Falling in Love (12 page)

Finally, Elaine said, “Why don’t you just give it up?”

“It’s my security blanket. I’ll have a place to go if Skip ever throws me out, and God knows how many times, I’ve deserved that. And you know what will happen if I’m ever arrested.”

Elaine didn’t reply. We entered The Shamrock, corner coffee shop that was brightly lit and bustling with business as waitresses in green uniforms adorned with a four-leaf clovers navigated narrow pathways between crowded tables laden with coffee cups and cakes. Only a few customers seemed to have actually come to eat a meal. Everyone else seemed to have poured out of the neighborhood’s several twelve-step programs and huddled together in a safe environment, unless they were in caffeine anonymous.

Elaine slipped into a back booth and Gregory moved in beside her. I sat across from them. A plump redheaded waitress immediately set two coffees before Elaine and Gregory and asked if I wanted coffee. I nodded.

I watched Elaine as she seemed to pour half of the sugar jar into her cup and then absently stirred the thick concoction. Finally, I said, “Thanks for talking, about my mother.”

She smiled weakly. “You’re welcome.” She stared at her syrupy coffee. “I didn’t realize until tonight how much I really loved her. God knows how many more things I’m still in denial about.”

“Will you tell me about her?”

Elaine shook her head. I tried a different tack.

“What was my father like?”

Elaine shot a glance at me, aware of the ploy. She shrugged. “He was just a guy. Mostly a nice guy. Your mother was a looker, like you. All the guys were after her. He just happened to get her pregnant.”

“What do you mean ‘mostly a nice guy?’”

“He was nice, okay?” She snapped. “It’s just that in the end, it was really bad.”

“Why?”

She looked away. “You don’t want to know.”

I nearly screamed. Of course I want to know! You just don’t want to tell me!

For all of my life, no one ever wanted to tell me! My Aunt always said, “You’re better off not knowing.” Everyone but me seemed to know some deep dark secret. Now I knew part of it, about my mother and Elaine. But there had to be more. I was more determined than ever to one day, somehow, find my mother and ask her every question I’d ever had and not stop asking until she gave me the answers. I suddenly loathed Elaine for not telling me. Sharing? Right! She was just like everyone else.

Gregory had to leave. “Will we see you again next week?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think this group thing is for me.”

He paused and then asked, “Is you life unmanageable?”

“I’ve got a few problems,” I admitted. “But I’m managing okay.”

He looked at me for a long moment and then answered, “Then maybe it isn’t for you.”

Suddenly, I burst out crying as I realized why Elaine’s words had hit me so hard. Her feelings of worthlessness and shame was how I had felt since I was eight-years-old. She had been describing my life! And I knew that if I passed up this chance to get help, I truly was going to die, one way or another. I finally managed to stop sobbing. I asked Elaine, “Would you be my sponsor?”

Horror came over her face. She shook her head. “I can’t.” My stare implored her. “I’ve never been one,” Elaine insisted. “I’m not ready. There are better people for—”

“—I can’t try this with anyone but you.”

Elaine stared at me, still horrified. Then she finally said, “Alright.”

We walked out into the night. Elaine and Gregory were sharing a cab uptown and offered me a lift. I explained that I was staying nearby. Gregory asked what I was paying and I told him. “For a tiny room with no bathroom?” He added, “We’ll see.”

Then they both gave me wonderfully loving hugs.

The next afternoon, I arrived at Elaine’s for my first session on the Steps. She buzzed me up and had left the door open. The drawing room seemed more like a mausoleum than the day before and Elaine was on the phone with Gregory, crying and mostly babbling. Finally, she mentioned that I had arrived and hung up.

“Give me a minute,” Elaine said without greeting me. She went into the powder room beside the front door and I could hear her crying. I waited on the sofa and looked out at the terrace. The day was bright and beautiful and I suspected the view from the terrace was breathtaking and I would have loved to have had our session out there. If there was going to be any session.

After about ten minutes Elaine still hadn’t returned and I asked if she wanted me to make some tea. She didn’t answer so I went into the kitchen anyway and put on the kettle.

On her refrigerator door were several adages, like “Dear God, please help me to want what I already have without having to lose it first.” And “It is in the Heart in which God is found and not in the Reason.” I wasn’t quite sure what the last one meant but since I never expected to look for God, it didn’t matter all that much.

I found an array of teas marshaled in a cupboard. Most of the names were too exotic for me so I opted for what sounded the simplest, English Breakfast Tea. Shortly afterward, Elaine came out, apologized for the wait and thanked me for making the tea. Then without a word about what was distressing her, she went to work.

Elaine spread out several pamphlets on the coffee table and began going over the Steps. In Step One, I had to admit that I was powerless over my addiction and that my life had become unmanageable. That seemed more right than wrong, so I said “Yes.”

“Good,” she replied. Then she went off on a tangent, saying that she went to groups not only for sex addicts but also for drugs, alcohol and overeaters. “Sex and overeating, are the two most difficult addictions to overcome,” she informed me. “With drugs and booze, you can just quit and then try to stay off them. But you can’t stop eating so you have to somehow moderate it, something addicts are not particularly good at. You can stop sex but then you are missing out on an important part of love, intimacy.” She added wistfully, “And in the end, love and intimacy is what life is all about.”

Tears trickled from Elaine’s eyes but she tried to stay on message, informing me that in Step Two, I had to admit that I had come to believe that only a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Uneasy at admitting that there was some Power greater than myself, I hesitated a bit but then decided to go with it. “Yes.”

As Elaine began with the third step, she broke down and I began to learn why she was so distressed. Elaine had a twenty-year-old daughter, Marie, and a nineteen-year-old son, William. Both had dropped out of college partly due to addictions for which Elaine blamed herself. Both were currently in recovery and to help guard against relapses had broken off all contact with Elaine.

Hal, her husband of twenty-one years, was in denial about being a codependent and refused therapy. She kept on crying and I tried to comfort her but she pushed me away. Finally, she said, “I always loved my children even though I harmed them in ways that I can never forgive myself for. But until I got into recovery, I never knew how much I loved my husband. And now I’m going to lose him.”

While trying to wipe away the tears, Elaine talked about Hal’s many affairs. “They were always nameless women. Young willing bodies who were no where near his intellectual level. I knew he would always tire of them. But Yvonne is mature, with a mind instead of a body, a Phi Beta Kappa, for Christ’s sake.” She stammered, “And, I thought, she was my friend.”

For years, Elaine and Yvonne had worked closely on the building’s co-op board and had secretly shared being in AA. Then Yvonne had stopped going to meetings, claiming that she had learned to drink “moderately.” Hal occasionally had reminded Elaine how much he admired Yvonne for having “outgrown” meetings.

Elaine mentioned that Hal owned a business with a factory in Buffalo, where he often went on business during the week. But when he was having an affair, he would say he was going to Buffalo on weekends. On Friday morning, Hal had told Elaine that he was leaving for Buffalo. But right before I had arrived, she had come home to see Hal entering the building. She figured he had ended his latest affair before it began until she saw his elevator stop on the eighteenth floor, Yvonne’s floor.

“He’s sleeping with her in my building. It’s almost like they are doing it in our bed. Did they really think I wouldn’t find out? Is he daring me to confront him so that he will have a reason to leave me?”

Elaine broke down again. When she finally recovered, she said, “The irony is that I almost didn’t mind Hal having affairs because when they were over, he always felt guilty and would be so loving and intimate that he became this fantasy lover who happened to be my husband. What will I do if I lose him?”

Elaine jumped up and rushed behind the Oriental screen into her bedroom. I heard her crying and then she was silent. After a while she emerged looking refreshed and almost radiant in a pink silk designer suit. Apparently, Elaine had been through enough crises in her life to be able to keep their effect hidden and put on a brave face to the world.

She sat down the sofa, and calmly said, “I’m sorry, Sherry. But, obviously, you arrived at an inopportune time. You may be wondering what good it might do you to follow the Steps when you look at me and the mess that I seem to be right now.” I didn’t mention that this thought had crossed my mind. “But I can tell you,” Elaine continued, “if the last twenty-four hours had occurred five years ago, I would probably be dead right now. But I am still here, alive, trying to survive and stay sober.”

She picked up a pamphlet. In Step Three I had to make the decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God.

This was a deal breaker. “I’m sorry,” I said, standing up. “I don’t think I can do this.” Elaine remained silent as I paced around the inlaid-wood coffee table, accidentally hitting it and rattling the tea cups. I didn’t care. “How am I supposed to turn my life over to some being I don’t even believe exists and if he does exist, I hate him. No God worth caring about could allow a child to go through what I endured.”

My voice hadn’t seemed that loud but now I heard it echoing around the room. I found myself quivering with rage. My fists were knotted. Suddenly, I wanted to punch my mother’s picture and Elaine and the world and myself and, most of all, the person I craved to pummel until his smug face disappeared into a bloody pulp.

Elaine read my mind. “Was it Ernie?”

I stared at her. I had lived alone with that secret for so long. Now it was out, and with it, came a rush of emotions, pent-up rage and pain and humiliation. I’d felt those all before. A new one was relief. I began crying. Elaine stood up and hugged me and I cried all over her pretty pink silk jacket. She didn’t seem to notice.

After a while, I managed to get enough control over myself to sip my tea with shaking hands. I was worried that I might spill it on Elaine’s sofa or her antique Chinese carpet. But she wasn’t worried.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I shook my head but then turned to her. “You knew him. You even had him. You know why he did what he did to me?”

Elaine paused thoughtfully and then shook her head. “No.”

“I used to fantasize about asking him,” I said, “right before I pulled the trigger. Sometimes, I still think about it.”

“You have to release that anger, Sherry. You never have to forgive what he did. You have to forgive why he did it.”

I became enraged. “No fucking way! I’ll never forgive him! Never!” Elaine remained silent. I tried to control myself. “Tell me. How the hell am I supposed to forgive some ‘why’ when I don’t even know why! You don’t even know why! What if he doesn’t even know why?”

“God knows why.”

“Yeah, right! God again! Well he’s not telling me anything! Forget this! I’m not bowing down to some God who never did a damn thing for me.”

Elaine sat calmly on the sofa. “It’s God as you understand, God, Sherry. Your Higher Power could be the group.”

“I don’t think I can do this,” I repeated.

“Sherry,” Elaine said softly, “if you won’t work the Steps, I can’t help you.”

“Well, I’ve got my own steps,” I retorted, “and number one is to find out some answers to questions that have plagued me all my life.”

“Sherry, I’m sorry that I don’t have the answers. Maybe your mother doesn’t even have them. Maybe Ernie doesn’t even have them. But the most important questions are inside you, and only you can answer those.”

After a moment, I asked, “Do you ever think about my mother?”

“Sometimes.”

“I think about her every day.”

After a long moment, Elaine admitted, “So do I.”

Even though I thought most of it was BS, I went back to my little room and read the Steps’ pamphlets about boundaries and slips. Nothing I had done alone had worked so what did I have to lose?

Although I was the newbie, weirdly enough on Monday, I called Elaine to see how she was doing. She said that Hal came home and acted as if nothing unusual was going on, which made it worse. “It’s not like I don’t deserve him having affairs,” Elaine said. “It’s a little difficult acting like a betrayed wife when you’ve given your husband gonorrhea.”

I wasn’t sure if it was the Steps or discipline or luck but I did manage to show up for work everyday for a week without a hangover or wearing the previous day’s clothes. By Friday evening, despite my misgivings, I knew I would show for group. It was the only way Elaine would let me stay in her life and I craved the possibility that she might slip and accidentally tell me something about my mother.