“Embrace the glorious mess that you are.” - Elizabeth Gilbert
Exhausted after the long drive home, I dialed June’s number before I unpacked the car. The phone rang and rang and rang. I never got June to use an answering machine and now was not the time for any more change other than what was currently being inflicted on her.
“What time is it Richard?” I said to him in the garage.
“Quarter after three,” he answered appearing in the doorway with my suitcase.
“I know they feed them early but this seems a little too early for dinner,” I said. “Maybe she’s getting her hair done.”
I made her an appointment before I left. Her hair had been looking kind of ratty lately and in better days I knew bad hair days meant a cranky June.
“Maybe she’s playing bingo.” He dumped all my dirty clothes in the washing machine. “Stinks like cigarettes,” he added.
“I doubt it. Every time I visited her, she was curled up in a ball on her bed.” I said. “And you would stink too if you spent a week in June’s apartment.”
Richard and I settled into our usual banter like I’d never been gone. That was a wonderful benefit of being married for almost thirty years. He filled me in on all the gossip of our 55 plus neighborhood and I showed him all the Thomas Wolfe books in the back of my car. He rolled his eyes like he always did when I brought books home that I had no more room for in the bookcase. He didn’t share my love of books; he liked magazines, short, sweet and to the point.
I relaxed quickly now that I was home. Ginger’s nails scratched across the tile floor trying to get enough traction to race into my waiting arms. I’d missed her wet kisses and warm snuggles. By the speed of her tail wagging, she missed me too. Forgetting the grief and sorrow of past week however, would take more than a few tummy rubs.
Little by little, I emptied the trunk of the Thomas Wolfe books, June’s steel lockbox containing what she considered important papers, like an insurance policy cashed in years ago and Dad’s Navy discharge papers that no longer held any importance. The mysterious and scary white box found its way onto my desk. Stacked in my office, I warned Richard not to touch any of it. I had to go through it more thoroughly.
“Why did you bring all this stuff home?” he asked.
“It’s old family stuff I couldn’t throw away. You know how I am about books,” I answered. “But there’s that box of papers she left specifically to me. I’m afraid to open it.”
“Just open it,” he said. “What is there to be afraid of?”
“Oh, I don’t know but I feel jittery every time I look at that flimsy old box with my name scribbled on the top. It belongs in a Stephen King novel,” I quipped. “I’m really craving a drink right now.”
“You didn’t bring her booze home, did you?” he asked with an inflection of disbelief. “The cocktail lounge closed here a couple years ago.”
“No,” I said. “The furniture guy took it. Said he could sell it.”
“Are you serious?” Richard asked.
“Every penny we can get, helps,” I answered.
About a year after Richard and I moved to Melbourne, Florida away from Delray Beach and June, I found the strength to give up my daily bottle of wine once and for all. What we originally thought was an exciting opportunity started out sour and my drinking only escalated. The sale of the house in Delray fell through four days before the closing and we had already moved into our new, beautiful home on a lake where the birds chirped all day long and deer roamed in the wildlife preserve next door. We started out life here owning two homes and neither of us had a job. What should have been a new exciting adventure turned into anything but and pouring the first glass of wine started at lunchtime when there was nothing left on the daily agenda to do and an eon of anxiety to remove.
Every day fell into a routine. I woke up with a headache, laid around the house nursing it all morning, feeling better around three before pouring a glass of wine. I’d guzzle one down not remembering that the vicious cycle would start all over again.
My drinking habit started in high school when my friends and I would drive to the 7-11, pool our money and ask people going inside to buy us a 6 pack of beer. Some refused and others agreed without giving us back the change. College solidified my habit with Thursday nights downtown at the bars and Friday afternoon fraternity mixers. Once in the working world I came home every night after work and poured myself one, two, three glasses of wine just so I could convince myself I needed to relax.
When I met Richard, our first date was in a tacky Ft. Lauderdale beach bar that served me a glass of white wine in a frosted highball glass with a paper umbrella. He slugged down a V.O. and ginger ale and together we started our relationship as bar flies. He kicked his habit about ten years earlier than me but continued to enable my growing habit by making sure I never ran out of wine.
I was killing myself and I knew it but I felt helpless to stop. Being jobless with no good leads on the horizon, I drank so much Richard started buying me $1.99 rotgut chardonnay at Wal-Mart and I couldn’t tell the difference. The buzz felt the same, the buzz that helped to numb my growing anxiety.
Privately without telling anyone, I started praying. Praying to God for help to stop drinking. Each morning I prayed not to reach into the refrigerator and open a bottle of wine. Each afternoon I found myself doing just that, helpless to stop myself. I drank until I finished today’s wine bottle and passed out on the sofa with the television blaring. I was a patient person but at this time in my life, I wished I wasn’t. I wanted to take this crutch called alcohol, break it over my knee and toss it out the window. I’d had enough. I knew in my heart when the right time arrived, I would be more than strong; I would be invincible.
One day I went to the kitchen to start cooking dinner. I opened the refrigerator and took out the chicken, potatoes and some fresh broccoli, set them on the counter and closed the refrigerator door. My habitual reach for the wine bottle didn’t happen that day. I took a deep breath and started chopping.
That my usual glass of wine wasn’t sitting next to my dinner plate didn’t go unnoticed.
“No wine tonight?” Richard asked with a forkful of potatoes hanging halfway between his plate and his mouth.
“I’m trying to quit,” I answered.
“Want me to throw out all the bottles in the pantry? I don’t want you to be tempted,” he said.
Richard knocked his alcohol habit many years ago. That I wasn’t able to kick mine had turned into a huge source of tension in our marriage. When I poured my wine, everything else stopped. I didn’t want to walk the dog, play Scrabble, Richard’s favorite game, or leave the house for a dinner out. My wine in hand, I settled in on the sofa in front of the television until I felt numbness from the tips of my fingers to the end of my toes. Then I passed out.
“Not yet. I’ll be okay,” I said as my hands shook.
“I’m proud of you,” he answered.
The long, hard road to sobriety began. I hadn’t planned to stop drinking that day. I had simply been patient. God chose that time and place to answer my prayer. I am forever grateful He did.
Without alcohol, my usual morning headache lasted all-day and night for a month. I walked around the house in slow motion, often nauseous, aching from head to toe. I talked to God a lot because if I didn’t I would have just uncorked a bottle and taken a swig. But I didn’t.
When my energy returned, and I sat down in front of the television at the end of a long, full day, without a glass of wine, I realized how big a crutch alcohol had been for me. So many books and magazines I hadn’t read, so many movies I passed out in the middle of, so many novels and stories I hadn’t taken the time to write. The world suddenly became an interesting place to explore. I no longer needed to sit down and relax with a drink after a long day of doing nothing.
If Richard and I had stayed in Delray near June and our weekly dinners out continued, would I have ever made the leap to sobriety? Richard’s sobriety started in 2000 and June continued to buy him a bottle of Seagram’s V.O. for years. She had it at the ready for him and offered to make him a drink whenever we visited her home. His mixer of ginger ale kept an unopened bottle of Robert Mondavi chardonnay company in her refrigerator.
I’ll never know if June truly believed her drinking habit wasn’t harmful. She could never stop at one and never let me either, always pouring me another glass and placing it in my hand. Not that I had the willpower to stop at one, but with a little encouragement I might have tried. Looking backward, I don’t believe I would have developed the desire to stop as long as June and I were hanging out together. She wasn’t the only factor but she was a big part of my habit.
Thank God she never tried to get me hooked on cigarettes.
***
After a long hot shower to scrub the last of the stench of smoke from my body, my muscles released a tiny, tiny bit of the tension.
I picked up the phone and called June again.
“Hi, June. It’s Linda.” For years I called her and never identified myself. She knew the sound of my voice. After the first time she asked who was calling, I started adding my introduction.
“Linda,” she growled. “Where are you? I need you.”
“I’m at home June. What do you need?” I calmly asked.
“You abandoned me! You and Richard left me all alone. I hate it here.”
The rock I now carried around in the pit of my stomach suddenly felt five pounds heavier than it had a few moments ago.
“You have my phone number. I wrote it in your book on the nightstand,” Suddenly I became the mother again, trying to calm and pacify the child. “You can call me anytime you want.”
“There’s no one here for me to talk to,” she whined.
“What about the ladies you sit with in the dining room? They seemed pleasant,” I said.
“They don’t understand. I need to talk to you.” I could hear the frustration and agitation in her voice. She seemed to be missing our chat sessions but for very different reasons, drinks and cigarettes included.
“Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow and we can talk.” I crossed my fingers my pathetic response would ease her anxiety, a tactic that had worked for me sporadically in the past. Right now anything was worth another shot.
“Okay. I’ll like that. I love you.”
I heaved a sign of relief and before I could say I love you too, the phone went dead. This pattern of anger and docility had become June’s new normal. I never knew which I would get when I spoke to her and I never knew what I said to switch her from one to the other.
The town Richard and I moved to is called Viera, a Slavic word for faith. After conversations like this one, I took a deep breath and relaxed in knowing I had found my faith here. My mother raised us in a Presbyterian church, which gave me a foundation but not a faith. I had to find that on my own and God saw fit to introduce me to it here, in Viera. That’s why I found it so difficult to go back to a place and a life where that didn’t exist for me any longer.
After a week away, a stack of bills waited for me in my office alongside the things from June’s home, I dumped there. I sliced open envelope after envelope of bills needing to be paid and neatly stacked them in the corner of my desk. I ripped the junk mail in half, and filed away the property tax notice without even looking at it. I crammed the trash into an overflowing wastebasket.
All that was left for me to do now was discover the contents of the infamous yet unassuming box with my name written on the top. After all I saw in June’s closets and cupboards during the past week, I wanted to feel June had run out of surprises for me. An unpleasant gnawing inside me thought she saved the best or maybe the worst revelation for last.
“Richard,” I shouted. “I’m going to go through the box. Don’t bother me for awhile.” Diet Coke in hand, I steeled my nerves to take the plunge.
“I won’t. Shut the door,” he replied.
I told Richard about the box during a frequent phone conversation while I was away. He was more curious than I, but knew the box was hands off for him until I had the courage to share it. I heard the telltale sounds of a baseball game playing on the television in the other room.
Sitting on the floor, I tried to make myself comfortable which was impossible. My back ached and my knees creaked no matter what position I put them in. I stared at the box for a good long time before mustering up the courage to lift the lid. After taking a long deep breath, I slowly removed it waiting for a snake to crawl out or a creepy Jack in the Box head to pop up and scare the daylights out of me. I ended up only to be confronted with that distinctive June smell, not of a sweet perfume but a musty, moldy odor finished off with a dose of stale cigarettes. The headache that had released its grip somewhere on the turnpike between Boca Raton and Ft. Pierce instantly returned.
Greeting cards of every size, shape and color lay scattered in front of me. I reached for a black one on top of the pile.
With Sympathy, it said in fancy cursive silver letters. I reached for another one.
Thinking of you during this difficult time.
My heart skipped a few beats and my head felt dizzy. She saved all the sympathy cards and letters she received when my father died twenty-five years ago and had put them in a box for me. I swallowed back the bile rising in my throat. The sickening feeling I carried with me the day of Dad’s funeral had returned in full force.
I shuffled a few more cards out of the pile to reveal some letters. Several were in my mother’s handwriting, one from my grandmother and a few from my sisters. On others I recognized the return addresses of my Aunt Mary, my father’s sister. Some envelopes said “Paul” written by June. At the very bottom, I uncovered my parent’s divorce decree and Dad and June’s marriage license.
I could no longer hold back the force of the tears welling in my eyes. Pushing the precious letters aside, I reached for a tissue not wanting any teardrops to fall on the paper that had been cared for all these years and saved for me. Why? I now had to find out.
I opened an envelope and began to read.