Chapter Twelve: Honesty

Honesty: see things as they are, check your need to alter the truth, and release all fear; there is no advantage in lying…not even about the little things.

Sam and Mimi share a fleeting moment of truth when Warren, gainfully employed by Sam’s old partners at Steeles, stops by The Firefly at the end of service to say hello. But Warren's visit is more than social; his mission is to check up on Sam, to find out why Sam hasn’t been to an AA meeting in over a month. Warren is direct in his questioning. He hasn’t learned the fine art of diplomacy, but bravely takes the offensive against Sam’s battering, cynical tongue. Mimi is an innocent bystander who stands in the shadows watching as two trains collide; much as she’d like to, she can’t avert her eyes from the wreckage. “Sam, you’re drinking again,” Warren states. “Why don’t you admit it, and let me help you get back on track?”
“Nooooo, I don’t drink, not Sam I Am,” Sam sings in a scathing Dr. Suessical impression, cracking himself up as a breathless Mimi freezes. “Why are you laughing, Sam?” Warren asks. “Do you think this is funny? What’s so funny about lying to your wife, or to me? Or, more importantly, to yourself?” Warren is painfully sincere, and so very, very ineffective. Sam jabs Warren as an aggressive child might poke a vulnerable kitten with a stick. “Why, I’m laughing at you, boy! Look at you standing there judging me, all rosy and sober and self-righteous. When’s the last time you had a drink, yesterday?”
Warren is stirred, but not shaken. “Sam, you’re drunk right now, aren’t you? Bet you don’t know Mimi’s listening. She’s over there, watching you act like an ass. Now would a good time to tell her the truth.” Warren points at Mimi’s stricken face. “Doesn’t she deserve the truth?”
Sam laughs maniacally, and stumbles. “No siree, buddy, I am not drunk. Nope.” He leans against the nearest wall and cuts his unfocused eyes toward Mimi, but can’t see past his vodka-enhanced ego. “Why don’t you go on home now, little boy, and have yourself a cold one?” Jab, jab. “You’re about as strong as weak coffee, Warren.” Sam swings, but misses. “Damn wimp. I bet you squat to pee.”
Warren tires of straying close to the bully’s fist and walks dejectedly out the back door, but not before making an impression on Mimi. Sam follows Warren up the street, baiting him, mocking him, but degrading only himself as Mimi sadly looks on. It makes sense now, she realizes; Sam’s confusing behavior makes sense. ‘You’re working too many hours, Mimi; you’re not working enough, Mimi; you’re ordering the wrong wine, Mimi; you’re spending too much money, Mimi; you’re hiring morons, Mimi; stay out of my way, Mimi.’ She finally gets it loudly, deeply, clearly; Warren breaks the code to the map, replaces Mimi’s broken compass, and helps her find true north, although the path he uncovers is strewn with broken dreams.
The confrontation with Warren leaves Sam bubbly. He’s Master of the Universe, and goes about his business very happily for the rest of the night; he’s so happy, in fact, that he stumble-dances, paying homage to his favorite celebrity drunks Jackie Gleason and Dean Martin. He’s loud and funny in a twisted, obnoxious kind of way - scary funny, which isn’t very funny at all. At home, he lies to Mimi multiple times before the indigo-stained morning gives to a blood red sky. “Alright, you win, dammit,” he finally admits. A resigned but unsettled Sam sighs heavily. “I’m drinking again, but not much, and only for two months. It’s not a big deal,” he says, avoiding Mimi’s set face.
“Is that why you’ve been so rude and disrespectful lately?” Mimi seeks answers, answers that make sense. But she can’t make sense of Sam’s puffed up response – none whatsoever. “No, that’s not why I’m so rude, dammit! I don’t think you do a good job with the staff. They run all over you.” Jab, jab. “That’s not why I’m disrespectful! Respect is earned, Mimi. You just piss me off!” Sam turns his head from the window’s fitful light, closes his eyes, and within seconds, his thunderous snoring conjures heavy rain; Sam’s fury shatters the sky and sends the sun on a two-day vacation.

Sam reluctantly agrees that counseling is imperative if the marriage is to be salvaged. Mimi pleads her way into a Sunday afternoon emergency session, and as if taking a cue from the unrelenting downpour, Sam releases the floodgate. Under the watchful gaze of grandmotherly Donese Bradford, MA LPC LMFT, a regular customer and long-time fan of Sam’s unique recipe for shrimp and grits, Sam admits he’s been drinking again for two years. Mimi’s reaction is strangely calm for someone seeking shelter in the middle of a maelstrom. Donese directs her attention to Mimi. “You must be shell-shocked about now. What are you thinking?” Mimi looks from Sam to Donese and pauses. “I feel a strange kind of relief, lighter somehow, like I could blow away, but solid at the same time; maybe this is how it feels to drown.”
“Remember, Mimi, this is Sam’s problem, not yours.” Mimi takes a deep breath and looks gratefully at Donese before continuing. “For two years I’ve been trying to please Sam and couldn’t do it. It’s been confusing; no, awful, really.” She hesitates. “But, tell me, how could I not realize he’s been drinking for two years? I feel so naïve and ignorant.” Mimi looks intently at Sam. “Am I the only idiot? Does everybody else know, Sam?” Sam’s smug answer tips her tenuous balance. “Well, probably not everybody, but Jesse brings me vodka shots when I ask her to.”
“Oh, great. Now I have a cocktail waitress who helps my husband get drunk. What a gift! Is that why we gave her a raise last year?” Sam’s sarcasm is contagious; Mimi feels a rise in temperature until Donese quickly cuts the thermostat on her anger. “What’s Jesse supposed to do, Mimi, ask you first? Get fired because she’s enabling one boss and the other boss finds out? Get in the middle of your crisis?” Donese glances at Sam and continues. “Mimi, Sam’s good at drinking. He knows all the secrets, isn’t that right, Sam?”
Sam grins and leans back in his chair. “I have more tricks up my sleeve than a Las Vegas pimp has hookers.”
“That’s really nothing to be proud of.” Donese stares at Sam until his face turns red, and when he drops his eyes, she makes her call. “I don’t think rehab is the place for you. My suggestion is for you to immerse yourself in AA, Sam. Go to ninety meetings in ninety days. You make a three-month contract with sobriety. That’s where you start, and you start today. Can you do this?” Sam tearfully consents to what sounds like a sentence of hard labor, but with the possibility of parole for good behavior.
“Now, Mimi,” states Donese, “your job is to open your heart and stand upon the rock of your original attraction to Sam. Keep the faith. If that requires you to fake it until it feels right again, then you do just that.” Donese pauses, and softens toward the hangdog couple. “It appears to me you have way too much to lose by giving up now. Can you two stick together on this?”
Mimi silently implores Sam to speak first. “I can, Donese, if Mimi can,” he finally says after two minutes of tension-filled silence. He turns to Mimi and takes her hand in his. ”What do you think, wife? Can you do it?” Mimi puts on her rose-colored glasses. “I can, and I will, Sam.” Donese smiles at their vulnerability, and pulls out her appointment book. “Okay, then. I want to see you both back here next Monday, and every Monday for the next three months. If there are emergencies, call me. It doesn’t matter what time it is, I’ll see you right away. Deal?”
“Deal!” says Sam as he moves confidently toward his goal; however, on the twelfth Monday, on day eighty-four to be exact, a herd of turtles speeds toward the finish line, obliterating the competition. Marginally relieved by a second place finish, Sam pardons himself with an early parole.
Sam tries outpatient treatment. “I’m too good for those losers, not nearly as sick as they are.” So he quits. Donese suggests another twenty-eight day gig at The Farm. Sam says no. Group therapy, no; meetings, no. Bottle, yes. Niiiice fish, purty fish, lots of silver. Sam makes his choice, and it’s not Mimi. Better to be alone than in bad company, Mimi thinks. She moves into Warren’s old bedroom and lives like a stranger in their house until she finds a safe haven in the country, a lovely cottage with a big front porch, with a modern kitchen and heart pine floors.

Diving from high places into a tightly-woven safety net is better than diving into a net with holes, but a freefall is in an altogether separate category. Mimi knows the difference firsthand, thanks to Sam. She describes her depression as if it’s another person; Mimi knows depression, gives her depression a name and a personality. Enter Fatty Patty. Fatty Patty wears muumuus and lives in a dirty house trailer and reclines in a stained, worn out brown corduroy Lazy Boy recliner with rusty, squeaky hinges that groan under her weight. A scurfy little mutt sits on her fat lap and scratches its infected ears, chews its flea-ridden, rodent-like body constantly. Fatty Patty eats bonbons between each cigarette – forty-seven butts form a teepee in the overflowing ashtray and it’s not even bedtime. Fatty Patty’s long, stringy hair is greasy because she hasn’t taken a shower in three days. She watches game shows in the morning and soap operas in the afternoon, and after that, she watches Court TV. Fatty Patty takes a nap during the local news, awakens and slides a TV dinner in the microwave for a quick appetizer, then drives her old low-riding Buick Electra to McDonald’s - the drive-thru, of course - for two double cheeseburgers, large fry, and a jumbo diet coke. The TV tray beside the Lazy Boy is littered with used tissues and National Enquirer magazines.
Mimi allows Fatty Patty VIP entrance into her psyche for three days before she kicks her out; seventy-two solid, miserable hours of abjection are about all Mimi can stand. Then, Mimi stands alone in the dark, fully engaged with the poverty of her spirit; she embraces the darkness until she sees a shadow of light, until she hears music in her head again. Sam? Sam’s not depressed. Depression is for babies, Sam says. He’ll never admit he’s human that way.

Depression is not a solitary sport, but it's not necessarily a team sport, either. Julie Reston, depressed? Hell, no. She doesn’t have time for depression. Put a little lipstick on and forget about it, that’s Julie’s answer when dark thoughts sneak in. She dispels depressive thoughts with an internal vacuum cleaner, sucks those unwelcome mind mites away one, two, three at a time. Jake describes his depression as a nebulous blob.

Jake recognizes a kindred spirit in Mimi. He watches her closely when he’s at the club, spies as she runs through her paces like a professional; she’s unaware of his covert operation, so Jake sees the real thing. He sees Mimi’s mask crack when she thinks nobody’s looking. He feels the sadness in her eyes from the stage, sees it in her usual late night solitary dance after the club closes. Mimi smokes more and smiles less, but is engaging and kind to the musicians, to her staff. There’s a distinct difference in this woman and Jake knows something has changed, but what? What is it, he wonders? He observes Mimi for weeks, exchanging pleasantries and late night stories and basic weather facts and political opinions and they know each other, but they don’t.
Jake gratefully accepts the beer Dee hands him after the night’s gig ends. He takes a big pull and pats the bottle. “Thanks pal,” he says to Dee, grinning. “My throat was beginning to feel like scarecrow guts.”
“Great gig tonight,” Dee responds. “The crowd went crazy over that new blues tune you guys did; I’ve never heard it before. What’s it called?”
“We debuted two new ones tonight, which one?”
“The one you funked out at the end, with the line ‘sit, beg, and behave.'”
“That one’s called Cornbread, and Tommy wrote it. Fine, isn’t it?”
“You have to play it every gig from now on. Did you hear the call and response from the crowd? They were barking like dogs.”
Jake laughs. “You’ll hear it so much you’ll get tired of it, I promise. Give it three weeks and you’ll be begging for a reprieve.” Jake motions Dee closer and lowers his voice. “Hey Dee, I have a question. Tell me if it’s none of my business.” He stops and looks around, making sure they’re alone before venturing into personal territory. “Is Mimi okay? Something’s going down with her, but I can’t put my finger on it.”
Dee shakes her head and looks at Jake. “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”
“Well, don’t then. It’s none of my business.” Jake takes another long pull of his beer and looks around the bar again; Dee does the same, and determining their conversation is private, moves in closer to Jake. “Did you know she and Sam split?”
“No, hadn’t heard that, when?”
“Last month.” Dee’s eyes swing around the bar once more. Mo’s entertaining the rest of the band at the far end, so she continues. “Okay, Jake, I’m gonna tell you some things that could get me fired. You promise to keep this between us?”
“Dee, stop. You’ve said enough.”
“No, listen. Somebody around here needs to know. She won’t talk to the staff. We’ve tried, but she shuts us down.”
“I get that,” Jake says, “you’re too close; but I bet she talks to her friends.”
Dee shakes her head. “I doubt it. She’s in flames. I’ve watched her shake like a leaf for no apparent reason and have to grab a chair to keep from falling down. You’re a doctor, Jake. Maybe she needs medication. I think she’s having a nervous breakdown.”
Jake ponders before answering. “She’s losing weight, that’s for sure. And smoking like a burnt piece of toast.”
“Sam’s drinking again, Jake, and not just a little bit.”
Jake looks surprised. “I didn’t know he ever stopped.”
“Well, he lied to Mimi about it; she was the last to know. They went through marriage counseling and it didn’t take, but she tried, Jake. And he did, too, for almost three months. Can you imagine how hard it must be for them, working together like this? Sam’s so hateful to her, just awful. It makes me sick. The stress is about to tip her over. I’ve seen her bite the head off more than one customer lately and that’s not like Mimi. At least she doesn’t have to go home to that shit anymore.”
Jake finishes his beer, bids goodnight to a departing Melvin, returns to the conversation and lets Dee in on a little secret of his own. “You know Julie and I split awhile back, for four months, and then made a terrible mistake by reuniting. The honeymoon phase of our reconciliation is long gone. We tried too, Dee. But nothing’s changed except the silence is louder, the distance is wider, and the sheets are colder.” Jake stares at the back wall, thinking about the declaration he’s getting ready to make. “We’re back together, but not for long. Please, Dee, don’t mention this to anyone. Melvin doesn’t even know yet. And although I’m relieved, it pains me like a nagging toothache.” He covers his jawbone and chuckles. “I think Julie’s yanking out my last bit of wisdom.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Jake.”
“Don’t be. Julie and I are taking our last dying breath as a couple.” He rubs his face and sighs. “We’re total opposites.”
Dee frowns. “I’ve always heard opposites attract.”
Jake shakes his head. “We’ve disproven that old theory.” He grins at Dee. “A strange notion, isn’t it? I mean, think about it: two negatives make a positive, two positives make a positive, but put a negative and positive together, and they do not bond. Like attracts like – it’s a scientific fact, baby, hard core undisputed truth.”
“Sam and Mimi are opposites, too.”
“Their picture’s in the textbook too, right alongside me and Julie.” Jake and Dee share a hollow laugh; there’s nothing funny about dying relationships. “Where’s she living, do you know?”
“Somewhere out west of town in the country. I haven’t seen it, but she says she’ll invite the staff out soon for lunch. I doubt she will, though; she keeps to herself these days.”
Jake focuses in on Dee. “Do you know the road?”
Dee playfully grabs Jake’s shirt and pulls him close. “You’re not gonna stalk her, are you? I’ll have to kill you if you do.”
“Okay, this is weird, but I’m getting a feeling…” Jake pauses. “No, it can’t be…” He shakes his head as Dee releases her grasp. “I lived in a wonderful house for four months when Julie and I split the first time, a great little pad on Jenkin’s Bottom Road.”
Dee laughs. “No way, Jake. I think Mimi lives on that road. How weird is that?”
“Pretty damned weird,” says Jake. “Nah, couldn’t happen. Too weird.” Dee leaves the bar and heads for the office. “Hang on, I’ll ask her.” Before Jake can protest, Dee is halfway to the office door. “Stay right there. Sam’s gone and Mimi’s closing. It’ll be fine, she’ll dig it. She’s probably ready for a glass of wine anyway.”
Mimi tucks the last of the night’s paperwork in a folder and joins Jake at the bar. Her brow is furrowed, and her eyes are tired, but she smiles anyway; her mind fills with the image of her old boss. Nobody is intimidated now, she thinks. “Dee says we may have a shared experience. I live at the end of Jenkin’s Bottom Road in a lovely little farmhouse with a big front porch. Is that where you lived?”
Jake grins. “Sure did, Mimi. Great sunsets there, very peaceful.” Jake shakes his head. “I used to live in your house, can you believe it? Have you heard the coyotes?”
Mimi’s tired eyes light up. “I thought they were dogs howling at the gates of Hell; woke me from a dead sleep, Jake, what a sound. Now, though, I love them; they echo my soul.” Mimi takes off her sweater, picks up a menu and fans herself. “Dang, it’s hot in here. Dee, do you have a bottle of Atlas Peak Sangiovese or Markham Cab open?” Dee holds up the Atlas Peak. “Great, will you please pour me a glass with water back? And I’d like to buy this man a beer, Beck’s I think.”
“Yes, ma’m,” Dee says, turning around before Mimi sees her wide grin. Dee pours a good ten ounces into a sparkling glass and places it on the bar. “Why, thank you Dee! Being an owner certainly has its privileges, now, doesn’t it?” Mimi laughs as she walks toward the door. Jake picks up her water and his beer, and follows her. “We’ll be right outside if you need anything, Dee.”
“I’m fine,” Dee says. “It’s gonna be at least forty-five minutes before I’m ready to roll.” Her boss is visibly relaxed for the first time in weeks, and Dee isn’t in the mood to rush. Jake doesn’t mention Sam, and Mimi doesn’t mention Julie. They don’t talk much at all, but sit quietly under the stars and listen to the thirty-two calls of a mockingbird with the blues; they count his songs and hoot when he mimics the first five notes of Blues, Greens and Beans. Gino the mockingbird becomes a regular at The Phoenix, visits late at night when only songbirds with the blues are awake, and is most prolific when entertaining an audience of two.