TRACIE TAKES CONTROL
In better times, mornings in our house had been a hum of activity. Before the divorce, it was all about getting Tracie ready for school. I'd make her lunch and some hot breakfast to give her the best start to her day. I'd usually drive her to school and she'd give me a little kiss before she got out of the car. We would always tell each other, "Love you."
After the divorce, when I had to start working again, Tracie and I would get ready together in the mornings. By then, Tracie's friends had started driving, so fortunately, one or another of them would come by to give her a ride to school. When she left, my sweet stepdaughter would still call out, "Bye, Mom! Love you!" and I would call back, "Love you too, honey! Have a good day!" She'd usually give me a quick goodbye kiss.
Those many mornings, years of them, life with Tracie had been good, normal, happy, even with the interruption of my break-up with her father.
But such happy mornings were a thing of the past by that gray, overcast spring day.
I had no memory of going to my bed the night before, but somehow that's where I woke up. I didn't want to open my eyes. I smacked my dry tongue. There was an odd taste in my mouth. My lips were chapped.
The instant I tried sitting up, I was stopped by a pounding headache and swimming nausea. I had been waking up with hangovers more and more often, but this one was especially bad.
For some drunken reason, I was naked from the waist up, but still had my sweatpants on from the day before. As I very slowly got myself to a sitting position, my hand touched on something hard in the bed. I pulled the sheet back to see my vibrator. I must have tried again the night before. How pathetic. I would have rolled my eyes, but that hurt too much.
I figured it had to be the weekend, because even though my bedroom had a door to the house's only bathroom, I hadn't heard Tracie getting ready for school.
I sat uncomfortably in my crumpled sheets and felt wretched, not just from the hangover, but from the crushing sadness of what mornings in my life had become. And then came the emotional gut-punch of regret: I had forgotten my daughter's birthday the day before - and instead, I had fought with her and called her a vicious name. I was now fully the shouting, mean drunk my mother had been.
I laid back down in my bed, covering my eyes with my arm, wishing it had all been a bad dream, but knowing I wasn't so lucky.
For hours I stayed there, flat, heavy, hurting, scared to move. I hoped to hear Tracie get picked up by a friend's car to go somewhere, so I could be alone in my misery. But that never happened.
Around midday, out of sickly desperation, I finally dragged myself to the kitchen to make some coffee with shaking hands. I prayed the caffeine would lessen my pounding headache.
I was so sensitive to sound, I could hear through her closed bedroom door the
ticky-tack
of Tracie on her laptop. I hoped she would stay in there until I could hide in my own room again.
But I was too unsteady on my feet to carry my coffee all the way from the kitchen to my bedroom. I made it as far as the dining room table. I slumped into a chair and sipped at the bitter brown drink, hunched over like a broken old woman.
I cringed when Tracie appeared. She strode right up to the table, facing me. It hurt to look up at her.
"This?" she said, circling her finger at me, "is over."
I sighed and muttered, "Could we not talk right now? I'm really feeling horrible."
"Oh, really, Mom? No kidding. You've been feeling horrible for like a year. So we're going to talk right now." She pulled a chair out and sat directly across from me.
The look in my stepdaughter's eyes scared me. I suppressed an acrid hangover burp. "Honey," I said, hoping to avoid a noisy argument, "listen, I'm sorry about last night."
"Oh? What are you sorry about, Mom? Specifically?"
I took a deep breath and said, "I'm really sorry about forgetting your birthday, and calling you the b-word."
She huffed a sarcastic laugh. "Is that all?"
I said, "Well... I know I haven't been much fun lately. I know I've been drinking too much. And I'm sorry for not looking harder for a new job..." There were other things I was sorry for, but I couldn't bring myself to say them, like
I'm sorry for being a failure as your mom.
"Sure, sure," Tracie said. "But isn't there anything else you want to mention, from later last night?"
My heart started beating faster. I cursed myself for getting black-out drunk. I had to hold my coffee cup with both hands to keep it from shaking so much. I said, "If there's something else that I don't remember, sweetheart, I'm really sorry about that too."
"Wow. Alcohol is one hell of a drug. But don't be sorry, Mom. I think you actually did us both a favor. Because it's a done deal. From now on, things are going to be totally different around here."
"I know, I know," I said. "I'm going to stop drinking. For real, this time. I'm serious. And about your birthday, Tracie, I'm going to make it up to you."
"Oh, I know you are."
"I am, I promise."
My daughter laughed. "You promise? That's hilarious, Mom. I don't need your promise. I have something way better than your promise."
