Drowning

He grew up reading drink menus. Most evenings, he’d sit between his parents in a dimly lit banquette, his little hands resting in his lap, until all the images and songs that ran through his child mind washed away, a high tide arriving. Then, he’d reach for the slim leather book, always standing tall in the center of the table, a loyal soldier awaiting command. He’d flip through the thick pages, studying his second language while his mother and father gossiped, and sipped, and nibbled on bits of bread daubed with butter. He would sometimes read the words aloud: Angel’s Envy, Basil Hayden’s, Canadian Club. His small voice remained pressed underneath the din around him: his fellow diners’ chatter, the gentle clinking of forks against fine china, explosions of wild laughter.

The waiters interchanged, wearing crisp whites, or pressed black jackets. They’d genuflect to his father, bending like a single stalk of wheat, while his mother would silently lift her wine glass, or martini glass, or highball glass, pulling the viscous liquid between pristinely painted lips. He’d order orange juice, the pulp thick in his throat; then, as he grew, the effervescent cloy of a Shirley Temple, fishing the ice for the single stemmed cherry, a sunken treasure.

At 16, his father slid a tumbler of whiskey across the ironed white tablecloth, a knowing grin deepening the crosshatched creases around his violet mouth. His mother raised her eyebrows, and pursed her closed lips. As he lifted the glass, the amber liquid shone, refracting in the tealights. He rattled the ice and heard the plinking keys of Debussy. When he brought the tumbler to his mouth, and the smoky singe of the whiskey slid down, down, deep into his trenches, burrowing in his crevices, the world finally began to pulse, and hum, and purr.

He first planned weekend parties, nudging his friends to host when their parents went out. He scored a fake ID, and drove two towns over to use it. On the monitor behind the counter, the monochrome grain of his featureless face stared back at him with lifeless black eyes. The liquor store clerk, a heavy-set man with a sagging face and droopy gray mustache, gave his ID a tired glance, and accepted the cash in his liver-spotted hand. He’d then carry the cardboard box back to his car, his matchstick arms straining under the heft of the tightly packed clear and brown bottles.

Eventually, the parties darkened. He offended his friends, and they stopped calling. He decided that he had more fun in his room, alone, anyway, and filled his aluminum water bottles with vodka and whiskey, stashing the empties under the bed. He stopped going out with his parents, old enough to stay home, to feed and entertain himself. He’d watch movies in his room and indulge the most delicious secret he had ever held.

Two months before high school graduation, he drove into a light pole. The cop forced him to blow into a Breathalyzer, and then gently cuffed him, the metal rings cutting cold around his thin wrists. He cringed from the heat of the cop’s meaty hand against his scalp, the backseat of the police car patched with duct tape. His parents arrived at the police station to collect him, his mother’s mascara smeared around red-rimmed eyes, his father’s face a flattened mask. He exhaled when his parents informed him that a DUI can’t stop someone from attending college.

He devolved while away. Classes missed, assignments skipped. He woke each morning with hot sticky breath, a vise squeezing between his eyes. One gray morning, his parents knocked on his dorm room door and stripped his narrow twin bed, the soft sky-blue sheets stuffed into a duffel, alongside his wrinkled polos and torn track pants. They drove in silence to the countryside, where a stately Tudor-style mansion stood on a hill, lush lawns flanking the ivied brick walls, soft grey mountains in the distance. They left him there, and begged him to get better.

He sat through group therapy, and through individual therapy, and took the pills the doctors prescribed. He journaled, and he behaved. He sat quietly like he did as a kid in all those restaurants, his hands in his lap, conversations floating like ghosts. He passed the tests, and his parents came to collect him. He dozed in the backseat while rolling fields and horse farms blurred past the car window.

He applied for community college and went to class. He attended AA meetings, and he read, and he journaled, his inky pen scratching the soft paper. But each morning, he woke to a siren song, a hand with slender fingers and a delicate palm reaching for him. He considered how easy it would be to drive two towns over, to visit his old friend behind the counter, the sleepy man who always said yes, yes, you can have this. One day, instead of calling his sponsor, he took the outstretched hand, and wrapped himself in the familiar shroud.

His father shook his head and his mother sobbed. They threw up their hands and drove him back to the countryside. He tried again. He passed the tests, then went home, and behaved, for a while. He did this several times, before he could escape the grasp of his parents’ house. He found a job and a studio apartment, its stucco walls grayed with age, its blinds broken, sunlight streaming through the cracks. He clocked in daily, delivered the bare minimum while swathed by a fog of whiskey. Each night, his apartment became his sanctuary, his safe space, the cocoon that protected him from the world: from his boss, from his parents, from the doctors and the therapists and the friends that abandoned him all those years ago, when he began to hurt them, and himself. He survived, until his belly bloated and spiderwebs started to spread on his skin, and he knew it was almost over. He was juiced, pickled, brined. By then, his parents were long gone, no one left to tut their tongues, and he sipped away his days, until a single morning ceased to arrive.