The Wrong Door (9 page)

‘Oh Susan, I’m so sorry. How’s your poor mother?’

‘Poor mother nothing. She is as happy as a lark. She says she’s hated Dad for years and can’t wait to see the back of him. She reckons it’s about time she started having some fun of her own.’

‘No.’ Clare shook her head. She didn’t know what to say. The idea of Betty Lee kicking up her heels in middle age was too hard to imagine. Poor Susan. Clare felt for her friend.

Susan had been her best mate since year 5. They attended the same primary school, went on together to the local high school and now were at university, albeit in different faculties – Clare studying veterinary science while Susan was doing psychology. They were blood sisters, slashing their thumbs in primary school and letting the blood mingle.

‘Friends for life,’ they had vowed. And so they were.

Susan shared Clare’s passion for knowledge. They were considered the least cool in the class and they didn’t care.

‘I always envied you your family,’ said Susan.

Clare looked at her friend with disbelief. ‘You’re joking. Why?’

‘You were always having so much fun. We had to be so proper at home. I always felt like I was in trouble. I couldn’t use Dad’s stereo because I’d be sure to break it. If I borrowed his binoculars when I gave them back he said the lenses were dirty. It was like we always had to be on our best behaviour. I couldn’t wait to move out on my own. But your house was always so relaxed. You could eat in front of the ΤV. You had takeaway fish and chips for dinner. And no-one yelled at you if you dropped something on the floor.

‘I remember the first time I stayed over at your place and your mother brought us tea and toast in bed. Then Marla came and got in too and told us all about her date from the night before. Remember she had gone out with that TV actor and he took her to some star-studded opening night? And she let us try on her dress. I will never forget it. It was blue, off the shoulder with a slashed diagonal panel across the chest. I thought it was the most glamorous thing I had ever seen. I always dreamed of having one just like it.’

Clare smiled. ‘I remember she dated the actor
but I don’t remember the dress. It doesn’t sound like one Peg would have made.’

‘No, I think she kept it secret from your mother. I remember it cost her a fortune.’ Susan looked wistful. ‘How I wished I had a big sister like that. Oh, oh, oh,’ she sounded excited. ‘Remember the night we pranced around with our hems hitched up? You, me, your mum and Marla. Up the stairs, onto the beds, down into the kitchen.’

Clare groaned at the memory. ‘Those damn Dalton legs. We were showing them off. Mum was always so proud of our Dalton legs.’

‘And we had the stereo turned right up, listening to Frank Sinatra. We would
never
have been able to do that at my place. It was so much fun. I used to love coming over to your place because I never knew what to expect. There was always something happening. It was so … so … bohemian.’

Clare stared at her friend. ‘You know, Susan, that is the funniest thing I have heard in a long time. My “bohemian” household. Well I suppose it is. My mad mother and mad sister.’

‘And mad Indian neighbour,’ added Susan.

Clare smiled sadly. ‘He was the only one in my life who wasn’t mad. God, I miss him. Especially now. You thought my family was mad before, let me tell you the latest.’

‘My name is Marla and I’m an alcoholic.’

She spoke so softly the people sitting up the
back had to strain to hear. In any other public talk they probably would have called for her to speak more loudly. But not at this meeting. They wouldn’t want to risk breaking her concentration. The fact someone could stand up and tell their story was more important than them being heard and most people in the room knew it.

Marla’s voice was lilting with a slight lisp and her manner was shy and uncertain. It was obviously her first time and everyone in the room who had stood where she was standing felt for her and willed her to get through the next five minutes. Marla looked at the floor a few feet in front of her. She couldn’t focus her thoughts. She hadn’t intended to speak tonight and she wasn’t sure how she came to be standing out the front like this. It wasn’t her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, despite what she had told Clare, and she knew the protocol, having listened to others tell their stories. But she hadn’t believed she had anything in common with them. They were alcoholics who couldn’t say no to a drink. They needed to drink every day.

She wasn’t like that. Oh sure, she lost control a bit every now and then, but she could go for days without wanting or needing one. And hearing their stories certainly hadn’t inspired her to stand up and join them. Marla was horrified at the details that came tumbling out. And from such respectable-looking people. Marital abuse. Prostitution. Heroin.
Heroin?
And that from a baby-faced girl with a smile full of mischief. She looked about
seventeen and should have been running around a netball court, not standing at the front of a bunch of strangers on a Saturday night saying she was celebrating two years of sobriety.

A handsome greying man in his sixties spoke of how he had worked as a lawyer in New York by day, while at night he would seek out the seediest bars in the wrong end of town to be anonymous and enjoy a session, drinking until he blacked out. He managed to live that way and maintain his job for four years. He had been sober now for twenty-two years. Another man revealed he had spent time in Long Bay jail. Now he was a garbo, proud that he had stayed off the grog and become fit enough to run behind the truck collecting bins. The only thing these people appeared to have in common was a problem with alcohol.

On her previous visits Marla had sat through meetings, listening to the different speakers and finding nothing in their stories that was relevant to her. But each time, just as she was smugly assuring herself she didn’t belong here, someone would say something that would resonate and she would feel a ripple of fear. She could push that fear down most of the time. But then after a binge she would stand in the shower full of self-loathing, terrified and ashamed at what she had been powerless to stop.

Something propelled her to the front of the meeting this night. As soon as Thomas, a shy man with glasses, finished telling his tale of losing his family and self-respect through an affection for
rum, Marla was up and out of her seat, wanting to declare something. Make it public.

‘I’m an alcoholic,’ she repeated, still staring at an invisible spot on the carpet a few feet in front of her. That seemed to her to be the crux of it. What else was there to say?

‘Hello, Marla,’ the group responded as one, full of encouragement.

Marla looked up at them, blinking. ‘I … I have a problem.’ She stumbled over her words. No-one moved in their seat or coughed. Every ounce of attention was directed to Marla. ‘I haven’t had a drink today. I hope I don’t have one ever again.’ That was true, she thought, but it sounded trite. It didn’t really express what she meant. She tried again.

‘I hope not but I really don’t know that I won’t. I’m not sure I have the strength to not have another drink ever again. Today, now, as I stand here, I don’t want a drink. I think of my behaviour over the past couple of days and I am so ashamed and cannot imagine that I would want to get myself into that state ever again. And yet I know that some time in the future, I don’t know when, a few weeks, a few months maybe, I’m going to want to get drunk. It isn’t the drink itself I want, it’s that feeling of being drunk.

‘They use the word intoxicated for being in love and when I get that alcoholic high that’s how I feel. I just love it. Today I hate myself and I am ashamed and embarrassed and filled with disgust. But I know that is just how I feel today. Soon I won’t care about any of that. I’ll just want to be
intoxicated again. I don’t know how to fight that desire. I give up. I can’t do it on my own. So here I am.’

She turned to a poster that had been taped to the wall. It was headed The Twelve Steps. Marla pointed to the first one and read it aloud: ‘I admit I am powerless over alcohol. My life has become unmanageable.’ She turned back to the audience, almost shyly. ‘I don’t know if you can help me. I’m not really sure that I believe anyone can. But I’m here tonight so I guess that’s a start.’ Then she stopped.

The audience realised she had finished and clapped loudly, as if she had just given the best speech in the world. Marla was taken aback at the enthusiastic response and fled from the front.

Isaiah moved back to the microphone. ‘Thank you, Marla. We are here to help you.’

Two more people spoke. Unlike Thomas and Marla they were old AA members and their stories were less about their drinking days and more about how they maintained sobriety.

‘My name is Cherie and I haven’t had a drink for one year, four months, two days and probably about three-and-a-half hours,’ said a petite blonde with lots of makeup and a bouncy manner. She paused, waiting for the response.

Everyone in the room cheered and stamped their feet. ‘Hi, Cherie.’

‘Well done, Cherie,’ called out Isaiah.

Cherie continued. ‘I am here because of my sponsor. Without her I wouldn’t have been able to
fight the madness. When I can feel myself spending too much time in my head, and starting with all that negative stuff, I pick up the phone to her and say I’m going mad. She’s great. She’s been there herself. She doesn’t judge me, just listens then tells me I
am
mad. We all are. And that’s okay. I don’t know why that helps me so much but just knowing I can call her any time of the day or night has been great. Marla and Thomas, I recommend you get a sponsor. Mine is my angel.’

The audience clapped Cherie with the same gusto as they had Marla.

Graeme was next. He was a gruff-speaking, tough-looking man in his thirties with a lovebite on his neck. He also had some advice for the new members. ‘The hardest part is over, recognising you have a problem, admitting you are powerless over alcohol. We aren’t like most of the population who can have a drink now and then. We have a screw loose,’ he declared. ‘When I feel that urge for a drink come, that craving, I stop and let it just wash over me. I don’t fight it or suppress it. I just feel it. I know from experience that it is just a craving and it will pass, whether I have a drink or not.

‘I got sober by taking myself off into the bush and camping. It was a two-day drive to the nearest pub so I gave myself no choice. And what I discovered was that those cravings have a certain life span. They pass, even without being satisfied. They come back of course, but then they go again. I relax and let them come then go. It works for me. I wish you both luck.’

As Graeme finished Isaiah stood up again, reading from
The Big Book,
written by AA founder Bill W. Everyone listened attentively. And then it was over. Within seconds the members were out of their seats and helping themselves to coffee, leaving Gwennie alone up the back, feeling conspicuous and unsure what she should do. Isaiah was making his way towards her, his face beaming with a welcoming smile. It was all the impetus Gwennie needed. She stepped out of the other end of her row and made her way towards the hot water urn.

Marla was surrounded by half-a-dozen men. Thomas stood awkwardly to one side, part of the group but not quite. The men were full of advice for Marla, which she listened to politely. Gwennie studied her. Obviously she was accustomed to being the centre of male attention and quite comfortable with it.

She must have been very beautiful as a younger woman. Up close the years were starting to show. And the drinking. She was wearing a lot of makeup, more than any other woman in the room, but still her skin had the flushed rosy look of a drinker. And fine lines around her eyes and mouth suggested she was a smoker. Her figure was superb, long legs ensconced in tight, faded jeans. She was the most casually dressed woman in the room and yet the most elegant.

To Gwennie’s eye she looked like the woman at the funeral. Perhaps Gwennie had got the name wrong. But then she lived at the same address. They must be related. The other woman in the car
must have been Clare. Or maybe Clare was this woman’s middle name. Or maybe she had used a false name because she was at AA. Maybe all of them gave false names.

The men flirted with Marla, not-so-subtly competing with each other to engage her in conversation. It didn’t matter that a couple of them were almost young enough to be her son. She was that kind of woman. Men would always buzz around her.

‘One of the best things about AA I have found is the mentoring process. When you feel that urge to have a drink, you just ring your AA sponsor and talk it through with them. Really, it works,’ said a man with spiky blond hair.

Another man agreed. ‘Yes, that’s the best thing. It worked for me. When you feel it come on, ring one of us.’

You are so transparent, thought Gwennie. You are all just angling for her telephone number. No-one noticed Gwennie, standing quietly, sipping tea from her polystyrene cup.

Gwennie wondered which would be Marla’s type. Big beefy Graeme, shy self-effacing Thomas, Mr Spiky Blond or one of the others. AA certainly attracted a cross-section of people. Anyone, it appeared, could be an alcoholic. Maybe she should try it, thought Gwennie. Drown her sorrows. Drink away her grief. The hopelessness of it held a certain appeal, but it would take too long. If Gwennie was going to kill herself she wanted something quicker. She realised with a start that
she hadn’t contemplated that for a few days – not since she discovered the existence of Ms Clare Dalton. It seemed that discovery had given her a new outlet for her grief and all the pent-up energy it produced.

Marla disengaged herself. She was courteous but she wasn’t interested and made her way to the door. As she moved away the group lost their focus and naturally dissolved. Gwennie found herself standing next to Thomas. He smiled shyly. Gwennie frowned and turned her back. When a suitable amount of time had elapsed so that it wouldn’t look like she was following Marla, Gwennie left too. She looked for Marla in the street but all she got was a glimpse of auburn hair and a colourful scarf whizzing past in a taxi.