That was February 18, 1993.
Back to the morning after. Trudging into the living room, I managed to find a corner of the carpet that wasn’t soaked with something. I sat, right on the floor, opened my address book, and started dialing the phone. I was going to ask about the blue sweater—that would be pretext enough for a call. But I really wanted to know what I might have done at the party, any clue at all to begin to create a memory of that night.
I called one acquaintance, then the next—I don’t remember whom. No, the sweater wasn’t theirs. Then another inspiration: Joyce. I’d find out from her! Joyce was actually a college friend of my sister—that’s how I’d gotten to know her. She was living up on the North Side and every week or so we’d go to Devon Street for a buffet lunch of tandoori chicken and vegetable curry. Joyce Richardson. At the very least the tone in her voice would tell me something—she was studying to be a therapist, but she hadn’t yet learned the neutral tone.
I called her. Rehearsed and wooden, I began: “Joyce, I’d like to thank you for coming to the party …”
She broke out in laughter. Several days earlier, we had talked about how nervous I was about the party, about how I expected that no one would actually come.
“You really are something,” Joyce said, with lighthearted sympathy.
“You really are something”—the words seemed to echo.
But I knew I was nothing.
Suddenly, I saw myself through the eyes of others. In the eyes of the homeless man, I saw my own grandiosity and racism reflected back; in the eyes of the security guard and the woman at the cash register, I saw my composure unraveling; and in the eyes of the barman, I saw the image of someone who had lost himself so completely that he couldn’t remember his own name.
Joyce didn’t see me in that way, she couldn’t—I wouldn’t let her. She merely thought she was showing mercy to an insecure graduate student, not to a blackout drinker.
After I hung up the phone with Joyce, I realized that no one knew who I really was, not even me.
And so, I sat there, alone, with bottles all around me.
St. Augustine’s Confessions is often passed around in recovery circles just as it is in Catholic ones: if you’re a Catholic in recovery—it’s required reading.
While everyone naturally focuses on Augustine’s story in Confessions, I’ve always found Monica, Augustine’s mother, to be the more interesting character. She’s best known for relentlessly praying for Augustine’s conversion—that’s “praying Monica.” But there’s also another Monica, too, or at least another aspect of her: “drinking Monica,” the patron saint of alcoholics. There’s a scene in Confessions when Monica goes down to her wine cellar. Her maidservant looks at her, and says:
“Boozer.”1
In Confessions, it’s easy to see that Augustine is taken aback that a maidservant would speak to her mistress in that way; he observes that “boozer” was said not in a spirit of charity, but of condemnation.2 But God, Augustine argues, was able to turn that ill will to good, and Monica never drank again. What Augustine was talking about is what Catholics call “actual grace,” a supernatural impulse that allows us to act, to respond to God’s call.
On that morning after the party, after sitting alone for a while, I went to the kitchen to get a phone book. I dialed the Alcoholism Helpline and said:
“I’m an alcoholic, and I need help.”
It was a mercy to be able to say that—to admit what I had tried so long to hide. As my sobriety developed over the years, I would learn words to describe that experience: “moment of clarity,” “jumping-off point,” “powerlessness.” Sometimes it’s not that we’re open to mercy as a conscious choice; it’s that we are opened to mercy by circumstances beyond our own power to control or grasp. Grace is not automatic, of course, but sometimes it takes hopelessness for us to see that hope has existed all along, albeit in different ways than we were capable of imagining.
Stories of sobriety—like stories of conversion—are all different, but they’re all the same. They’re stories of mercy—stories about love and hope entering into the seemingly most desperate situations after we finally surrender to ourselves and to God.
I never did find out who owned the blue sweater or how it got on my couch. My memory and experience of looking at it so intensely stands in for those memories and experiences forever lost to the darkness of my drinking days.
But, like Monica, I never drank again—she had her wine cellar and I had my South Side apartment. I suppose we’re all Monica in our own ways, with each of us having the metaphorical equivalent of a cellar where we hide and lock ourselves away.
But, like Augustine, I think I had a praying Monica, too: a person who understood my need in a sympathetic way, a praying Monica who noticed me, remembered me.
I believe we all have a praying Monica, even though she may be hidden from sight.
I’m sure that someone was praying for me: I had reached a place where only prayers could find me.
Suggested Questions for Discussion
1. What reaction do you have to the story? What feelings did you feel when reading it?
2. Is there a particular scene that stood out for you? Why did it stand out?
3. Mercy is mentioned at several junctures in the story—which is most interesting to you and why?
4. The end of the story mentions St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine. How is she connected to the theme of mercy?
Suggested Questions for Private Reflection
1. If you saw yourself through the eyes of others, what would you see?
2. Is there a place you go—physically, mentally, or emotionally—where only prayers can find you? What would mercy mean there?
Chapter Two
Mercy and Reconciliation
Even now I don’t know, exactly, why I bullied Zach.
“Hey, Mat, Mat Schmalz—get over here!”1
I recognized Zach out of the corner of my eye. I was surprised to see him at our twenty-fifth high school reunion in the summer of 2007.
I never even talked to Zach during our time at high school. Zach was part of my more distant past: the early 1970s, a time when I wore Toughskin jeans, flared at the cuffs and lazily hanging over my blue Keds sneakers. It was a time when I watched Kukla, Fran, and Ollie on Saturday mornings after Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids; it was a time when my favorite pastimes were playing army and exploring the woods behind my home. Zach and I had grown up in the same small town.
And Zach obviously remembered me.
I wondered how vivid and accurate his memories were.
I wondered whether Zach was planning to punch my face in.
I have a love/hate relationship with barbershops. Actually, the hate usually comes first. I just don’t like how I look in the large barbershop mirror: doughy, with a dimple in the middle of my chin. I especially don’t like it when the small mirror comes out so that the barber can show me the cut along the back