Seducing the Demon (11 page)

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

W
hen I was fourteen and at the height of my adoration for writers, I went alone to the 92nd Street Y to hear Dorothy Parker. Her stories and poems were alive for me, so I had no idea they had mostly been written more than thirty years earlier. She took a long time to come to the stage. The crowd grew fidgety. When she did appear—a little dumpling-shaped woman in her sixth or seventh decade—she was short for the podium and had a hard time finding the mike. Then she began to read in mumbles punctuated by long pauses. Her voice was nearly gone and clearly she was drunk. It was impossible to understand anything she was saying. I was so disappointed as I sat there clutching my copy of
The Best of Dorothy Parker,
which I had hoped to have autographed by my idol. Now I didn’t
want
her autograph. Whenever my drinking demon starts to get the better of me, I think of her. I don’t want to be her. Alcohol was the subtext of her unhappiness.

Probably she thought it was the cure.

I have given up alcohol for years at a time and then drifted back to it. I don’t smoke dope. I never tried cocaine. I don’t like gin or vodka or whiskey—martinis deliver a blow to the back of my head—but wine is one of the delights of life. I know good wine and can taste it. I won’t drink plonk.

For this, the AA people mistrust me. I mistrust myself. Total abstinence is the only thing AA allows. I have often stood up at meetings and said, “My name’s Erica and I’m an alcoholic.” There is only one narrative:
I was a mess, I found AA, I am abstinent and now my life is radiant and God-filled. I can help you do the same.

This program has saved the lives of many people I love and I am grateful to it. It saved my daughter’s life! How can I fail to love it?
It works if you work it,
as we say at the close of meetings. I have been to many, many, many meetings. And mostly, I find them inspiring. I’m not even sure why. When you describe a meeting to a friend—or even to yourself—it sounds silly. All kinds of people—young and old, rich and poor—silting together to be strong, to be humble, to be utterly happy in the love and protection of God—
as you understand her.

AA people are wonderful and kind. They believe in service and they give it. They are generous with their time. They are forgiving. If you drink again and come back, they always love and accept you. They are extraordinary. I wish Dorothy Parker had found them. She was so depressed and much of her depression, I’m convinced, was worsened by alcohol.

Of course she lived in a time when everyone drank to excess. Drunks populated the famed Algonquin Round Table. They thought it was necessary then to drink in order to be a writer. And many of them died of alcoholism and never wrote their best, most mature books. They were constantly soused, like Parker.

Think of the wreckage of lives of that and the previous (and following) generations: F. Scott Fitzgerald dying young, Faulkner drunker and drunker, Cheever struggling with the bottle all his writing life and finally getting sober at the bitter end—only to die of cancer. He wrote two marvelous books sober:
Falconer
and
Oh What a Paradise It Seems.
But he also wrote pretty damn well when he was intermittently drunk—though he was more depressed. That is the joke of alcohol. We depressives are drawn to it for self-medication, but then it only makes us
more
depressed.

I feel wonderful when I’m abstinent, working out, eating vegetables and drinking tons of water and herbal tea—as at my favorite spa, Rancho La Puerta, in the desert of Baja California. But when I go to Provence or Umbria or Venice or Sicily, it seems criminal not to have a glass of wine. I have been abstinent in Provence, drinking bubbly water and Coca Light and looking longingly at those drinking Gigondas. I have been sober in Milan, sitting next to Umberto Eco (after La Milanesiana—the arts and literature festival where we both read our work). Umberto was happily guzzling some lovely wine from Tuscany. I studied the label, I poured for everyone else. I drank San Pellegrino water. But why? Would a glass have killed me? I was deep into abstinence then and I thought so.

Last summer, I was in Aspen with my dearest friend in the world, Gerri, and I remember an AA meeting where a woman in her seventies was beating herself up for having had
one sip
of wine on a trip to Paris with her friends.

“Why did I
do
it? Why am I
still
so self-destructive?” she mumbled moodily.

Because you were in Paris, I wanted to say. And the wine was amazing. But of course I couldn’t say it. I was in the AA narrative: abstinence followed by illumination. No wine allowed—not even a sip.

Is this the only way not to destroy yourself like Parker did? I don’t know. Some people are trying what they call “harm reduction,” but the AA people hate them. I’ve been to “harm reduction” groups too. The therapist tries to get the group to reduce their intake of harmful substances, but she does not forbid them because she knows this sets up a rebellion within.

I know that when I was young I was horribly self-destructive. I drank margaritas then—not wine—till I passed out. I smoked anything you handed me and even took little blue pills, having no idea what they were. Those mysterious pills nearly killed me. If it hadn’t been for two physicians at the party who walked me up and down and spooned coffee down my gullet, I might be dead. I have also passed out at parties from too much wine coupled with terror of the famous company. Once I was seated next to Robert Redford at a flashy New York dinner party and I was so scared by his good looks and his possible interest in me that I kept drinking wine till I passed out. I didn’t get a date with Redford, and not only was I not invited back but my hosts gleefully told the gossip columns. Hardly kind of them. But even elegant people can stoop low. I got sober after that—and stayed sober a good long time. I even dated sober and had sex sober during my single days. Not an easy thing to manage.

Then I met Ken, who hardly drinks (his substance is food), and he said, “Why do you think you’re an alcoholic?”

“Because I passed out at a party in front of Robert Redford, because I once nearly died from little blue pills mixed with margaritas, because I can’t drink—that’s why.”

And he respected this, admired it, even wanted to go to meetings with me. He learned the jargon—he who tastes one sip of good wine and stops—even though he passed the Chevalier du Tastevin course (a really pretentious accreditation in wine tasting). He even gave me his silver Tastevin cup. He learned to call it “The Program” instead of AA. He learned about anonymity. He learned to say “It works if you work it” and “Let go, let God,” and even “Meeting-makers make it.” He is totally respectful of those who don’t drink, and orders them water or Coke or orange juice without blinking. He never asks why.

As I felt more and more secure with him and more and more relaxed, more and more cared for, I had a glass of wine. (This was more than sixteen years ago.) We were falling in love. We were reading each other poetry. I was writing poetry for him. We were reciting old Omar (the eleventh-century Persian poet and astronomer, as interpreted by Edward FitzGerald in 1859). Surely we were reciting the verses out of order, but who cared?

You cannot quote Omar and drink Diet Coke. You cannot quote Omar and drink San Pellegrino. Wine is demanded. Wine is essential. You cannot be in love and not drink wine. Or I can’t, anyway.

So it began. And I was moderate in my usage of wine. Older and wiser and married to my best friend, my soul mate, my darling, I drank with moderation and enjoyed it.

At that point, Molly was eleven. She turned twelve, thirteen, fourteen—those hellish years when mothers and daughters both go mad. She was in rebellion about my new marriage.

She wanted to be first in my life and Ken did too. Impossible. They tore me limb from limb at the breakfast table. He wanted me. She wanted me. I felt like a medieval martyr torn apart by wild horses.

But then I began to notice that they did this little act for
me.
When I went away to give a lecture or promote a book, they got along fine. I decided not to react and see what happened. Five years into the marriage, they were pals. He became the steady father she needed. And she became his daughter of the heart.

They formed a conspiracy to make fun of my absent-mindedness, my dreaminess, my constant dieting, my tendency to spend fortunes on clothes. They bonded. And I was happy. We’d become a family. We even took vacations with Ken’s other stepdaughter, Samantha—and almost got along. It was tough, but it was worth it. Stepfamilies always take a lot of work.

Now Molly was sixteen, seventeen, and doing a lot of drugs. Some of them I’d never even heard of—like Ecstasy. They didn’t exist in my day. And the pot was lethal, a hallucinogen overbred to be stronger than anything anyone
ever
smoked in the sixties—or seventies. She’d stop for a while and burn all the dealers’ numbers, but then she’d start again. Like most parents, I didn’t want to know. But I knew. I knew something was very wrong. She graduated from Riverdale Country School and began Wesleyan. I knew when I visited her in a dorm room with a sticky floor and a rug you could have smoked to get high that she was miserable. I knew she was lonely. I knew she was at risk.

Colleges stopped being in loco parentis in the sixties. But the kids are not really mature enough to go away without any guidance, without parents, without friends. Molly was in bad shape and I didn’t know the full extent of the cause. She wanted to come home and see her shrink. I agreed. She was better off home.

For a while she continued with a shrink who couldn’t even figure out she was using. Of course she had contempt for him, as she later had contempt for a woman shrink who had no idea what was going on.

She applied to Barnard, my alma mater, and began school again. She went back to painting, for which she has a great gift. She worked in a gallery in SoHo and learned a lot about the art biz. But still she was miserable and going with a married guy.

Eventually she took a leave from Barnard too and worked at the Holly Solomon Gallery. And made various druggy friends in the art world.

The shit hit the fan when she was nineteen and had transferred to NYU. She was now, thank God, with a shrink who understood addiction.

One day she came to me and said:

“Mom, help me. I can’t stop using coke. I think I’m going to die.”

Her complexion was greenish, her hair bright auburn, her hands shaking, My first thought was to say, “It can’t be that bad,” but something stopped me. I didn’t want to believe my daughter was a drug addict—what mother does? But I realized that both our lives might depend on my believing her. I was not totally innocent about her drug use, but I didn’t want to believe how far it had gone.

“Tell me about it.”

“Mom—I thought I could control it, I really thought I could, but I keep wanting more. I stay up all night and then take downers to come down. I’m afraid I’ll be one of those people who never wakes up. I’m turning into a coke whore. You have no idea how easy it is to be a coke whore in New York.”

My daughter is a drama queen but somehow I believed her this time. I could see from the greenish color of her skin that she was telling the truth.

“What do you want to do?”

“I think I need to go to rehab. I really do. It terrifies me. I’ll lose my job at Holly’s. But otherwise I think I’ll lose my life.”

I hold her in my arms smelling the sour smell of cigarette tobacco and vomit. I remember her baby smell, her sweet head smelling of baby oil, her sweet tush smelling of baby crap. How can your children get so far away from where they started?

I immediately start making phone calls. By that night, Molly and I are on a plane for Minnesota.

Even though it’s November, it’s midwinter in Minnesota. It’s always midwinter in Minnesota. We are standing in baggage claim when a chubby woman in a parka comes up to us.

“Molly?” she says.

“I’m Erica, this is Molly.”

“I’m your transportation,” she says. “I’m Mary M.”

We get into a station wagon and drive north. It starts snowing. I hold Molly’s hand.

“I’m scared, Mom.”

“No reason to be scared,” says Mary calmly, “the worst is behind you.”

About two hours north of the airport, we arrive at a group of brick buildings in the wilderness. There is a frozen lake, tall pine trees, fields of snow.

Getting out of the car, I see that my breath is making puffs of smoke in the night air. Molly and I are led into an office where a short black man with a clipboard has some questions for us. We fill out papers, sign releases.

“I need to talk to Molly alone now,” he says. “Probably you should wait outside.”

“Don’t go, Mom.”

“I think I should.”

“Molly,” says the man, a counselor called Jim R., “I need to ask you some specific history of what brought you here and I think you might be more comfortable talking if your mother isn’t here.”