Joanna Rakoff - A Fortunate Age

During the day, at work, she read about alcoholism and depression. There were, she found, hundreds of websites devoted to each and twice that many message boards where people conversed about their own struggles or those of their husbands, mothers, brothers, and so on. There was a large group, Al-Anon, for family and friends of alcoholics, which had meetings of its own all over the city. Briefly, she considered going, to show her support for Curtis’s endeavors—but then dismissed the idea as overzealous and more likely to annoy or embarrass Curtis than to impress him with the extent of her devotion. Instead, she kept reading, tracking the cycle of addiction—and depression, for the two seemed interlinked—from start to finish. She read about genetics—the importance of family history—in both diseases (“Alcoholism is a disease,” the AA sites shouted). She memorized the signs of alcoholism—Do you drink alone? In the mornings? Do you have blackouts? Do you frequently drink to excess?—and the signs of depression. Curtis, she decided, had none of the former, and some of the latter. She read about codependency—which seemed, clearly, to be what was going on with Curtis and Amy—and “addictive personality,” the existence of which, she discovered, was currently in debate among psychologists and neurobiologists, though it made a sort of sense to her, for she saw Clara in the profiles she read, and Curtis, too, and most troublingly, herself, the way she had to have her first cup of coffee—made precisely the way she liked it, in a tiny French press, with a half teaspoon of sugar—at precisely 8:00 a.m., and her first glass of wine at 7:00 p.m. Now that Curtis had given up his glass, she found herself, during her lonely Sundays, counting the minutes until she could allow herself this pleasure. On the good Sundays, when she was content with her own company, she sat, lazily drinking, through the evening, then fell into bed early, her head pleasantly fuzzed. On the bad Sundays, though, she tried to resist the urge, for wouldn’t it be slightly disloyal to Curtis to drink in his absence? Wouldn’t she somehow jinx their whole affair if she took so much as a sip of pinot noir?

But on this Sunday—this bad, bad Sunday, which should have been a good, better-than-good Sunday, for the next day was a holiday and they would be happy, they would be celebrating, they would be among their friends!—as she cooked her sad solo meal (spaghetti with jarred sauce), a spot of rage broke through and she brought out the bottle and the corkscrew, ensuring, in her private schema, that Curtis wouldn’t call that night—as he sometimes did on Sundays—just to say good night and that he loved her and was thinking of her.

“Fuck him,” she said aloud. “I’ll see him tomorrow. I don’t need to talk to him tonight.” At that, the pins of the top lock thunked heavily in their steel casings. Emily jumped and put down the bottle with a heavy thud, just as Curtis’s long head poked through the door.

“Hey,” he said, loping across the room and kissing her.

“Hey,” she said warily. He had never, ever broken their Sunday rule. “What are you doing here?”

Curtis shrugged. “I just thought I’d stop over and see you.” He looked at the bottle of wine on the counter. “Were you just about to have a glass of wine?” She nodded. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll have one, too.”

“But what about—” she asked.

“My three months are up,” he said, grinning. “I saw Amy today and she talked to my sponsor. He told her that I’ve been clean for the whole summer.”

Emily began to laugh. “Oh my God, Curtis , I got so wrapped up in all this that I guess I thought it was forever.” She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. She felt giddy, lighter than she had in months, since this whole business had started. “So, if you’re having a drink, does that mean you’re not an alcoholic?”

“Yep,” he said. “Just like you said. I’ve done a lot of thinking.”

Emily ran her hands over his long arms,with their fine brown hairs, and wrapped them around her. “Oh my God, Curtis, it’s been so hard. I’ve been trying so hard not to ask you about it, but I feel like there’s nothing else to talk about.” She looked up into his face. “So this means, right, that you’ll get the divorce soon? Right after Labor Day?”

Curtis nodded. “Not right after Labor Day, because of the tour. But right when I get back.”

Say nothing , she counseled herself, but her pulse had already sped up, the words rushing out in venomous spurts. “But you’re not leaving until Thursday. Couldn’t you get started on the paperwork on Tuesday? You know, Meredith Weiss said she’d help.” Curtis sighed and took off his glasses. Without them he looked young, so young that she wanted to grab him and hold him and run her fingers through his hair. She wanted to say, I’m sorry. I hate myself for being this way, but I can’t stop. But her mouth had turned hard. She couldn’t open it to speak.

“We have the show on Wednesday night, at Hammerstein, and Alana”—this was the publicist—“has some interview for us, some NPR thing, and some other stuff. It’s gonna be crazy.”

He sounded, she thought, as tired as she felt. Good , she thought, he deserves it . And suddenly she knew what she wanted: she wanted to punish him. “She won’t do it,” she said. “Why don’t you just tell me the truth?”

Curtis held up his hand to her and gave her a look so sad she knew she was right. She pulled her legs from his and planted them on the floor. “Okay,” he said, nodding. “She just wants to wait a bit. A few months. It’s no big deal.”

“Oh my God.” Emily dropped her head in her hands. She’d expected him to deny this, to say no, no, no, everything was fine. “A few months . No. No. No .” Before he could answer, she’d sprung up from the couch and was shouting, “I am so sick of her shit. If I ever have to hear her name again, I’m going to fucking slit my wrists . She’s a stupid, manipulative, selfish bitch. I just don’t get it. I don’t fucking get it.” She had moved from shouting to screaming, her hands shaking with rage ( adrenaline , she thought, from some rational corner of her brain). “What the fuck is wrong with you? Why don’t you see it? She does this shit to you, Curtis, she manipulates you.”At this word, she began to cry, which only made her more angry, for Amy, fucking Amy , didn’t deserve her tears. “Everything goes right for you and she does this stupid shit to cut you down, telling you you’re an alcoholic—it’s fucking ridiculous . And you believed her.” Curtis was staring at her, lips parted, from his perch on the couch, the skin around his eyes white and shiny with fatigue.

“Emily, come on,” he said, in a whisper. “Don’t say these things. This isn’t you.”

A hoarse sob escaped her throat, then turned into a scream. “This is me. I want to get married and have kids and do… do normal things, just like everyone else . Just like fucking Amy, the fucking anarchist , with her fucking apartment in Park fucking Slope , that her fucking parents bought her.” Her breath was coming in big ragged gulps and her eyes burned, but the storm was passing. All she wanted now was for him to leave, to leave her alone. “I’m just like everyone else,” she said, pressing her hands into the sockets of her eyes. “I want the same things. I want a normal life.”

“No, no, you’re not,” he said, wrapping his arms around her. “You’re not .” He smoothed her hair back from her hot forehead and she allowed herself to relax, to melt into him for a moment before she remembered what he’d said—there would be no divorce, not now, not ever , she knew. She shook his hand off.