Promontory

By George Uriah

Joe’s bride to be was familiar with alcoholism, since most of the men in her family were hard core drinkers. Her father started drinking the moment he no longer had to work on a given day. Some days it was at five when he started driving home. On his days off it was when he woke in the morning. The man was never sober unless he had to be. The first time Joe met her father was when he went home with the intention of asking him for her hand in marriage. The man was so drunk he hardly remembered Joe asking, and later that night came to blows with his wife. If I had to be married to that woman, Joe later avowed once he was more familiar with the situation, I would be drunk every chance I got too. I wouldn’t lay a hand on her, but I wouldn’t be sober. Of course, for much of Joe’s own marriage alcohol was the only way he could handle it.
The family tradition of alcoholism had its benefits. On Christmas morning, for example, before anyone was allowed to open a single present, screaming banshee kids included, the adults sat down for a few rounds of Bloody Marys and Mimosas. There were breakfast hors d’oeuvres too, but only the little hurricanes bothered to do anything but graze them. Why waste a good empty stomach on food, someone joked. Especially on Christmas morning. Later that first Christmas together they dined at her grandparents’ house. Joe went to retrieve something in the garage and noticed an entire wall was outfitted with shelves and stocked with bottles of gin and bottles of tonic. “At least if the apocalypse comes,” Joe chided, “no one in your family will have to be sober for years.”
She shrugged it off, as did every woman in the family. “Really,” she had said that first night when her parents came to blows, “he’s only like that once a month or so. All the other nights he’s harmless.” She tried to say it was only the occasional bad night but they both knew it was more than that. And one bad night like that is one too many, Joe wanted to say. There’s no place for physical violence in a relationship. Not my place to intervene, he told himself.
But he held his tongue that night because he had his own bad night early on when they were dating and that’s why he stopped drinking the first time. He wasn’t abusive to her. That was not his personality to harm a woman, or even a man unless his hand was forced. No, when Joe got drunk and frustrated he harmed himself instead, taking out all of his frustrations on his own body or soul.
Joe couldn’t even remember what triggered him that particular night. It had nothing to do with his bride to be, except that he might have had generally high anxiety because of the impending nuptials. But she did nothing in particular that night. Whatever it was, he suddenly hated himself midway through a bottle of whiskey, or hated something about his life. He said he wanted to die, and she mistook it for him saying he actively wanted to end his life. He wanted space and she refused to give it, and the more he asked to be left alone, the more she insisted on talking things out. “Just for a few hours,” he begged. “Please, I’ll be fine in the morning.”
But she still insisted so he grabbed the rest of his alcohol and did the logical thing, drive off in his truck. She followed him but he shook her trail.
Joe showed up a few hours later, calm again like he said he would be. His bride to be looked horrified. “I told you I would be fine,” he said, but it had no affect on her. So finally he said the only thing he could to calm her down. “I’ll stop drinking. Completely.” He may have even meant it at the time. He knew he had probably been drinking a bit too much for his own good in the buildup to the wedding. He didn’t need to stop, but he definitely needed to slow his velocity before he wrecked and did some damage he couldn’t repair.
And he meant it when he said he’d give up booze entirely. And it meant something to her too. No other man in her family had ever willingly given up alcohol for their partner, or even made an effort. She was so proud of him, she said, for sticking to it. For about three days, she treated him like he was something special. It felt like the first three days of their dating relationship again, except without the alcohol.
Joe did mean to keep sober for as long as he could see into the future, but the stress of the impending marriage felt more and more like it might crush him, or like he was in the middle of a storm tossed Atlantic and the waves were about to pull him under. It made him think of Winslow Homer so he asked his bride to be if she was familiar with his paintings. She was not. He asked her if she was familiar with any painter. “Sure,” she said, “that guy who painted the Mona Lisa. Michelangelo. Right?” He didn’t bother commenting. What am I getting into, he wondered. She has a college degree, I’ll give her that, but she majored in sorority.
The stress and doubts got too much and he started drinking again. He loved everything about the feeling he had when he drank, except its evanescence. The good times never lasted. I feel as full as a harvest moon when I drink, Joe maintained, but the moon waxes and wanes. How glorious when it was ascending! I want to share those joys with the world. But Joe hid these highs and lows because he wanted her to still be proud of him. She didn’t even notice, and Joe noticed that she was always so wrapped up in her world she never paid very close attention to him and it was easy to hide things from her. Their mutual friends probably knew he was drunk at their outings, but she never did. “I’ll go to the store and get some ice for us to take,” he’d say, and stop by the liquor store and pound a pint of hard liquor and soda on the way home. It would hit him quickly about the time they left for the parties and it flooded over him like warmth and happiness that washed him so thoroughly it reached his veins and traveled to his heart. “Aaaah,” was the only thing he felt. She could rattle on in the passenger seat about all the things in life that truly didn’t matter, and it didn’t drag him down like it typically did. Even her volcanic laugh was almost charming in those moments. He felt like he could sink into the passenger seat of the car and melt into the leather. Even the very leather felt comforting and he didn’t mind the fact she needlessly drove a luxury SUV. Everyone in her family drove a gold SUV of some luxury brand and they joked when the family got together and glanced at the vehicles in the driveway that they belonged to a gold SUV club. “I’ll stick with my old truck,” Joe replied when she suggested he get something more suitable to her tastes. “It was the first vehicle I bought when I graduated college and went into the Army and I’ll drive it until it falls apart.” It outlasted their marriage.
Joe blamed his renewed drinking on the stress caused by the impending prospect of being married, but he always intended to stop before the day of the wedding. He didn’t. To his credit, he was sober on the actual day of the wedding and even intended to stay that way. He lasted a few days.
Looking back he couldn’t point to a reason why he started again, in the middle of his honeymoon. It was not a stressful time. In fact, it should have been one of the most stress free times of his life. They honeymooned in Hawaii, and picked Maui because it offered the most for people who wanted outdoor activities. The first morning they rose at dawn, bodies still not adjusted to the time shift, and picnicked on the beach in front of the hotel. The second morning they rose before dawn to watch the sunrise on the Haleakala crater, then cycled down to the ocean. The August Maui breeze felt like something emanating from the edge of heaven. Why go home, Joe wondered. His new bride had no such thoughts.
The third morning of the honeymoon he still woke early, but she didn’t want to get out of bed until the late morning. So Joe took a walk down the beach and onto a promenade and found a general store in an oceanfront strip mall that sold liquor. He swore he was not seeking it out, but it called to him when he went to the counter to pay for some postcards and trinkets, and walked out of the store with a pint of Bacardi and a Coke. He went into a public bathroom and mixed it and chugged it on the twenty minute walk back to the hotel. He tossed the empties into the pool trashcan then sat on their lanai and let the alcohol blast his mind when it finally hit his system with full force. I could sit here all damned day like this, Joe mused. He often preferred to drink the way he now did, consuming an evening’s worth of alcohol in fifteen to thirty minutes. That way it hits like an explosion, he maintained. But instead of being a painful bombardment with frightening concussion, it was beautiful like fireworks in your mind, lighting things up instantly with beautiful colors, but also warmth. It hits with the intensity of walking into a toasty room on a freezing night where you didn’t have enough clothing to keep warm anyway.
Eventually she woke up and came out to the lanai and found him, not noticing his glazed over eyes. He had cut a pineapple and popped a slice into his mouth seconds before she walked over to kiss him good morning. “That pineapple is so sweet on your breath,” she told him.
“Have a slice,” Joe smiled at her in return. But her phone rang and she answered it. It was merely one of her friends calling to gossip.
She never did try pineapple in Hawaii. She never ate fruit or vegetables of any kind. “I don’t like the feel of them in my mouth,” she explained the first time Joe expressed wonder at her dietary habits. “I’ve never had an entire piece of fruit or vegetable in my life. Well, I guess potatoes count.”
“Never?”
“Nevah, evah,” she replied in a voice that was intended to jokingly mimic a Southern sorority girl, which wasn’t too far from her real tone. Joe wondered if the two of them had anything in common.
They took the road to Hana that day, and Joe insisted she drive for the first part. He put on his sunglasses and let down the top to the rented Mustang convertible and let the wind from the edges of paradise perfect his day. She put in her bluetooth and chatted with friends and family back on the mainland, and Joe listened to the new Dave Matthews CD and felt the breeze on his outstretched hand and felt all alone in the world, on the one week he was supposed to feel closer to anyone than he would ever again feel. But they took what turned out to be her favorite picture from the honeymoon at an overlook along the way. “You look so happy in this one,” she later commented. I was loaded, he wanted to say.
She slept in every morning and he got up early to start the day with coke and rum and a walk on the beach. They spent the days exploring some new corner of the island, red sand beaches, black sand beaches, white sand beaches. “Black rock beach is a better description,” Joe chuckled, later offering the same comment about the red sand beach.
The exploration of the scenery was for Joe’s enjoyment. His perfect days were guided only by caprice, hers by controlled predictability. His bride was merely humoring him by going along on his honeymoon adventures. If it were up to her, she would spend the days by the pool instead of the Pacific Ocean, or the indoor tourist spots they visited in the evenings and nights. As it turned out, it was the last time in the marriage she would indulge him and his desires.
On the last day of the vacation they ate at Cheeseburger in Paradise and paid far too much money for a mediocre burger in an atmosphere far too crowded with views that were surprisingly average. Joe remembered being in the last throes of a buzz and looking across the table at his new bride and wondering why he was not happy. He tried to make eye contact but she was too busy with her phone, glued to whatever texts she was sending back to the mainland. The texting and the checking of social media were constant, Joe learned early on in the relationship. She could not make it through the first date without constantly checking her phone. She had halfheartedly apologized but Joe could tell it was not sincere, and he should have known it was an omen if she could not even pay attention to him in the first days of falling in love. She was not the first woman to be glued to her phone on a first date with him, but she was the first one he ever asked on a second date.
She put down her phone when the food came, but only made it halfway through the burger before answering a text. “Sorry,” she told him.
“We go home tomorrow,” Joe pleaded, though she did not catch the resigned sullenness in his voice. It felt as if time was moving at two different speeds for them. For Joe, it was gloriously standing still so he could grasp onto the joys a little longer. For his bride, nothing had changed. Time was still ushering her forward at the same rate to some inevitable future malaise.
“I know,” she replied without looking up, “so sad.”
When they got back he asked her to take a walk on the beach with him since it was their last night. Nothing stays the same in life, he wanted to tell her, and it’s about capturing the moments so that something, somewhere stays the same, even if only in your mind. So let’s get out and capture one last memory.
“You go ahead,” she told him. “I’m going to watch the new episode of Survivor and do a group chat with my family and friends about it.”
He muttered something in response but she didn’t catch it. He strolled down to the trinkets shop mindlessly, out of a habit that had evidently only taken a few days to form. “The usual?” the woman behind the counter asked. Joe just nodded.
He went into the public bathroom to mix the rum and coke, then took his time strolling back down the beach. He walked past the hotel to the edge of the beach, marked by a promontory that stood only thirty feet or so. He followed the path around the side to the clifftop and found a perch and finished the alcohol. He thought he’d sit there until the alcohol walloped him like it usually did, and he could watch the moonrise in the distance and the stars out at sea. Soon the alcohol crashed over him like a warm and merciful wave and washed over him and made everything feel new again, at least until the tide went out again. I bet I could jump off this cliff, Joe thought, and she’d never know something happened to me until the morning. Except when he looked over he knew he’d survive any fall from this height. “I feel so defeated,” Joe spoke, though no one could hear him. “Here I am in a paradise where everyone is happy, on what should be one of the best weeks of my life, and I feel all alone.”
Hemingway had said something about feeling alone even when you’re with people, Joe recalled, and how that makes it even worse. Joe felt trapped in a thicket with no way out. He wondered if he’d ever find someone who didn’t make him feel alone. His bride in white had made him feel that from time to time, at least in the beginning. Whatever happened to that feeling? Better not to think about such things. He shook it off.
“I’ve got to sober up,” Joe decided out loud. “And I will the moment I get home.”
Joe sat on the clifftop and stared at the ocean. He looked at his phone to check the time. Survivor had only been over a half hour. He likely still had time before she noticed he was gone. She’d text if she was worried about him and he could reply that he’d be there in a minute or two, since the hotel was only a few hundred yards from the cliffs. In the meantime, Joe decided, when’s the next time I’m gong to be sitting on a clifftop in Maui looking out at the Pacific and feeling more and more of an alcoholic rush by the minute and feeling like the whole world could pull me under but it wouldn’t matter because I could just stay in this moment forever? Sometimes it feels if you sit somewhere long enough you will become part of the landscape, turning into something less human and more stone by gradual increments until you become unrecognizable except that you’re now the part of the rock formation that someone says reminds them of trolls or elves or some mythological humanlike creature. Wouldn’t that be nice, Joe thought, to become landscape that people used as a photo backdrop. I could have my eyes fixed to the heavens and watch the slow, merry-go-round procession of the stars as they crept their way across the horizon.
This could be the last time I’m drunk, Joe reasoned, coming back to reality. He’d take his time. He didn’t take too much time though. The lights were still on in their suite and he hoped he could hoodwink her one last time with his drinking. He’d go straight for the pineapple again. As it turned out, it didn’t matter. His bride was fast asleep on the couch when he walked through the sliding glass door from their lanai. What a wonderful way to start a marriage, he thought.

****

George Uriah’s short stories have been published or accepted for publication in Timber Creek Review, Thin Air Magazine, and Proud To Be: Writing by American Warriors: Vol. 8, by Southeast Missouri State University Press. His education includes an undergraduate degree from Vanderbilt University and a Master’s from the University of Tennessee. He served in the US Army from 1996-2001.