Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir (27 page)

“What?” they asked in unison.

“He has photos of her cut out from magazines and tacked all over his bulletin board.”

“Katie Couric?!” Dad said. “I could see Diane Sawyer, maybe, but Katie Couric?”

“I blame it on the Coors Light.
That’s
the infatuation he can’t get over. Like a lot of guys here, he’s been through multiple rehabs.”

“Bless his heart,” Mama Jean said. “That’s just pitiful. You’re smarter than those other guys. You know what will get you through this? Your intelligence.”

I lied and told her that she was right, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that intelligence was as effective as an umbrella in a hurricane when it came to alcoholism.
Why else would I, Little Miss Straight-A Student, have a couple of pops at nine in the morning, then show up unprepared for a sales-conference presentation and hope for the best?

Like a good pupil, I fell right into the routine of the place. Up at six-thirty. Smoke a cigarette. Breakfast. Smoke. Morning meditation. Puff. Group-therapy sessions. Puff. Puff.
Puff
. Free time for volleyball, swimming, TV, reading, or back-to-back cigarettes. Lunch. Afternoons were spent at either a workshop (journaling, art collage, educational video), the dreaded baseball field with Coach, or an off-site gym with a perfect view of Bob Hope’s spaceship of a house. The drive was the best part. The special-needs van would glide along Bob Hope Drive, Ginger Rogers Road, Frank Sinatra Drive, and Dinah Shore Drive. It made me feel safe knowing that Dinah and Ginger were right under my ass. Back to the dude ranch for more volleyball and fags—
the carcinogenic kind
. Dinner. Off-site 12-step meeting. Round-robin of daily affirmations: “Great game, Hank.” “Love ya, man.” “Today, I’m grateful to be sober and I thank my HP [higher power] for Marlboro Lights.” Hot tub and one last butt. Lights out at midnight.

Once I asked Hank what day it was. He replied, “How the fuck do I know? Every day is like
Groundhog Day
around here.”

There was also the privilege of “town time” three days a week. We were allowed to leave campus unsupervised in buddy groups of two or more. Since we were a scant block from the main drag of town, we could cover a lot of ground in the two or three hours we were given. If anyone thought of sneaking a drink or scoring some dope—and we all thought about it—there was the threat of random urine testing back at the ranch. A stroll down Palm Canyon Drive in the warmth of the arid desert air was heaven. I was no longer dying for—or from—a drink, but as I passed all of the alfresco restaurants, I could name every drink caught in my peripheral vision: martini with a twist, salted margarita on the rocks, cosmopolitan, perfect Manhattan, whiskey sour, Bass ale.

A stronger distraction was the sidewalk, a knockoff of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame called the Palm Springs Walk of Stars. The marginal and forgotten names kept my head staring
down
at the stars: Rona Barrett, a 1970s gossip columnist; Cheetah the chimp from the Tarzan movies; Mr. Blackwell, the queenie arbiter of best- and worst-dressed celebrities; Mamie Van Doren, a cheap Jayne Mansfield, who was a cheap Marilyn Monroe—
that’s pretty cheap
.

Lining the Walk of Stars were shops and art galleries of every caliber. My favorite was the gallery of Thomas Kinkade, aka the Painter of Light. Keith and I would pretend to be serious buyers of the vomitus, mass-produced paintings of saccharine, bucolic scenes with candles
glowing
and stars
twinkling
. The paintings appeared to have pin lights in them, but, no, it was the magic of the master’s technique that made the light shine. The saleslady positively radiated like a lit fire in one of the pictures as she told us that she was a graduate of the Thomas Kinkade University of Art. “You mean that you can actually
teach
people to paint that way?” was our response.

Most of my town time was soaked up by some of the seriously chic antiques and design stores. We weren’t allowed to carry credit cards, and our petty cash of forty dollars maximum wouldn’t buy a crystal ashtray in these shops. I had my eye on a Czechoslovakian glass bowl from the 1930s. The glass was lacquer-shiny—the outside Halloween-cat black, the inside an orange the color of a taxicab when a taxicab isn’t yellow. I had to have it. It was only $150, but it might as well have been $150,000 when all you’re carrying is piddling change left over from the Jamba Juice smoothie and Starbucks scone you just had.

“You simply don’t come across glass with a sheen this pure,” the effete shop owner raved rhapsodically.

“It would be perfect in my art deco apartment in New York.”

“New York? Do you have a place here too, or are you just visiting?”

“Actually, I’m here on extended vacation.” I glanced at my watch.
Yikes
. “You know what, I have to dash or I’ll be late for an appointment. Can you place it on hold and I’ll get back to you in a couple of days?”

“Certainly.” He handed me his engraved business card with his well-manicured hands, the nails of which had a sheen almost as pure as that glass bowl.

“Really, I must dash or I’ll turn into a pumpkin.” I had less than ten minutes to make curfew back at Mission Rehab.

I made it back just in time for the afternoon mail delivery, always an endorphin rush.

“Brickhouse, get over here!” Hank shouted from the patio smoking table where the mail lay in stacks. “You have a package and it looks like food. Open ’er up. I’m hungry.”

“In a minute.” I bypassed the table where heads bobbed amid a cloud of smoke over the mail. I went straight to the pay phone.

“Michael Hayes,” Michahaze said in his clipped, professional, office voice.

“Hey, it’s me.”

“Howdy. How are you today?”

“Good. Just got back from a
lovely
town-time afternoon.”

“Oh, yeah? What did you do?”

“The usual. Grabbed some treats from Jamba Juice and window-shopped. You know, they have some exquisite antique shops here.”

“That’s what I hear. I can’t wait to check them out.”

You’d think I was on a solo vacation, but that was Michahaze’s way of coping—keep things upbeat and normal. We hadn’t had a heart-to-heart since that moment in the dark on the pullout sofa before I left.

“Well, there’s a tiny shop off the main drag that specializes in vintage glass and ceramic vases.…” I described the bowl.

“Sounds fabulous. It would be perfect for the dining-room table. You should get it.”

“Actually,
you
should get it.” I reminded him how strapped for cash I was. “I have it on hold. Why don’t you call the store and have them ship it?”

“Ha! Did you tell them where you’re staying? In Palm Springs, they’re probably used to that.” I pulled the salesman’s card out of my pocket and gave him the number, before heading to the mail party.

I had quickly become the most popular gal in rehab since I received more mail than anyone else. Part of the reason was my advanced age. Since most of MH’s clientele was under thirty, none of them nor their friends had ever written a letter. On one town-time afternoon I had to walk some of them through how to address and stamp a letter at the post office. “Didn’t they teach you kids
anything
at school?” I asked them in my best Texas mawmaw voice.

The letter from my brother Jeffrey—who had been my third parent and mentor growing up and held vigil next to me in the emergency room after Michahaze went home to make sure my HIV medication was hidden before Mama Jean arrived—filled me with hope:
I am looking forward to having my brother back. The brother whom I adore. The brother whom I will always, always be there for
.

The most entertaining letters came from Mr. Parker. He didn’t need a best girlfriend in rehab as an excuse to write letters. He’d never abandoned them and was valiantly fighting to keep the art of letter writing alive. His missives were a work of art, not just in content but in presentation. They were written in royal-blue fountain-pen ink in an affected, exquisite script—flowing, upright letters, sans slant, like the cursive font of Neiman Marcus.

Dear Jamie—

So I checked out Michael’s House on the internet, as you advised. The place looks nice … comfortable I suppose; like a dude ranch. I guess you can think of it as a Reno, Nevada, divorce ranch not unlike the one such prosperous New York matrons as Mrs. Lorna Hansen Forbes, the Countess De Lave and Mrs. Stephen Haines were obliged to spend six months (!) because of a world that didn’t understand. I suppose your time in the desert is your Reno-vation from the bottle.… Maybe it will be the answer. (Well, not the answer, exactly, but a way to get at it.) The only danger I see are the quilted bedspreads I saw on the website. Fiberglass, insulation-filled, poly-cotton bed “linens” cannot be considered therapeutic. It really is the only thing in the Michael’s House environment that might drive one to drink.… I want only the best for you, no matter how much your life does or does not change and I love you wet, dry, or otherwise.

Much love to you, darling,

Michael Parker

I heard from friends whom I hadn’t seen or spoken to since college. Rehab really does bring out the best in people. Keith would chain-smoke with nothing in front of him but a pack of cigarettes as I sifted through my mail or read choice bits of Mr. Parker’s letters to him.

After I’d plowed through one particularly robust stack of letters, he offered me one of his cigarettes. I accepted.

“You know,” he said, exhaling smoke, “after the second or third rehab the phone stops ringing and the mail dries up.”

*   *   *

Rehab wasn’t what I expected, but it was better than I expected. First I had to wrap my booze-soaked head around the idea that I was in rehab, which wasn’t an idea, but a dry, hot fact. Once I got to know my inmates and learned how to negotiate with Coach, the novelty of being sober became a thrill. Just not being hungover every day of my waking life was worth the price of admission. It was better than any vacation I ever took. For the first time in my adult life I could completely let go of work and family and spend time
thinking
about me and not
running
from me. Being free of the outside world became sexy superfast.
Okay, this is all I need. Three meals at the same time every day, a little therapy, a dose of recreation, some free time in town, and back to the safety of MH’s white stucco,
dry w
alls.

I was making progress with a cast of characters—some unexpected—to help light the way. If Mama Jean was my benefactress, Dave my guardian angel on earth, Keith my kindred spirit, then Liz was my patron saint. Liz’s ghost arrived during the middle of my “extended Palm Springs vacation.” I was still in mourning and marinating in my favorite emotion, guilt, over not being able to be a part of her memorial. But the core of my guilt about Liz was that I’d tried to throw away what she would have given anything to have. Every time I thought of my feeble suicide attempt in the harsh glare of her death—“But I have so much more to do,” she had said when she was told she was dying—shame scalded my every nerve.

When the program for her memorial, along with
The Many Moods of Liz
CD, arrived in the mail with her beatific face on the cover of both, I wept all over again for her death and for my sins. I tacked the program to the wall above my bed so she could watch over me. Then I grabbed some headphones and a CD player, went outside under a canopy of desert stars, and let her talk to me through her “many moods.” Some of the songs I had suggested for her CD were on there: Judy Garland singing “The Man That Got Away,” Dusty Springfield’s version of “The Look of Love,” and Madeleine Peyroux’s “Dance with Me.” I thought of that marvelous, euphoric moment of disco dancing with her at the company Christmas party. It was our last happy moment together, the last time booze made me happy, joyous, and free. Four months later Liz was in a casket at the front of St. Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church. That was the last time I had been to Mass.

When I left for college, I stopped going to Mass. After eighteen years of going every Sunday, I didn’t have to anymore. Besides, why was I going to sit for an hour under the roof of a church that didn’t want my sinning sodomite self? During one of my visits home, Mama Jean, who was no longer attending Mass regularly herself (much to the consternation of Dad), spoke for both Dad and herself about their disappointment that I wasn’t attending church anymore.

“Come here. I want to talk to you.” She pulled me into the Miss Havisham living room, which was always as quiet and somber as a sanctuary. She sat in a wingback chair while I stood before her. “Your father is really upset that you’ve stopped going to church. He won’t say anything to you about it, but I will. Listen to me. I may not go to Mass every Sunday—and believe me, there is no church for me
but
the Catholic Church—but I was born a Catholic and I’ll die a Catholic. You’ll never see me under a Baptist roof—or even Episcopalian. No, ma’am! But I’ve
never
lost my faith. Not even during 1963.”

That was the black year. The year that her first husband, Len, died in the plane crash and her father, Big Daddy, died, three months later. Two thousand and six was my 1963.

“After the plane went down, I waited a week for them to find his body. A
week
. You can’t imagine what that was like.” She was right. I couldn’t. “And when they found him, I didn’t know how I was going to go on. But I had to. I had two little boys to take care of. Do you know what got me through it?”

“The Church?”

“No. My
faith
. My faith carried me. I cried and I prayed and I cried and I prayed some more. And when I didn’t think I could cry any more, Big Daddy died. Well, I thought they might as well bury me. But as hard as that time was, I learned that I’m a survivor and there’s a God more powerful than me.”
Really? There is something more powerful than Mama Jean?

“Your father disagrees, but I don’t need to go to Mass every Sunday to prove my faith. I’m secure in it, but you’re too young to understand faith. That’s why I think it’s a big mistake for you to stop going to church until you find it.”