Under the Influence (21 page)

I
should have gone right to bed when I got home, but I didn't. I didn't even go straight home, to tell the truth.

On the road between the Havillands' house and my apartment was a liquor store. I must have passed the place a thousand times and barely noticed it. But this time, I pulled in. I bought a bottle of cabernet and set it on the seat next to me beside my camera. When I got back to the apartment, I took out my corkscrew and poured myself a glass. After all that time, sitting at meetings, crossing off the days of sobriety, it was gone that fast.

After the bottle was empty, I stood in front of the mirror and studied my face to see if I looked any different. Maybe I did, but at the time, given the amount of alcohol I'd consumed combined with the fact that I hadn't eaten anything all day, it would have been difficult for me to make a clear assessment of anything.

I did an odd thing then, though it seemed to make sense at the time. Maybe I wanted to make a record of the moment, so I'd remember to never let it happen again. Maybe I did it out of the despairing recognition that I hadn't managed to change my life after all.

I set my camera on a stack of books, the same as I had when I took my picture for my Match.com profile, and set the timer. I stood in front of the viewfinder and waited for the click of the shutter.

Then I picked up the telephone. I might have called my sponsor, but the person to call in an emergency was Ava now. If I hadn't been drunk, I would never have called her at this hour, but I was, so I did. As it always was—even at this hour, even though I had clearly awakened her—Ava's voice on the other end of the line was full of compassion and concern.

“I blew it,” I said into the receiver. “I got drunk.

“I am Helen,” I said, out loud, the way we did at meetings. “I am an alcoholic.”

T
he next morning, I tried to forget about the whole thing. The trip to Tahoe. What I saw there. Ava's response. Most of all, the drinking—though I had to acknowledge it at my meeting the next day, and I did. Up until then, I'd had 1,086 days of sobriety. Now I was back to zero.

Before I could put the whole event out of my mind, though, I had to do one thing: I printed the photograph I'd taken of myself wasted, the night before. I placed it in my underwear drawer so I'd see it every day, to serve as a reminder to never let anything like what took place the night before happen again.

After I got rid of my headache, I drove over to Folger Lane. I had decided to ask Swift point-blank if he still planned on helping me hire an attorney to help me get Ollie back. Once he placed the call he'd promised to make to his attorney, I'd get to work assembling my bank statements and credit report, and character references. Starting with Swift and Ava, of course. And maybe Evelyn Couture.

Just then it occurred to me: There was just about no part of my current life anymore that didn't come directly from the Havillands. My friends, my livelihood, my prospective lawyer, even my clothes. Swift and Ava were responsible for everything, with the sole exceptions of the son I gave birth to and the man I was sleeping with—though not even that so much anymore. In some ways, they had claimed Elliot, too, by always
showing me his shortcomings so that, after a while, I no longer saw his strengths.

This was baffling, even to me. Having learned from Ava about the apparent disregard of her stepson, his father, her stepson's fiancée, and herself, for the concept of fidelity to a partner, I might have felt renewed respect for Elliot, who was loyal as the day was long. But all I could see was that aligning myself with Elliot put me in direct opposition to everything Swift and Ava represented. And Swift and Ava were the ones who had made my new life possible—including Oliver's willingness, finally, to open his heart to me again. Whatever unease I might feel now, emanating from my discovery at Lake Tahoe, there was no place for any of that if I wanted to get my son back.

I
still hadn't told anyone about my engagement to Elliot. There weren't that many people to tell, but Ava and Swift would have been two, of course, and then there was Ollie. I didn't want to deliver the news to my son until he'd gotten to know Elliot better.

There was another important factor driving my decision to keep my engagement to Elliot a secret: my impending court motion to regain primary custody of Ollie. If Ollie knew I was getting married to a man he didn't hold in much regard, he might not want to come live with me. I had already told Elliot this was the reason why I didn't wear the ring he'd given me (though I spared Elliot the part about Ollie's low opinion of him). I said that Ollie simply didn't know him well enough yet, and that before we broke the news, my son and Elliot should spend more time together. “Once he knows you, he'll love you,” I told Elliot. Though privately I had my doubts.

As hard as it would be to tell Ollie about Elliot and me, the thought of delivering the news to the Havillands seemed even more daunting. There was nobody else in my life I felt a need to tell—certainly not my mother, Kay. But for some reason I felt I needed to get their okay, if not their blessing, before I fully committed to such a big step. They were that important to me.

Thinking about sharing my news, I realized that, with Alice gone from my life, there was nobody to tell but Ava and Swift. Now, knowing
that I couldn't put off the announcement much longer, it seemed important that the four of us have dinner together, and since the Havillands had made no further mention of a dinner with Elliot since that first disastrous trip out on Swift's sailboat, I decided that, for once, I'd take the lead.

“I know Swift's not wild about going out, but I'd really like you to get to know Elliot better,” I told Ava. “So I thought I'd be the one to make us all dinner, for a change. Nothing fancy. Just roast chicken and my special potatoes. Caesar salad maybe? With the birthday coming up, it would give you a night off cooking.”

“I'll try to persuade him,” Ava said. “But you know Swift.”

Amazingly, they agreed to come over to my tiny apartment. I didn't plan on telling them about the engagement just yet, but I hoped that if things went well—and I wanted to believe they would—there could be other dinners after this one, during which my friends would grow to see Elliot's good points: how funny he could be—in his deadpan way—and above all, how good he was to me.

I spent most of the day preparing, though the meal itself was a simple one. I bought flowers and candles, and rearranged the furniture in the living room to make space for Ava's wheelchair. I studied the bathroom, wishing for some way to make it look less shabby, and since there wasn't one, I put an orchid on the back of the toilet and stuffed my cosmetics under the counter. I put out an expensive scented candle and pretty hand towels. I framed and hung a print of a Boston terrier that had been a gift from Ava.

“These are your
friends,
” Elliot said, observing my preparations and the anxiety surrounding them. “You shouldn't have to worry about all this stuff. They're coming here to have an evening with us, not to critique your apartment.”

Or to critique him, I hoped. Or for him to do the same to them. Because as harsh as Ava could be on the topic of Elliot, Elliot had revealed his own surprising capacity for sharp, critical assessment, too, where the
Havillands were concerned. I had not shared with him the details of my experience at Lake Tahoe, of course. Had I done so, he would have closed his mind forever to the possibility of a friendship with Ava and Swift. But even without his knowing about Cooper's betrayal of his fiancée and the ease with which Ava dismissed it, I knew Elliot didn't think much of my friends. And now, in addition to everything else he appeared to dislike about them, he had become seemingly obsessed with the inner financial workings of BARK, which were evidently a matter of public record for whatever crazy individual had nothing better to do than read through a pile of boring documents. An individual like Elliot, for instance.

The idea that the man I'd promised to marry now suspected my friends of some kind of sketchy business dealings made me sick, and the fact that he would never have embarked on his tireless study of the BARK foundation if he hadn't known me, and if I hadn't been their friend, left me feeling guilty and ashamed.

Swift and Ava arrived on the dot of five thirty. When the doorbell rang, I asked Elliot to let them in. I was in the kitchen, no more than five steps from the door, but I hung back to convey that we were a couple and to help Elliot feel like a part of things. When Swift handed him the bottle of wine—a very good red—I asked Elliot to open it and pour everyone a glass. Everyone but me, of course.

As I knew she would, Ava noticed the print she'd given me right away. Swift made a comment to Elliot about the Giants, who'd had a good season, evidently.

“I've got to admit I'm not much of a baseball fan,” Elliot said. “Though I'm even worse about basketball. The playoffs always take place in the busiest period of tax season.”

“That would be reason enough for me to consider a career change,” said Swift. “But of course, you're talking to a bum who doesn't go to any job any more. All I have to do now is sit around thinking up new ways to give my wife an orgasm.”

I was accustomed to hearing Swift talk this way, but I could see Elliot having a hard time responding. Ava came to the rescue, sort of.

“It's not all that difficult,” she said.

“Anything I can do to help in the kitchen?” Elliot called out. I knew he was hoping the answer would be yes, but it wasn't. I wanted him to get to know my friends. More than that, I wanted them to get to know him.

I'd shared so many happy evenings with these people—with Swift and Ava, and with Elliot, too. Just not all of us gathered together as we were then, around my small table, with that chicken in the middle, like a burnt offering, while I tried to reveal to Swift and Ava just how good and lovable a man Elliot was. And I wanted badly to persuade Elliot that just because at least one of my friends (meaning Swift) kept doing and saying mildly obnoxious things, while the other (Ava) kept making vaguely condescending remarks, did not mean that my friends were obnoxious or condescending.

“Tell Swift about the time when you were growing up on the farm, when all the cows got loose,” I suggested to Elliot, because it was a good story and he'd told it really well a few weeks earlier, and because it showed him taking charge in a way I thought even Swift could recognize and admire.

“You're a farm boy, eh?” said Swift. “You ever engage in any hanky-panky out in the barn?”

“My family got out of agriculture when I was seven,” Elliot said. “We sold the farm and moved to Milwaukee, where my father got a job at a brewery.”

The full story had a lot more to it than that, I knew. But Elliot wasn't going there. His goal that evening seemed to be to keep his conversation as bland and terse as possible. But Swift, ever the frat boy, couldn't let it go.

“A brewery, huh?” said Swift. Beer was a topic he could get into. “You get into that line of work yourself?”

“Actually,” said Elliot, “I fell in love with the accounting field pretty early on. I love the clarity of numbers. I've always loved the way a ledger
book can tell a whole story. Not always a good one, mind you. In our case it was a disaster. We lost our farm.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Swift said, reaching for the wine.

“That's when I learned the importance of keeping a close eye on the balance sheet,” Elliot said. “My father didn't, and it cost him the land he loved, which had been in our family over a hundred years.”

“To each his own,” Swift said. “Me, I see a calculator or a spreadsheet, I head for the hills. I leave that to the people who work for me.”

“I hope they're doing a good job,” Elliot said.

I had made a cake, but it took longer to bake than I anticipated, and the Havillands didn't stay to try it.

“You know how we are, honey,” Ava said to me as she was pulling on her jacket. “Early to bed. It's like Swift's religion.”

“To bed,” he said to Elliot with a wink. “Not necessarily to sleep.”

After they left, when the cake had cooled, I cut Elliot a piece. I wasn't in the mood myself.

“I know you love those two, and I intend to respect that,” he said. “But doesn't it ever seem to you like whenever they're around, all of a sudden you feel kind of small? That Swift takes up all the air in the room?”

“I don't know what you mean,” I said. “Swift and Ava always take an interest in what's going on in my life. Swift spent hours this summer teaching Ollie to swim.”

“But what do they know about
you
that doesn't involve them?” Elliot said.

“They're very interested in me,” I said. “They always want to hear my stories. They find me entertaining.”

“Entertaining,” he said. “Sort of like the court jester?”

I had never heard Elliot speak this way. Up to now, I'd always seen him as a gentle man. What I saw in his face now was contempt. Not for me, but it might as well have been.

“You're threatened by our friendship, aren't you?” I said. “You want me to choose between Swift and Ava and you.”

He shook his head. “I'd just like to see you choosing yourself, Helen,” he said. “Instead of racing off every time Ava snaps her fingers to do some errand in support of maintaining the amazing Swift and Ava road show. The ongoing performance of their wonderfulness.”

I'd never heard so much anger in Elliot's voice. Hearing him now, I felt dizzy.

“They've done everything for me,” I said. “They're basically my family.”

“I was hoping
I'd
be your family,” Elliot said. “Ollie and me. The kind of family members who don't walk out the door at eight o'clock to give each other massages.”

“They're passionate people, is all,” I said to him. “They have this intimate connection that most people can't understand.”

“He's a narcissist,” Elliot said. “Whatever her gig is, I haven't figured it out. She's his pet paraplegic, maybe. The woman who will always look up to him, no matter what, because she's stuck in a chair twenty-four seven.”

Of all the things he'd said up to now, this was the worst. I could feel my body turning cold. I had a sick feeling in my stomach.

“Ava's spent the last twelve years in a wheelchair, for God's sake,” I screamed. “You think that hasn't been hard? Who are we to judge how they live their lives?”

“The thing is,” he said, scarily quiet, “the thing is that they're judging mine. They've been doing it since the day they met me. And they decided within the first ten minutes I wasn't worth their time.”

“They don't
know
you. That's why I wanted them to come over. So they would. But all you wanted to do was talk about accounting.”

I had practically spit out that last word, pronounced it as if it were an obscenity. “Numbers. Columns. Balancing the budget,” I said. “I can't imagine why they didn't find all that as
fascinating
as you do.”

“I'm sorry if I'm not as exciting a person as you'd like me to be, Helen,” Elliot said. “But the exciting people aren't always the ones you can count on.”

“Ava and Swift love me,” I said. “Swift's going to pay for the lawyer who'll help in my custody appeal. I don't even know how much that will cost, but I know it's a lot.”

“I thought Swift was supposed to get that going ages ago,” Elliot said. “Since he doesn't seem to be following through, why don't you let me help with that?”

“Swift's busy, that's all,” I told him. “He'll come through. He and Ava are my best friends in the world.”

“You don't know a good friend when you have one,” Elliot said. “As for love, if you can't trust in mine at this point, I don't know what more I can do to convince you.”

In the past, one thing I could always count on was the tenderness in his voice when he spoke to me, even about difficult things. But there was a hard edge to Elliot's tone now. His face betrayed none of the old gentleness.

“I know good friends don't sneak around checking up on someone's finances, like they're just looking to find out something terrible about them,” I said. “They don't go around thinking that everyone's hiding some deep terrible secret, and it's their job to uncover it.”

My voice had been rising over the last few minutes. With Elliot, the opposite had taken place. His was growing quieter, and his words, when they came out, had a tight, strangled quality, as if it were painful to speak.

“I hear a lot of emotion in what you're saying to me here, Helen,” he said. “But I'm not picking up much in the way of love.”

“Well, right now it's not that easy to feel loving toward you,” I said. “You just attacked two people who have been kinder to me than anyone else ever was.”

Elliot's voice was so quiet now I could just barely hear him. “Love doesn't come and go, when it's real,” he told me. “Love is supposed to be constant.”

Up until this, the two of us had been facing each other at the table, the barely touched cake between us, the candles I'd bought that
afternoon—so anxious to make everything perfect—burned out, leaving little pools of melted wax on the tablecloth. Now Elliot got up slowly and stood in front of me, with his too-short haircut and his baggy pants. This was the moment when I might have wanted him to grab my shoulders firmly and press me against his chest, tell me I was being unfair and that he deserved better. He could have raised his voice, even, and told me I was making the wrong choice. Maybe a part of me knew that, even.