idea how much booze and coke I pumped into my system when they weren’t around. Now that I was doing something as extreme as going to detox, I had to tell them. They were my city family, my urban tribe. I could never just disappear on them. And I wanted to tell them. I didn’t want to do this without them.

  I flopped on my bed and called Russell first. I had met Russell almost fifteen years earlier through his wife, Jessica, my closest friend from my
first law firm. Russell had been my confidant the few times I decided to talk about having gone too far, like when I’d stayed up all night doing coke at my place with a guy I barely knew. “Ro, it was really fucked up. We were just hanging out watching Goodfellas, and when the coke was gone, he wouldn’t leave. I went over to the door, like, ‘Let’s go, you’ve got to go,’ and he actually shoved me up against the wall. I almost called the cops. He was like a drug psycho.”

  “That’s not right, Pumpkin,” Russell had said. “You have to be more careful.”

  As my using escalated, I had told him I was thinking about stopping, without elaborating. “That could be really cool,” was his response, without elaborating.

  Russell picked up his office phone on the first ring. “Hey, Li,” he said.

  “Hey Ro. Listen, I’m feeling really messed up. Like way worse than usual. I’m going to check into a detox today. I can’t do this anymore.”

  “Wait, what happened? Are you OK?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I think. But you know, I’m not normal anymore. I’m not drinking like a normal person. It’s too much now. I have to change.”

  “OK,” he said. “You sure?” I imagined him looking out the window of his office at an investment bank in Midtown at the normal people on the street below. Russell looked like a young John Malkovich with titanium-framed glasses and he carried himself with Malkovich’s kind of confidence. He never spoke loudly, but whatever he said was firm and usually not open to challenge. Part of his discipline came from his karate practice. He was working toward his black belt and rarely traveled anywhere without the gym bag containing his gi.

  “Yeah, definitely. Bad. My doctor gave me a place to go on the Upper East Side. I just have to show up there by eleven o’clock tonight.”

  “OK, let me just clear one thing off my desk and I’ll come over. I’ll call Jessica, but she’s probably going to be stuck home with the kids.” Russell and Jessica had two boys, aged six and three. “Just hang in. OK, Pumpkin?” he said. The uncharacteristic urgency in his voice made me realize that I must have sounded scared or strung out, or both. I hadn’t planned on his coming over, but it made perfect sense. None of our crew would let any of the others go through something this serious alone.

  My next call was to Jerry. He was a banker who had been a drunken pick-up in an East Side bar one night during my second year of law school. Then we started dating. He was handsome in a smart-ass, mischievous, Jewish kid kind of way. With slicked back dark hair that curled at the bottom and a constant smirk, Jerry always looked like trouble, which he was. After I suggested that instead of calling me at three o’clock on Friday afternoon for a Friday night date, maybe he could ask me out on Tuesday or Wednesday, he didn’t ask me out again. Then about a year later I randomly ran into him, and he offered to take me to a Grateful Dead show. I couldn’t pass that up, and from that point on we become tight friends, just friends. Drinking was our favorite pastime.

  “Yo!” Like Russell, Jerry was at his desk early.

  “Listen, I’ve got some news.”

  “Yeah? You OK?”

  “Not really. I’m in bad shape. I’m checking into the tank,” I said.

  “The drunk tank? Nah! Get out!”

  “No, I’m serious,” I grabbed an ashtray off my dresser and lit a cigarette. From the next room came the sound of television news and the faint smell of fried egg and bacon. Mark had returned. Jerry inhaled and then pushed out a deep, loud breath. “OK. OK. What tank do you even go to? Harper’s friend went to that place in Minnesota. I think I’d go to Betty Ford. Food’s supposed to be good.”

  “No, no, I’m not doing a big thing like that. I’m just going for five or so days to this place on the Upper East Side to detox. Gracie Square. I got the referral from my doctor. I can get there any time before eleven o’clock tonight.”

  “Yo! This is going down today? Today? Whoa.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Russell’s coming over here to help me get my shit together and take me over.”

  “He’s coming over? Are you drinking?” Jerry asked. “You better drink now before this whole thing goes down!”

  “Oh, trust me, I’m drinking.”

  “I’ll be right there. See you in a few.” He hung up and I pictured him scrambling around his office getting ready to run out. He might have had to bail out of a big work meeting to come over, but it wouldn’t matter to Jerry. He was that kind of friend. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt if alcohol were being served. We were known to open the Dublin House on West 79th Street at 8:00 a.m. on St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe it wasn’t a bad idea for us to finish off any alcohol in the apartment before I left. I had a feeling I’d need to keep booze out of my place after detox, at least for a while.

  At last I took off my work clothes and slipped into old jeans and an oversized cotton sweater. I was clammy with sweat and my insides felt like pea soup puree, churning around and around in a slow blender.

  Was I really doing this or would the presence of my friends make me realize that I’d never give up my drinking and drugs? The situation was so surreal, I couldn’t be sure. It was as if I were hovering over the scene, watching some actress who looked like me telling her friends that she was just hours away from redefining their friendship forever. Wasn’t that true? Didn’t the decision to dry out threaten to change every relationship I had? Forever? Not the least of which would be the relationship with myself. Jesus, what would I do with myself sober all day? Fuck. This couldn’t possibly stick.

  Jerry was at my door in minutes. “DOG!” He hugged me hard and I spilled into him. Then he helped himself to a glass of wine and headed into the living room to light a cigarette. “What’s up, dude?” he politely asked Mark who was sitting on the club chair. Mark and I spent most of our time together in my apartment, and I usually saw my friends separately, so they barely knew who he was. When they were around, he tended to hang back, maybe because being with us was like being at someone else’s family dinner—you’d definitely been invited and they tried to make you feel welcome, but you really weren’t part of the family.

  “Hey!” Jerry said when Russell knocked shortly after. “Big day, huh? You believe this?” I hugged Russell in the doorway. Jerry sat with his jacket off and tie loosened, his right arm slung across the back of the living room couch. “She’s going to the drunk tank!”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Russell. Then looked at me. “You OK?” I hugged him again and nodded into his chest. “Jess is with the kids,” he said. “No babysitter.”

  “Sure, yeah,” I said. “I’m OK.” I tried not to sound disappointed.

  Russell grabbed a glass of wine and sat on the couch next to Jerry, dropping the bag with his Karate gi on the floor. Sitting cross-legged opposite them, I leaned back against my heavy wooden bookcase.

  “So, what’s up with this?” Jerry asked me. “What happened, baby? You really think you need this?”

  “I have to drink to get out of bed. I’m puking blood. I’m shitting blood. It’s really, really bad.”

  Jerry’s eyes popped. “Oh my God! Why didn’t you say anything? I had no idea!”

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Russell said. “We’ll get her in today and she’ll get better.”

  I rocked forward and hung my head over my legs. It didn’t seem real for me to be telling everyone the things I’d been so carefully hiding for so long. I felt sick and relieved at the same time.

  “Shit. Did you call Devon?” Jerry asked.

  Devon, a marketing executive at a financial firm, arrived shortly thereafter and was already crying before she hugged me. She was the kind of woman whose mascara didn’t run when she cried. Devon actually looked great in a bikini—from every angle. And she could eat roast beef sandwiches dripping with mayonnaise and never gain a pound. My news had shaken her up, but not one hair in her expertly highlighted blonde bob was out of place. We had met in a shared beach house on Fire Island almost fifteen years earlier and had spent the first night bonding hugely over vodk
a sodas. Now she was here in my apartment, on a workday, getting ready to send me to detox.

  Were it not for me in the crummy clothes I had changed into and Mark in his holey jeans, the room could have passed for a Wall Street happy hour.

  “Hey, you guys! What did you know about this?” Devon asked Russell and Jerry, pointing a well-manicured finger in their direction.

  Russell was looking at his phone. Jerry spoke up. “We didn’t know anything, Dev! What the fuck? Why don’t you get some wine and relax?” Jerry knew that Devon hated being called “Dev” and being told to relax.

  “Clowns,” she said, shaking her head. “Where’s the wine?” I pointed to the kitchen. “Here, I got this for you,” she said. She tossed me a little white stuffed tiger with black stripes that she had picked up on her way over. It roared three times when you squeezed its middle. “Just in case you need protection.” My eyes teared. I never would have thought to do that for anyone.

  The same question kept coming up in various forms: “Why didn’t you tell us things were so bad?” What was the right answer? The lies had become so free-flowing that I hesitated to say the simple truth, which was, “There’s something wrong with me, with the way I think. I’ve always known it. I’m not like you guys. I’m chasing a happy life, but I don’t think I deserve it. I’ll never be good enough. Every day I still feel like the fat kid in fifth grade. The only way I can stop that script in my head is by drinking and using coke. But now drinking and using coke have become all I think about, all I care about.”

  I listened to the chatter that always sounded like family bickering among my friends, mixing in with the Talking Heads CD that played in the background. My mind zipped through the repercussions of what I was about to do. If I detox the booze out of my body, does that mean I never get to put any more in? What if I couldn’t sit around and drink with these guys anymore? Would I have to just sit there and watch them drink? It was unthinkable. Sure, I was vomiting blood, but how do you live without drinking?