Dawn #2
“Hey, Mom.” I wasn’t even going to bother with small talk. “So listen. Have you heard of these Vineland books?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“I accepted a job to do a book release party for the last one in the series, so I just finished reading the first one to get a feel for the setting. Have you read any of them?”
“I haven’t. Why?”
“Because whoever wrote them knew a lot about our home.”
Mom laughed. “Like what?”
“Like the hammock that Grandpa Leo knotted and you keep in a special box. Like the creaky fourth stair.”
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sure those are just coincidences. Your grandfather isn’t the only man who knotted his own hammock in the fifties.”
“There’s more. The horrible drive up Spring Mountain and the special clearing half a mile from the house with the amazing view.” Telling her about the thematic resonances felt a little too woo-woo somehow, so I stuck to the factual similarities.
“I’m sure there is some explanation,” Mom said, and it frustrated me that she wasn’t more interested in this. “Plenty of people have driven that road. Maybe the author lives in Napa. That would be exciting.”
Jittery from lack of sleep and the swirl of all my questions, I blurted out, “Was my dad a writer? You’ve always said he was an artist. Could he have written them?”
“No.” Her answer was so swift. Too swift. “He was not a writer.” I didn’t believe her, though. This was the first time in my life I had ever questioned my mother’s honesty.
“Then help me out, Mom. Who could it be?”
“How about you give me some time to read one of them myself?”
I didn’t reply right away. I wanted her to pick up the thread of my father again. But she didn’t. Instead, she said, “What is the first book called?”
“Phoebe and the Burning Vines.”
“Phoebe, you said?”
“Yes.”
“I’m just writing it all down.”
“You’ll read it?”
“I’ll read it.”
“Can you hurry?”
“I’ll get the first one today. Now I need to get to work.”
“It’s Saturday.”
“The grapes don’t know it’s the weekend.”
She’d given Raul weekend duty a million years ago. She was obviously trying to get off the phone.
“Hey, Mom,” I caught her before hanging up.
“Yes?”
“What about the pen name of the author. E. Lang. Does that ring any bells for you?”
“Lang?”
“Yes.” That was the second name she’d repeated.
“No, I’m afraid it doesn’t,” she said.
“Alright,” I replied, though the goose bumps on my skin had only intensified during this conversation. “Read quickly, okay?”
“I promise.”
Since it was Saturday, I had to wait at least two more hours before calling Audrey, so I went to an early yoga class at the studio around the corner and practically fainted on the mat from lack of sleep and too much coffee, and afterward I wound up at the egg-sandwich place for the hangover special.
I felt hungover. Well, maybe not that bad. But since I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol, it seemed especially unfair that I would feel this jangly, with a headache coming on.
The gooey egg and cheese and bacon on sourdough did steady me, though. I added an orange juice to diffuse the caffeine in the hopes that I could nap when I got home. Just as I was bussing my plate and glass, two texts pinged into my phone.
Dennis:
So the Roxie is showing North by Northwest next week. Want to go?
Audrey:
I slept with Jed again. What the fuck is wrong with me?
I hurried home, flopped on the couch, and Alfie immediately lay down on my legs. I’m not letting you leave without me again, that position seemed to tell me. With my hand in his soft hair, I called Audrey, and when she answered I said, “Tell me all about Jed.”
“I’m so sick of myself! I mean, it’s nothing new. We started texting again, after three months of no contact, and we met for green juice yesterday, then couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and…You know how the song goes.”
“And?” There was always an and with Jed.
“We were hanging out afterward, and he offered me a gummy. A gummy! He’s supposed to be sober.”
“That has always meant something different to him than it’s meant to you,” I observed.
“I know, I know. I just wish…I’ve never had that kind of chemistry with anyone else, you know?”
I did because I’d had it with Clark, until we started fighting so much all the chemicals just evaporated. “Chemistry isn’t everything.” Then I heard what I’d just said, and added, “I’m sorry, that sounded totally empty.”
Audrey sighed. “No, it didn’t. It sounded like something that’s a cliché because it’s the truth.”
“I wish there weren’t so many of those.”
We were quiet for a few seconds before I said, “Are you up for some drama on my end?”
“Oh my god, please distract me.”
I summarized the last twelve hours, including my theory that my father wrote the Vineland books.
When I finished, Audrey whistled. “Wow. That is a lot.”
“I want to day drink so badly.”
“Of course you do. But think it through. Will that make you feel any better?”
“While I’m drinking it will.”
“And after?”
“I’ll have hangxiety.”
“That’s the part to hold on to. And also, your mom is going to read the book, and then you’ll know more.”
“And on top of all that, Dennis asked me to see North by Northwest at the Roxie.”
“He’s going to stop asking if you keep saying no.”
“But they serve beer there! The last time I went I got perfectly buzzed and watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“The world is going to remind you of drinking everywhere you let it. You have to figure out a way to put your blinders on. But can we go back to the Vineland books for a minute? Because I’ve read all of them.”
“You have? But why? They’re kids’ books.”
“In recovery circles, they’re read as a parable for sobriety.”
“What? I mean, I thought that the vines and elixirs are like grapes that make wine?”
“Yeah, that’s where it starts. The sobriety part emerges in the later books. I know people who are totally convinced the writer is in recovery.”
“I wonder why I didn’t see that in any of the research I did.”
“Twelve-step anonymity. Trust me, there are private Facebook groups passionately devoted to this question.”
“Has anyone gone looking for him?”
I wondered, for the first time, whether my father was an alcoholic. I didn’t believe Mom when she said the author wasn’t him. Maybe he’s even a recovered alcoholic. How great would it be if I could talk to him about what I was going through?
“People have looked,” Audrey said. “And if anyone has found him, no one is telling. It might be one of those things like the ending of The Mousetrap, where the players ask the audience never to reveal the secret of whodunit.”
“You mean, like, people know but they’ve promised never to reveal the truth? Even on the private Facebook pages?”
“No matter who it is, someone knows. The author isn’t a hermit.”
“How do you know?”
“It just feels unlikely. There’s too much in the books about the importance of love and community.”
We were both quiet for a beat, and then Audrey burst out, “Oh! I have an idea! And it’s the perfect way to distract you from Saturday day drinking. Why don’t we look for the author ourselves? We can make it a road trip. I know exactly where we’d start.”
This left-field idea gave me a zing of excitement. “Where?”
“It’s better if I just take you there.”
“Is it up here or down there?” She lived in West Hollywood, a long, boring drive down Route 5 or a one-hour flight with all the hassle of TSA. It was a toss-up how to get to each other.
“Down here.”
I looked down at Alfie, who now had his sweet muzzle on my lap and his milk chocolate eyes gazing up into mine, and I had my answer. “I need my emotional-support animal. If Alfie can come with us, I’ll get a rental and drive down.”
“You know Alfie is my favorite man.”
“Okay, I’ll pack up and leave as soon as I can.” I just had to let the curator know I’d pick up the Morisot work when I returned. I was way ahead with what she needed anyway.
“Yay!” Audrey clapped her hands, and I could practically see her bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“And now I have a perfect excuse to put off Dennis. I mean, not even you can tell me I should go out with someone new with all this going on.”
“I dunno—it could be kind of fun.”
“Don’t they tell you in recovery that you’re not supposed to date in your first year of sobriety?”
“Maybe you should try a meeting and find out.” Audrey had gotten sober in a twelve-step program, and even though she had complicated feelings about it, she was still a fan, and she’d encouraged me to go many times.
I just could not bring myself to say “Hi, I’m Dawn, and I’m an alcoholic.
” Because despite the Incident, most of the connotations of that word didn’t apply to me.
I hated what that word represented. Alcoholic and addict.
Also, grammatically it was so problematic.
No one is an addict. No one is any one thing.
A person is many things. In my better moments, I was a daughter, a dog mom, a Trivial Pursuit expert on American cinema, an aspiring filmmaker, a set designer, a yoga student…
. Plus, I was not getting DUIs or making a fool of myself at work or even missing work altogether like an alcoholic.
“I’ll see you later today,” I told Audrey and immediately went into my bedroom to pack, hands trembling with excitement.
A road trip with my best friend.
Unmasking the author of the Vineland books.
And maybe even…meeting my father?
It felt like I was hurtling toward the precipice of something huge, and I couldn’t get there fast enough.