Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife Read Free Page B

going to take turns telling their addiction stories for the benefit of my dad and me. The first woman to speak had burned down her house in a drunken stupor. The man sitting next to her had gone to prison for vehicular homicide while driving drunk. A guy sitting a little further down went on benders and regularly woke up in a pool of his own urine.
    “Hi, I’m Jerry,” my dad said. “I probably drink too much, but I run a successful business and my drinking doesn’t interfere with my work.” He patted my knee. “I’m here for my daughter.”
    “Hi,” I said nervously. “I’m Brenda. I’ve been drinking too much. That’s why I’m here. But I’m just going to listen tonight.” Maggie had told me I could say that if I didn’t want to speak.
    After the meeting I thanked Maggie, and she asked me to meet her at another meeting the following night. Feeling cornered, I agreed. My dad and I walked to the car, and once inside, he patted me on the back and said, “You’re on your own. These people are Skid Row.”
    I met Maggie in the basement of a Catholic church the next night. “You should get a sponsor,” she told me afterward. “A sponsor is someone who helps you stay sober. I can be your temporary sponsor if you want, but take your time and pick someone, a woman you connect with.”
    I didn’t pick anyone. I went to one meeting a week and drank substantially less for the next two months. Things were working out, I thought, then one night, while I was filling my Styrofoam cup with coffee at a meeting, someone tapped me on the back and asked, “Do you have a sponsor yet?” It was Pam, an attractive woman with long brown hair and perfect teeth.
    “No,” I answered.
    “I’ll be your sponsor.”
    “Okay.”
    Pam was a stay-at-home mom. She was two years younger than me and her daughter was two years older than Max. They lived with Pam’s parents. Pam and her mother got along like two tomcats in a duffle bag. I called Pam every day—because she insisted—and her mother usually answered the phone. “Pam!” she’d scream. “Pam! Pick up the phone!” She’d chuck the receiver, clunk, clunk, clunk, onto the kitchen table, and I’d hear footsteps, arguing, more footsteps, then Pam would answer. Pam’s mother would continue talking to her in the background while Pam tried to talk to me until Pam would scream, “You know I’m on the damned phone! Shut it!”
    Pam moved in with her parents after her husband died. The night Pam’s husband, Vito, died, he’d been out drinking, pulled his car into the garage of their town home, shut the garage door with the remote control, and passed out with the car running. When Pam went to get her car out of the garage the next morning, she found Vito slumped over his steering wheel.
    Pam and I began working out together. We went out to lunch. We took our kids to the park. And I quit drinking. But each meeting I went to confirmed my belief that everyone else’s drinking was way worse than mine.
    “My dad bought a Porsche,” a twenty-year-old goombah with slicked-back hair and crotch-hugging jeans laughed. “I got drunk, took the keys, got it up to 110, 120, slowed down to take a corner, and BAM! This tree jumps out in front of me. I was in the hospital all fucked up for weeks.”
    A middle-aged biker with a potbelly leaned back in his chair and scratched his face. “You think that was bad? I totaled my Harley and was in a coma for a month. Got a plate in my head.” He tapped his skull with his fingertips. “Don’t know what the fuck happened I was so fucked up.”
    I cleared my throat when it was my turn. “About a week after I started coming to meetings, I wanted to drink,” I began. “I didn’t have any liquor in the house, but I had half a bottle of cooking sherry. It tasted like shit, but I drank it. How sad is that?”
    “Shit,” the guy sitting next to me said, adjusting the strap on his eye patch. “I loved cooking sherry. Drank it all the time