Romancing the Bottle

[word count: 2940]

Tammy awoke in her own vomit. She did not have the strength or will to clean it up. Instead she managed to pull herself onto her bed and to twist herself into a somewhat seated position. The stench of the vomit infused her nostril. She put her hand up to see if her face was still there. Tears welled up in her eyes when she felt the vomit that caked on her face and hair. She slowly raised her head and let it drop against the headboard, and repeated this for several minutes until the pain penetrated her beer-soaked brain that this hurt.

“Mark! You made me like this! I hate you!” That was a mistake. The screeching left her head throbbing and her voice cracked. Three husbands and each worse than the one before. She never could figure out why love always ended up in such a mess for her. What hurt the most is that she loved the first one the most and he just did not have the same drive and ambition as she. The other two squashed the drive and ambition to nothing.

The tears flowed down her face as Tammy let her mind wonder back to her pretty years. She never touched alcohol until she started working at the upscale restaurant called Charlie’s. She was on the wait staff and always got the best tips. Tammy used her good looks to her advantage. She had thick chestnut hair, sky blue eyes and a 110-pound frame that was strong enough to lift the heavy trays to deliver the orders to the tables. She barely topped 5’3” and the men enjoyed her flirtatious nature.

As she thought back to those early years, Tammy wished she had a time machine where she could skip meeting Mark, without that mistake she would not have met Lee, the source of her current torture. The memories came flooding back -- a co-worker introduced Tammy to Mark. Tammy was instantly attracted to Mark. He was lean, handsome, charming …..and unbeknownst to Tammy, totally broke.

This time Tammy whispered to spare her voice and head any more pain, “Chris, I hate you for unloading you deadbeat boyfriend on me. You must have really hated me to do that.”

Chris was her college roommate. Tammy thought they were good friends, but looking back she very much doubted it. Tammy’s gregarious nature was quite the opposite of Chris. She should have known Chris would get even. The first day on Campus, after Tammy introduced herself and they were looking at the freshman directory, “Chris, I’m going to date him, and him, and him.” And she did that at every turn of the page.

“That’s 25-30 guys! Are you nuts?”

Tammy could still see the astonished look on Chris’s face. It was almost funny… almost. But she did date all of them. If she had been paying attention, she would have seen that Chris was not as happy about her success as she was.

Tammy did not want to remember that anymore. She scooted down to a prone position so that she could stare at the ceiling and hoped that her head would quit spinning. Her head fell to the side and her eyes landed on an unopened bottle of Murphy’s Irish Red beer. Ever since the first time she admitted she was an alcoholic; she could not tolerate the taste of domestic beer. She could afford to pay a little more for the more expensive imported beer from her father’s homeland, and that is what she would do.

The need for the bottle was too intense. Tammy sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed and let them land in vomit. She reached the bottle and bottle opener with her shaky hands. She sat and looked at the bottle and with heavy sigh popped the cap and took a long drink, and let the liquid slide down her throat. She closed her eyes to acknowledge the release of the cloying tugs that the addiction had on her. She embraced the bottle and its contents as she would a valued treasure that she did not want to relinquish. Even the smell of this liquid heaven sated her frayed nerves.

The sound of the telephone ringing came through the fogginess of her awareness and she debated whether to answer it or not. She fumbled for a pair of glasses that she kept on the nightstand so that she could see the caller ID. She did not want to talk to her son. He could always tell when she had been drinking and she really did not like disappointing him.

She wished she had never married his father, Mark. Her heart ached with each painful memory of him. She met him after she divorced her first husband, Kenneth. It was a mistake getting involved with him just to spite Chris, and an even bigger one to marry him. She was pregnant, alone and scared. She could still hear the titters of her girlfriends at the wedding. Chris was teasing her, “Tammy, the bible in the living room is upside down! This is so hysterical!” At the time, she though Chris was trying to get Mark back. She wished she had let Chris win and not married Mark.

The marriage was short-lived and resulted in a very nasty divorce. Tammy could have survived anything if the Judge had not awarded custody to Mark. Mark only wanted custody to hurt Tammy. The pain from the loss of her son drove her further into the grip of alcoholism. She had briefly reconnected with Jerry when he was in high school. She was then married to Lee, who was a wealthy man and Jerry chose to live in the majestic house even if it was with a drunkard for a mother. She knew that Jerry would put up with anything as long as she and her husband could afford to keep sending him to his Ivy League school.

Tammy came out of her reverie as the answering machine kicked in. Her son knew. “Hi, Mom, it’s me, Jerry. Call me when you’re sober.”

The shame swept over her again. She let out a deep sigh and thought that if she worked hard, she would be sober by noon – wait, it was noon. She no longer cared.

Her life seemed to swirl between periods of sobriety and black out drunkenness. Her life had shown such promise and was ending in such a mess. She wished fervently that she had never divorced her first husband. But she wanted children and he didn’t. The second one stole her only child, and this third one was just a liar and cheat, with him living on the other side of the country. She could sure pick ‘em.

She lovingly put the half-empty bottle on her nightstand. She told herself that this beer was too expensive to waste and she would not waste it. In truth, she loved the beer so much that it would never be stale or flat to her need for it. If she was true to form, she would be half-way sober by the end of her shower. If she were true to form, she would clean up the mess and hide the evidence her disgrace.

Tammy though she knew Lee so well. But if she could have seen him, she would have seen the painful decision being finalized.

Lee quickly flipped through the correspondence he pulled from the mailbox. He stopped long enough to tear open and scan the one with the fancy lettering on the front. He refolded the letter and tapped it a couple times across the hand holding the envelope. He threw back his head in a long exasperated sigh as he debated whether to follow his lawyer’s instructions. Lee had put up with his wife’s addiction for a long time and he was more than sick of it. The letter directed that if he wanted to proceed with the divorce, he had to call his lawyer, pay a retainer, and make an appointment to go over 25 years’ worth of assets and debts.



Lee knew this would be a long drawn-out ordeal. He had been with Tammy long enough to guess what she would most likely be doing on a beautiful day like today. He surmised that she would probably awake in her own vomit because she had not had the strength or will to get to the bathroom. He could visualize her trying to pull herself together long enough to hurt herself in some physical fashion. He half hoped that she was still passed out because when she was in the throes of sobering up, she had a wicked mouth and he was the object of her rage.



The tears welled in Lee’s eyes as he recalled her pretty years. When he met her, she had thick red hair, sky blue eyes, a curvaceous 125-pound frame, and a flirtatious nature. He knew going into the relationship that she liked to drink, but he did not care. His own family was nuts and he needed to avoid them. He was not much to look at, and he knew it. All he had to do was make lots of money because that was what this gorgeous woman liked most.



He grabbed his cellphone and punched in her number. The memories came flooding back – the effort to make it work, the enormous amount of money it took to get custody of his stepson, the ridiculous amount of money wasted to put her son through an Ivy League school on a B average, the constant moves from house to house to avoid the police because she was a deadbeat parent, and the ever present lies he had to tell about not knowing where she was or what she was doing.



Lee’s heart ached that the constant need for the bottle was so intense for Tammy. She invariably chose that valued treasure over him. Even when he moved out of the house, she chose the bottle first and him last. Lee had hoped that when her son moved to another state far away she would change, but she continued to dive head first into her addiction. In his heart, he knew the “reasons” for her cloying dependence. He tried to be there for her and support her; but the grip of alcoholism was greater than anything he could offer.



Tammy was proud of herself as she closed her bedroom door after making it presentable again. Her head was no longer throbbing and her hands were not shaking so badly, before long she would plant a smile on her face and chat merrily with the neighbors and merchants who she would meet as she went to the nearby liquor store to pick up some more beer. She had to do this when she was sober so that no questions or whispered gossip would follow her. It made sense to her. She convinced herself that the lies she told to the merchants about why she went through so much alcohol were believed. No one was fooled, but the merchants played along in this pretend display because their desire to make a sale was greater than their care that she was an alcoholic. This game had two winners.

Her plans were interrupted by her cheery message on the answering machine. At the beep, she heard Lee’s voice, “Hi, Tammy. It’s me, Lee. Call me when you’re sober.” Tammy bridled at the sneering tone of his voice. She did not care about his convenience. She would let him wait several hours before she returned his call. She knew he was going to give her an ultimatum and she really was not interested in hearing it when she was not feeling well.

In her mind, Tammy imagined that Lee debated with himself about whether to call the sheriff to make a well-check visit on her. It would be a futile attempt to get her to quit drinking. She knew he was just doing these thing to create a paper trail. She wished she had seen that manipulative side of him earlier, she would not have wasted 25 years on him.

Tammy pressed her hands against her ears at the pounding on the door. “Police. Well check visit. Open up.” She slithered over to the heavily curtained window over the kitchen sink and, without touching the curtain, looked through the crack that was created where the panels met and saw the police car out front. She returned to her barstool and sat quietly while she waited for the sheriff to leave. She knew Jerry or Lee called him. Neither one of them had proof that she was here. All the lights were off and the windows were heavily shaded. They could not know for sure that she was here. The police would have to leave sooner or later. She hated this because the townspeople were starting to gossip about the number of times the police were parked out in front of the house, at least that’s the story she made up.

Tammy could hear the voice coming over the sheriff’s collar mike, and she could hear his responses. She could not discern what was said, but recognized the pattern: The sheriff would knock on the door, no response, report the no-response to dispatch, and then would get orders to leave the premises. Within an hour or two, Tammy would check again and if her heightened senses gave the all clear, she would make a quick trip to one of the nearby towns to replenish her beer stash. She did not like going to the nearby towns, because they carried only domestic beers. She would choose one of the more expensive domestic brands, but she preferred the Irish beers.

She sat on the stool and became very still. She only knew that she did not want contact with the police and they would leave if they could not hear or see movement in the house. Her stool was strategically placed so that she could see through the crack and would know when the police left. She remained seated and very still for at least one-half hour after the sheriff left – just to be sure.

This is how far Tammy’s life had plummeted. She was a caged animal. Her life was spent foraging for her daily supply of beer, and staying out of sight and thought of her predators. She hated that she had to have four cars so that she would be harder to identify, and that her son was relegated to the role of her keeper to make sure she had not killed or hurt herself.

She grabbed her phone and dialed the number. He had to be told. Jerry listened patiently to her rant. She stopped long enough to ask, “How could things go so wrong? I hate all of them. They promised to love me forever, and then they hurt me.”

“Mom ….”

“Don’t take their side! I hate them. They’re evil liars. They said they loved me, but they don’t.” She did not hear him say that he loved her.

“Mom …”

“I have to go now. I’ll go you tomorrow when I am not so sick. Good bye, Jerry. I love you.” She did not wait for Jerry to say anything back. When the line was dead, she whispered into the air, “I need a drink.”

When Tammy was finally able to move about, she went to the bathroom to make sure her face had not fallen off. She brushed her fingertips across her cheeks, lips eyes and nose to make sure they were all there, everything was still numb. She grabbed the keys for the next car in the rotation, and snuck out of the house and made her way to the vehicle that would be her device to get to the next town over to complete her mission. The coolness of the night air and the soft honeysuckle smells hit her senses harshly. She kept the house closed up tight most times, the freshness of the air and the sweet early summer smells were unfamiliar and argued with her desire to hide and be unseen. Tammy allowed herself a brief bit of sadness for she had already chosen to repeat the cycle of pain/drink/shame.

Meanwhile on the other side of the country, a decision was made. For years Lee stood by and watched as the woman he loved devolved into a caged animal. He felt powerless because he assisted in her daily hunt for her supply of beer, and avoiding her predators. Yet, in the most honest part of his being, he loathed that he chose to let her drink while he secretly built a separate life for himself. Before this, he loved Tammy so much and was dutiful to his obligation to fix the messes she created. This time he would choose to love himself more than he loved Tammy.

He looked at the instructions again and made the call to his lawyer that would put the divorce action into motion. Lee allowed himself a brief bit of sadness for he knew that he would never see the woman he loved sober ever again. He gruffly wiped away a single tear when he heard “Good morning, Law Office, how may I direct your call?”

“Lee Howes for Larry Levine … please.”

Lee hoped that one day she would learn that people can love her back and that she was worth it. Maybe one day she would love a person more than money, possessions or that damn bottle. Maybe.