Throwing
Away The Script
by Patti Dean
The film rolls.
The sprockets engage. The actors spool through their paces.
“Hired” to run through another night of the same old thing.
Same old behaviors taking the place of an inventive screenwriter who
would have tossed in a bomb, percolated a hot affair on the sidelines,
invented a disease of the month, spun a web of greed and money lost and
found.
No, this is the rigid ice age story of a mother who drinks and the
family survives as they accommodate her behind nice house closed
doors. The loyal husband lays down the law: When Mommy
comes home stay out of her way and for God’s Sake don’t say anything to
upset her.
When Mommy enters the house from her 9 to 5 job – Husband is
always in the kitchen making dinner. Dinner must be prompt or
Mommy will be upset. Children are busy doing homework or quietly
playing computer games. Eyes on books and screens.
I am that mother.
I am that mother
despite the best of intentions – Today I Won’t Drink. Today I
won’t put vodka in my morning espresso. Today I won’t snack on as
much sugar as I can so that I can get through the day without a
high. Today I won’t sneak across the street from my public
library job and buy the biggest cheapest bottle of wine and sneak
drinks down in the staff room. Today I won’t pull into the alley
a block way from my home and twist myself into a pretzel lying across
the gear shift so I can guzzel from the bottle without being seen.
I inch my car toward the house as the impact of all that booze hits the
brain. A block away from home is not drunk driving.
When I throw open the door of my house – I am a rocket ship that has no
trajectory other than impact and crash and burn. Everyone.
This happens day after day after day. For years.
Until today. When my 15-year-old daughter throws down the script.
She ignores the system
that works because I burn myself out quickly and pass out.
Hopefully in bed. Instead, she decides to argue with me. I
am telling a garbled story. She isn’t paying attention. I
accuse her of being aloof, cold, refusing to be a part of the
family. I say she is selfish. And doesn’t know how to love.
She slams her calculus book on the floor. She goes to the door.
She says she is leaving. She says, ‘Fuck you!’
I rage.
“How dare you! You phony! If you walk through that door I
will call the police and report you as a runaway!”
I have played my trump card – the police.
Her hand is on the door knob.
“Go ahead. I don’t care anymore.”
The dicing and slicing
of vegetables ceases in the kitchen. The blip blip of a video
game escapes necessary attention.
The high stakes of an improvisation split the air.
“If you leave, it’s Juvie Hall for you.”
She says: “I’m not the problem – You are.”
The burn of the brand sears my brain, my solar plexus, my stomach, my
heart. The fire of that statement is so powerful – I am stopped
in my speech. My speech that I ride until I pass out – every
night. The riverbed of alcohol - dries up.
She stands at the door – hand ready to twist the knob. Ready to
bolt. And in that moment I know that she has told me something so
true. I also know that there is a love in that truth – because
she hasn’t opened the door.
‘You’re right.’
We are both shocked.
My youngest daughter is frozen at the keyboard – game over for her.
My husband is frozen at the kitchen door – stir fry sizzling to a crisp
in the wok.
I don’t hug my soothsayer. I don’t break down and cry. I
don’t apologize to the family.
Instead, I climb wobbly stairs to the bedroom and sit on the edge of
the bed. Voices murmur downstairs. My life enfolds me in a
cloak of drunk, sober, awake, and solitary. I don’t leave the
room. I must sit here. I must feel the moment. I must
think. I must.
Family knocks on the door and asks if I am ok – I say Yes. When
my daughters come in to say goodnight. I give them hugs, but I am
still frozen in time with this moment. Frozen because I have to
be. They are brave to want hugs.
My husband sleeps downstairs that night.
I can’t sleep.
I log on the the computer at 2 a.m, moving through air as thick as
pudding. I google AA Seattle. There is a list of
meetings. So many. I wouldn’t know where to begin.
And I work. I’m a Mom. A Wife. When can I go?
I see a meeting that starts this morning – at 7 a.m. I will go to
that one. I have to go to a meeting. I am afraid. I
am a mother who drinks. I’ll get thrown out. Women aren’t
supposed to drink. Women with children for sure. I’ll be
the only woman there. Surely.
I must go. I count the minutes until 6:30.
Before I leave I wake
my daughter. I make her breakfast and make myself an
espresso. Sans Vodka
“Where are you going?”
‘I am going to tell you. I am going to tell you because of what
you did. I must tell you – because it took immense bravery to do what
you did. I am going to tell you. But I also have to tell
you – it may not mean anything. It may make no difference.
This may be nothing. This may be like all the other times I’ve
cried and pleaded and told everyone – I was going to change. I am
going to an AA meeting.’
We don’t fall into a puddle of crying and I’m sorries and I’m so proud
of you. We reach another deep level of fear. And
unbelief. This will be another thing tried – and failed.
But it is the next step in finding a way. In writing a new script.
We hug each other lightly. It is too scary to put anything else
into that hug.
I drive to that
meeting which meets 7 days a week at 7 a.m. I drive there with a
heart thudding in fear all the way.
For the next two years I go to that meeting every day without fail –
every day of the week. I meet other women who are also
Wives. Who are also Mothers.
At one year, my now sixteen year old daughter watches me receive my
coin. She now lives in New York City studying to be an
actress. The lines she says now – the scenarios that she studies
now – are of her own choosing.
The pain of the kind of marriage that we had and then tried to have
afterwards was too much for my husband and I. We divorced 2 years
ago.
As of today, I am 5 years and three months sober. One day at a
time.
This past birthday, my youngest daughter watched me get my coin.
She says that she is tired of the endless story about how her sister
saved me. She says that she is ready to hear the ones about how
she has healed from that day on. She is right.
As for my own healing, when I stopped drinking – my creativity came
back. I’ve written plays, anthology submissions, and am now
working on a film script for a independent film company. And yes
– the film is about changing and finding out who you really are.
Life – imitating Art.
***
To contact Patti, send an email to
pattideanwriter@gmail.com.
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