Out of the Drink

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

I'll never forget the day he told me that his Knopf editor wanted him to take the drinking out of all the stories in the book that would be titled What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. I paused a long while, pacing the rooms of our little cottage in Tucson, Arizona. Then I sat down in front of him and said, 'You've got to get rid of that editor. He just doesn't understand where you've come from or what you're about.'

But this early phase of Ray's sobriety demanded that he not take on battles that would exhaust him and possibly lead to uncontrollable consequences. Ray saw his choice as this: stay sober, or fight to get a new editor. Although the drinking stayed in his stories, there were many other important elements the editor cut.

Ultimately the trespassing editor and Ray parted company. A provision was made that this editor wasn't to touch the next book, Cathedral, which would certify not only Ray's literary reputation but also his gift for writing about moments of transformative change. This book, in which the upturn in Ray's life was clearly apparent, has continued to be his best-selling work.

Early on Ray had told me how, in his first days of trying to stay sober, he'd needed something to fill up all the time he'd previously spent drinking, so he'd played hours and hours of bingo. He'd also gone to AA meetings drunk, he said with an embarrassed giggle. But he would always sober up and try again. He had three major physical collapses before he finally quit. When he suffered a seizure in a doctor's office, the doctor told him that if he didn't stop drinking, he'd die. Thank God for that doctor. From that moment on, Ray was determined to get free of alcohol.

I admit I was partly bluffing in Texas when I led him to believe I would disappear from his life if he went back to drinking. Luckily I didn't have to face that choice. I truly don't know what I would have done, for I was deeply in love, as if my life until then had simply been a rehearsal for meeting him. There was a way in which all the failed alcoholics in my life were symbolically delivered by Ray's success. He was drying out for all of them.

Ray and I got to be like two mountain climbers rigged to each other on a glacier face. There was a heady exhilaration in everything we did, because of how far we'd come to get there.

Ray felt an obligation to help others who were in trouble with alcohol. Wives of my colleagues at the University of Arizona used to ask me if Ray would talk to their husbands, whose drinking had gotten out of control. In Syracuse, where we both taught, I'd learn on occasion of students who were alcoholics or addicts, and Ray would take them aside and go to meetings with them. He'd share his own story, for he believed that stories can save us.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print