Read It Was Me All Along: A Memoir for Free Online Page A

door. She swallowed before continuing that the glass had sliced open the whole length of his forearm, that from the way the blood gushed out, she thought he might have hit a vein, and …
    I reached into my pocket for another caramel cream and unwrapped it, fumbling with the twisted plastic ends. The cellophane crackled so loudly, I couldn’t hear the rest of what she said. Suddenly, I was starving—so hungry I couldn’t get the candy into my mouth fast enough. The sound of my chewing was all that filled my head. Calm coursed through me.
    I chewed each of my remaining caramels, one by one, until all that was left was a pile of shiny plastic wrappers on the seat beside me.
    That day at the hospital was a turning point. Over the next few months, Mom stopped commenting on Dad’s drinking. I no longer heard her plead with him to “take a night off” when the two of them were in the kitchen alone. She didn’t stop him as he picked up the key ring and headed for the door after he realized the only drinks in the fridge were milk and Coke. She tells me now that she just didn’t want to fight anymore. She tried to see if she could just put up with it, so that Anthony and I still had an intact family.
    And so he drank.
    The handful of nights when Mom didn’t have a night shift, she cooked dinner, and we ate together. She’d make the most delicious meal, one of my favorites being meatloaf covered in a smoky-sweet glaze and served with potatoes she’d mashed with garlic, butter, and heavy cream. Those nights were the only ones when I didn’thave to chew so loudly I couldn’t hear what was going on around me. The plates, the napkins, the silverware—they all sat peacefully in place. We became more comfortable in our seats around the square butcher-block table. And lots of times we laughed as we ate meals as big as the whole of our four personalities. I’d feel, at least momentarily, that all was getting better. Dad would be his charming, brilliant self. He’d tell us stories that would make me laugh so hard milk went up my nose midgulp. Anthony’s stutter would be less apparent. Each word, every sentence required less forethought when Dad didn’t yell. It felt as if Dad had placed his foot on the one wobbly leg of our table, making it steady for once. And I’d begin to think that maybe we were becoming normal.
    But there were times, perhaps midmeal, when something would rattle him—a sentence, a sound, anything at all—and almost instantly, Dad was done eating. It was as if he’d grown sick and tired of holding that table still, and he resented us for even asking him to keep his foot in place. Suddenly I’d feel my place setting shift slightly. I’d grab hold of my plate, sure that I could stop the sliding if I held tightly and acted as though the wobble didn’t worry me. I’d work to keep the food on my plate sectioned securely. The peas had to maintain a strict border with the mashed potatoes, which couldn’t dare touch the meatloaf. My buttered biscuit was quarantined. Having each food perfectly within in its own boundary made me feel calm. I’d take a bite from the potatoes and make sure to smooth them carefully back into place. I’d eat peas in rows so as not to disturb the line that stood between them and the meatloaf. And if the boundaries I had created on my plate broke—if those peas and potatoes mingled—I worked quickly to put them back into place.
    The last meal I can remember eating together around the sametable—all four of us—was in the early spring of 1994, the year I turned nine, just before Dad entered rehab and Mom told me we were moving. Dad’s parents, Nana and Papa, decided to move permanently to the condo they owned in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, rather than straddling the sunny South in winter and Medfield, Massachusetts, where they owned a house, in summer. Mom said that Nana and Papa eventually were going to give us their house and that, for now, we’d rent it from them. I