Alissa was 39 when she found herself sitting alone in the parking lot of a bar at 3am on a Saturday night. A closed kitchen had conspired to make “just one margarita” hit a whole lot harder than she had intended, and once she began drinking, she didn’t want to stop. The bartender was nice and just a little flirty. Sweet enough to earn a generous tip, but not so charming that it would appear he was disrespecting the ring on her left hand. She drank and laughed and listened to the music, while her husband and children slept soundly just a few miles away. Eventually the bar closed and she found herself shivering in the cold February air. Making her way to the family Honda that she had eased down the driveway just four short hours ago, she couldn’t quite remember why she’d left her warm bed. It had something to do with her husbands breath in her face, and how her skin crawled when his toes brushed her leg in the bed. What she did know was that thanks to having more than one drink too many, this car wasn’t going to be bringing her back to her warm bed anytime soon. She turned the key in the ignition and the car roared to life. Soon the warmth blowing in from the car’s engine began to thaw the winter’s chill on her bare skin. Why had she not thought to wear a coat?
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Utterly shocked at who could be calling her at this ungodly hour, she pulled it out and blinked at the screen. “Alaskan Man” flashed on the screen. She’d left him snoring soundly, having filled his belly with a wonderful home cooked meal, tucked all the kids in bed, satisfied his carnal appetite with the manner of marriage, and stayed beside him until his snoring was deep and even, she couldn’t imagine why he’d awakened.
She answered the phone and said “Hello?” She said it like Hello was her question, but really she was asking how mad was he… exactly?
“Where are you?” The voice on the phone demanded.
She looked around her. She knew right where she was, but if she told him, he’d be down there in minutes. She considered lying. She could say she had a friend in crisis, no she’d say she had gone to see her mother. It was no good. The truth wasn’t any worse than leaving in the middle of night to help an imaginary friend, and he know she’d never make the 75 minute drive to see her mother at such an odd hour.
“Downtown, in the parking lot behind the Matador” she told him honestly.
“Stay RIGHT there. Don’t you dare move” he said angrily, and hung up the phone.
She waited for him. When he pulled up, before he could get out and start interrogating her inside her warm car, and probably turn it into a two hour conversation she didn’t have the energy for, she hastened to exit the car and climb inside his cold truck cab.
“I’m taking you home” he told her, as if he’d briefly considered the movies or a dungeon torture chamber as alternate options. “Then tomorrow after church we are going to come back here and get your car.” He said the words “after church” as if they should never be said in a sentence in which one discusses picking up their wife’s car at 3pm, 12 hours after abandoning it behind a bar.
She nodded. They drove in silence and four minutes later they arrived home. Their roommate and small children were still fast asleep. She walked quickly to the bedroom they shared with their three children, who were all sleeping soundly in the “cave” she had made for them beneath their vaulted bed. In the darkness she took off her sweater and jeans and wiggled quickly into her pajamas, leaving her bra on, like armor to protect her. He liked to have sex when he felt like she “owed him” because she had “been out of line.” He was seldom concerned for her pleasure, even in the best of times, but he was none-to-gentle in circumstance like these and she didn’t want to risk giving him any ideas.
When he resumed snoring she pulled out her phone and searched again for Alcoholics Anonymous, this time she identified a local meeting about five miles away, in the opposite direction as the bar. Three hours later she snuck out of bed for a second time, left a note saying she’d “gone to an AA meeting,” and quietly closed and locked the door behind her.
She didn’t know it, as she drove in the dark of that first chilly morning, but she was about to begin something that would forever change her life, and the lives of her children. She’d been miserable for a long, long time. She didn’t know if drinking more than her pitiful liver could handle, multiple days per week, qualified her as an alcoholic, but she knew one thing: she couldn’t go to bars anymore to get away from him. She could pretend at church. It was a small price to pay for a roof over her head, food to eat, and the freedom of using the household checking account for her creature comforts.
Just as the meeting was starting, she slipped into a chair in the back and slouched low in her seat. It was 7am and her new life was about to begin.
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