Susan Keller

Chapter 34

I Was Never Sober

 

My hand trembles as I ring the bell to my dad’s upscale, rambling house. I don’t have a key. I never have. His other daughter—the adopted one, the one who replaced me—has a key, always has. I’m a visitor. She’s family. Another one of a thousand cuts.

He looks good. There’s color in his face. Over a starched blue work shirt and khaki pants, he wears a faded red plaid apron with a ruffle around the bottom. One of Rosemary’s no doubt and dusty with flour. The apron makes me smile and relax. I hug him. He smells of apples and cinnamon, the acrid scent of cigarettes and alcohol long gone. I follow him into his sunny kitchen.

“I’ve never seen you in one of those,” I say, gesturing toward the apron.

He runs his hand down his chest and says, “I’m messy.”

“You’re making a pie?”

“Yes. My one achievement in cooking.”

His remark strikes me as a miniature tragedy: I have no idea what my father can or cannot do in the kitchen, or most anywhere else for that matter. My impulse is to say, “Oh, how I wish I knew you better,” but contained in those few words is a siren, a Mayday. The years have passed and we are still mostly strangers.

“Have a seat,” he says nodding toward a high swiveling wooden stool at the counter where he works.

I sit. This room, like the rest of the house, is spotless. All this care for inanimate objects.

“Well?” I ask. “How are you?”

“Better. Much better.”

“Good,” I say, smiling at him.

“Your old man’s tougher than those damned doctors.”

He rolls out a nearly perfect circle of dough. “Well, I mean, you won’t be a damned doctor. Sorry about that.”

“No worries.” I look into the luxurious living room. “Is Rosemary here?”

“Out shopping.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” he says.

“Do you remember when I visited you in the hospital?”

“It’s all pretty fuzzy.”

“You told me that Barbara had been there.”

He frowns, slides the pie into the hot oven, sets a timer, and says, “Let’s go outside.”

We sit on plush, expensive lawn chairs on his redwood deck. In the sheen of the late morning sunlight, the lines of his face are softened. He looks at me intently and says, “You want to know if I still think about your mother. Is that it?”

“Yes, I guess so.”

He folds his hands in his lap. “A day has not gone by in the all the years your mother and I have been divorced that I have not thought about her. I love your mother very much.”

“Love? Present tense?”

“Yes. Love.”

I glance at the lawn, so dense and green. Everything so perfect.

“All those years ago, I tried to get her back. But I was still drinking, and she wouldn’t have me. I don’t blame her. I wasn’t worth having.”

I fight the urge to get up and bolt. My father loved her so much. My mother loved him not at all. How could that gap ever be bridged? And in between the two of them was me, desperate to hold together a marriage, a family, that could never be.

“I wanted you back.”

“Annie, the divorce … my leaving … had nothing to do with you,” he says.

“Had nothing to do with me?” My voice is loud, accusatory. “What damned universe were you living in?”

He flinches. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Do you know how many times I lied to keep Barbara from throwing you out?”

“I…I,” my dad stammers.

“And it wasn’t only lying about you. I lied about Ray. I told a horrible story to make him look like a monster. Barbara kicked him out because of what I said. And it was all just to get you back. What a joke.”

“What do you mean?” My father’s voice is demanding, urgent.

“I betrayed Ray. I told Barbara that he just stood by while a sleazy pedophile ran his hand under my dress and into my underwear.”

“What the hell?”

My dad’s eyes are intense. Furious. He leans forward in his chair.

“The pervert part was true. It happened, but Ray never saw it. I didn’t think Barbara would believe me, but I was desperate. She ended her relationship with Ray, which is exactly what I wanted so that you would come back. But you never did.”

“Jesus. I don’t know what to say.”

“Isn’t that funny? You have never known what to say. Or to do. You really screwed up.”

The purple flowers of a jacaranda tree shudder in the breeze and remind me of Mae. Shafts of sunlight fall through the branches and make bright patterns that dart across the grass. My hands tremble. I feel lightheaded.

“I never asked you to do those things, to lie, or cover up for me.”

He studies my face with a sadness and a softness I have never seen.

“Of course, you didn’t. But how does a parent just leave their kids and not look back?”

“In those days, I could only think of two things. Getting a drink and making a sale. In that order. I was a sick SOB. That’s all I can tell you.”

“You never loved us. Me and Hal.”

“I was sick Annie. I don’t know what else to say.”

“Damn you. You still have no idea, do you?”

I want to lunge at him and pound on his chest. To hammer hard enough to break the valves and pacemakers and whatever the hell other accessories are inside of him as a result of his first heart attack. “You are supposed to tell me you love me. Is that so hard to say?”

My dad shakes his head. “What sort of a fool thing is that to ask?”

“Considering that you’ve never said it, and you left and replaced me, it’s not a fool thing at all.”

“Annie, I love you,” He reaches over, takes my hand, and looks at me intently. “I always have and always will.”

I take in a deep breath and let it out. I want to believe him. I really want to believe him, but can I trust what he’s just said?

“I’m not saying the divorce wasn’t my fault. I’m just trying to explain,” he says. “Please believe me. I’m sorry that I haven’t told you before that I love you.”

“Thank you, Dad. It means a lot to hear it.” I close my eyes. I squeeze his warm hand and let it go. I need a moment to let his words sink in. To become real. We are quiet, but I need to know.

“When you were drinking, weren’t you always sick? Hung over?”

“No. I was never sober.” Unable to meet my gaze, he looks past me, “Drinking was the first thing I did in the morning and the last thing I did at night.”

“Wait a minute. I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

“I drank all day. Everyday. My last drink at night would be eleven or midnight. I’d wake up at five and start all over again.”

“Drinking at five in the morning?”

“Yeah.” He looks down at his hands.

I shake my head and thank God I’m light years away from that destination of lunacy.

“But you quit. How?”

“It was weird is all I can say.”

“Weird? What happened?”

He sighs and looks at me with a sorrowful expression. “You really want to know?”

“Yes, I really want to know. Please.”

I’m desperate to know. My hands are clenched. Alcoholism runs in families. Gushes and drowns husbands, wives, and children. But I have found a way to be a moderate drinker and will never end up like he did. Never sober? What the hell? Still, I must hear what he is about to say.

“Okay. I was driving into San Francisco, around dawn as usual. I’d been sipping on a carton of milk I carried on the seat next to me, most of it was gin.”

I am stunned. Gin and milk? At dawn? God, how bad can it get?

“The sun was coming up and began to reflect off the Bay Bridge. Something in the way the light hit the bridge really moved me. For some mysterious reason, it all seemed, I don’t know, profound. Just the light. I know it’s crazy, but that’s what did it. That early morning light bouncing off the metal girders with the city in the background was a message that I’d hit bottom.”

“Did you think it was God, or something?”

“Naw. I’m not religious. It was just the light, telling me that if I didn’t stop the booze, I’d die. I’d been trying not to think about hitting bottom for a long time. But I was drowning and knew I had to stop, or it would stop me.”

I think of my own version of hitting bottom. I’m not even close.

“What did you do?”

“Started AA. Going from a fifth a day to nothing was really tough. But I had to. Haven’t had a drink in sixteen years.”

“Do you ever want a drink?”

“Hell yes, I do.”

“But you don’t?”

“God, no. I just might as well shoot myself if I start drinking again.”

I look at my father and feel compassion for him. How did he get so bad? Was it his over critical father, a loveless marriage, a genetic predisposition he couldn’t resist? All three? I never knew how sick he was, but why should I? This is the first time we’ve really talked.

“Please don’t do that—drink, or shoot yourself.”

The kitchen timer goes off and he returns to the house.

“Pie looks pretty good.”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Sure,” he says.

“When I was five, Barbara told me that you wanted a pen for Christmas. She said she would buy it, we would wrap it together, and I would give it to you. On Christmas morning when I handed you the gift, you looked at it and said, ‘Oh, I bet it’s a toothbrush.’ I was so proud and happy, knowing how much better the pen was than a stupid toothbrush. When you opened it, you hugged me, and made a very big deal of the gift. It was the best Christmas ever.”

My dad is smiling with tears in his eyes. “Thank you, Annie, for telling me. I’m so happy you remember that Christmas. I do too.”

Gazing at his yard, he says, “I’m sorry there weren’t more times like that.”

Now tears run down both of our faces. We stand and embrace.