Vanishing Acts
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Seymour, CT
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Vanishing Acts
I'm reading a book right now called Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult. It's a book I borrowed from a friend and it just so happens to be based on a very interesting topic.
Most of the book is centered around alcohol. It's about a young girl who is kidnapped by her father because her mother is an alcoholic and incapable of caring for her child. Twenty eight years later her father is arrested on kidnapping charges. It just so happens that his daughter ends up falling in love and having a child with an alcoholic. Here is part of the book that I just read and felt the need to jot down here.
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It's a choice that makes us human: I could put this bottle down at any time, or I could continue till it's empty. I can convince myself that it will take much more than a few drinks to slide down a pit I cannot climb out from.
And, oh, God, the taste of it. The sooty smoke in the back of the throat; the burn on the flesh of my lips. The stream of it through the baleen of my teeth. After a day like this one, anyone would need to unwind a little.
Tonight, the moon is jaundiced and scarred. It's so close to the roof of Ruthann's trailer that for a moment I imagine that the corner of the roof might ***** it, send it flying like a pierced balloon.
Why do they call it a mobile home, if it never goes anywhere?
"Eric?" A sliver of light splinters my arm, then my leg, then half of my body as Delia opens the door. "Are you still out here?"
I manage to slide the whiskey bottle behind my calf where she can't see it.
She sits down on the step behind me. "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. I know this isn't your fault."
If I answer, she'll smell the booze on my breath. So instead, I just hang my head, and hope she thinks I'm overwhelmed.
"Come inside," she says, reaching for my hand, and I'm so grateful for this that when I stand up I forget what I've been hiding, and the bottle rolls down the steps.
"Did you drop something?" Delia asks, but as her eyes adjust to the darkness, she sees the label. "Oh, Eric," she murmurs, a boatload of disillusion in those broken syllables.
By the time I shake myself out of my stupor enough to follow her inside, she's already hauled a sleeping Sophie into her arms. She whistles for Greta, and grabs her car keys from the counter.
"For God's sake, Delia, it was just a little nightcap. I'm not drunk, look at me. Listen to me. I can stop whenever I feel like it."
She turns around, our daughter caught between us. "So can I, Eric," she says, and she walks out the front door.
I don't call her back when she gets into the Explorer. The taillights dance down the road, the sideways eyes of a demon. I sit down on the bottom step of the trailer and pick up the bottle of whiskey, which is lying on its side.
It's half full.
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Most of the book is centered around alcohol. It's about a young girl who is kidnapped by her father because her mother is an alcoholic and incapable of caring for her child. Twenty eight years later her father is arrested on kidnapping charges. It just so happens that his daughter ends up falling in love and having a child with an alcoholic. Here is part of the book that I just read and felt the need to jot down here.
----------------------------------
It's a choice that makes us human: I could put this bottle down at any time, or I could continue till it's empty. I can convince myself that it will take much more than a few drinks to slide down a pit I cannot climb out from.
And, oh, God, the taste of it. The sooty smoke in the back of the throat; the burn on the flesh of my lips. The stream of it through the baleen of my teeth. After a day like this one, anyone would need to unwind a little.
Tonight, the moon is jaundiced and scarred. It's so close to the roof of Ruthann's trailer that for a moment I imagine that the corner of the roof might ***** it, send it flying like a pierced balloon.
Why do they call it a mobile home, if it never goes anywhere?
"Eric?" A sliver of light splinters my arm, then my leg, then half of my body as Delia opens the door. "Are you still out here?"
I manage to slide the whiskey bottle behind my calf where she can't see it.
She sits down on the step behind me. "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. I know this isn't your fault."
If I answer, she'll smell the booze on my breath. So instead, I just hang my head, and hope she thinks I'm overwhelmed.
"Come inside," she says, reaching for my hand, and I'm so grateful for this that when I stand up I forget what I've been hiding, and the bottle rolls down the steps.
"Did you drop something?" Delia asks, but as her eyes adjust to the darkness, she sees the label. "Oh, Eric," she murmurs, a boatload of disillusion in those broken syllables.
By the time I shake myself out of my stupor enough to follow her inside, she's already hauled a sleeping Sophie into her arms. She whistles for Greta, and grabs her car keys from the counter.
"For God's sake, Delia, it was just a little nightcap. I'm not drunk, look at me. Listen to me. I can stop whenever I feel like it."
She turns around, our daughter caught between us. "So can I, Eric," she says, and she walks out the front door.
I don't call her back when she gets into the Explorer. The taillights dance down the road, the sideways eyes of a demon. I sit down on the bottom step of the trailer and pick up the bottle of whiskey, which is lying on its side.
It's half full.
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