Maclean’s Dec. 15, 1946

I’M AN ALCOHOLIG’S WIFE

By Janet

Today’s Alcoholic is babied as a noble, frustrated soul, says this wife. But what about the real victim – the family.

Alcoholism has become respectable, so every alcoholic home which shelters an to speak. lt is discussed in magazines and alcoholic? What about them? papers, in sermons and at Rotarian meetings; It seems they are impatient, selfeverywhere in fact. lt seems that alcoholism is righteous clods, lacking in understanding, an illness, and the victim of the disease needs thinking about such mundane subjects as how to sympathy and not blame – the victim, according pay the rent or what to feed the children, to this theory, always being the one who thinking about – would you believe it? – of what indulges, never the family. lt’s just like a bad the neighbors are saying when the dear cough or measles. alcoholic staggers up the front steps in broad The weak spot in this comparison is that daylight. people are usually glad to be rid of disease, and One alcoholic writes a whole book on the will go to ludicrous lengths to effect a cure (as subject, blaming the ordinary natural family witness the radio commercials), while the affection, the indulgence and praise of his alcoholic clings with a love, “passing the love of mother, as the cause. Don’t praise your children women”, to his so-called disease. too much, he solemnly warns, well, that sounds Better compare it to insanity, but again logical. Most drinkers seem inordinately fond of there is a difference. An insane person is praise; but the next authority says profoundly, generally confined where he can do no harm, “People drink because of an inferiority complex. while the alcoholic is allowed at large to drive Parents should praise their children for every high powered cars, trucks, buses, to carry effort.” firearms, to squander money, to run up bills. Yet all around, you see people with It’s nice, though, to have the alcoholic so inferiority complexes of the most painful natures fashionable. A wife can now sit at a bridge table who never take to drink, who either endure or and say to another wife, “Oh, your husband is overcome their feelings of inferiority, and in tubercular? Mine is an alcoholic,” just like that – many cases lug an alcoholic along with their not a bit embarrassed or anything. ln this way complexes. When will the learned people start she can hold the floor for quite a while, instead looking for the cause at its source – alcohol? of remaining silent when other wives discuss But you mustn’t be bitter. These people ailments of husbands. ln fact, the alcoholic is are trying to help you. All you have to do now is now almost a hero. lt seems he is a sensitive, tell Johnny and Suzie that papa is sick. “Why noble soul, who can’t stand the sorrows and doesn’t papa have treatment?”, little simple sufferings of mortal life, and must have liquor to Suzie asks. Papa doesn’t want treatment. I cast a rosy glow over it, or to numb him into not mean, what fun would paps have when Joe feeling anything. Doakes drops in, if he had treatment – what fun Very good! What about the wife, sister, would papa have on his business trips, at his mother, or even brother, who perhaps, too, is a class reunion, at the bar? sensitive creature, and to whom war and famine No, on second thought, better not tell and orphaned children are unbearable thoughts, Suzie he is sick. Better not say anything to but who must think about them cold-sober, and Suzie, To Johnny, maybe, Johnny has been also put up with the eternal worries, the chronic acting morose lately, embarrassed when the heartache, the everlasting pall which hangs over gang sees papa not quite himself.

Tell Johnny, “Papa is sick. He is an As the years go by it gets harder to keep alcoholic. You mustn’t be ashamed of him any your resolution not to look like a drunkard’s wife, more than Jim is ashamed of his father’s heart not to let the children know, not to invite trouble.” lf Johnny cries out, “But Jim’s father sympathy. You don’t give a damn how you look stays in bed with his heart trouble. He doesn’t some days, but habit is strong (even a good say and do foolish and bad things because of habit) and you keep up appearances. You don’t his heart trouble. He is not allowed to drive and care what the children think of papa, but secretly knock down fence posts because of his heart you hope they think the worst. You long to win trouble!” – but he won’t, being Johnny, and 14. sympathy on the street car and in the stores by your look of patient long-suffering – to let your THAT SYMPATHY LOOK hair down and tell all to the “girls” – to hear their cluck-cluck of sympathy, their words of praise – He will squirm uncomfortably and change or just to get it out of your system. the subject. He’ll become quieter and meet the gang down the street a way, and sometimes you YOU DON’T CARE will catch him, with sympathy in his eyes, looking at you. Above all, some days you don’t care Thank goodness Suzie is different! She what becomes of papa. Better have him come to is gay and is never bothered by papa’s actions. some harm than to harm someone else, you say But the little demon, memory, whispers, “Johnny grimly or philosophically, according to your was like that a few years ago too.” Suzie will get mood. The quick sympathy, the feeling of quiet and ashamed, and will look at you with tenderness, when he becomes sober and pity, and do little kindness’far beyond her years penitent, is gone. lt seems kind of good. Enough – which will hurt you more than any childish to feel sorry for yourself and the children without thoughtlessness ever hurt. But you smile until feeling sorry for papa. You tear out of your heart your face aches, and you swear that no one will the image of the man he might have been – the ever see you looking like a drunkard’s wife. man he was. Like having a tooth pulled, it’s hard, You dress becomingly, and keeP the but a relief. children looking nice and the home homelike. By You read some more. “Only an alcoholic rigid economy you manage fine – that is, on a can help another alcoholic. He alone good week you can save just about as much by understands his problem.” Only an alcoholics all your economies and mendings as papa wife can understand another alcoholic’s wife, spends in a day. BUT KEEP THAT SMILE ON! you paraphrase. And they are not always Drunkards wives are apt to let their faces sag to sympathetic, you think sourly, they can always scowl, to let their hair hang down their necks. see how the other wife is to blame, but not You will never come to that!. themselves. You wouldn’t confide in them So you extol papa’s virtues to the anyway. lnstead you hold aloof and don’t children and to outsiders. You are old-fashioned. associate with them. What snobs we drunkard’s You still can’t talk about papa being a drunkard – wives are! excuse it, an alcoholic. You know that everyone You lose control more easily. You sob knows, and that they know you know it, but it and cry and pound the table, and heap curses saves your face a little to pretend you don’t. This on the heads of the liquor interests, and wins you some admiration but not much. Mostly maledictions on anyone who hands out a drink it brings you scorn. “Why doesn’t she admit he of liquor; but the next time papa gets out the drinks too much? Wouldn’t it be better?” Better drinks for the guests, you adjust your wooden by far, a hundred times better, but you can’t. lt smile and help. Never must the alcoholic’s wife hangs over you every waking minute, eating into openly disapprove of liquor. That will always be your vitals, coloring, or discoloring your life; but seized upon as a reason for his drinking, by you can no more talk about it than you can relatives, by friends, by papa! undress on Main Street. ln fact, you learn early that alcohol is a Sacred Cow. To help food saving you eat up all

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the crusts so obediently that there is nothing left them if you break down? You have been a father with which to stuff the Sunday chicken. You feel and mother to them for years. You settle down guilty to have the chicken, even, and well you to sleep. Surprisingly enough, you sleep long might, the papers tell you; but only the most and soundly, and awake amazed at your own courageous – or foolhardy – editor will suggest, resiliency. This is another day. Be thankful you once in a while, that perhaps some of the grain can take care of the children. that goes into alcohol might better go to feed a Occasionally the day ends with you starving world. Leave that Sacred Cow alone! feeling encouraged and hopeful, but perversely, You hear that there is a comedY at a the next morning the pall is thick around you, downtown theatre, and you all go, including your and it seems almost impossible to go on. lt’s a husbands’ maiden aunt. Monty Woolley relief to get the children off to school, and no portrays, in equally divided parts, a mixture of longer have to pretend before their searching, Monty Woolley, Alexander Woollcott, George sympathetic eyes; and on this day life stretches Bernard Shaw, and the village bum – with an before you without a ray of hope, with no release endearing character! He plays a gifted actor who this side of the grave. The one thing you are never holds a job, an alcoholic, well pleased with thankful for on one of these days is that there is his status. His daughter is a cripple because he no gas stove in the kitchen, no gas jets on the drunkenly dropped her when she was a baby. walls. You can see what a riot it is! She waits on him And the week ends, the horror of the and worries over him and has no social or week endsl No school to send them off to, romantic life. Devastatingly funny, of course! Suzy’s friends in and out, Johnny spending more Monty is selfish, rude, lazy – and full of charm. time than is good for him at the movies and Hired to be a store Santa Claus, he becomes bowling alleys to avoid seeing his father inebriated, insults the customers, and burps. celebrate. The “new leisure,” the long weekend, The children force a laugh, but presently you all beginning Friday afternoon and lasting until leave, voting it the worst picture of the year. Monday morning. What is your amazement to find, in a Oh, for the good old daYs when respected magazine, a review of this picture, drunkards had to wait until Saturday night to citing its humor, and adding, gratuitously, that start the week- end celebration! But Sunday you everyone will delight in it but bluenosed get up and start the dinner. You rouse the prohibitionists. You boil. You contemplate writing children in time for Sunday School. You dress a scathing letter to the editor and pointing out to carefully, and put on your new hat for church. her that the one who disliked it the most was not How flattering the color is with your silver hair. the maiden aunt, not the children, not the wife, You can wear a lot of colors now you never wore but the alcoholic himself. But you don’t – you before. You must remember that when you shop don’t. No Carrie Nation you, to lift up the tongue for clothes. All these things help in keeping up against the Sacred Cow. appearances. Many a night You go to bed sobbing And once again, you vow eternally that hysterically, to be brought up short by the you will never look like a drunkard’s wife – no, thought of the children. What will become of not even like an alcoholic’s wife.

Source. Maclean’s Magazine, December 15, 1946

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