Just Keep Swimming II

I roll down my window and let the ocean breeze in. It does little to calm my nerves. I manage to get a hold of you on your cell and you feed me some bullshit about them making you wait thirty minutes for our grinders. It six months into your so-called sobriety and you are thirty minutes late for our lunch. You are thirty minutes late and your words are thick over the cell phone, thick like they get when you've been drinking.
I watch your car pull in front of mine. I watch you get out and stumble toward my door, a paper bag crushed carelessly under your arm. I smell the booze before you even drop into the passenger seat beside me. You lean in for a kiss and I instinctively pull away.

“Are you alright?” I ask, knowing you are not and not really wanting to listen to another lie.

You hand me my grinder but leave yours untouched. That is another thing I have noticed lately, you never eat anymore. I put mine aside, my appetite suddenly having evaporated. How long have you been drinking today? When I talked to you an hour ago, you seemed fine.

“Let me drive you home.” I offer, trying to keep any trace of accusation out of my voice in an attempt to avoid an argument I can’t hope to win.

You raise one eyebrow at me and tell me I’m being ridiculous. I try not to acknowledge the lead weight of despair that has suddenly dropped into my gut.
You make an awkward exit back to your car and have trouble getting it started and into gear. Panic seizes me as I realize you intend to drive yourself home and I know you are in no condition. Deciding against calling the police, I take off after you. I know it's futile attempt to control an out of control situation but I do it anyway. I tell myself that at least I will know you made it home alive.

The short drive back to our apartment passes like an eternity. I watch your weaving car, my heart so far up in my throat that I can’t breathe. My heart gives a terrifying jolt when you nearly take out a speed limit sign as you exit the highway. I wonder, my anger mounting, where all the police are when you need them? Are they busy pulling over drunks somewhere else? I make a frantic, tearful call to my secretary, telling her the bare bones of what is happening and tell her I’ll be in as soon as I can. My next call is to your mother. I simply tell her that you’ve been drinking. When I get to the part about not being able to handle this on my own, my control gives way and I find myself sobbing. She tells me she’ll be there to meet us.

Relief washes over me as you round the corner and park in the apartment lot. I watch you stumble across to the building and let yourself in with my key, a key you managed to manipulate into your possession again. I swallow hard to keep the shame at bay and wait for your mother. In the time it takes for her to arrive, I’ve searched your car, again, and found the bottles. One empty vodka magnum and one half full have been lodged under your seat. I recognized the dark red and black label of your favorite brand. I know that even in the face of this indisputable evidence, you will deny the truth. You will cling to the assertion that you are sober; have been sober as if your life depended on it, which it does. I watch your mother pull into the parking lot, thinking of those six long months of your hospitalization and the lifesaving procedure that spared you. She and I go up together to find you passed out in my bed, snoring soundly. The apartment reeks of alcohol. The mask of despair on your mother’s face must match my own. I leave her with you. Little words have passed between us other than her promise that she and your sister would take care of this that you would not be there when I got home. As a consolation, there would not be many of your things to collect. You have not lived with me since the last visit to detox and the subsequent rehab stay. I head back to work, sick with my shame and filled with dread.

Its not that I actually believed you would stay sober forever. I think I’d ceased believing in that fairytale about the same time I stopped believing in a life with you, at least the life I wanted for myself. My dreams for a home and family with you died a slow and painful death during the weeks your life hung precariously over your head. My conditional love rotted inside me, fueled by the endless hours of caring for your convalescent body as you bleed around your rectal tube, oblivious to everything. I had given up so much but still, you managed to leak inside me again, little by little, after months of good behavior. The visits to my apartment had grown into overnight stays and had stretched into weekends before I had even realized it. Why do I let you hurt me over and over again this way? The wounds scarcely start to heal over before I allow you to tear them open again.

When I get home, as promised, you are gone. I light candles and close the windows your loving sister had thoughtfully opened to air my place out. Sometime in the afternoon my cell phone rings and your sorrowful sobbing fills my ear. You tell me you have to let me go, you can’t keep hurting me. I listen to you, and then lamely say “okay” before closing my cell phone with a snapping motion and slipping it back into my pocket. Good. Goodbye. Good luck.

At home in the apartment I set about reclaiming it once again. I tear the sheets off the bed with more violence than is actually necessary and wash them twice. I pour myself a glass of wine and sit soaking in a hot tub of bubbles. I prepare for the call that would inevitably come later. You will call from a ratty pay phone in the hallway of the detox ward where you will slur your apologies and your empty promises...again. Before bed, I crack the nearly forgotten bottle of Tylenol pm, pop two and fall into bed. Awakened hours later by the phone, I only half-listened to a conversation you would never remember, the drugs administered to dull your withdrawals already thickly coursing through your veins. After I hung up, I slept like the dead.