Mornings Always Made Us Better

CAM AND I WERE TWENTY-TWO AND DRINKING WHITE WINE IN THE ARIZONA SUMMER FOR AUNT BABE’S BIRTHDAY PARTY, and it was good, but it wasn’t enough and we both knew this.

Drinking is so bad for you, Cam. He laughed. I laughed.

Too late, he said. He laughed. I laughed.

I told him about this camping party from high school. My friends and I took bottles of Absolut Citron for dinner and M & M’s for dessert. One friend fell in a wash but she was ok. Most of us left dehydrated. We all always threw up. Too much heat and alcohol.

Cam and I drank more. We’re going to be so sick later, I said. But then it will be so funny. Our aunt, who we called Aunt Babe because she was super hot, came by and smiled at us, and I teased Cam that maybe if something happened to our uncle, he could try. Aunt Babe’s age was closer to us than our uncle’s age.

So I said I’ll go get the hard alcohol. My boyfriend at the time said you don’t need to leave your family’s party to get vodka or whatever it is you think you need. But there wasn’t any, and someone had to get it. I walked around and asked others what they might want to make it look like I was doing a favor for everyone, but I was doing a favor for myself because I have a lot of anxiety, and I got my car keys, and Cam came with me because Cam and I always went for booze together. And when we got back, my boyfriend shook his head at me, and fuck him, and I went into the kitchen, and poured a shot of vodka for me and Cam, then poured two more, and Cam waved me off, and I said, Jesus grow some balls and do the shot, and he drank the shot with me and I felt it hit me fast, which is what I wanted, and the loop of disappointment I made in myself was complete, and then I fixed myself a drink with more vodka and juice and fixed the same drink for Cam and we went back outside because another cousin had plugged in an iPod and T-Pain’s Low was on and we started dancing.

*

The backyard drinking story was the story I almost told in Al-Anon. That story was fun. Cam and I always had fun. Phoenix bars. Vegas. So many trips to Vegas. We always had fun until we didn’t. We were always on the same page until we weren’t. He lost his job—it was a dumb office job but still. He started bartending. He was good at it. He liked people, and he connected well with strangers. He made a lot of money at first. He was happy, in the beginning, because beginnings are the happiest places.

I didn’t tell the backyard drinking story. I only said my name and hello and everyone repeated my name and said hello back. I learned to bring my own tissue to these things. The first time I came unarmed and at least five people jumped up and rushed to get me tissue, which made me uncomfortable. Al-Anon was always in the back of a church. Different groups. Different churches. This was my fourth meeting. They told me to try six meetings before I decide to keep going or give up.

The circle continued, and the woman next to me said she found peace within herself for a few days last week. The woman next to her passed, waved her off then dabbed her eyes with a tissue then crossed her arms.

The woman next to them said her name and hello and we all said her name and hello. Then she said, “I found my alcoholic’s shoes in the refrigerator.”

The group laughed and felt grateful for the break in darkness. She regaled us with more of her alcoholic’s hijinks. Her alcoholic often puts things in crazy places, and she cleaned up after him, and he seemed to have no capacity to handle himself, and he ruined mattresses and couches and now it’s like she had a little kid all over again. I forgot myself and laughed, too. A child was vulnerable. An adult alcoholic was vulnerable.

“When he’s good, we’re good. You know? And a long time ago, he was just so full of life. He was so put together. I look back 20 years and I try and try and try to piece it together. Where it went wrong. Where I went wrong. What made him cross that line? His job? Me? The kids? Mortgage? Pressure? His family are all big drinkers? Anyway. I hang on because I think there’s enough of who he used to be left in him,” the funny woman said. “And I just can’t get out of that cycle. I just want to be good all the time. But we’re stuck, you know? We’re stuck together. But he won’t go to meetings anymore. So I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

No laughter this time. Many in the room nodded along. Endings are always the saddest places.

The woman sitting next to her said her name and hello and we said her name and hello.

“Yeah, I gotta tell you. Sometimes I wish my alcoholic would just die and break us all from these chains,” she said.

More laughter.

Dark humor helped the pills go down, and one should not be afraid to speak in Safe Places like this one. I’m not upset that woman joked she wished her alcoholic would die. People say insensitive things all the time. The comment was not insensitive. The comment was her release. Irreverence can be funny.

This was what stayed with me, maybe, how hard I judged others when it’s my own breath that bothered me the most.

When the meeting concluded, the group members milled about the room. The woman who said she wished her alcoholic was dead smiled at me, and if she knew what she said soured me, she didn’t let on, so I smiled back. She and another woman talked to me about the Al-Anon steps. You gotta do the steps, they insisted. Another woman offered to hug me. I let her.

The group leader reminded us to take our chairs down the hall because AA met after us. AA was in the bigger room. We walked the chairs in one by one and offered relief to the standing people.

*

Jesus loomed over us, his abs ripped, his head bowed in complete despair. Cam’s picture from a long time ago was blown up resting on an easel. His smile had been our chorus. His smile could eat you alive.

Aunt Babe touched the checkered silk Burberry scarf around my neck.  “Can I borrow this?” she asked.

Mourners moved around us. The regular Catholics genuflected and performed the sign of the cross. The pews filled. Organized religion was bullshit but childhood was childhood, so in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, ah-men.

I bought the scarf last weekend, a frenzied impulse buy off an app, an online second hand clothing shop. I paid $178 for it. I put it on my credit card. For thirty seconds, it felt like a thrill. Aunt Babe held her hands out. I unwound the scarf from my neck and gave it to her.

“Lifesaver,” she said in a breathy voice.

She arranged the scarf around Cam’s urn, stood back to admire her work, then fussed with it more. Those colors were not Cam’s colors. Aunt Babe nodded to herself then took her seat next to her family. I reached into my bag for the now crumpled tissue I’d tossed in this morning.

Most of our family sat on the left. Cam’s friends sat off to the right, all gray, damp, and brutalized. His girlfriend sat away from all of us. She stared ahead. She was the one who had a job, we all knew. Cam wasn’t working. Who was giving him money? None of us invited her in.

The processional began. My aunt and uncle and Cam’s two sisters entered. I stood along with my parents.

The priest spoke a long time. We stood, kneeled, stood again. The priest did the rap about peace, and peace be with you and, also with you. Everyone hugged and kissed, and I’ve never liked that. I don’t like to feel pressured from the Catholic church to leave my aisle to go to other aisles to shake hands with a person who might have a cold. Communion was offered to everyone. Part of me wanted to skip it, sit out for protest. I haven’t gone to confession since I was a kid because it’s ridiculous to sit in front of a priest who was just a man—at this point in Catholic canon maybe a pedophile—and tell him so-called terrible things. I participated in manufactured penance as a child. I refused to participate in it as an adult. But this was for Cam.

My scarf clung to the urn. Jesus wept. I considered another Al-Anon group. Cam smiled. Maybe it’s the wrong time for Al-Anon. The entire church stood up for communion.  Maybe this is what they mean when people erupt after a mass shooting about gun control. All of us filed out in the aisle and took our blessings and wafers. Maybe the immediacy of a tragedy is enough. No wine. Active crisis was not the time. Do Catholics get wine during Communion anymore? I’m not in active crisis. Al-Anon was a back door to AA, someone online told me. Communion was a dumb wafer that tasted like paper and guilt. The crisis died.

One of Cam’s friends performed “Hallelujah” as the last song. His voice was strong, then it broke, but he kept playing. We hovered in the entryway of the church when it was over. The family planned a small brunch at a restaurant down the street. The back room had been reserved for us. Aunt Babe returned my scarf folded in the most perfect way. I stuffed it in my coat pocket.

*

Cam was both dead and active now on Facebook Messenger. I took a long drink of my red wine. This had been happening since he died, and I think it’s his girlfriend using his password. His profile pic was black and white. The wine is from a nice bottle I bought a few months back on a wine tour.

His girlfriend’s profile pic was also the two of them, but in color. He doesn’t look like himself. He looked ill. Thin. Ashy. He was the wrong color. The picture was taken in what looks like their bedroom. I took another long drink of wine and rubbed my eyes and continued scrolling.

The last message I’d sent him was two weeks before he died. My—our—30^thbirthday was upcoming, and I was throwing myself a party. Casual.

I asked how he was doing. He said he was great! Someone who says they are great (!) wasn’t dying. I read this message several times. Can you believe I’m going to 30? And that you are going to be 30?

This was the most interaction I’d had with him in months. My fault. My fault? My fault. Cam and I grew apart. It happened. Cam worked nights at a club, then a bar and grill, then at a series of dives, then nothing. I worked downtown in a high-rise building. I had to sleep at night. Cam went too hard. He was fine and then he just went too goddamn hard and I had to look away. Cam wanted everyone to love him. I loved him.

The green dot next to his name meant he was on Messenger right now.

Cam?

Dumb. He’s dead. His girlfriend was on his Messenger.

They came to Thanksgiving last year. Kept to themselves. They left early. I didn’t know what to say. Cam and I hugged, briefly. He didn’t look at me. They took an Uber. Responsible. They were both super fucked up even before they got there.

I should contact Facebook, right? Tell them he’s gone. Did he leave a legacy contact? Fucking Facebook.

I typed in his name in the search and found him tagged in a video at a friend’s party. I watched the video five times to hear his voice and his laugh and see his smile live instead of in pictures. I poured a third glass of wine.

Someone should tell that girl to stop. Just be like, you’re a mess, and stop it, or get some help with your grief or whatever, but stop lurking in his Facebook and reading his old messages because that can’t be doing anything helpful for you.

Get help.

The thought of help arrives and disappears like meditation. Someone, her friends, will tell her and she’ll stop. Sometime soon, she’ll stop because she has to. No one can live in all that for long. She’ll stop because she’ll reach a point where she’ll want to stop on her own. Because that’s what people do, and that’s what you have to let people do. They stop their own shit in their own time in their own way.

I returned to the messages Cam and I sent back and forth.

Come to my birthday, Cam! That’s the best I could do? Come to my party like old times.

Birthdays. So worthless. Try harder.

Please, Cam, you should come to my birthday.

Try. Harder.

I miss you, come to my birthday so we can hang out again I haven’t seen you in so long so much has changed are you ok?

Try.

Do you remember the morning after Aunt Babe’s birthday, we sat outside in the sunshine, and you brought me a cup of coffee and my stomach felt sour from throwing up, and you had a headache, and we laughed about how we were right, weren’t we, now it was funny, and we looked at pictures of the night before and agreed we had so much fun and laughed so much, and we joked to each other we might still be drunk but we said no, we’d gotten the poison out. No, we were fine because that’s what happened in the morning. We became fine again. Remember? Mornings always made us better.