By the time Michelle’s shift at work ended she would inevitably feel better. She would feel better and she would be embarrassed at how dramatic she had felt earlier, with the stop drinking stop drinking stop drinking. Why was she so extreme all the time, Jesus. So hysterical. A little hangover and it’s, Oh, don’t ever drink again. A glass of wine sounded amazing, why would she deprive herself of a glass of wine after a day of work, people in Europe drank wine all day, their children drank wine, Michelle was screwed up from being an American, Americans didn’t know how to do anything properly, Michelle would have a European glass of wine and everything would be fine. Tonight she would not stay up all night, finishing the bottle, calling in another from the Pink Dot, no way would she do that. She would not be sick again in the morning, she would stroll into work strong and healthy, her heart in better shape, actually, from the antioxidant benefits culled from a glass of natural wine, from grapes, fruit, something that still managed to grow in the toxic soil of their planet, Michelle saluted the grape and its hardy, twirling vines. Nothing seemed as alcoholic as quitting drinking. That was one thing that alcoholics did for sure.
Michelle stopped at the Unfair and picked up a bloated jug of wine, one meant for a large Italian family to sip over a Sunday dinner. She brought it home and consumed the entirety of it. Each time she considered stopping — That’s it, that was the last glass, time to go to bed — a feeling like heartbreak washed through her body. It was the saddest feeling in the world, the feeling of going to bed, of ending the drinking. You can drink again tomorrow, Michelle promised herself. Go to bed. But she couldn’t.
In the morning she trod to work, stop drinking stop drinking stop drinking. The black wave of vomit stirring inside her commanded she pause in the middle of the sidewalk to lean against a street sign. The metal pole burned her bare arm but it didn’t even register. Michelle felt crazy. How was she sick like this again? How had she stayed up until four in the morning — again — when she had not wanted to do such a thing? She did not want to stop at the Unfair to Gays after work, but she felt scared. She knew that she would. She knew that she would forget how she felt right then, dizzy and trembling on a burning street sign, she would forget all about it, and the lure of the wine would somehow seem the only sane impulse. Michelle fished in her army bag for a pen. She pulled out a receipt from the bottom of the sack and kneeling on the ground she wrote, YOU WILL WANT TO BUY WINE DO NOT BUY WINE REMEMBER HOW YOU FEEL RIGHT NOW DO NOT BUY WINE DO NOT BUY WINE. She folded the note and put it in the front pocket of her bag, where important things like house keys and Chap-Stick were stored. Then she took the pen and wrote NOTE on her knuckles, a letter on each finger.
Michelle thought of a Dean Koontz paperback, the kind she purchased from junkies for a quarter. It had been in Michelle’s house growing up, Wendy was a voracious consumer of the sort of mass-market horror novels you could buy at Walgreens. Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and books by women in which the protagonist’s handsome new husband turned out to be a serial killer. In this Dean Koontz book, teenagers were being diabolically controlled via waves that were broadcast through their town. The teenagers would band together outside the reach of the waves and make plans to save themselves, but once they got home the power of the waves lulled them and they did nothing. It was such a creepy story. It was Michelle’s story. One of the teens wrote themselves a note in a moment of lucidity, only to destroy it once under the influence of the brainwashing waves again. At the bookstore that day, Michelle flushed her note down the toilet. It had made her feel crazy to see it, the desperate, capitalized handwriting, how the force of the pen had torn through the receipt, the word NOTE inked on her fingers that all the annoying junkies kept asking about. In the bathroom she rubbed the word from her skin with antibacterial soap, then ripped up the note and sprinkled it into the toilet. After work she bought a bottle of wine.
If I take Lu out of the story, how does Michelle get sober? Michelle wondered. If there is no Lu to witness Michelle’s degradation, to watch Michelle jump out of the car at the red light by the freeway, run onto the freeway’s shrubby shoulder, and sit there under a bush, smoking, gazing down at the red lights of the passing cars blurred with her tears. Michelle couldn’t even remember what they were fighting about, she never could, and this put Michelle at a terrible disadvantage. As long as she was drunk she would lose every fight with Lu, she had no comeback for You were drunk. Did Michelle get sober in order to win their arguments?
If I take Lu out of the story there is no one to chase Michelle down when she runs away to the Frolic Room. You wouldn’t even be able to call it running away because there’d be no one to run away from. Michelle would just be another alcoholic warming a barstool in one of Bukowski’s old haunts, staring at a mural of dead Hollywood stars, trying to figure out who was who, but it was such a bad mural. Only Marilyn in her famous white dress was for certain. If Michelle couldn’t run away then she couldn’t be found. The bartender would never look at Michelle and say, Someone on the phone wants to talk to the girl with blue hair. Are you here or not?
If not Lu, then who would have come to find Michelle in the bar where she drank wine with some new friends? Who would have yelled, Do these people even know that you have a problem? That you are trying not to drink? Who would have convinced her to go home, still in the grip of fine, she was fine, it was fine for her to drink some wine — only to wake up in the morning full of despair. How had she gone and drunk again when she had sworn she wouldn’t? She must be crazy. If Lu wasn’t there to show her this insanity, how would she ever know something was wrong? How would Michelle ever get better?
12
You really can’t tell half the story. People wrap around each other like trees planted so close that they fuse together. If something happens they both fall. Then you’re just this busted tree walking around. Learning how to think again, learning how to be. It’s like you had a stroke. In an AA meeting where Michelle had shared that she was exiting an eight-year relationship, an old woman had held her hand and said, It’s like a death, and contorted her face in understanding. Because the woman was old Michelle presumed she had known death personally and was grateful for her condolences. Michelle felt like a part of her had died, the part that believed in love.
Michelle had always felt annoyance at the dramatics of jilted people claiming to have given up on love. It sounded so silly. No one gave up on love. Who could resist its pull? But now Michelle got it. It wasn’t a pose. She had pulled back the curtain and found nothing. No forever, no loyalty, nothing to stake a life on. She supposed this is what it had been like for Andy. Andy had really loved her, and Michelle had shat upon that devotion. Understanding for the first time Andy’s pain, wondering if she was perhaps a sociopath for it having taken so long, Michelle guessed she deserved it. She deserved to have the illusion of love ripped from her heart. Everyone did.