Fifteen Places

Originally published by The Rumpus, Voices on Addiction column.

Waco, Texas, 1997

Nestled in our sleeping bags on my bedroom floor, my best friend, LC, finds it hard to relax. My floor-to-ceiling posters of JTT, Devon Sawa, and *NSYNC overtake the space, unsettling her. I always feel like their eyes are following me, she says.

Late into the night, I woke to my door creaking open. My dad’s imposing silhouette fills the frame, his eyes glazed, voice slurring, Where are the sheep? he asks. He’s abused his medication again, some combination of benzos and opioids for pain and insomnia. He’s not lucid, not my dad; an outline, a collection of foreign features. WHERE ARE THE SHEEP, he repeats. DID YOU LET THEM OUT. It’s a question that doesn’t sound like a question. LC rolls over, eyes closed, pretending not to notice what’s happening. The faces on my posters are staring, waiting. I don’t know, Dad, I say.

LC has no recollection of this incident. I wonder which moment it will be for my children, what hitchhiker will invade the recesses of memories, barnacles encasing them, only emerging in adulthood, unsure if they were real or fragments of dreams. Who will turn to the other and say, “Remember that time Mom . . . ?” and then convene in an uncomfortable laughter, fading into silence.

Elmira, New York, 2008

Then I grabbed the gun, but I don’t remember grabbing the gun; my wife and children ran to the other room. That’s when I knew I had to quit drinking. Stifled sobs pierce Hector’s story. In my outpatient, work-mandated therapy session, I endure somber tale after tale of middle-aged strangers describing their rock bottoms. Another participant, Brandon, and I exchange numbers and meet up later. We drink anyway, despite it being against the program’s rules. We hook up in his car, his townhouse, kiss in the stairwell of the clinic. We share a joint lying under the stars on the Seneca Lake pier, egos ricocheting between lies and confessions. On his nightstand there’s a photo of his three-year-old daughter, hair in pigtails, cupping a mug of hot chocolate in her mittened hands. I’m trying to be a better dad, he says. He never calls me again.

When it’s my turn in group session, I recount a sexual assault, mention my assailant had also been drinking. The group leader tilts her head, eyes narrowed, mouth pursed. It’s important to take responsibility for your actions, she says. Have you considered he might have also been blacked out and didn’t mean to? Maybe he doesn’t even remember.

Axtell, Texas, 2003

A high school party unfolds at a farmhouse nestled among cornfields and sprawling acres dotted with grazing cattle. As the sun dips below the horizon, providing respite from the unyielding heat, we convene around the bonfire, the lids of coolers held ajar by broken plywood, cans of beer drifting among a sea of melting ice. Radio country peppered with static. The warped screen door slams over and over, fly strips wave in the air, catching strands of my hair as I step inside. Ashley and Jonathan’s dad, Mike, asks, You wanna beer, honey? I say, No thanks, Mike, I don’t drink.

After the party, after Ashley’s buzz wears off, after she does my make-up and we construct vision boards from dissected Cosmo magazines, we sneak into the kitchen for late-night snacks, facing down a hoard of invading cockroaches. We try to tip-toe around them. They scatter; the crunch-crunch-crunch beneath our feet instigates muffled shrieks and giggles. By morning, they vanish, even the deceased among them.

Once a staple of adolescent retelling, the cockroach experience becomes lore between us: for me, an anecdote of country life; for Ashley, an embodiment of an infestation no exterminator could resolve intertwining with the harsh realities of her family history marked by evictions, poverty, and rampant alcohol and drug abuse.

Ithaca, New York, 2013

I’m at home alone with our infant daughter, engorged breasts bare, leaking milk, her head propped up on the turquoise and white polka-dot nursing pillow. I have never held a baby before the nurses laid her on my chest saying, Congratulations, Mama. Weeks of trying to latch her successfully and failing, to do what my mother-in-law says is important, is best, is the natural way to nourish your baby. Following instructions from the lactation consultant, I pump around the clock, clean and warm bottles, nipple shields sliding off, unrelenting screams of hunger. She is crying, and I cannot feed her. I cannot feed her this way. She is refusing; she is refusing me. I am not a mother; I don’t feel like a mother. I start drinking at 4 p.m. I think about drinking when I wake up every morning. I hide bottles behind the baking supplies, pay in cash at the liquor store, lie to my husband, lie to myself.

Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, 2007

Upstairs with our neighbors Dave and Rebecca, I enumerate the reasons I’m leaving my boyfriend and moving out. An artist and actress, Renee’s collection of miniature shadow boxes line the entirety of the living room, depicting scenes from still lifes, imagination, movies: a plastic baby alone in a crib surrounded by wolves, a room full of abstract portraits of herself, a surrealist carnival.

You fucking slept with someone else?! Robert screams. He’s been listening through the door. Oh, for fuck’s sake, I mutter as I follow him downstairs into our apartment.

Objects are flying—CDs, clothes, shoes, launched out of angry hands from the ends of an arm where he will later tattoo my initials. The bottle of whiskey is nearly empty—marking the breaking of a three-year sobriety streak—because the twenty-year-old he followed to the city is bored with him, a barely employed thirty-four-year-old people pleaser. I don’t love you, I yell. I never did. My dog paces the floor, tail between his legs. I try to reason, to say he can have the apartment; it doesn’t have to be like this, I repeat.

Then, he’s running downstairs, out the door, spilling onto the sidewalk, finding long, disorienting strides as the streetlights click on. I chase him, no shoes, one block, then three, fifteen, until I recognize my friend Matt’s apartment building. He lets me borrow his shoes, two sizes too big. I find Robert asleep in the bushes on the walk back home. I never remember to return Matt’s shoes.

Waco, Texas, 1999

A medal and complimentary t-shirt mark my triumph as the first-place sixth-grade D.A.R.E. program essay competition winner. Later, in my dad’s bathroom, I replace his cigarettes with miniature rolled-up scrolls of paper, each adorned with anti-smoking messages I copied from my booklet. From the right-hand side cabinet, I peruse his collection of medications, attempting to pronounce names and make sense of the shapes, sizes, and colors. From each container, I pour samples into my pockets, sharing with friends under the bleachers during the following Friday night football game, the effects of Vicodin decelerating the sound of marching band horns, warping the cheerleaders’ chants as the wind carries them over the field.

Astoria, Queens, 2010

The police are pounding at our apartment door.

Is everything OK here, ma’am? We received a call about a domestic disturbance.

I can’t remember the source of the fight, but it doesn’t matter because, with my first husband, all there is is fighting. And drinking. The drinking and laughing that always turn into fighting.

Tribeca, Manhattan, 2009

James is sitting at my bar again. He’s never taken off his baseball cap, always wearing a dark, quarter-zip sweatshirt, drinking the same beer on tap. A Forest Hills native who comes to watch the Mets play, or the Knicks, or the Giants, he finds it charming how my open vowel “I” in words like Been and Ten informs listeners of my southern origins. It’s been two weeks since we met and I mentioned I’m a writer and he leaned over and recited a poem in my ear. A poem so striking, spoken in half-whispers and full of honey that it made me release a full-bodied sigh when he pulls away.

So, how long have you had the problem? he asks. The boyfriend?

About a year, I say.

He smirks and asks for another round.

Dance, baby, dance. I am taking shots with the customers like my boss, Tom, says. I am the patron saint of freedom. I am the center of my universe. You can use water in the shot glass, you know. Customers can’t tell the difference, my manager, Patience, tells me. I’m not a pussy, I reply. At the end of the night, I’m so drunk I can’t count my money. Sasha helps me balance the cash drawer, fill out my paper, find my purse. James waits for me, leaning against the brick wall outside; we hit the jazz club, the neighboring dives, drop in at the hotel bar for a final nightcap. We spend our clandestine meetups underwater, swapping poems into the whiskey, pretending we can swim, pretending my boyfriend doesn’t exist.

Baylor University Campus Housing, 2005

It’s the first time I’ve ever been drunk. Paul is leaning back, melting beside me into the couch, tolerating my increasing intoxication, my cacophony of word-like noises, asking What’s your name? Where are you from? Who do you know here at this party? Paul, who is a student at the university I’m attending in the fall; Paul, with his piercing green eyes and generous laugh and suffocating hugs; Paul, who I fall in love with immediately; Paul, who introduces me to cocaine and ecstasy and acid and breaks my heart when he leaves me for our mutual friend Jennifer. When I tell him I’m dropping out of school, Paul says things like Best of luck, young flower, amidst the thorns. The boys I hated in high school are here at this party, and they are laughing, the same soundtrack to years marked by resentment and disgust. They are laughing as the room becomes unrecognizable, and I’m gone, a penumbra drifting through limbs, sloshing glasses, and drawing hits on bongs.

Trumansburg, New York, 2013

My kids are in the car, a bottle of wine sloshes around in my belly as I drive home. Just get home, I repeat in my head. Just get home safe. Everyone else was drinking too. That’s what moms do in the late afternoon. We drink, and we complain, and we commiserate, and we laugh, and we joke the next day about our hangovers and the TV our children watch for hours in the morning so we can sleep in. All the moms do it. It’s cocktails at brunch. It’s happy hour at outdoor playdates. It’s a champagne night because red wine gives us headaches. We deserve this, we say. We work hard.

Dublin, Ireland, 2008

Did you know Dublin clubs mark your hand so you can only have two shots of absinthe per night? I throw my hands above my head, stamps glowing under the black lights. Two German boys who don’t speak English ask if I want to go back to their hotel. I leave without my coat and friends, negotiating taxi fare and room rates with hand gestures and facial expressions. It takes me three hours to figure out how to get back to my hostel in the morning. No one calls to check where I’ve gone, why I’ve been missing.

32,000 feet above the Southeastern United States, 2006

On the flight from New York to Texas, a soldier heading home shares my armrest and repeatedly clears his throat, shifting in his seat. He tries to make friendly small talk, and all I can say is My dad’s favorite movie is Saving Private Ryan. I mean was, I correct. He says, Let’s get a drink. I say, I can’t, I’m 19. He says, That’s OK, I’ve got you. The soldier and I drink. We drink and drink and, at some point, reach our destination. Before I can stand, he snatches my luggage from the overhead compartment and follows me through the Jetway, bag hoisted over his shoulder, muscle memory from active service, a gesture of understanding of the death we have both experienced. He hugs me and says, Take care.

New York, 2016

In the news, I read about a mother who, while driving drunk, rolls her car, careens into the concrete median, and instantly kills two of her children. Hope she rots in prison forever, a commenter writes. What kind of mother . . . , another says. I scroll past, onto the next headline. It doesn’t haunt me like it should.

Rudy’s Country Store and BBQ, Texas, 2016

My husband and I are in my hometown for my mother’s funeral, his first and only time visiting Texas. A father ahead of us in line swipes an ice-cold Lone Star from the cooler and hands it to his teenage son, condensation glistening, fighting against humidity. My husband remarks, I can’t believe no one cares that kid is drinking. The woman behind the counter smiles and says, Oh honey, they ain’t drinking, that’s just havin a beer.

Trumansburg, New York, 2020

Your favorite drink used to be wine, but now it’s coffee, right, mom? During lockdown, early in the pandemic, my five-year-old son is working on his Mother’s Day About Mom project.In his drawing, the image of a wine glass in my hand is crossed out, half-erased, and replaced with a crude sketch of a coffee mug. Little squiggles of steam float above, a crooked smile adorns my face. Yes, buddy, I say. Yes, it is.