All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir(57)

I headed over to a quiet corner and tried to compose myself. I found myself praying to God to help relieve me of this. We left the museum and went back to Jasper’s apartment. The consensus was that everyone felt tired, so Jasper suggested takeout. My first opportunity to have a drink and he had ruined it. We ordered Thai food, and I excused myself to go to the bodega and get some soda. I came back with beer and tried to get the both of them to have one. They refused and the room was quiet. I wondered just how much of a secret my drinking problem really was.

The weeks that followed felt like more of the same. Wake up, spend time on the computer researching various story ideas, turn on Sex and the City and crack open the wine at 6 P.M., fall slowly into a blackout. Yunna was home most nights but I preferred drinking alone, with no one watching. My therapist with the kind eyes told me that I needed to start going back to AA or she could not treat me. She said that I was medicating with alcohol, and it was medically or clinically impossible to work through my grief while in an active stage of alcoholism. She suggested an outpatient facility, but I took a look at my bank account and knew that there were other, life-centric things like rent and groceries I had to use that money for.

The last day I drank was not like all the days that came before it. There was no blackout or shoving match or lost job. It was just the depression I felt that came sweepingly into focus every single time I was hungover. I knew that sobriety had worked for my dad, and yet I still felt unwilling to apply it to my own life. My brain shouted at me that he had real consequences as a result of his drinking. He was a junkie who left me and my twin in our snowsuits in a freezing cold car while he went to a crack house to get high. Having a morning shower beer was pathetic—JV shit—and I should just shut up and learn how to drink. But the other, more rational side of my brain understood that I was at the end of some sort of road and that I would lose whatever HBO project I had cooking if I continued to consume alcohol in the way that my genes wanted me to. I also often thought back to my sister dragging me into the shower. That is where my life was headed.

My other motivation felt even simpler. I wanted to honor my dad and live a life that he would be proud of, and I knew that I could not accomplish that if I continued drinking. I had to give it up. On August 23, 2015, my stepmom offered me a beer at dinner. I quietly said no then, as I did thousands of other times in small and big moments in the days and years that followed.





32


    Resentments





“It’s normal to lose a parent,” Jill remarked to Meagan one afternoon as we headed into our first winter without him.

“Have you lost either of your parents?” Meagan replied, as carefully as she could.

“No,” Jill admitted.

But I could understand the unsaid half of what Jill was saying. She and my dad were married for more than twenty years and considered each other their closest confidants. I have many memories of them dancing through the kitchen with the music cranked up way past the normal parent-friendly audio setting. Most often my view of them was sitting at the kitchen table side by side, reading the Times together. Both she and my dad were independent and stubborn, but they were each other’s constant.

They were not people who included their children in their relationship. They had their own coded way of speaking to each other. Nicknames, media gossip—I was never sure what they were talking about. And they made little effort to change that when we would complain about it. Eventually we stopped when we realized that this was who they were: a couple devoted to each other who showed one another respect and love—a model I made a mental note to try to emulate someday.

Jill told me that the night before he died, she’d slept on the spare bed in the attic. She was sick with a nasty cold and didn’t want to pass along any germs before his panel the following evening. Her last night, another thing snatched away by circumstance.

Jill and I had never been close. She, who came into our lives when Meagan and I were six, had been the designated disciplinarian, always insisting on good manners and respect toward our elders. But our relationship with her never went much beyond that. Never really softened. I was sure it was hard for her then, as it was now. I could have used some softness, though.

It was November. The holidays would soon be here. I had been actively trying to not think about Thanksgiving, my dad’s favorite. I remembered past Thanksgivings and cringed. I recalled 2013 as being a particularly hard year in our relationship. I’d kept delaying, refusing to commit to any plan for the day of feasting, and eventually got a furious call from Dad. Where was I? Everyone was waiting for me. I threw some sweatpants on, which I knew would piss him off, and headed to the dreaded Port Authority.

My dad had always wanted his kids to be as excited about Thanksgiving as he was. There was none of the annoyance of gifts or reindeer that Christmas entailed. Turkey Day was just about the turkey and us, and that was something he could certainly get down with. Every year he was responsible for the bird, while Jill would handle most of the sides, except for the gravy. My dad was a complete freak about gravy. He would labor in the kitchen making his homemade savory concoction, tasting and seasoning it until he declared perfection. When we were called to the table for the meal, he would smile and ask people to taste it. “Nothing is too good for my family,” he would say as he grinned toothily at us.

We were traditionalists and held hands and went around the table to say what we were thankful for. Often, he discussed his sobriety and his love of us, his girls. Work was rarely mentioned.