Dawn #2
We made it to what can only be described as an amazing meeting, which was something called a “speaker meeting,” where there was a featured guest who came to tell his story of recovery.
It just so happened he was a pretty famous actor, and the large audience was rapt.
We sat in the main part of a beautiful church, and as the twilight tipped into night, the colors from the stained glass windows cast us all in blue and red and yellow and made the hour feel like a time out of time.
On the surface, his story was nothing like mine—he’d grown up in a gang-ridden part of LA, for starters—and yet I could relate to so much of what he said; plus, he was hilarious about his early experiments with sobriety.
He had everyone in stitches when he talked about how—completely at the mercy of coke and speed and booze at twenty-two years old—“this old-timer kept bugging me about coming to meetings. ‘Come to meetings, come to meetings,’ he said. ‘They work, they work, they work.’ And I was like, a meeting? A fucking meeting? A bunch of people sitting in a circle singing ‘Kumbaya’? I’m gonna need something stronger than a meeting, Grandpa.
I need something more like…like a flux capacitor. ”
I could totally relate. I thought I needed something huge and magical outside of myself to “fix me.” It was like everything that I’d seen and heard since that tarot reading had reinforced its message: Sobriety, happiness, success…it was all an inside job. If I wanted it, I could have it.
And I wanted it.
I wanted to feel as clear as I’d felt these past five months.
I wanted to feel bold, like the woman who’d approached Dennis at the Berkeley Art Museum.
I wanted to use the rest of my adult life to make art that mattered, like Winnie did.
And I knew that all these things were possible if I was sober.
If I drank again, I’d go back to feeling fuzzy and exhausted and being a third as productive as I knew I could be.
I wanted to be like this actor, who’d won every award there was to win after he’d gotten sober.
The cool kids are sober, I thought. I want to be like them.
—
Full of determination and veggie burritos, with Audrey tucked into the foldout bed of my couch, I lay in my own bed looking at my last lame communication with Dennis and texted him:
Hey, I should be able to make Charade next week.
Three dots almost immediately appeared, and my skin got goose bumps at the thought of a reply.
Me too. I hope the family emergency has sorted itself out.
It has, mostly. I’ll tell you about it sometime.
Something to look forward to.
Can you tell me where you are, or is that top secret info?
Tonight I’m home in SF. Tomorrow I’m heading for Mendocino.
Mendocino is high on my list of CA places to see.
I’ve never been, either.
Is Alfie coming with you?
He is! Good memory.
I have great recall for beautiful women, dogs, and Hitchcock. You were the trifecta.
I’m blushing.
Hold that thought.
So there’s something I’d like to tell you before we meet again, and I’m just going to admit it makes me squirrelly. But I’d rather tell you now than have it be a thing at the Roxie.
I’m on tenterhooks.
I don’t drink. I’m new to sobriety, and all the lingo, and everything, but…I just wanted you to know.
Do you eat Red Vines?
Yes.
Thank god. I thought you were going to tell me you didn’t eat Red Vines, and that would be a shame because I can’t watch movies without them.
Lol.
I don’t drink much either, fwiw. I’m not sober per se, but I don’t particularly like the way it makes me feel.
Wow.
***
I wish I didn’t like the way it makes me feel. A subject for another time, though.
Something else to look forward to.
Tell me something about you, so I’m not flapping in the wind with my disclosure.
I’m divorced.
How long ago? Any kids?
Five years, which is one year longer than we were married, and no kids.
Are you still in touch?
We tried to be friends and “evolved” for a while, but no. Subject for another time.
Yet more to look forward to. ;-)
Thanks for understanding. About the drinking thing.
Of course.
I’m going to end this on a high note and try to get some sleep.
Good call. Or good text, as the case may be. (I’m not a dad, but I do use dad humor.) Nighty, nighty.
Lol—again. And good night.
I smiled as I put my phone on the charger. I was right—the cool kids really didn’t drink.
—
Audrey and I arrived in Mendocino the next day, shortly after lunch.
Not that I’d eaten much, since my nerves were back on fire by that point, and even though we had talked our plan to death before we drove into the tiny seaside town, I had no confidence in it or anything else.
I’d checked that text exchange with Dennis one hundred times just to make sure it had really happened.
I’d read it to Audrey and marveled at what appeared to be his total lack of interest in alcohol and marveled, too, at her shrugging reaction: “Yeah, it turns out there are lots of people like that.”
Audrey parked near our hotel, which we couldn’t check into until four, and we each put on a fleece because even in July, this very northern piece of coastal California was a cool sixty-two in the middle of the day.
The morning fog was still in the process of rolling out, though it had cleared the land and maybe a half mile of ocean. The sun was bright.
“Ready?” Audrey asked.
“I think I need to go for a walk first.” My hands were actually shaking.
As soon as we got out, Alfie strained at the leash, sniffing every flower and post, overjoyed to be free of the car.
Within two blocks, we stumbled on a little coffee shop and stopped for two paper cups of coffee; then we wandered the narrow streets with their split rail fences and cedar-shingle buildings that housed all manner of art galleries, craft shops, restaurants, and boutiques.
I could hear the swell and rush of the ocean mere blocks from us.
The sun broke through high cottony clouds to rain down in sheets of light that illuminated the wild ocean waves crashing up against the craggy earth in glorious white sprays.
There was so much variation in the coastline and the many ways it met the sea—in steep vertical climbs, and gentle slopes toward sandy beaches, and every kind of incline in between.
It meandered in a thrillingly irregular pattern north–south, forming deep inlets, then jutting out as if punching into the ocean and daring the water to wear it down.
Alfie pulled us onto a sandy path, and we obliged, letting the salty air prickle our faces as we followed trails of sand between succulents and low burnished grasses. Occasionally there was an inlet below with a small beach dotted with driftwood. I loved it all.
I took one last deep breath, closed my eyes, held the breath, and gusted it out.
“Okay,” I said to Audrey, “I’m ready now.”
As if by magic, the path we were on looped right into town and led us straight to the Mendocino Bookstore.
When we stepped inside the huge store, lined with many oak shelves full of books, I handed Alfie’s leash to Audrey and made a beeline for the front desk, where a multipierced woman with purple hair stood organizing bookmarks.
“Hello,” I said, “I’m looking for Winifred Hartley. Winnie?”
The woman with the piercings replied, casual as can be, “I just saw her a minute ago. Hang on and I’ll get her.”
No sooner had she turned away from me than two women stepped out from the maze of bookshelves.
Mom and, unmistakably, Winnie.