Waving Not Drowning 13: Back to Rehab

The following day brought not one, not two but three visitors.
They weren’t quite The Three Wise Men but they did herald a new era.
And a realisation that things couldn’t continue as they were forever.
Here the downward spiral gathered speed leading to one leg, two legs, a body, two bodies flailing, falling into the Thames.

I was sitting in the bath around three in the afternoon with a glass of Pinot Grigio in one hand and a bottle of shampoo in the other when the doorbell went. I had no real intention of going to get it, Stephen now had his own key and came and went as he pleased. Anybody else spelt trouble. My ambition to return the neighbourhood’s stolen bags had dissolved once I thought things through properly; a) I would have to explain how the bags had come into my possession b) I would have to admit to shacking up with a fifteen year old crime wave c) The sliver of time (between when I woke up and having my first drink) was growing smaller and smaller and now things which seemed very important one minute were irrelevant the next. So at this moment, sitting in the bath, I couldn’t remember why I’d wanted to return the bags; it seemed kind of useless seeing as they now had nothing inside of them. And what business was it of mine? Stephen hadn’t stolen them; it had all been Danny’s idea. Now Stephen had told me that the mass thieving had been Danny’s fault, I’d built up a whole bank of negative associations around him, he was a negative thought magnet.
That stain on the sofa.
That was Danny!
And the pile of dirty plates left in the sink.
And the broken TV remote.
And the burnt goldfish.

That had been him.

So when the doorbell went that first time, my first thought was that it was Danny trying to get in, no doubt wanting to break more stuff round the flat and hide stolen booty in my wardrobe. I placed my wine glass on the side of the bath and squeezed a big dollop of shampoo into my palm. It felt good taking care of myself; I needed to make more of an effort even if I wasn’t planning on going anywhere apart from the off licence at the end of the road. The soap smelt like pine cones as I lathered it into my scalp, massaging behind my ears and round the back of my hairline. Then the doorbell went again, this time one big long buzz that went on for about five seconds. I ignored it and switched the shower head on, twisting it up to full blast and leaning my head forwards between my legs so I could get all the soap off the back of my neck. The water was blissfully warm and the dull throbbing dissipated (I got headaches from not enough alcohol rather than the other way round). I sprayed the water all over my shoulders and then with some difficulty stood up and after failing to locate the stand for the showerhead, placed it on the floor next to the bath. Then I spotted part of the stand lying broken next to the toilet; there was also a big hole in the wall where the plaster had been pulled away. I struggled to remember when the shower stand had parted company with the wall (had it been Danny again?) but couldn’t remember anything. Increasingly my day-to-day existence felt like cleaning up after a riotous party that I’d not been invited to. The doorbell buzzed and I jumped. Whoever it was wasn’t going to give up. I drank the rest of the wine, wrapped a towel round myself and went into the hallway.
‘Who is it?’ I said into the intercom.
‘Open up!’
It was a woman’s voice. Not one I recognised and not one that sounded convivial.
‘Who is it?’ I repeated.
Stephen wasn’t in and I usually depended on him to climb up onto the kitchen counter and look down to double check who was there. Making sure it wasn’t anyone from Café Jingo (why they would call I don’t know but several glasses of wine can make you paranoid) or my parents (who you may think are strangely absent but are soon to make another, somewhat dramatic appearance).
‘It’s Diane,’ the voice said.
I tried to remember if I knew anyone called Diane. Was Diane someone I’d worked with? Or was the scrunchie girl, the one who wasn’t Sophie, was she Diane? Neurons struggled valiantly, trying to make connections, to link up ideas, swimming in a sea of pear juice, beer and white wine. They quickly gave up, got out their lilos, lay down and paddled off.
‘Let me in, I’m Stevie’s sister.’
It wouldn’t surprise you to know that it took me a few seconds to realise Stevie was short for Stephen which meant that this was Stephen’s sister, the one who had been horrible to him and didn’t bother and had no right coming over. And what did she want with me anyway? Did she know he’d practically (well in fact wholeheartedly) moved in? That I cooked him fish fingers, chips and peas and read extracts from The Wombles to him at night? Actually thinking about it maybe I DID need to speak to her. I needed to give her a piece of my mind.

Why did I have to be Mother Bird when it was really her job?

But then I felt a horrible twist in my gut, what if she was coming here to pick up his things, coming to take him away? I hesitated once more, my finger suspended over the entrance button.
‘I need to talk to you,’ Diane said.

She sounded reasonable enough. I pressed the entry button and then heard the door downstairs swing open and then slam. I was dripping all over the hallway so I quickly went into the bathroom, dried myself off and pulled on my dressing gown, which was basically what I lived in and perfectly suited for activities such as lying on the sofa watching Stephen drive a car up a building sideways. Or traipsing round the kitchen looking for a bottle opener.

I opened the door and Diane was standing there. Any expectations of her being reasonable were soon blown out of the water. She started shouting as soon as she clapped eyes on me.
‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ she screeched, her finger jabbing the air like she was poking an invisible man to death.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
She looked at me starting at the bottom with the chipped nail polish, moving up to the lumpy grey towelling gown and then onto the grand finale, the red, puffy face framed by wet hair hanging in rats tails.
‘Where’s my brother?’
She pushed into the flat and was quickly in the hallway. A petite, hunched figure, she couldn’t have been more than four foot eleven but she shared the same curly hair as Stephen and the same pale, shark-coloured skin. She headed for the front room and I followed.
‘What a tip,’ she said shaking her head.

Looking through her eyes, it was as if I was seeing things for the first time. The previous evening Stephen and I had sellotaped several empty tubes of Pringles together making one big long tube, which we’d then glued to the wall behind the sofa. I started to explain the joke but then realised I couldn’t remember why we’d done it. I then looked over at the TV, the screen displayed a paused image of a wrestler, blood pouring from his nose, and he was holding a tiny bald man over his head, poised to hurl him into the crowd. What was the name of the game we’d been playing? And was I the tiny guy or the wrestler? I’d have to ask Stephen when he got back.
Diane gestured at the screen.
‘No wonder he loves it here,’ she said flatly.
‘I try not to let him play for too long,’ I said feeling guilty, ‘And he’s been reading a bit …nothing very educational,’ I trailed off.
Were The Wombles educational? They were positive that was for sure. Don’t throw away your rubbish. Clear things up. Recycle stuff. Perhaps that was where everything was going wrong with kids these days, they needed more Wombles!
‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ she demanded walking towards me.
She was doing the invisible-man-finger-jab again.
Then before I could answer, she slapped me full around the face. The force of the slap was so hard that I fell back onto the sofa and knocked the extra long tube of Pringles off the wall, it rolled onto the floor. Then I remembered!
A BURP AMPLIFIER! We'd used the tube to burp at each other through. The acoustics had been amazing.
It was all coming back.

‘Why are you smiling?’ Diane said coming in for another slap.
The side of my face was beginning to burn. I raised my arm up as she brought her hand down, this time she missed and ended up grazing my shoulder.
‘You’re disgusting,’ she said, ‘Danny said you’d shacked up with Stephen. You’re a fucking pervert.’
I managed to move out of her way as she tried to smack me again.
‘It’s not like that,’ I said.
I’d moved on from the whole paedophile thing, why couldn’t she? She couldn’t talk anyway. What kind of relative was she? One that never looked after her brother. One that let him stay out all night burning the contents of handbags and sniffing mobile juice. At least I provided him with some sort of stability. We always went to the off licence at midday. We always had a roll of Pringles at two am. And I didn’t let Stephen watch any of those terrible hip-hop videos with women writhing around in leather hot pants that they showed on MTV late at night. Okay he played some violent video games but so what? Kids needed an outlet; life was more stressful than it had been. Perhaps this didn’t sound like the definition of good parenting but it was a darn sight better than hers! I stood up and realised I was shaking all over; the dampness of the bath hadn’t helped making me feel all clammy and dizzy.

Diane surveyed the room again, looking for clues that I was a paedophile, maybe some photos of young nubile boys hiding under my copy of Red magazine.
‘Are you telling me you’re not a pervert?’
‘I promise I’m not a pervert,’ I said lamely.
I’m an alcoholic.
A good-for-nothing.
But no pervert.
‘Why d’you let Stevie crash here all the time?’ she asked.
She seemed to be calming down a bit. The finger had retracted back into the hand which was now placed solidly on her hip. Her head was tilted to one side. At least she wasn’t slapping me anymore.
‘It’s difficult to explain… he likes it here. We enjoy each other’s company I suppose.’
‘But you’re an old woman and he’s only a kid!’
‘I’m not that old. I’m only in my early thirties…’
‘Pull the other one,’ she exclaimed laughing.
There was a time when that would have been about the most hurtful thing anyone could have said to me. But now my looks had become irrelevant. I lived in a dressing gown! This was both liberating and rather sad.
‘I can see how it looks but it’s not like that…I’ve even been trying to persuade him to go to school.’
Diane’s eyes had the same familiar blue-grey hue to them. But she looked tired. Everything about her sort of drooped. An elderly version of herself was already sketched across her features.
‘Well it’s over now. He’s coming back home with me.’
My stomach did a cartwheel.
‘But you don’t even like him!’ I said.
I reached for a cigarette and shakily lit it.
Then I remembered the stash of handbags.

I managed to buy Stephen at a relatively cheap price.
He cost three handbags, a diamond key ring and two packets of cigarettes.
Alongside these ‘gifts’ I had to make a final promise that he wasn’t my toy boy.

Really it was the best outcome for both of us. Diane didn’t really want Stephen back; she couldn’t cope with all the rows in the house and life had obviously been sweeter since he’d left. But this was a small estate and she had to be seen to be ‘doing something’. Danny was obviously spreading the word, making everything between Stephen and I seem sordid and salacious. And I was unaware that people on the estate were ‘talking’. When I lumbered to the off –licence, squinting in the sunlight, I missed the faces pressed up against the windows, the disapproving glances at my slippers peeping out from under my frayed jeans, Stephen dancing ahead of me. Diane and I struck a deal. In exchange for a cut of the mugging bounty, she would leave us alone and make sure everyone understood that the relationship between Stephen and me was purely platonic. I was Mother Bird, nothing more. And besides, she’d said cheerily just before she’d left, maybe the four of us could go for a drink, her boyfriend was a nice guy really and by the way if I ever came across another handbag like the green number…

I sat down after she’d left and tried to eat something. But the piece of buttered toast lacked appeal. I looked up at the clock and waited for Stephen to come home. I waited half an hour or so, a still life with toast, then just as I was retrieving a second bottle of wine from the cupboard, the bell went again.
This time I wasn’t going to answer it.
Even if it was Oddbins telling me I’d won a lifetime’s supply of Pinot Grigio.

I went into the front room and shut the door and turned the Playstation on. The music started, it was an upbeat, house track, punctuated by a roaring sound. The game was pretty good, I quickly remembered the objective was to hurl this tiny man into the crowd and avoid the half-human/half dragon that was trying to claw at my back. I pressed one of the buttons; my wrestler bent down and with all his strength threw the little bastard into the crowd. The audience cheered and whooped. I imagined this was Danny. I was the protector, the Mother Bird and had despatched him and his sick, perverted thoughts.
Now he was gone.
Next Dragon was up in my face, this was Diane and she was using her weird undersize claw hands to scratch at me and then to poke at my back. She was shouting and all this fire was coming out of her nose and mouth and then trailing onto the floor and into the crowd who were now all shouting PERVERT! So I did this kind of roll over move that I’d seen Stephen do before and I twisted Dragon Sister’s legs round so she tripped up and everyone was silent now because they knew what was coming. I was going to throw the damned Dragon Sister into the crowd and they could all burn in hell…but then the doorbell was going off like an air raid siren, like someone was literally leaning on the doorbell and not moving and I was forced to press pause just as Dragon Sister was half in and half out of the ring. I sighed.
Why so many visitors today?

I didn’t even bother with the intercom this time, I just buzzed them up. I’d already had a skinful and felt I could cope with whatever was thrown at me.
Dragon Sister’s, Monsters, Miniature Wrestlers.
Bring them on!

Still it didn’t prepare me for Ruth standing there and then right behind my Mum and Dad.
It was TEAM INTERVENTION!
I had to get it together and fast.
‘Darling,’ my Mum said before I could even brush my teeth and at least pretend I hadn’t been drinking and that it was perfectly normal to be sitting in a dirty, dressing gown playing violent wrestling games at six in the evening. At least Stephen wasn’t here. I couldn’t go through that whole is she/ isn’t she a pervert? rubbish all over again.

Then they’d all slowly shuffled in like a six- legged monster and the door shut behind them and I tried to at least manoeuvre them into the kitchen which was marginally less messy than the other rooms but there was still a bottle of wine on the kitchen table so the cat was well and truly out of the bag and meowing round the kitchen like I’d just opened a can of tuna.
‘Poor poor darling…’
Dad was silent and Mum just sort of pushed me into one of the kitchen chairs and Ruth was walking into the other rooms and sort of moaning. I was worried she’d gone into labour already but then she came back in and I saw her bulge was still relatively small and I went to pat it but she moved away.
‘I had no idea,’ Ruth said, ‘I’m so sorry,’ she looked at my parents, ‘I should have got you over her sooner but I really thought she was alright.’
‘It’s not your fault Ruth,’ my Dad said running a glass under the tap and then handing it to me, ‘Drink,’ he ordered.
‘Don’t go in the front room,’ Ruth said as my Mum wandered out of the kitchen, ‘It looks like a bomb’s hit it.’
‘Poor, poor darling,’ my Mum mumbled over and over.
It was slightly unsettling like I wasn’t really there. Like one of those dreams where you’re right next to someone’s face and you’re shouting at them and they can’t hear you and you’re like ‘YOU’RE ON FIRE!’ and they can’t hear and your throat is like completely hoarse. Except I was just sitting here drinking a glass of water and thinking how much better it would be if it had just a touch of Thunderbird in it, just to take the edge off. Ruth was staring at me as if I was some sort of art exhibit labelled ‘Drunken Elderly’. She fingered my hair, which had dried into dreadlocks because the Dragon Sister had distracted me.
‘You know what’s going to happen don’t you?’ she asked softly.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll go perfectly straight once I get the dryer to it,’ I said.
‘Don’t be sarcastic young lady,’ my Dad said taking the glass and refilling it with a perfectly clear but ultimately unsatisfying liquid.
Mum came back in. She’d taken just about as much horror as she could handle. The TV had probably been the most upsetting thing. In her mind, violent video games were what serial killers played just before they smoked crack and cut off people’s heads.
‘Just remember we love you,’ she said, getting down on her knees and wrapping her arms around me.
I felt stiff like a wooden spoon standing up in some hard porridge and I tried to relax into it but was worried that if I did I would just fall apart. So instead I just listened to her cry into my shoulder whilst Dad and Ruth looked on impassively.
‘Get your things,’ Dad said solemnly.
Mum stood up, looked around for something, anything vaguely clean and then wiped her eyes with the corner of her sleeve.
‘You’ve got this all wrong,’ I said.
‘Get them.’

I can only remember a couple of occasions in my life when my Dad has used the same tone as he used that evening. The first time had been when I’d been about seven and had shaved off half of my best friend’s hair whilst playing hairdressers in my Wendy House. The other time was when I’d fallen asleep in the bath, drunk. The two words he’d said just before he’d driven me to ‘Shady Sands’ had been ‘It’s over.’
He wasn’t a man that talked an awful lot anyway.
Now he was down to one, two words, it was very serious indeed.

I walked into the bedroom and tried to shove some things into a holdall bag (this was actually my own bag and not one that had been thieved from one of the local residents). All the time I was sort of formulating a plan of how to get out of ‘Shady Sands’ as quickly as possible. And I also needed to let Stephen know what had happened. As I pushed two rolled up pairs of pants and a couple of sweatshirts into the bag I bought some time by lying face down on the bed and making a pathetic wailing noise. When Ruth came in and tried to comfort me I told her I needed a few moments alone. I scrambled under the bed, found an old takeaway menu and a pencil and scribbled in the margin in tiny writing.
Stephen.
I have to go to rehab. It’s a long story.
I will call you soon.
Look after yourself.
I got up to level 7 on ‘WWE Smackdown’ this afternoon!
Jess xxx
P.S. Don’t let Danny in the flat.

I placed the note on his pillow where’d he easily find it, then found a small half-bottle of 20/20 that had rolled under the bed. I placed it in the top of my bag. I’d drink it on the way.
I couldn’t bear drawing up outside ‘Shady Sands’ sober.

The third visitor arrived (I’m counting Mum, Dad, Ruth as one because they’re the INTERVENTION TEAM) just as we were sitting in the car outside. Mum and Dad were arguing about the quickest route to get off the A40, Ruth was holding her tummy and stroking it in an absent-minded kind of way. I was sipping on my peach schnapps; no one was saying anything because in four hours I’d be dried out like a husk of Shredded Wheat anyway. Then I spotted Danny, he was leaning on the doorbell of my building with his upper body. Two, three times he threw his body against the door. It was only as he turned away that I saw his face.
It was contorted in anger.
He swore under his breath and then kicked at the bottom of the door before he left.
I took another big swig of schnapps and swallowed.
I felt a rush of relief.
Not because I was on my way to rehab and embarking on a new sober, more exciting chapter in my life.

I felt relief because I hadn’t been there to answer the door.