I Thought You Were Dead (25 page)

He read his father's message.

He read it again.

He read it a third time, then gathered up all the liquor he had in the house and poured it down the toilet. He pissed after it and flushed the toilet, watching the water swirl in the bowl. He flushed a second time and went to bed, knowing, all in one moment, that he would never drink again, because there was no further reason to, and every reason not to. He made a mental list of the things he wanted — good health and a long life, a productive life, prolonged creativity, a relationship, a family — and then he asked if drinking was going to help him reach those goals, and the answer in every case was no, it wouldn't. Using his computer's calculator, he estimated that if he'd averaged 5 drinks a day for twenty years (and that was a conservative estimate), he'd had 36,500 drinks in his lifetime.

He knew his limit.

Time to say when.

This was change number one.

H
e resumed running, recovering the motivation to exercise that he'd lost after putting Stella down. That was change number two, even though the weather was getting cold and he didn't really have the proper gear or clothing. He ran three miles, five times a week. At the Smith track one day, he timed himself again in the hundred-yard dash. He clocked in at 29.7 seconds, still hideous, but better than his previous time.

He resumed his yoga class. He tried to feel calm and to pay attention to his breathing, as his yoga instructor taught him, but he felt as if he wasn't having much luck, striking the balance between feeling mindful and feeling awkwardly self-conscious. What he did feel was patient, and maybe that was the point.

Some changes were less welcome than others. One day, after running a four-mile loop out in the Meadows area of town, where the floodplain beyond the airport was planted with corn, now harvested to stubble, he was cooling down on Parsons, next to the cemetery, walking hands on hips, when he saw a small, scruffy-looking terrier, charcoal gray, swaybacked and potbellied, with a snout full of wiry white chin whiskers and a cheerful expression on his face, his three-inch tail a-wagging as he sniffed at the contents of a tipped-over garbage can. Stella had introduced them once, and he knew the dog's name.

“Tobey?” Paul said.

The dog turned and looked at him, tail down and not wagging.

“It's Paul. Stella's friend. We met last summer when I was changing the oil in my car.”

The dog turned to a forty-five-degree angle in a classic “I may or may not run but I'm no threat to you” signal but maintained eye contact.

“What's up?” Paul said. “You probably heard I had to put Stella down.”

When Paul took a step forward, the dog moved a cautious step away.

“Cat got your tongue?” Paul said. “Oh, come on — that was funny.”

The terrier ignored him and resumed searching the garbage, but when Paul took another step in his direction, the small dog ran down the street, glancing over his shoulder at Paul once. For a second, Paul wondered if he'd had the wrong dog, some other mutt that just looked like Tobey, but it was the same dog, he knew.

He attempted to communicate with several other dogs that morning, including a Westie on Market Street so fiercely protective of his home that his front feet hadn't touched the ground in years, the dog for all practical purposes two-legged as he strained at the end of his chain, barking and barking without saying a word that Paul understood.

That, apparently, was change number three.

He flew home the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Bits and Eugene and the boys met him at the airport and hung out with him as he waited for his luggage to slide down the baggage claim. Bits told Paul he'd be staying at her house and said the kids were excited to have their favorite uncle visiting. As they drove, he stared at the still-familiar landscape. The tree limbs were black and leafless, the city solemn beneath a heavy sky.

At his parents' house, he saw that Carl had hired a crew to construct a wheelchair ramp. It looked sturdy and sadly permanent.
Paul's mother hugged him and told him Harrold was doing much better. The old man was in his bed in the downstairs sun-room, propped up and watching a college football game on television. Working with his occupational therapist, Beverly said, Harrold had significantly improved the mobility in his right hand and arm. Paul had hoped to see his father's face light up, but Harrold's face was incapable of lighting up in the traditional sense. Yet Paul thought he saw something in his old man's eyes. Maybe he was imagining it.

He went to his father's bedside and took his dad's right hand in his, bending over and kissing the old man on the forehead.

“Hi, Pops,” Paul said. “It's good to see you. You look great.”

His father looked at him, then squeezed his hand three times.

“I know what that means,” Paul said. Then he leaned down and whispered into his father's ear, “I did what you told me.”

His mother made him a sandwich, and they chatted while he ate, Beverly filling him in on everything the doctors were saying, while Harrold watched television, using the remote control to switch back and forth between a college football game and a rerun of the old
Perry Mason
show. Beverly was happy to say Harrold's speech and language therapist thought that within three to six months' time, Harrold would be able to convey simple thoughts orally, though right now he was more comfortable using the computer keyboard.

“She thinks part of what's been going on is that his mood has improved,” Beverly said.

“The new medications are working, I guess,” Paul said.

“Oh, no — they took him off his antidepressants,” Beverly said. “They thought they were holding him back in other ways. You know, I've tried to educate myself on all of this, but some things they just can't explain.”

They chatted and kept Harrold company until Bits said it was
time to go — she had a lot of baking to do for tomorrow. She made sure each of her kids kissed Grandpa good-bye, and then Paul kissed his father one last time on the forehead, saying he would see him tomorrow for turkey and pecan pie.

They drove to his sister's house for dinner, ordering pizza and picking it up on the way. He threw his suitcase in the guest room, and then they all sat together in the den, watching football. When his sister offered him a beer, he declined. He'd felt a bit shaky initially, and his hands had trembled slightly the first few days, but now that he'd gone two weeks without a drink, he monitored himself for any strange or aberrant sensations or emotions and had nothing to report. He'd expected to have some sort of unbearable craving for a drink, but he didn't feel any thirstier than usual, and indeed he felt measurably better, more clearheaded. He slept better, and his skull didn't hurt when he woke up in the morning. The main difference was that time seemed to have slowed to a crawl. He knew he could never have another drink, not even a sip, but it didn't seem as if it was going to be all that difficult. He couldn't drink bleach or antifreeze either. Poison was poison. Unless somebody pried his mouth open and poured alcohol down his throat, it couldn't hurt him anymore.

After the kids were down, his brother-in-law Eugene yawned several times and said he needed to go to bed, leaving Paul alone with his sister. Bits had made two pumpkin pies, two pecan pies, and four loaves of banana bread. Paul couldn't imagine a house smelling any better than hers did. His sister was wearing a bathrobe over her flannel pj's and Polarfleece socks with leather bottoms.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” she said, flopping next to him on the couch and pulling her feet up under her. Paul put down the crossword puzzle he'd been working on.

“Sure,” he told her.

“Are you all right? You seem sort of quiet.”

“I'm good,” he said. “Maybe I just used to be louder.”

“What happened to Tamsen? I thought maybe we were going to meet her.”

“That didn't work out,” Paul said.

“Oh, no,” Bits said sympathetically. “Why?”

“Lot of reasons,” Paul said. “Stupidity. Ignorance. Cowardice. Speaking only for myself. I'm probably leaving something out.” He knew he was leaving out drinking, self-pity, impotence, deception, and the fact that she'd overcome her fear of commitment by choosing someone else, but he wasn't sure his sister needed that much information.

“I'm sorry for you, baby brother,” his sister said. “Are you okay?”

“I'll be all right,” he said, hoping that it was true.

“That's a shame,” she said. “She sounded like she wouldn't put up with your bullshit.”

“She wouldn't,” Paul said. “That's why she left. It was sort of funny, but right before she told me she didn't think we should see each other, I was thinking how we shouldn't see each other either, but when she said it, I thought, ‘Hey, you can't break up with me — I was going to break up with you.' It was just like junior high school. Except worse.”

“Have you heard from her?” Bits asked.

“Nope.”

“So what happened?” she asked him.

“Her other boyfriend asked her to marry him, for one thing,” Paul said. “You gotta admit, I'm not the best marriage material.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Bits said. “Why do you say that?”

“Put yourself in her shoes,” Paul said. “What do I have to offer? I don't have a house. I don't have a job. I'm not exactly a portrait of financial stability.” There was much he was leaving out. “I'm just being realistic.”

“Excuse me,” she said, “but if you were being realistic, you'd have to include all the positives. All you're focusing on are the negatives.”

“What positives would those be, exactly?” Paul asked. “Because I think I'm kind of a failure.”

“That's just stupid,” Bits said. “No offense. I just don't know why you see yourself that way. You're the one who left home and went off and had a dream that you followed. That's a lot different from the paths that I took or Carl took. Carl said you've always followed your own instincts.”

“Carl said that?” Paul said.

“Can I ask you something else?” his sister asked. “You don't have to answer if you don't want. Did you quit drinking?”

“I did,” he said.

“You okay?”

“So far, it's been pretty easy,” he said. He pictured jumping over a wall, sort of like escaping from East Berlin in the sixties. He'd made a decision, and now he was on the proper side of that wall. Jumping back over the wall to the wrong side was simply not allowed, even if he couldn't remember exactly all the reasons he'd jumped the wall in the first place. It didn't matter, as long as he stayed on this side of the wall. “I'm actually sort of surprised at how easy it was. Maybe I just got lucky.”

“So would you say you're an alcoholic?”

“I would say that, yes,” he said.

“Was that a factor in the breakup with Tamsen?”

“Indirectly.”

“With Karen?”

“Absolutely.” He nearly laughed to consider how many times he'd told himself drinking had nothing to do with the failure of his first marriage. How could he have fooled himself for so long?

“Did Tamsen want you to quit?” Bits asked.

“No,” Paul said. “I mean, maybe she did. She never mentioned it. It wasn't like an ultimatum or anything.” She had, of course, told him on numerous occasions to look at himself. Was that what she was getting at? “Actually, I quit because Dad suggested I should.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“How would he know?”

It was actually a good question. The more he thought about it, the more it puzzled him — how, indeed, did his father know what to say? Perhaps he hadn't been as successful as he'd thought at hiding his problem from his father, but that didn't explain it.

“I should go to bed,” his sister said. “I have to go over and help Mom with the turkey tomorrow morning. I'm sorry for you. But I'm also proud of you.”

That night, thinking about Thanksgivings past and the question his sister had posed as to how his alcoholism may have affected his marriage, he found some stationery and a pen and wrote a letter, taking care to write as legibly as he could. He couldn't remember the last time he'd written anything by hand, and his penmanship showed it.