The Dirty Book Club(46)

He was Paul Newman handsome, drove a Ford Fairlane convertible, and was the heir apparent to Frank Crawford, owner of thirteen stores statewide. It didn’t discourage me when the other checkout girls told me Rob got kicked out of his father’s country club for stealing a golf cart or that he named his surfboard Johnnie Walker—it inspired me. I was Dotty Snip after all—head cheerleader, valedictorian, and best friends with Marjorie Shannon (the biggest troublemaker at Pearl Beach High!). And I still graduated with honors. I welcomed a challenge like a neighbor with a swimming pool.

Rob and I fell in love that summer. We spent our days off at the beach, going to drive-ins, and necking in the back of his Fairlane. In the fall, I started teachers’ college, Rob was promoted to produce manager at the store, and we saw each other on the weekends. I was happy. And he was, too. But as time went on he complained more and more about his job. He was bored. Uninspired. Obligated. Trapped. Doomed to decades of answering to his father and smelling like vegetables. “Thank God for Dotty Snip and Johnnie Walker,” he’d say. “The two things that keep me going.”

I assumed he was talking about me and his surfboard. He wasn’t. Though I didn’t realize it until after we were married.

“Alcohol helps me relax,” Rob used to say. So I’d make sure he had plenty of it when he got home from the store. It was the least I could do, especially since I left my teaching job to raise Jenny. He worked so hard for us. But the odd thing was, he seemed more relaxed before he drank. After, he’d become angry, impatient, critical, mean.

I’d tell myself that that wasn’t Rob. It was the alcohol. If it was Rob he would have woken up the next morning and known why I was covered in bruises. He would have known why the trash can was filled with broken china. He would have known why my lip was swollen or why our daughter was scared to be in the room with him. He would have known. And he didn’t.

So I blamed Johnnie Walker for those things and Johnnie Walker blamed me. “If you could make Jenny stop crying I wouldn’t be so angry,” Johnnie would say. “If I didn’t have to work all day to support you I wouldn’t be stressed.” And when he got that speeding ticket, which led to a Breathalyzer test and a DWI, somehowit was my fault again. . . .

I apologized because Rob was my husband. I placed him on a pedestal and wanted him to stay there. Because if he fell off, who would I look up to?

I apologized because if it was my fault I could work hard, just like I always did, and make things right. But if Rob was the one who needed changing, then everything would stay the same. And I couldn’t live with that.

I apologized because I was afraid of what would happen to me and Jenny if I didn’t.

After every “incident” the girls would ask how much more I would put up with. I never had an answer. I didn’t know. I didn’t think I had a choice. Rob was addicted to alcohol, and I was addicted to Rob’s potential. I believed he would return to being the sweet boy I met in 1961, just as soon as I stopped making him so angry.

I clung to my belief the same way that Anastasia clung to hers. The idea that love and patience were enough to rid Christian of his vices and turn him into the man that he wasn’t—the man she wanted him to be—was just as naive.

August 14, 1982, was the day I stopped being naive.

I was home in bed with a terrible stomach flu and needed Rob to get Jenny and her friend from their tap lesson. He said he would and I was relieved—maybe he wasn’t so terrible, I thought, and I drifted off to sleep. Thirty minutes later I was woken up by a phone call from Gloria. She had been at the grocery store and saw Rob stumbling to his car. He looked blitzed and she wanted to make sure he arrived home safely.

I thought of Candy Lightner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and how her thirteen-year-old daughter was killed by a drunk driver. Jenny was also thirteen. In a swirl of nausea and panic I gave the police an anonymous tip.

Rob had driven three blocks with the girls before he was arrested and charged with blowing five times over the legal limit and two counts of child endangerment. He was sent to jail for thirty days.

When Rob returned home he found a Tupperware full of my tears and a note that said Jenny and I would not move back into the house until he was sober. The choice was his: Dotty or Johnnie?

Five days later, Jenny and I were back home, but not because Rob stopped drinking. He drove through the window of Crawford & Sons, split his head open on the steering wheel, and died instantly. Rob chose Johnnie.

Once again, I blamed myself: It was my fault for moving out. My fault for not being good enough to fix him. My fault Jenny would grow up without a father. It was years before I realized that there wasn’t anything I could have done. That there were things in this world that Dotty Snip couldn’t control. And Rob Crawford had been one of them.

I, like Ana, was seduced by the soft licks of hope into believing that I could change the man I loved. Then flogged by whip-sharp reminders that I couldn’t. So, like Anastasia, I turned myself over to grief and eventually came to accept that the only person I can change is myself. At which point, I got the help I needed, learned how to cut the ties that bound me to guilt, and set myself free.

Shit happens is life’s dominant; wishful thinkers, its submissive. And happy endings? Well, they don’t come until we accept the sad ones. And so, Anastasia, with the help of this club, I did.

—Dotty Snip Crawford