A mostly safe for work comic by Jodi Wegner.
I wept when I heard the news the next day.
Ok, sure—everyone wept. It doesn’t sound like a surprise that I wept with them. The problem is that I wept for a different reason. I could have stopped it. I could have told the police the suspicions I had about my brother. I could have written a story in the paper about him. Hell, I could’ve taken a gun to his head and blown his brains out.
The point is—I could’ve acted. But instead—I wrote.
I got an entire chapter in my novels as a result of all those deaths.
As a result—I started drinking again.
Oh, it didn’t start out so bad at first. The first drink I had came after I interviewed the Occupy protestors the day after the attack.
“Matias Jones is no longer a member of this cause,” one interviewer told me. “We don’t need people like that.” He looked at me strangely. “You look just like him. It’s scary.”
I had hoped to find Blossom there—since she seemed to know him best. But no one at Occupy had seen her for several days. Was she holding him up somewhere, I wonder? When I had gone to pick Matias up from the jail after the Occupy protest a few weeks ago, the cops had told me that a woman had already picked him up. No, they didn’t know who she was. Perhaps Blossom was that woman.
I’d had a terrible thirst all day. I drank water like a fish—but nothing could seem to quench it. I walked by a bar on the way home. I stood there for several minutes transfixed by it. I seemed to walk in of my own power.
“Hey, bartender. Pour me a beer please.”
He did so and I paid him for it.
“You going to drink that or stare at it all night?” the bartender asked me after I just sat watching the drink for five minutes.
“I haven’t had a drink in five years.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks, but I honestly don’t remember why the hell not.” I grabbed the beer and drank it. That was the only beer I drank that night, but it wouldn’t be my last.
“Welcome home, honey!” Mandy greeted me at the door and gave me a kiss. She pulled back immediately. “You’ve been drinking.”
“I had one beer. It’s not a big deal.”
“You told me you were going to quit.”
“I did quit. I quit for five years, and I had one beer. It’s really not a big deal.”
“Nuh uh! You don’t get to just pawn this off as ‘not a big deal.’ You knew my history with my ex-husband when you married me. You stay sober, or I walk. That is a hard limit.”
A little history lesson. My wife was married for three years to a drug addict and alcoholic—and she’d been with him three years before that. He was never physically abusive, but he was manipulative and psychologically abusive. He was a real psychopath. He was depressive, heard voices constantly berating him, and was constantly suicidal—although Mandy suspects that he never actually intended to kill himself. It was all an act to get her sympathy—and to make her stay. And she loved him, so she stayed.
It was one final suicide attempt that finally convinced her to leave. She’d finally had it with him—got him packed up to the hospital, and while she was gone, she packed up and left—and never turned back.
Drugs and alcohol abuse were a no-no for her. It’s why I stayed sober for all those years.
“Hey, I am not your ex-husband, alright? We’ve got a good thing going here, and you’re not about to ruin it over one beer, are you? I’m sorry.” And I was. It was stupid, and I regretted it. “I’m all stressed out about everything that’s going on, and I slipped. I promise that it won’t happen again, ok?” My eyes started to water. “Please?”
She relaxed. “Oh, honey…” Then she stood up straight and looked me in the eyes. She pointed at me. “No! I won’t enable you like I did my ex-husband. You get this one free pass, but you never touch another drink again—and you go back to AA. I’ll drive you to the meetings myself if I have to.”
“Yes, yes. Whatever you want, honey. I am done with alcohol forever.”
I wish to God I had been able to keep that promise. I sometimes wonder if I’d kept it, if my wife and daughter would still be alive today.
I finally fell off the wagon a few days later. While the manhunt for my brother continued (No officer, I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him for weeks.), my editor had me frantically covering the story—trying to get ahead of the investigation. I think he was hoping I’d catch up to my brother first, so we could scoop everyone with an “exclusive” interview with my brother, the terrorist.
Terrorist.
Even knowing what I did about my brother, I couldn’t see him as a terrorist. I needed to find him for me—for my peace of mind. The longer he went free, the more I wanted a drink—something I was desperately trying to avoid. Because I wanted my family more—and I didn’t want to be the one who destroyed it.
Oh yeah, and I hadn’t written anything on my novel in days.
I honestly don’t know what I would have done if I had caught up to my brother. By the time I saw him next, things had gotten way out of hand.
So on the day I’d fallen of the wagon, I got a call from my editor.
“You need to come in.” He paused. “Now.”
“What’s going on?”
“Too much to explain over the phone, but this Matias story is shelved for now. We’ve got bigger news.”
Bigger news than the worst terrorist act since 9-11? Ok, that got my attention.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked my editor after I read the AP report. I looked up at him. “This has to be some sort of joke, right?”
“No joke. This came over the wire about twenty minutes ago. The president has scheduled a press conference this evening to address the American people.”
“He won’t seriously sign this bill into law, will he?”
“I don’t know. The world’s gone topsy-turvy, and I can’t be sure of anything these days.” He paused to light a cigarette. “I need you to fly to DC immediately and cover this.”
“DC? Don’t you have anyone else to cover this?”
“Sorry, Diggory, but I need you on this story. Your brother’s trail is getting cold, and honestly he’s small potatoes in comparison to a law like this.”
“I can’t leave right now. My wife is almost getting ready to have our baby.”
My editor looked at his calendar. “This should all be over in plenty of time for you to get for the birth of your daughter. Don’t sweat it.”
I desperately needed a drink.
“Do you really have to go?” Mandy said over the phone.
“Yeah I do, babe. I’m sorry. It should only be for a few days.”
“I want you to call me every night.”
“I swear on it.”
“Ok, honey, I love you."
“I love you, too.” I hung up.
I walked through the doors into the bar.
“Back for more?” The bartender asked me.
“Haven’t you heard? It’s the end of the world. Set me up with a few rounds. I’ve got a few minutes to kill before I gotta catch a plane.”