by T.R. Healy
A Man in Half
“Easy now, easy,” Surtees cautioned himself after turning the corner so fast his tires squealed.
As he applied his brakes, he noticed that the sharp turn caused the paper bag on the passenger seat to tip over. A few hundred-dollar bills fell on the floor. Immediately he pulled over to the side of the road and picked them up and put them back in the bag. Then, after making sure he had room to get back on the road, he did and pressed his foot down on the accelerator pedal.
*
After checking to see if the Windsor knot of his necktie was secure, Reid Surtees went back into the bedroom and, without turning on the light, stepped inside the closet and reached for the pint of Irish whiskey he kept on the shelf and filled the shot glass he also kept there and took a hurried swallow. He lived alone in an apartment now, so there was no reason to keep the bottle in the closet, but he did out of habit. It was where he’d kept it when he lived with his wife and son because he didn’t want the boy to see him taking a drink so early in the day.
For the past nine years, he’d worked as a marketing consultant at Meadowbrook Estates, where all day long he met with prospective candidates he tried to persuade to move to Meadowbrook in their so-called golden years. A shy person by nature, he found it difficult to engage with people he didn’t know, so he began to rely more and more on alcohol to feel more comfortable with others. Not surprisingly, he’d met his former wife, Elana, in a bar and knew he would not have had the nerve to approach her if he hadn’t had a couple shots of tequila. A drink or two or three made him someone he wasn’t, an imposter who was confident and congenial and completely at ease with perfect strangers. Without its support, he struggled to connect even with people he thought he knew.
“You’re the quietest person I’ve ever met,” Elana told him on their third date.
“I am?” he asked, pretending to be surprised by her observation, even though he knew he had always been pretty reserved. All through elementary school, teachers encouraged him to participate in class discussions, but he preferred to sit and listen.
“Sometimes I’m not sure you know where you are.”
He grimaced. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m not sure I do either, but you act as if you’re somewhere else at times.”
“I do?”
“Yes, Reid, you do.”
“I wonder where I could be.”
“So do I.”
*
With his head wagging and his arms churning at his sides, Surtees ran half of the quarter-mile track as fast as he could then slowed down and jogged the second half. Though he could feel the strain in his legs, he ran six more wind sprints before he collapsed in exhaustion on the side of the cinder track.
His high school coach had required all sprinters to run a series of ten wind sprints at the end of every practice. The workout was punishing but not very long, and afterward everyone was so tired they could barely walk back to the locker room.
He took his first drink of alcohol after the track squad won the conference championship. One of his teammates, a burly discus thrower, had a bottle of vodka in his gym bag and invited a few of the squad members to go out behind the field house and celebrate. He didn’t have another drink for a couple more weeks, until he went to a party where the discus thrower had another bottle of vodka. After that, it was rare when he didn’t have something to drink on weekends. Alcohol had enabled him to protect himself from others by concealing his insecurities.
Somewhat recovered, he stood and stepped back on the track, stretched his legs again, and ran another set of wind sprints. He was not as fast as he used to be, not anywhere close, but Saturday mornings he continued to run so he didn’t gain too much weight from all the alcohol he consumed each and every day.
*
Late one evening, after drinking with some colleagues from work, Surtees struck a neighbor’s car as he swerved into his driveway. Immediately, the neighbor stormed out of his house and, after inspecting the damage Surtees had caused, threw a handful of gravel at him.
“You’re a good-for-nothing drunk, Surtees!” he hollered. “You know it, I know it, and everyone in the neighborhood knows it!”
Until that evening, he had not realized others regarded his drinking as out of control, and, at the urging of his wife, he entered a month-long outpatient recovery program. For almost a year, he was sober except for an occasional glass of wine on holidays. Then one summer evening, after a favorite cousin passed away, he drank half a bottle of tequila, and Elana had to walk him to the bedroom and help get him get into his pajamas. He apologized for his lapse but continued to drink, deceiving himself into believing he could stop whenever he wished to stop.
He couldn’t though, and eventually Elana got tired of looking after him and asked for a divorce. At first, he thought it was just a threat to compel him to seek help for his addiction, but soon he realized she was through with him and his drinking and determined to move on with her life. Even so, on numerous occasions, he promised her he would stop drinking once and for all. But he knew she knew it was a promise he would not keep. He needed the protection that alcohol afforded him.
*
The day that their divorce was finalized, Surtees expected to get snockered, but, instead, he telephoned Peter, the sponsor he’d been assigned after he began to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.
“Today I am officially a single man,” he said, “and I can’t tell you how badly I want to have a drink.”
“These are the dark moments when you have to muster all your strength to resist the temptation, Reid.”
“I feel as weak and vulnerable as I’ve ever felt.”
“Of course you do, but you must stay strong.”
He sighed. “I wonder, Peter, do you ever get to the point where you don’t want ever again to have a drink?”
“The truth?”
“Absolutely.”
“The craving never completely goes away, I regret to say. I’ve been sober eight and a half months, and almost every night I dream about having a drink.”
“And do you have a drink in your dreams?”
“I do, and it tastes wonderful. But then I wake up and remember all the awful things that happened when I drank.”
“They weren’t in your dreams, though?”
“Nah,” he chuckled. “My dreams about drinking are fairy tales.”
*
Two months before the divorce, Surtees lost his marketing position at Meadowbrook because a couple of prospects mentioned to his supervisor they could smell alcohol on his breath. They could, too, because he’d begun to keep a pint of Jameson’s whiskey in his glove compartment, and during his lunch break he would go out to his car and knock back a shot. It was shortly after he lost his job that he went to his first AA meeting. He really didn’t think it helped him that much, but he was glad he went, because his sponsor was able to find him work as a sales associate at a Goodwill store on the east side of town.
He had worked there not quite a year when, late one evening, he received a call from Elana, who by then had married a prosperous personal-injury lawyer. She made a request he had never expected to hear.
“I know you’re struggling to keep up with your schedule of child-support payments.”
“I’m doing the best I can, Elana.”
“I know you are, Reid, but as long as you continue to work where you are, you’ll never catch up.”
“I’ve looked for other places to work, but, so far, I haven’t found anything that pays any better.”
“I believe I have a solution.”
“I’m listening.”
“If you surrender your parental rights and let Doug adopt Joey, you won’t have to pay any more child support.”
He was stunned. “You’re not serious?”
“I am.”
“Joey’s my son as much as he is yours.”
“Of course he is, Reid, but you can’t take care of his needs the way Doug can, so I believe it’s in the best interests of Joey.”
“I can’t do it,” he insisted.
“Doug is willing to offer you what amounts to a year’s salary that you earned at Meadowbrook if you agree to let him adopt Joey.”
“It’s out of the question, Elana, absolutely out of the question.”
“Think about it, Reid. Think about what’s best for Joey.”
“He’d have to give up my name, wouldn’t he?”
“He would.”
“Joey Fishback doesn’t sound right. Not at all.”
“Please, give it some thought.”
After the conversation, he sat down at his desk and stared at the framed photograph Elana had taken of him and Joey one afternoon at the beach. Their smiles were so bright it almost hurt his eyes to look at them for more than a second or two. What she said made a lot of sense, though he hated to admit it, because he was never going to meet the burden of his share of child-support payments. So, reluctantly, he called her the next evening and agreed to accept the offer, and as she began to tell him he had made a courageous decision, he hung up on her. He knew deep down what he’d agreed to was shameful.
*
Two days later, Elana dropped the check in his mailbox along with the termination papers that required his signature. Early the next morning, he cashed the check at his bank and, to the surprise of the teller, stuffed the crisp hundred-dollar bills into an oil-stained McDonald’s Happy Meal bag. He’d intended to find a bar that was open this early and get as drunk as he could, but as he drove away from the bank, he got another idea and headed toward the still-dilapidated neighborhood where he was raised. Then, as he approached the row house where he had lived with his parents and maternal grandmother, he rolled down his window and grabbed a handful of bills out of the bag and threw them into the street. He continued to throw out more money until the bag was empty, figuring the people here deserved it a lot more than he did.