“… Sober?” I asked, thinking he’d smile, but he just looked sad.
“Yes. Sober.”
“I am,” I said. “For today.” I didn’t give him a day count. There had been far too many times in the past when I had used my fifteen days, or eighteen days, or twenty-four days to throw in his face, right before diving into drink again.
Jason nodded, and in his sadness I saw everything he was thinking: Why couldn’t you have done this years ago? Why did you have to wait until our family had been torn apart? Why did you leave it until it is too late?
I know what he was thinking because I was thinking the same thing myself. I left then, tears leaking down my cheeks all the way home. I got my daughter back, under court supervision, for half the time. But I didn’t get Jason back. I had changed, but he hadn’t. The damage I had wrought had altered his feelings. He would always love me, he said, but he just didn’t have the wherewithal to do it anymore. He was so scared of it happening again, and he didn’t trust me, my new sobriety.
So here I am, eighteen months after our divorce, rebuilding my life, interviewing women like the one I interviewed earlier today, about how she threw her life away for an affair, and I have long known that the greatest affair of my life was with alcohol. I love Jason, but I loved drinking more; in my heart I chose Jason, but everything overruled that, and drinking won, every time.
I did what I had to do, all the work successful recovering alcoholics do to stay successful recovering alcoholics, moving through the steps, speaking to my sponsor every day, filling my free time with meetings.
Finally, I reached the one step I was dreading, the step I had been dreading since the moment I first heard of this program. Step 9: Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
I had a very long list, and the big ones, the ones I left to the end, the ones that had haunted me for years, were my family. The other family. The ones I had let down so badly it is still sometimes unbearable for me to think about.
Three years ago, before I got sober, my father died. Brooks. I wrote to Ellie and Julia then, not to make amends, but to let them know how sorry I was, how sad. I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t hear from them. Just sad. And sadder still that I will never have a chance to make my amends to him.
I have worked my way through the rest of the list. The easy ones, most of whom had no idea what I was talking about. I phoned Jackie and met her for coffee, and I told her I had to make amends for all the late mornings and lying, and late copy, and she just cracked up laughing and told me I was being ridiculous.
I haven’t worked my way through the entire list yet. No one explained quite how long it would take. But I have made amends to Jason, and it did make a difference. Not quite the difference I would have liked—he has made it clear that he has moved on, that he and I as a couple are never going to work, but my acknowledgment of the hell I had put him through seemed to ease things between us, pave the way for, if not a friendship, then at least a convivial coparenting relationship.
Although all that may have changed now that Cara has come on the scene.
Eighteen
I buzz the door open and check my hair in the mirror. I may not stand a chance with Jason, our marriage may be well and truly dead in the water, our divorce a fact of life I have to live with every day, but I still want him to feel some regret, want him to look at me wistfully, see me at my best.
While Annie gathered her things, I surreptitiously ran to the bathroom and tidied myself up. Not too much, not enough for Annie to notice, although she’s thirteen: She notices everything. Primer to remove the shine and turn my skin into silk, a touch of bronzing powder that glimmers seductively on my cheekbones, a slick of gloss, my hair quickly brushed, then gathered up in a loose bun, tendrils hanging