“I don’t know what to say.” Ted McCormack tapped his pen on the desk in his office. “She’s not a classic alcoholic, that’s certain.”
“A.A.?”
“I’m sure that it won’t hurt. I’m glad she’s decided to try it. But her problem is more complicated than most. A.A. works by changing behavior. It doesn’t deal with underlying problems. In many cases that works. For Rose”—he shrugged—“God, Chuck, I’m not sure.”
It had been the scariest of Rosemarie’s explosions. It had lasted for almost a week, during which no one was able to talk to her, not even the good April.
She was not abusive or obscene as she had been after the oak tree collision. Rather she wept, continuously it seemed.
Mom and Peg took turns holding her in their arms and telling her how wonderful she was and how everyone loved her.
I searched the house for the bottles of gin and bourbon she had hidden before the binge began. She had carefully prepared the logistics of her drunk.
I found half a dozen bottles, but I must have missed at least that many more. She consumed a bottle a day for the six days and then stopped drinking and locked herself in her study for another day.
When she finally emerged, wasted and looking at that moment like she had aged ten years, she apologized to all of us, hugged her children, swore she would never drink again, and promised that she would attend A.A. meetings.
We all rejoiced, I with somewhat less conviction than the others.
“She doesn’t like booze, Ted,” I said to my uneasy brother-in-law. “When she’s … well, when she’s stable, she doesn’t touch it and doesn’t seem to miss it. I don’t think that it’s hard for her not to drink most of the time.”
“Then something snaps, and like it or not she tries to destroy herself with it.”
“Exactly. Probably it’s the result of her early family life.”
I was not ready to tell him about her father’s raping her.
“Everything is the result of early family life.” Ted smiled ruefully. “I don’t know what to say, Chuck. She may need long-term psychotherapy. Analysis even. And there’s no guarantee that would work.”
“I don’t think she’s ready for that now.”
“It’s a solution you should keep in the back of your head for the future. In the meantime maybe A.A. will do the trick. It often does.”
I thought of the untidy, slobbering, red-eyed, manic woman that my wife had become during that terrible week. She had degraded herself more than her mother had, poor woman. Would Rosemarie fall down the steps someday?
I shivered.
“What can I do, Ted?”
“Stand for reality, Chuck. Love her, but don’t tolerate another binge. Make it clear that you will think of ending the marriage if she does it again.”
“Ending the marriage?”
“You may have to threaten it But don’t threaten unless you mean it.”
I left his office frightened. I could not lose her, could I? Wasn’t that unthinkable?
A.A. had to work.
It did for a couple of years. Rosemarie went to her meetings faithfully, though she never discussed them with me. And she did not drink.
What would happen when another incident triggered her terrible self-destructiveness?
As the months went on, I persuaded myself that the problem was behind us.
I hardly noticed when she cut down on her A.A. meetings and then stopped going to them.