Are You There Vodka? It's Me Chelsea Read online

  Tears were streaming down his face. It was a sad moment; even though he had attacked me like an ice-cream ninja, I couldn’t help but feel awful for him.

  “I’m sorry I kicked you in your privates,” I told him, awkwardly maintaining my position on top of him. (A position, mind you, that I became much more comfortable with later on in life.) “But you are a mess. What is wrong with you?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly.

  I finally felt like maybe the sugar was passing through his body, and I could tell he was tired from crying. I knew that whenever I threw a temper tantrum, I always felt pretty beat afterward as well. I got up from sitting on his penis.

  “I’m going to bed,” he said, and walked upstairs to his bedroom.

  I sat on the sofa, staring at the empty container of yogurt, wondering how long I was going to have this headache. James Sr. and Susan walked in moments after I had finished cleaning up.

  “How were they?” Susan asked as she walked into the living room.

  “Fine, they were fine,” I said, standing in front of the broken window.

  “There were no problems?”

  “Nope,” I told her.

  “Really?”

  “Yes, they were perfect.”

  I thought about the benefits of telling her the truth about what had happened, but knew that with all the details, I could have spent another four hours in that house, and, truth be told, I wanted to go home and wash my hair.

  James Sr. grabbed my jacket and we both headed outside to the car. He was very sweet and told me how nice it was to have dinner without any kids. He seemed like a submissive type of guy who was being tortured on a daily basis by his family. His life was not his own, and I knew he would be the perfect prototype for my first husband. As we headed down the dirt road leading to my parents’ house, he said, “I really can’t tell you how grateful I am for you babysitting,” he said. “We never really get a chance to go out.”

  “No problem,” I told him. “My pleasure.”

  “By the way,” I added. “James Junior threw an orange through the living room window and it’s broken, and then he took an empty tub of ice cream and crowned me with it until I had to wrestle him to the floor.” I left out the kicking-him-in-the-nuts part, because I didn’t want any of the blame in this scenario.

  James Sr. didn’t respond to what I said immediately, and when he did, he said, “I had a feeling things got hairy when I saw the back of your hair matted to your head. I suppose you would never want to babysit for us again, huh?” It was clear to me that James Sr. needed to leave his wife, but was one of those men who would never have the guts. Instead, he would rather suffer 90 percent of the time in anticipation of the small capsules of grown-up time he could have with her. And even though that had been one of the worst nights of my life, I wasn’t going to be the one responsible for denying him his only morsel of happiness.

  “I have a sister named Sloane who is older than me and has much more experience with emotional illness. I think you’ll like her. And I think she’ll really get a kick out of James Junior. The only problem is that she charges $15 an hour.”

  “That’ll be fine,” James Sr. told me.

  “And she carries Mace,” I added.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Prison Break

  It was exactly one week after my twenty-first birthday when I got my first DUI. I haven’t gotten another one since, but I’m not ruling anything out.

  My friend Lydia and I were on our way home from a night of heavy drinking and were midway through the second chorus of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” when she punched me in the shoulder and slurred, “I think you’re getting pulled over.”

  “Huh?” I asked as I hurriedly readjusted my rearview mirror, which I had been using in place of a compact. I lowered the volume on the radio and turned my head around for confirmation of what looked eerily similar to glaring red lights. Lydia was right. I was getting pulled over. “Fuck.”

  I’ve always had a fear of police officers, especially when their sirens are blaring and they’re behind me. “Don’t say anything,” I ordered as I quickly slammed on the brakes and drove over the curb and into a stop sign.

  Lydia slurs when she’s sober, never mind after seven vodkas with cranberry juice. She also has a tendency to offend people who can help us. Earlier that evening we had gone to a seventies revival bar in Westwood where the bouncer wouldn’t let us in unless we were on the list. “I’ll handle this,” she said, right before she laid into him. “What, do you think you’re special because you’re a bouncer? Puh-lease. You’re not an authority figure. You know you’re just fat and stupid, right? Now, can we come in or what?”

  “Pretend you’re sleeping,” I barked at her as I saw two police officers get out of the patrol car.

  “You weren’t doing anything. Tell them you want proof!”

  “I’m serious, Lydia, shut up. Do not say a word, and close your eyes! Go to sleep.”

  A burly officer in his late thirties approached my side of the car while his partner tapped a flashlight on Lydia’s window, motioning for her to roll it down as he shined the flashlight in her face.

  Lydia had to open the door because the window didn’t roll down. For my twenty-first birthday a week earlier, my father had shipped me a 1985 two-door Yugo with one working window. The year was 1996 and, as luck would have it, the window that worked was on the driver side, in the backseat. Forgetting my window didn’t roll down, I had tried on several occasions to throw a cigarette out of it, only to repeatedly slam my left hand into the glass. I had started physical therapy a few weeks prior in order to get some of the strength back in my hand, but was having trouble making a full recovery because, as the therapist said, my injury was “highly unusual.”

  “Hi, sir,” I said to the policeman as I opened my door. “Sorry, my windows don’t roll down.” I was trying to keep one eye on my cop and one eye on Lydia, knowing that any chance I had of getting out of this situation was going to depend entirely on my performance.

  “License and registration” was his hello to me.

  “Sure,” I slurred as I stood up, leaning one hand on my door. As I rifled through my purse for my license, I said to him as articulately as I could, “Can you ask me why I pulled you over?”

  The officer smirked at his partner, who was asking Lydia to remain seated in the car, and then looked back at me. “I’m going to need you to step away from your vehicle, ma’am.”

  “Ma’am?” I asked, trying to figure out how old I actually was since I had been lying about my age for some time in order to get into bars. I couldn’t remember if I was legally or illegally drunk.

  “Where are you coming from, Miss…Handler?”

  “Baja Fresh!” Lydia yelled from inside the car.

  My officer stared at me while I tried to think of anything that rhymed with Baja Fresh that would also be open at two o’clock in the morning.

  “Her cat died,” I told my cop. “She’s really tired.”

  “Uh-huh, it says on your license…”

  “Oh, shit,” I said, and grabbed the license I had given him to make sure it was mine and not the fake one that said I was my twenty-six-year-old Mormon sister, Sloane. It was my license. I handed it back to him. “Sorry.”

  “It says here that you live up the street,” he continued as he pointed in the direction behind us. I realized then that I had driven past my own apartment.

  “Tell him you want to make your phone call!” Lydia screamed.

  “You haven’t even asked me if I’ve been drinking.” I paused. Then I leaned in with my index finger pointed at him. “Because I haven’t been…if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Nope, don’t like the taste,” I said matter-of-factly. “I had two drinks, that’s all…. Okay, three drinks.”

  “Tell him about your cold,” Lydia crowed once more from the car, which was now twenty feet away from