December 30, 2005
We were supposed to go to dinner at 8:30 tonight, because that allowed my brother to join us. Mama wanted to leave the house at 8, so that we could get the table taken care of before everyone gets there. It’s a place that doesn’t take reservations (Texas Roadhouse) for large groups.
Mama and the sister who lives here, my niece and I are in the car, all waiting on my 21-year-old nephew. Mama is getting pissed because he’s not there, and his mother doesn’t seem to know what’s going on with him. My mother is fuming, so it’s my job to try to solve the problem. I get out of the car and go in the house. I check on him, and he’s still wearing only boxers and sweatpants (see earlier audio post).
I go back outside and tell mom to leave that I’ll bring him. I get in my car to warm it up while I’m waiting for him. At 8:25 or so, after waiting for at least 15 minutes, I begin to wonder what is going on. I go back in the house. I can’t find him. He’s not in his room. Not in the bathroom. I’m wondering if he went out the back door to a friend who lives nearby and just didn’t tell me. I go through the utility room to see if I can tell if he used that back door. Instead, I find him coming in from the garage in shoes, shorts, and a hoodie. He looks like he has a headache or something.
I ask what’s wrong, and he tells me that he never wanted to go to dinner with us. He says that his mother said that we would be having dinner at the house tonight, and he didn’t expect us to be going out and certainly not so late. He tells me that his friends (a different group) were supposed to pick him up at 9 to go play pool, etc. He makes it clear that he doesn’t want to go, but, well never mind all that. So I said, I’ll tell them you have other plans, and I’ll go ahead without you.
I make him confirm that this is what he wants. I leave him in the house. We come home a couple hours later or so. His dog is loose in the house, and the front door wasn’t completely closed. My sister (his aunt, not his mother) calls for us to come downstairs because he is lying on the floor of the bathroom and hallway downstairs.
When I get there, he won’t answer anyone who asks him what’s wrong. My brother waves everyone off, hovers over him, and says, have you been drinking? Yes, he says.
So there was once a gallon bottle of Jim Beam that had about 3 inches in it. It’s empty now. There has been nothing but fighting and yelling and arguing since, and none of it directed at him, cuz he’s passed out and had to be carefully walked by two people back to his bed. He’s thrown up a little at the last report.
He was one of the drunkest ppl I’ve ever seen, all toppling over and woozy. No telling when he started drinking, but he wasnt drunk like that when I left him. I thought something was wrong, but he told me it was that he didn’t want to go to dinner with the family because he had other plans. He apparently hadn’t eaten much today, and drank that 3 inches of Beam. His mother is flipping out and yelling and crying. See, today is her birthday; so Mr. Drunk skipped her birthday dinner to get drunk alone at home. At least that’s how it’s being perceived.
I’m sure it’s more complicated than all this. I don’t know if his friends didn’t show or what. I feel horrible because I’m afraid that I should have noticed before I left. He looked stressed or like he had a headache, but not drunk. I feel like a horrible person.
