Girl Walks Out of a Bar Read Free Page B

then yelled, “HARVEY!” She must havebeen standing at the bottom of the stairs shouting up to the second floor. Both of my parents had weak hearing, so shouting was the norm in their house. I could hear bits of their back and forth as she relayed what I had told her. “Alcohol.” “That’s right.” “She said ‘no.’” “I don’t know. I don’t know!” Eventually, my dad got on the phone.
    â€œYessss,” he said drawing out the word in his standard greeting. “We’ve got a little problem, huh?” Dad had never been one to discuss the intimate, emotional details of my life. A brilliant judge who had graduated from high school at sixteen and college at nineteen and had passed the Bar by twenty-two, he was much more comfortable in the intellectual realm. Whenever there was drama at home, Dad would joke that he wanted a t-shirt that read, “Leave Me Alone” on the front and “Buzz Off” on the back. Only once did I ever see him cry, after his best friend, Angelo, died from a brain tumor. My father’s face looked bizarrely different to me that day—changed by contortions and grimaces that scared me.
    â€œYeah, we do. I need to go to detox for booze. It’s a problem.”
    â€œAlright, OK, so that’s what you’ll do,” he said. Dad was seventy-five, but he looked like a man in his early sixties. He had a semicircle of hair around his head and was tall and trim thanks to his routine of yoga and a diet dominated by fish and vegetables. When I was two years old, I’d wake up when Dad did, so early that just about the only thing on television was a show called Yoga for Life . Decades later I would come downstairs at my parents’ house in the early mornings to find him standing on his head, balanced against the laundry room door.
    My father never doubted my ability to deal with things. When I was five and terrified of having the training wheels taken off my bike, he quietly removed them in our garage, toldme to climb on, and gave me a push. But he didn’t chase me to make sure that I didn’t fall. He said he wasn’t worried. When I made the Law Review after my first year of law school, he said, “Of course you did,” with a giant smile.
    â€œWhat are you going to tell your office?” he asked. I knew that he’d be concerned about that.
    â€œIt’s already done. I emailed everyone to tell them I have a medical issue that came up over the weekend. If they ask me about it, I’ll lie. But they’re not supposed to ask about medical things. And I’ll be back on Monday.”
    â€œOK. Good, good. They don’t need to know this. Mom said you don’t want us to come in. Keep us posted, though. We’ll come if you want . . . at any hour . . .”
    â€œThanks, Dad. I appreciate that.” I started crying hard again.
    â€œHey, hey, don’t cry. This is the right thing you’re doing. You’ve got a problem and you’re going to take care of it. It’s OK.”
    After we hung up, I took a deep breath and tried to get my composure back. Why hadn’t I saved some coke last night?
    My friends were next. My inner circle was tight, and we spent a lot of our time together with drinks in hand, but I’d made sure that they had no idea how much booze and coke I pumped into my system when they weren’t around. Now that I was doing something as extreme as going to detox, I had to tell them. They were my city family, my urban tribe. I could never just disappear on them. And I wanted to tell them. I didn’t want to do this without them.
    I flopped on my bed and called Russell first. I had met Russell almost fifteen years earlier through his wife, Jessica, my closest friend from my first law firm. Russell had been my confidant the few times I decided to talk about having gone too far, like when I’d stayed up all night doing coke at my