The Good House by Ann Leary

Author:Ann Leary
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2013-01-15T06:00:00+00:00

twelve

“Rebecca McAllister called three times already this morning,” said my receptionist, Kendall, when I walked into my office on Monday morning.

“It’s nine-fifteen,” I said. “She’s already called three times?”

“Yeah, she left two messages on the machine. And then she just called a few minutes ago.”

I went into my office and dialed Rebecca’s number. She picked up after the first ring.

“Hildy?” Rebecca said. She was giddy and out of breath.

“Hi, Rebecca. What’s up?”

“Oh. Nothing. How’re you feeling?”

“Fine…”

Rebecca laughed. “I was a little worried about you last night.”

Last night?

“Oh?” I said.

“I was really into the idea of you coming over when you called, but I was glad that you decided not to. We waited up, you know, Brian and I.”

“Oh yeah, well, I ended up going to bed.”

This is what you do. This is what blackout drinkers do.

Until Hazelden, I thought everyone who drank had blackouts. I had had them ever since I started drinking in high school. I would have no recollection of even attending a party, which, I would learn the next day, I had been the life of. “I didn’t even know you were drunk,” my friends would often say when I told them I had no memory of seeing them. I came to think of myself, during those times, as operating under the control of some kind of charming, devil-may-care automatic pilot. I would be at a party, or a bar, or a restaurant, having a few drinks and a pleasant conversation, and then it would be the next day. Only later would I learn that I had driven a group to the beach for a skinny-dip, or convinced everyone to dance on the bar, or even seduced somebody I barely knew.

As the years went by, however, after I became a wife and a mother, it was no longer very funny to forget hours at a time. It was seen, by some, as an indication of some sort of a problem. So I became quite adept at blustering my way around the last night’s recollections. I’d offer vague answers to queries about how I had gotten myself home and fumble my way through forgotten conversations with others. I made real-estate deals in blackouts, invited people over, told secrets, expressed loving sentiments to casual acquaintances, and all this stuff had to be undone while sober—usually under the bludgeoning sledgehammer of a hangover. So you can see how drinking alone, in my own house, after my trip to Hazelden, had offered a nice solution for me. What a relief not to have to wake up with all that bullshit to undo. I thought I had given up drunk-dialing, but apparently, according to what Rebecca was telling me, I had taken it up again. Or rather, my scheming autopilot had. At Hazelden, during an “alcohol education” session, a counselor discussed blackouts: “When you’re in a blackout, your conscious mind is not at work. You are operating, mainly, on very primitive instincts. You’re like a beast.” My beast had called Rebecca and now I had to cover its tracks.

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