For many years this blog chronicled the adventures of The Posse – the group of friends consisting of Ellie, Karin, me and our children. During our first years as mothers we lived near each other in the same Boston community, and saw each other almost every day. After Karin moved to Connecticut, we remained friends and traded off making the two-hour trip.
Ellie has written much about her treatment for alcoholism and her work to rediscover her motherhood and herself in sobriety.
Here, in tandem, Ellie and I tell the other side of that story – of the friendship we three shared, and of the crisis that changed everything.
The events described here take place in the summer of 2007. The story starts here at my blog for my perspective, and then links to Ellie for hers.
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“She has to go in for a long term program, that’s what my guy says,” Karin has called to tell me. She has talked to a friend about Ellie, about our suspicion that on the last Connecticut visit she was sneaking off to drink.
“A long term … like rehab?” I ask.
“He says she’s not serious. Nothing will work short of a full rehab stint, that’s what she has to do, and even that might not do it.”
My stomach plummets. This is not a selfless “poor Ellie” moment — although that’s in there, too. What sends my guts to the pavement is the knowledge that she is really sick, and really close to me, and something dark and horrible has been in my world for a long time and I have not seen it.
Now I am staring at it, ashamed and scared.
“I called her this morning,” Karin says to me. “I asked her if she remembered our conversation yesterday. She pretended she did and I said, ‘Well, you were pretty drunk.’ I think that really upset her.”
“I can see where it would,” I answer. It is upsetting me. When Ellie calls me drunk, I pretend I don’t notice. It has happened a few times recently, and I think it is because she is in a dark place. I listen, quietly, offer empathy, suggest she consider getting some help. In the morning I pretend it didn’t happen – to spare her dignity, to give her space to be human. And I don’t think to ask myself – or her – just how much she is drinking.
Or who’s taking care of the kids.
I rejected Karin’s suggestion weeks ago that we talk to Ellie about the condition of her house, and her children — how it’s gone past funny normal stuff and into the land of not-okay. I made a compelling case for not saying anything – Ellie will run, I say. She will feel judged and lock us out and then we won’t be able to help at all. We must not make her feel she can’t talk to us because then she will talk to no one and the kids won’t have any help.
And we have done that and now it’s so much worse. Ellie has admitted to drinking, has said she’ll go to meetings, and we believed her. But her stories don’t make sense, and it’s starting to seem like she lies all the time, even when she doesn’t have to. I am finding it harder to politely accept her explanations.
“He says that if she’s admitting to a bottle of wine per night, the truth is ten times that,” Karin says. “I think she’s been lying to us for a long time.”
I’m starting to see how much she has lied and how I’ve helped her. Because it was impolite to press her on why she smelled like wine at three in the afternoon. Because it was simply unbelievable that this person who was my friend could be that incredibly sick – and that I did not see it.
“I think she’s pretty much drunk all the time at this point,” Karin says.
“What’s going on with the kids, do you suppose?” I finally ask.
“I don’t know,” she says, but we both know: if we’re right about how much she is lying and how much she is drinking, whatever’s going on for the kids is bad.
That night I am huddled in bed, my arms around my legs. My own children are sleeping safe in their room, which fills me with guilt.
“What are you afraid of?” Cute Husband asks me.
“What if I’m asked?” I say. “What if he tries to take the kids from her and I am called as a witness and they ask me whether she is competent to care for her children?”
“You tell the truth,” he says, like that’s so easy. Our posse was the safety and security of non-judgment and humor and acceptance. It is crumbling and leaving me in a stark landscape.
If I tell her truths … will she tell mine? What has she done that is so awfully different from anyone? We’re all on the edge, one job away from losing the house, one bad afternoon away from total incompetence. She is a good person, she is like me, doing her best. Flawed, human.
“Do you really think Ellie should be left alone with those kids right now?” he asks me. “And if she can’t get better, don’t you think Steve should get them?”
If she can’t get better. Oh, Jesus, she really might not get better.
I spend a terrible night in the half-darkness trying to sleep, trying not to throw up. I’m alone with the truth and no place to hide.
I don’t want the responsibility for any contribution to denying Ellie her children. Because I don’t want it, I have pretended I don’t have it. My politeness, my determination never to condemn another person has gone too far.
My compassion is becoming a cover for cowardice.
It is Ellie’s children I can’t stop thinking about that night. I am their Miss Liz, I know their mother is sick and I must start to actively work toward removing her from them. Nothing that can happen to me is as bad as what could happen to them if I don’t face it.
I realize, too, somewhere in all the mess of thoughts and tears, that it isn’t betraying Ellie to expose her. It is betraying her not to.
I would rather face Ellie’s hatred that I stopped her, than her despair that I didn’t.
This post continues with Ellie’s side of the story.
