A little crazy, p.10
A Little Crazy, page 10
I repeat myself: “What the fuck did you say?”
He stands up straight, doesn’t speak, and stares at me eye to eye.
“This is my pub hub, Dan. Do you hear me? They put you in charge, but I lead this team, Dan. I lead this team. We’re gonna make the fucking newspaper tonight with the best news available. We’re just gonna make a good newspaper, on time, with the best news available.”
The building is silent except for my footsteps as I pace down the stairs, trying not to trip on clown shoes, exiting through the lobby to my car. I get in, shut the door, start the engine, and lean my head into the steering wheel. I take a deep breath. I begin to cry.
“Ahhhh,” I shout, pounding the wheel with my right fist.
I’d meant to walk back in, sit down, and finish the paper with the curation team. But he pushed me, and I lost it, and now I’ll lose my job. Now, I might lose my way. Now, I might lose my wife.
My stomach churns. I inhale deeply, leaning my head back against the seat. I close my eyes.
“Dear God,” I say, “help me. Help me help myself.”
I don’t want a seat at the bar. I don’t want another woman. I don’t want to leave my job. Again.
I haven’t lost my temper since William died. I haven’t yelled once, certainly not at another person. That’s been new for me.
In my youth, I swallowed my negative feelings. That was my assigned role in the family and Mom and Dad praised me for that, how I’d not cause disturbance and conflict like an erupting volcano, spewing at unexpected and uncomfortable moments. Years later, though, as an adult, a self-medicating adult, I developed a quick trigger. Something about how drink makes you relaxed going down, but agitated going away, and in the hours after, when used in higher quantities. I became easy to set off, a coiled spring. But after William died, and after all the turbulence I’d put my family through, I’d decided they needed a rock, and I’d become a study in patience, quietly moving through the seasons of our life change, until.
Dan.
I was a volcano, with pent-up tension beneath the surface, and now, here was Dan, inviting my eruption.
Dan, whom I like. Dan, who’s good at his job. Dan, who asks me and others, “How was lunch?”
My eyes are closed. I can’t open them. I’m afraid to open them, see the mess I’ve made, the mess I swore I’d never make again.
I hear something.
A voice.
I’ve heard voices since hair sprouted in new places as a teen. Sometimes, audible—a whisper. Sometimes, I hear the words in my mind and wonder if there’s a sound, but I’m not sure. The Doubter was the worst of this, telling me I was worthless, the bastard child nobody wanted. Poor David. Whenever I’d have something good, a girlfriend, consecutive decent grades in a class, or later Kent, professional success, and my children, he’d remind me I was no good, that I was not worthy, and I’d get to work on proving the Doubter was right.
Other times, the Dreamer, ambitious David, who believed he could solve complex problems that troubled others, soared beyond the bastard-child beginning, speaking with equal clarity, and I’d fall under his spell, chasing the ambitious direction, often before fleshing out the details, ultimately getting stuck in progress—with the Doubter waiting to remind me that I wasn’t up to it, and I’d run from the promise toward self-destruction, a victim of the bifurcated voices that left me, my work, and, therefore, my family in the wake of extremes.
I’ve since dimmed those voices, learning to better manage myself in the days AAA, without self-medication, with more honesty and less shame that comes with all that. But now, I’m hearing a voice, and it’s neither the Doubter nor the Dreamer.
It’s not too late, the voice says.
It sounds familiar, and comfortable, like tenor funneled through velvet. It sounds like Hudson. It sounds a little like me. But no.
You can fix this, the voice says.
“William?”
Yes, Dad, it’s me, he says.
I open my eyes wide.
“William!”
The sun is still shining. The car is still running. I’m crying a flash flood, tears dampening my shirt.
“William,” I say amid the river running down my face. “Dear God. William. I miss you so much. I was so afraid that voice, your voice, would slip away from me, that I’d lose it, forever.”
Silence.
“William?”
I remember my prayer on that dark, frozen, lonely night. When I cried out from the couch that he died on to keep his memory, and our connection, near me. But I can’t help but wonder if perhaps my sanity is and has been compromised since I saw the man’s translucent skin that night in the bar in California, if perhaps my dear William isn’t talking to me but I’m talking with my delusion.
You can fix this, Dad, he says. It’s not too late.
I exhale. It’s him. I’m having a conversation with my son.
“William. Right. I can fix this.”
Don’t quit, he says.
“I’m not quitting,” I say out loud, shouting into the windshield. “I just lost my temper. I’m about to get fired.”
Apologize. Tell Dan you’re sorry. Blame it on me.
“Blame it on you?”
The grief. Losing your temper. Blame it on me. Blame it on my death.
My eyes open wider. I look straight ahead, into the light.
“Right. Grief. It’s the first time I’ve yelled at anyone since you died.”
You can fix this, William says. You must fix this. You belong here.
It feels like an answered prayer. Thank God for this voice I trust, this voice who knows me, who wants to help me help myself, so I can help others.
I think about how many so-called media experts label the newspaper transition the Newhouse family is attempting as crazy. I think about how I have been labeled as crazy in the past. I think I’m making a difference with this work because I see a path through the lunacy—calming the chaos to deliver needed information to many. After all, I have experience in the realm of insanity. I’m thinking about how vital the survival of news is to our society. I’m thinking I’m foolish enough to try to fix this.
You can do it, William says.
“Okay, okay, I hear you,” I say, composure regained. “William, I have a question. What happened that night? Why didn’t you call me? You know I would have come immediately.”
Silence.
“William?”
Silence.
He’s gone.
I gather myself, turn off the engine, open the car door, and walk back to the building.
William is right.
I arrive at the pub hub door, and chatter transforms into whispers upon my return. I gaze toward Dan’s office. I can see through the glass he’s there. He looks up, sees me, and waves me over.
“Come on in,” he says. “Have a seat.”
I look at Dan eye to eye.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“I’m listening.”
“I’ve never done anything like that in the workplace before, and, unfortunately, I did it to you.”
He smiles.
“I want this job and to work with you and this company,” I say. “I’ve been through a lot in recent months. We lost our oldest child, William.”
“David,” Dan says, “I’m so sorry.”
His eyes speak truth.
I’ve never acknowledged losing William to Dan or anyone in the pub hub. I’ve been too busy trying to prove myself, too busy trying to hide my truth.
“That’s not an excuse for taking you down in front of everyone,” I say. “It’s not. But it’s the reason. I had all this emotion built up. I haven’t let it out in that way since William died. I’m sorry I dealt it on you. But I’m glad you got it, in a way, because I hope and trust you will accept my apology, and we can put this behind us and move forward.”
He smiles.
“Also,” I add, “it will never happen again. Ever.”
He smiles again.
“Let’s hope not,” Dan says. “Listen, David. I understand, and I forgive you. Let’s move on.”
We stand, and he moves in step with me to the office door. Hands extend simultaneously and we shake, firmly.
“All good, now get back to work—and hey, make sure the Birmingham paper is curated to meet the audience,” he says with a smile and a pat on the back.
“I’m on it,” I say, walking to my desk.
I take a seat, wake up my computer, and put my hands on the keyboard.
Told you so, William says, and I can hear his wide grin.
I laugh, audibly, and the laughter turns to tears streaming down my cheeks.
Yes, I think with a smile, you did. You absolutely did tell me so.
CONFLICT
I dislike five o’clock somewhere. I dislike five o’clock most anywhere, even in my home.
We’re together, Kent and I. It’s our weekend for meeting in Chattanooga, and we’ve counted down the days from Monday of being together. From my leather chair in the den, I can see her across the small condo, searing rib eye steaks over the stove. There’s a flatness, though, that neither the Diet Coke I’m sipping nor the gourmet smells can lift. We’re making small talk, in rhythm with the simmering skillet, yet she can’t get more than a yes, no, or sure out of me, because my mood is as tasteless as refrigerated leftovers, flavors muted by the changed temperature.
I’ve never liked this time, the witching hour. Growing up, 5 PM meant Mom and Dad got home from work at the university, and our house would transform from a quiet spot to Mom scrambling to prepare dinner while Eunice badgered her over her list of demands. But the fish sticks needed placing on a platter, crinkle-cut French fries needed frying, and cans of green beans needed opening so that Dad and I could eat while Eunice went back to her room, drawing Mom into a continued discussion of her demands. Mom would negotiate with Eunice for hours, returning to the kitchen later that evening, head down, to eat a cold plate of the few remaining fish sticks alone, and clean up the kitchen, alone.
Years later, with my own young family, 5 PM meant the beginning of an hour and a half in which Kent and I would both scramble to meet our children’s needs for food and baths. Kent’s homemade pot roast and mashed potatoes comforted me and our children and invited them to tell the stories of their days, which we devoured as homemade gravy. Still, with Kent cooking and feeding, me feeding and cleaning, both taking turns with bathing, 5 PM would land like an alarm, as if we were the fire crew responding to the siren’s call.
I’d find distraction with a 5 PM glass of wine, which would make the hour feel like a band I liked playing a favorite song, with others talking, which would morph into another glass at 5:45 PM and another at 6:30 before dinner, which felt like a band I liked playing a favorite song, with nobody talking, which often felt the next day as if I’d stayed at the concert for too long. The first sip at 5 PM when that fermented sugar would hit the bloodstream, firing off dopamine in the brain in a flash flood of pleasantry, spreading to fingertips and toes, would evaporate the concerns of the day, and of days gone by. Eventually, the daily habit became a crutch for decades until I said—enough of the lonesome song.
I keep since a running mental list of all I’ve gained since I decided Adderall, infidelity, and drunkenness have no good place in my life. The list is additive and long—work that redeems, waking up refreshed, moments of pleasure fueled by chocolate, a long walk, or writing good sentences. I have found joy, a joy that I didn’t know was possible, a joy that lasts, because I now feel, which means tears and sadness but not depression and paralysis.
I’d forgotten how to cry, because I was afraid to cry, and remember Kent asking me early in my forties why I didn’t. Cry. I’d explained how I cried frequently in my youth, before puberty, so much so that Mom worried I was a crybaby, too sensitive for the world, but that something had changed in junior high, and I didn’t know what. But I know now that I started running from tears about the same time crazy found me, and the absence of tears, the absence of the release of feelings, helped new feelings like anxiety and depression take root.
I embrace tears these days, shedding them liberally for William, for Kent, for my family, but also for others, especially for others, because I have learned to feel more empathy from the experience of loss. And from those tears, for William, and for others, comes joy on the other side, because we can’t have one without the other. When I stopped feeling the sadness, I muted the joy in accord, chasing artificial up-moments through glasses of wine, and, eventually, prescription Adderall and infidelity. But when I relearned crying, I began to also relearn joy because, I learned, they go together hand in hand.
I wouldn’t trade it for anything—the joy, of course, but also the tears. Especially the tears. But Lord, I miss that 5 PM distraction, really, I do. Not what it took from me. Of course not. It’s just, the brain doesn’t forget. Even with months and years of practice, I still hear that 5 PM alarm and my mind says Drink, with a voice of its own. And that’s where I am now, with Kent as she’s cooking a dinner for the two of us. I’m fidgeting, working at conversation, but it’s bland, the way sex without a buzz isn’t the same. I remember how we’d come home after several glasses of wine at a wedding and knock the sheets loose from the bed with so much uninhibited activity. Now the sheets stay tucked in, mostly, anchored by my inhibitions, and I’ll tell people that, how it’s amazing, better, in ways, but different, and they don’t understand until I ask how often they do it with at least one glass of wine in their system, and usually they give pause, to say, yeah, right. Same way with parties. Some have never been to a party as an adult without getting at least one drink to break the ice, and I was no different, except my experience dated back to teenage years.
It’s easy to keep the list of what we gain, and that’s enough to keep going. But there’s no denying what we lose, what we mourn, what we must navigate, what we try to do to make it look easy when we give up something like alcohol. That’s why at 5 PM, I want to shout expletives to release the anger of what I can’t do.
Drink like a normie, having just one, two on a special occasion, and shutting it off.
They do it. Why can’t I?
Kent’s not in love with five o’clock, either. She doesn’t suffer from alcohol use disorder as I do. Still, she’s gradually eliminated her one go-to 5 PM glass so that, unless we’re out at a restaurant or headed to a concert, she’s drinking water, distracting herself with cooking, her hobby and love language. Busy hands and all. We’ve learned to eat early, also—food strikes up dopamine, and fullness shoos away thoughts of glasses of wine. Or we’ll walk, when the alarm sounds, and eat later.
I don’t have friends in the quantity or quality that I had before because the friends I had now get together at 5 PM for drinks, or they meet for dinner with drinks, or listen to music while drinking, or gather to tailgate with drinks. I hate it, I really do. I don’t enjoy the company, talking to a friend or even family as they pour down their distraction potion of choice. The setting, and feeling, reminds me of a trip to the dentist, when they make a joke as they push on a molar with a sharp metal prong that strikes a nerve, sending a shock into your head, and you laugh, at the joke, but it’s not so funny, because.
That hurts.
This day’s 5 PM funk has descended into a fight. Kent and I now stand in our bedroom, facing one another a few feet apart, wielding our words as weapons, like enemies of the worst kind. It started when she was in the kitchen, over what, exactly, I can’t recall because that wasn’t it, anyway. She’d missed me, as I’d missed her, eager for my return. She’d made a dinner of skillet rib eye and sweet potatoes, searing the steaks just right, medium rare with some crisp on the outside, and fluffing the potatoes with butter and cinnamon. I’d gobbled it up as she sat across from me, thick brown hair streaming down to her naturally dark shoulders, and I’d thought I should take a bite of her, but I’m tired from the long week.
“The meal was excellent,” I’d said. “It’s good to be home, and thank you. Let’s go early to bed”—thinking she was feeling the same, running a busy business, going to hot yoga evenings. But my disinterest landed like a knife in her stomach. I could tell she was annoyed—no, hurt. As we cleaned up after the meal, I nonetheless brought up something that she’d forgotten that needed to be done regarding William’s estate, but it wasn’t a rush, so I suggested she make a list to remember. She said okay, but quickly brushed it off, and I’d brought it back up again, telling her how it needed to get done, and she said she’d already said okay, but I came back again, and then she said, “You are not my mother,” and now the fight is on.
I’m annoyed that she’s annoyed that I’m not giving her enough when I’ve been giving all I have at the pub hub all week. I’m prodding, not because I’m genuinely bothered by what she forgot, which isn’t overdue or late—it’s just that I’m a list maker and checker, and she’s a “do it when I recall and have time” type—but because I know what’s simmering, in reality, is years of pent-up anger and hurt over what I’ve done to her, cheating, multiple times, letting hard-earned money slip away, as if it, like her, wasn’t valued at all.
When she’d taken me back, Kent had said, “It won’t be easy,” this reboot of a marriage. She feels the glare of every woman who comes into her store, who knows I cheated on her, who knows she took me back. I know that’s the truth. I know she’d like to take me apart for the deeds I’ve done. But fight about it every day, it’ll never work. Fight about it every month, it’ll never work. We’ve talked about it all, so many times, and I’ve apologized, once or twice literally on my knees. Still, it simmers.
Still. I’ve done this to her, I’ve done this to myself, and it’s not like in a divorce where two planes of hurt travel in different directions, landing in new lives with new people, sorting out the pain of the earlier relationship slowly and securely, or not. No, it doesn’t matter so much when both have gone separate ways since anger doesn’t hurt so much, eventually, when its object is out of sight. But here we are, together, and Kent must work at living with me in joy, while living with the accrued weight of it all. I understand that the past replays in her mind and evokes feelings that overpower her. Kent tried to fight them off as I chewed the steak and gave a meek thank-you, but now she’s feeling them, and I’m annoyed that she’s not letting us live in the moment.
