Annie shrugs. “Pippa’s really boring. There’s no way I’m sitting with Pippa. She’s still obsessed with One Direction, which is just so yawn.”
Annie grimaces with disdain, and I think now is not the time to point out her bedroom wall is littered with posters of Harry Styles.
“Do you have homework?” Some days, Annie comes home filled with chatter, and I delight in listening to her, the two of us able to sit at the kitchen table for hours, but other days, like today, it is like squeezing blood from a stone.
“A bit,” she says.
“Why don’t you get it out? I’m going to start making dinner for tomorrow night.”
“What’s happening tomorrow night?”
“Sam’s coming over. He’s turned pescaterian, so I thought I’d do salmon.”
“Can you do risotto?” The only kind of fish my daughter will eat is the kind that is disguised by carbohydrate.
“Maybe,” I say. “Although I was thinking of doing something simple, then making ice cream for dessert.”
“He’ll definitely eat the ice cream,” Annie says, knowing full well that Sam is always on some kind of ridiculous diet, all of which goes out the window when it comes to dessert.
Sam has progressed from my gay best friend to my gay husband. He often commissions me, bless him, and since he and his long-term partner split up a couple of months before Jason and I did, he understands exactly what I have gone through. Although he is the one I invariably turn to for advice, I do believe we have become each other’s ports in the storm. The only thing he doesn’t quite get is the AA stuff. He drinks. Not excessively, unless it’s a celebration, but he doesn’t understand why I can’t have the occasional glass of champagne.
We have learned to agree to disagree. After I got sober, this time, I let go of a lot of people, the relationships I had that were based on drinking. I didn’t want to be around unhealthy people anymore. Sam isn’t exactly unhealthy, but if I didn’t love him so much, I might have reconsidered his constant urging to “go on, just a glass.” Luckily, I have been sober enough for long enough that it doesn’t bother me. I am never tempted these days, and quite happy to keep wine at home for when Sam comes over.
It helps that Annie completely adores him. The three of us have formed an unlikely family of choice. Birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Sam is always first on our list.
Annie looks at me. “What kind of ice cream will you make?”
“I thought maybe banana.”
Annie makes a face. “Or I could do coffee chocolate chip.” She grins—her favorite ice cream, and even though I know I shouldn’t, for she will doubtless finish the tub within the next day, even though I know I should be trying to encourage her to stay away from the devil that is sugar, she’s my daughter, and this makes her happy, and the guilt I have long carried over the years I was not the kind of mother I should have been, not the kind of mother anyone would have wanted, is enough to make me give her ice cream every day for the rest of her life, if that will make her happy.
Sixteen
I have now spent years trying to make people happy after that disastrous summer when I left Nantucket, left so much unhappiness in my wake.
I have now spent years trying to figure out how to make myself happy, how to come to terms with who I am.
Who am I?
I am an alcoholic.
Today, I am a grateful, recovering alcoholic, but it was not always the case.
My first foray into the world of recovery was in my early thirties, just after I met the man who would become my husband, against his better judgment, against, perhaps, everyone’s better judgment.
I slept with my long-lost sister’s boyfriend, although I have no recollection of it. My father, who I had only just found after twenty-nine years, kicked me to the curb. He did so kindly, and with tremendous regret. He did so even while admitting that he recognized himself in me, the drinking, the terrible behavior that I refused to see.
He had, he said, done enough damage to his own family with his drinking, and it wasn’t fair to continue to bring more destruction by letting me stay. Plus there was the small fact of my sister refusing to ever speak to me again. It was better, he said, if I left. And