“So, for Christmas, I want to buy you a winter coat,” Peter’s mother said as she handed Peter a catalog for L.L.Bean.
“Let me see.” I snatched it from him. I started to thumb through it and felt Sue looking with me.
“I really like Jake’s coat. Where did he get it?”
“I bought it for him,” she said. “Where did Peter get those boots?”
“They’re Frye boots. I got them for him when we first got together.”
She nodded.
Oh god, we were two little kids dressing up our Ken dolls.
“I like that one,” she said, pointing at an image of a blond-haired man frozen in midwalk with a dog on a mountain path. He was wearing a brown leather bomber.
“Yeah, I wonder if the dog comes with it.”
“I wonder if the man comes with it,” she said in my ear. Sue was an onion peeling itself in front of me.
“I like this one,” I announced.
Peter’s mother came over to look at it. “Oh, honey, five hundred dollars, I don’t think we can afford that.” Christ, I had to pick the most expensive thing in the fucking catalog.
I handed the catalog back to Peter.
Everyone went to the enclosed porch. They put on a home movie.
In the movie, Peter was swaying in a doorway in blue jeans and a denim jacket, his brown hair falling over his face. “Whose birthday is it?” his father, holding the camera, asked. “Gracie’s birthday,” Peter said. He was looking at the floor. Then we followed him to Sandy, who was sitting on the ground with fat-faced Gracie among wrapped presents. Jake was sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Open the presents!” he demanded. Gracie was handed one but looked unsure about what to do. Jake grabbed it from her and ripped it open. Peter interceded, “No, let her do it. No! Mom, it’s not fair!” Everyone laughed.
The morning after one of my first nights with Peter, we were late and rushing to the bookstore. We huffed up the subway stairs and saw the electronic board indicating our train would arrive in two minutes. “We don’t have to rush,” Peter said, but just then we heard the train come and go before we reached the platform. “It said two minutes! That was like a second!” Peter yelled. He kicked one of the benches, pissed off. “It’s just not fair,” he said, shaking his head and doing an excellent impression of a bratty kid. I looked at him, baffled. My jaded, calloused heart flopped around, having a seizure. Peter wasn’t hardened to the daily frustrations normal grown-ups shrugged their shoulders at while thinking, “Of course, the board lied, because the world is fucked-up.” Peter’s heart was fleshy and pink, and I didn’t want anything to hurt it.
Watching other people’s home movies was so boring. It was like listening to someone tell you about a dream. Who cares, if you’re not in it?
“I’m going to bed,” I announced, and went back to the bedroom. Before I turned on the light, I heard someone come in behind me.
“I want you to know I haven’t given up on him.”
Rick was standing there.
“How do I turn this on?” I asked, with my fingers on the lamp’s neck.
“There’s a switch.” I found the switch and clicked it on and turned to face him.
“I wanted you to know. There’s still time. Maybe tomorrow in the car on the ride to the train station I can talk to him.”
Two weeks ago, I had called Rick in hysterics about Peter’s drinking.
“Okay,” I said.
“Maya, I don’t know how to broach the subject without telling him you called me.”
I sat on the bed. “Look, if you think it will help, I’ll tell him.” Peter would kill me, but I couldn’t tell his father that, because then it would look like our relationship was fucked-up.
“No, I think you’re right. He’ll just feel angry, I think.” He scanned the room. “I don’t really know what to do. I’ve always felt like I failed Peter, you know. I didn’t help him find a profession. I could have done better.” Oh god, he was confiding in me. Was I supposed to say it wasn’t true? That he had been a great father? That I knew Peter adored him? There was a silence during which I should have said something, but I didn’t, and then Rick asked, “So, how has his drinking been?”
“Better,” I said. I never should have said anything. “He went through that period of drinking every day, and it was a nightmare, but then he stopped. Probably it was only a phase.” Was it better to justify why I’d called Peter’s parents, so they didn’t think I was being a drama queen, or to act like I had overreacted, so I wouldn’t have to have this awkward conversation? I shouldn’t have ever called. Every time you think you should do the right thing, you probably shouldn’t do anything. And if we started talking about drinking with Peter, after Peter’s rage against me subsided, it would only be a hop and a skip to him telling them about my drug thing. God, I wanted a bag. As soon as I got home. “Do you think he has a drinking problem?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes, I do. I visited him once at college, and we went to a grocery store, and he bought a bottle of gin at ten in the morning, and I thought, There’s something wrong here.”
What the fuck? He saw his kid buying a bottle of hard alcohol in front of him before breakfast and did absolutely nothing about it? If it had been my mother, the bottle would never have made it to the register. I felt torn between how Peter’s and my parents were on opposite sides of the spectrum. Peter’s parents only said nice things or nothing; my mother only said awful things all the time. Finally I said, “If it gets bad again, I’ll call you.” Rick left. I popped a Xanax and got into bed.
Even though the whole talk with Peter’s dad was awkward, I couldn’t help but resent Peter. There was no one asking about me. There was no one whispering about how I was doing, trying to spare my feelings.
What was the difference between Peter drinking and me using? Maybe I resented Peter because his addiction was something legal and mainstream and pretty much accepted. Most people could relate to wanting a stiff drink at the end of the night. People thought hangovers were funny. It was easy for Peter to hide in plain sight with his obvious addiction. Sideways was about appreciating wine, not a pathetic alcoholic who stole money from his mother. But no film director wanted to pretend dope wasn’t a big deal.
When I drank for the first time at age thirteen, I thought, Why don’t people do this all the time? I loved it. I chugged whiskey for fifteen seconds longer than all the boys. But once I discovered dope, alcohol just made me clumsy and dumb, and the hangover was so dark. Elizabeth called anxious hungover thoughts the “creeping fear.” With dope, I could function. It was like wearing armor. You went through the world and nothing could touch you.
Tomorrow night I would be in my own bed with my old problems. I switched off the light.
I couldn’t sleep. I should have lain there in bed and thought weird thoughts or masturbated. But I didn’t. I went back out and joined the others. Everyone had found themselves weirdly awake and wanted to hang out more.
“Why don’t we play a game?”
“Why don’t we watch a movie?”
And then I unwittingly destroyed everything by suggesting we watch the Netflix film I’d received in the mail the day before. It was about a man who had grown up in a rural town, who brings home his sophisticated girlfriend from the city. She does not fit in. I popped it into the DVD player. Five minutes later, all hell broke loose.
I had seen it in the theater when it first came out, and I didn’t remember anything dirty. But during the opening credits, as the couple was driving to meet the guy’s parents, she started rubbing his leg, and then they got frisky while he was trying to drive and he swerved.