The guy ended up finishing his degree but also writing a novel about that restaurant.
So why would such a woman, accomplished and adept, loved and lauded, already in possession of all the gifts life could offer to the body and the spirit, trade those blessings for a couple of inches of firepower at the bottom of a glass with a twist of lime? Why would she do that, with not a single hint of any addiction in her ancestry, to the tip of the last branch of the family tree?
As Rebecca posed those questions, I thought to myself, indeed…why would Stefan?
I let my eyes slide over to him then, and I saw that he was already looking at me, looking at me as if my skull were made of window glass and he could read every thought on my brain. He knew the answer. There was no clear answer. There was no dot-to-dot that, traced, would set forth a clear route that could be studied, understood and avoided.
“Pretty soon, I figured out that the very attractive money was combat pay,” Becky said.
When Alice was sober, she was diligent, generous, painstaking and charming. When Alice was on a bender, she was devious, defiant, sometimes cruel…and charming. “It was like taking care of a baby who never got older but could filibuster like a senator, which she could, it was her birthright, okay? Lying was to Alzy like the cello to Yo-Yo Ma. She had a gift. It was almost something you could admire.”
With a reproving look that asked, how could you suspect anything else, Alzy would sometimes tell Becky, “I’m just getting my briefcase out of the car.” But minutes would pass. Alzy would not return. Then the grim hunt would begin. Friends’ houses, restaurants, libraries, parks, bars, bus shelters along the lakeshore, the Civic Center parking lot.
Becky would be afraid to call Alice’s sisters or her mother and father or her ex-husband, afraid that they would put Alice back in rehab and Alice would lose her good job or never see her children again. Becky would also lose her good job. The Hodges trusted Becky and treated her like family. And Alzy was ever gallant, loving, contrite, when she was sober.
“I loved her,” Becky told Stefan and me. “I wanted to save her. But I was only one girl.”
Alzy loved Christmas.
The first Christmas after the final salvo of the custody battle with her ex-husband, she was to have the girls with her starting that Christmas Eve. Not a drop of liquor passed her lips. The days were tender and festive. But when they went back to their dad several days later, her mood plummeted.
That New Year’s Eve was gorgeously counterfeit: The sun was so high and bright it was impossible to believe that the high temperature, in late afternoon, was minus four. In the evening Alzy sat and gazed into the fireplace and drank huge mugs of what Rebecca believed was tea. Becky recalled Alice turning to her and saying, “I love my little girls. And I love my husband. I had everything. I ruined everything.”
“It’s not all your fault, Alzy,” Becky told her. “You have a disease. You just can’t have booze, is all. It’ll kill you.”
“Then I might as well be dead.”
“Not even a little. Your girls need you. Your husband probably needs you. You can see how much he loves you. So many people love you and admire you and count on you.”
As I listened to Becky, Stefan made tea and brought each of us a mug. Becky thanked him and went on.
“Finally, I calmed her down enough to put my arms around her and help her get settled in bed,” Becky said. “I thought, well, here I am, twenty-one years old on New Year’s Eve! The glitter times just never end.” But she was too worn out to even consider any of the invitations to go out dancing that friends had left on her voice mail. In the coach house, Becky took a long bath and made a deep dive under the fat goose-down comforter her grandmother had made for Rebecca’s last birthday. When she woke, it was past midnight.
“I knew something was wrong,” she said, tears filling her eyes as she took a deep draught from her mug of tea.
For just that reason, Rebecca never put her coat or boots away; she kept them next to her bed “like a farmer or a vet” so she could shove her feet and arms into them and run down the stairs and through the passage from the coach house to the main house. The main house was freezing, the front door wide open. When she looked outside, she saw that Alzy’s car was gone, although Becky had parked her own car behind it and had no idea how Alzy had maneuvered her own car around it without being able to make a Volvo station wagon fly.
“I pushed the door closed. Snow was drifted onto the floor. The door had been open for a long time. And I saw how crafty she was. Her keys were gone but so were mine. And her winter boots were missing from the hallway mat.”