A forty-year old memory is a dicey thing. You remember the stories you’ve told yourself rather than the actual events. Things get embellished, things get blocked depending on your needs. In my case, I think, blocked. I’ve banished memories, painful and embarrassing. Alcohol adds an extra curtain, a sheer one, not quite opaque. Another layer to peer through, or maybe around. My brothers might read this and say “No Jeff, that’s not how things went down. Pie wasn’t there, but Jid’s husband was.” It doesn’t matter. It’s a solid memory, and I’ve carried it most of my life. For me, it’s true.
We sat in the atrium, two four-tops pushed together. The hotel rose around us on all sides like some great cenote with balconies, hanging plants and a glass elevator. After the reception ended, my brothers, Leslie and I escorted my aunts back to their hotel. My father stayed home, washing dishes and wrapping up the leftover food. My aunts would all fly away the next day, and Leslie would return to school. Everyone left and the reality of life without my mother set in. But first we got drunk.
Jid, Joan and Pie were old-school New England stock. Those ladies could party. Their wealthy parents adopted my orphaned father when his adult sister sailed off to England to start a new life. My father tells a story about an ancient New Years’ brunch—prime rib, roasted oysters and Champaign toasts. Pie, the youngest and barely a teen, was trashed before noon. Alcohol was part of who they were. Me, just a few months out of college, I searched for an identity to emulate.
The waitress came by and started with Joan “Have the bartender fill a water glass with ice and Tanqueray and then say the word ‘vermouth’. That’s how I like my martini.”
“I’ll have one of those too. Oh, and olives. Lots of olives.”
When I was young, maybe five or six, my father came home from work daily and mixed himself a martini. “Whatcha drinking dad?”
“Firewater!” As his drink got low and watery, my brothers and I crowded around him and begged for his gin-soaked olives. The boozy flavor caused an involuntary pucker, a mouthful of flame. Repetition and approval from my father turned that eyewatering bite into something to covet. At twenty-one, I could have my own damn gin with olives.
When my mother died, my brothers and I were watching The Final Conflict, the third movie in the Omen trilogy. My dad called from the hospital “It’s over, she’s gone.” We sat in front of the TV, staring at the frozen and jumpy movie image and wondered what to do.
Today, I read a story by Georgia Kreiger. She writes about how her trauma is triggered by a ringing phone. As a child, her father answered the phone, had a short conversation and then died. The phone and death being forever tied together throughout her life. I have some of this as well. One morning three years ago, I noticed I had a voice mail from my brother. “Hey Jeff, give me a call when you can.” A phone call? Weird, we always text. I knew my father died. But he didn’t. Instead, our friend Joe took his own life. My father is ninety-two now, and recently in and out of the hospital twice. Now when my phone rings, my first thought is “Get ready. Here it comes.”
Crowded around the tables in the hotel was the first and only time I drank with my father’s generation. I suppose we heard tall tales about my dad’s childhood. Stories he’d never tell me himself. But in truth, I can’t remember any of it. As the night progressed, as I got deeper into the Tanqueray, my unconscious body-clench relaxed. I noticed that the pain of my mother’s death didn’t hurt as much. I set a goal to become pain-free.
After that night, Tanqueray became my wonder drug. It blurred the jagged edges making them look smooth. I found the identity I was looking for. I became the skinny kid with a goblet of gin. Once, at a party, a friend’s girlfriend said, “I think you’re so screwed up because you never grieved for your mother.” That comment was the coffin nail in our relationship, but I knew she was right. Blunting life seemed easier than living it.
My last memory from the evening with my aunts: Leslie and I rode up the glass elevator, looking out over a room full of business travelers and pathetic locals who couldn’t think of a better place to hang out than a hotel bar. When we got to the top floor, we pulled the emergency stop and made out in front of the window, groping at each other through our clothes, up on a stage for the world to see. Tanqueray numbs more than just pain.
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Previously Published on jefftcann.com and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock