Читать книгу From Whiskey to Water - Sam Cowen - Страница 6

My daughter is eight when my secret stops being a secret. I am driving her and a friend home for a sleepover when it occurs to me that my secret is no more.

“Bella,” says Genevieve casually, “my mom used to drink lots of wine.”

My fingers tighten on the steering wheel.

How does she know this? We’ve never told her that. We told her Mommy is allergic to alcohol. Mommy can’t have a glass of wine or a beer like other people because she gets sick and has to lie down. We have edited out how Mommy also used to throw up and make promises to host huge lunches that she would then forget or sometimes drove home on the wrong side of the road or fell asleep in car parks and had all her friends panicking for hours as to where she might have been.

“Really?” The little friend is both cheerful and curious. “How much is lots?”

My daughter is full of information.

“Lots. Like so much. Like TONNES.”

I don’t correct her on her unit of measurement. I don’t say anything at all. I just keep driving.

Genevieve continues.

“Luckily, she stopped drinking before she got pregnant with my bruvver or he would’ve been born stupid. And then I could have told him he was stupid and it would actually be true.”

I step in gingerly.

“Now, darling, we don’t call anyone stupid, because that’s not very nice, is it?”

But the eight-year-old is having none of it.

“It might not be nice, but it would be true. He would be stupid and have to go to a school for stupid children.”

Clearly she has a working knowledge of foetal alcohol syndrome.

I don’t remember much more about the journey home. I do know that my alcoholism is now classroom conversation. And that perhaps that merits a further conversation at home.

So, at home, I tackle my 11-year-old. Christopher is playing DragonVale on his iPad. This is both time- and attention-consuming.

“Chris, how much have you told your sister about Mommy’s drinking?”

Chris knows more than Genevieve. He knows I haven’t had a drink in over 13 years and he knows a little about why. He knows I would lose both memory and time, long stretches I could not account for. He knows it was very bad for me and made me sick. He knows it upset Daddy. But, as far as I know up to this point, that’s all he knows. I need to know if there is more.

Silence.

“Chris, I’m talking to you.”

“I’ve got a new dragon. It’s a Kairos.”

“I don’t care. How much have you told your sister about Mommy’s drinking?”

Silence.

“CHRIS!”

He eyes me coldly.

“This dragon is very difficult to get.”

And this conversation is very difficult to have.

“But have you told her I’m an alcoholic?”

“I don’t think so. Maybe Daddy did. Can I just finish this level?”

He does not care how his sister knows. He does not care at all. As long as he has been alive I have never had a drink. Never smelled of wine. I have never woken up and not recognised him or had to explain why I am home late or why I am still in the clothes I was wearing yesterday. He has never seen me drunk. It is not relevant to his life. Certainly not as relevant as DragonVale.

“Does it bother you?”

“No, because I’ve got it now.”

“What?”

“The dragon, I’ve got it now.”

“No, I mean does it bother you that I’m an alcoholic?”

He turns to me in irritation.

“Are you still talking about that?”

“I’m trying to be a concerned mother.”

“Well don’t. It’s weird.”

And that’s that.

Later, when I’m alone with Genevieve, I ask her how much she knows.

“Darling, who told you that Mommy used to drink so much wine?”

I tend to talk about myself in the third person when I am with her.

She shrugs.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know or you don’t remember?”

“I don’t know and I don’t remember.”

Well, all right then.

“Should I make the kitchen pink or purple?”

She too is an iPad child. She turns the screen towards me.

“I like pink, but I still want to ask …”

“I like purple.”

So the kitchen is purple.

I plough on.

“I just want to know how that makes you feel.”

Her green eyes turn to me, and she smiles widely.

“It feels good ’cos I like purple more than pink.” She slides her finger across the screen like lightning. “But you can have pink chairs at the table.”

“No, I mean how do you feel that Mommy used to drink a lot, but doesn’t any more?”

She looks at me blankly.

“I feel good?”

It’s a question because she doesn’t know the answer. And I’m very grateful because it means that the idea is as foreign to her as another country.

“Well, that’s good,” I say.

“Yes. Now I am making a cave.”

And back to the world of Minecraft goes my daughter.

But there’s one more person.

“Martin, did you tell the kids I’m an alcoholic?”

He blinks at me over his glasses.

“I don’t know. Probably.”

“Probably?”

“Well, yes … They were going to find out sometime.”

And of course they were.

My name is Samantha and I am an alcoholic. At the time of writing, I have been sober for 13 years, 11 months and 16 days. And, yes, I still count. And I’m writing about it now because I promised myself that I would once my children understood what that meant, that Mommy was an alcoholic. I think they may have understood long before I did, even if all the details are the stuff of ancient history for them.

So this is the story of how I stopped drinking.

No, it’s not.

It’s how I stopped drinking, started eating, became clinically obese, stopped eating (everything that wasn’t nailed down) and swam my way to freedom.

No, it’s not.

It’s about addiction and learning and sadness and anxiety and love and drive. It’s about channelling the unchangeable into the miraculous. It’s about dragons and learning how to put them to sleep when you can’t slay them. It’s about being my own Daenerys.