Seeking Refuge

“You don't have to be an angel, just be someone who can give.” –Patti LaBelle

I had to get away from my mother. I’d come back from an AA meeting, and she’d ask me if “I’d had fun with my friends?” I’d start in about alcoholism being a fatal, progressive disease, and she’d tell me to set the table. I needed to find a place to live. The linen manufacturer was back from China and wanted me to return to work.

photo by Christian Koch

My father drove me to Princeton Junction. He was quiet, and then he said, “Listen, keep writing. You are very good. I think you can write a novel.” I wanted to tell him how much I loved him and that I understood I could never be like Catherine, who was brilliant. I would write books like him if I could and ask him for criticism. I would never be as good a writer as him but I would do my best and get better. Mainly I wanted to tell him that I forgave him for scaring me so much when I was little, and I understood that he loved my mother most of all.

They met when they were so young, just twenty, and fell madly in love. She would always be his Lizzie, and he would always be her Jules. They would always be beautiful and glamorous and have famous friends and sit in Roman cafes in dark glasses. We were the three graces, Catherine, Brigid, and Molly, and they loved us to pieces even if they forgot we needed to be taken care of and listened to and encouraged and cherished. But I didn’t. I kissed him, took my bag and my stupid loden coat, and stood on the platform waiting for the train to New York City. When I looked back he was still sitting in the car. I waved, and he waved, and then the train going in the opposite direction roared in and blocked the view.

Returning to work was a relief. No one asked me any questions. There was a huge gathering of linen buyers in New York City and the linen manufacturer was busy taking them to fancy restaurants and out to Broadway shows. He stopped outside my office, and when I looked up, he said, “You look better.”
“I left him.”
“Good.”
“Don’t fire me.”
“Do some work. Job security is an illusion.”

I answered an ad in the Village Voice for an apartment in Manhattan near Columbia University that had one bedroom to rent for two-fifty a month. For so little money, I was certain the place had to be a slum, yet when I visited, it turned out to be a huge two bedroom, although my room was tiny, with a kitchen, a separate dining room, and an occupant whom I would soon describe as bat shit crazy. Libbett was a professor at Columbia with a serious drinking problem. Ironic, since I was attending AA every day, to return to the sight of a person face down on the floor of the living room or reeling around the kitchen making brownies at midnight. I tried to stay away as much as possible, going from work to a meeting, going out afterward for coffee, and then walking through the city for hours.

I had started to see a real therapist who had an office like so many others on the Upper East Side. My father had called me at work and said I was to start therapy at least twice a week, “If she needs it,” my mother yelled on the extension, with the bills sent to them. He gave me a name that was recommended by a therapist my mother was actually seeing occasionally to talk about my sister. “She lives right down the street. She’s very smart. She said I don’t really need therapy.” I resisted the impulse to laugh.

My shrink had trained with Freud or something equally impressive. Hazel Weinberg looked me in the eye when I told her I planned to commit suicide after I got sober again. “Well,” she said, “I’ll ask you to call me first.” I made a sad little speech about wanting to warn her that if she planned on getting fond of me since people had a habit of getting fond of me, she might be sad when I killed myself.” Also,” I added,” you could be embarrassed professionally.”
“How often are you going to AA meetings?” she asked me.
“Every day if I can,” I said.
“Do you have a sponsor?”
“Not yet.”
“Get a sponsor.”

This was a huge obstacle, in my opinion. Despite having any number of awful men in my life I had found it difficult to trust women. There were exceptions, Cynthia, Catherine, and Alison, but two of them were dead, and Alison was back in Madrid. My best friend from high school had refused to allow me in her house when I’d called her for help, and my other sister was consistently mean, and anyway, men were far easier than women to manipulate. “I’m writing you a prescription for Xanax until the panic attacks subside.” Hazel looked at me hard. “Don’t talk to your husband.”

When I told her his family was from Sicily, she told me that people from that part of Italy were genetically prone to violence and depression. My relationship with Hazel was crucial. After I told her about Catherine and Cynthia and being raped and how much I drank, I expected her to focus on those tragedies and my alcoholism. But she went much deeper, asking me about my childhood and my parents. I began to understand that our family was a quagmire. Much of what I’d accepted as normal was the opposite. I grew very angry with my parents, and in one session announced I wanted to shoot them both in the head. “No, Molly. You would find substitutes. Until you understand your parents, you’ll just replace them.”

My favorite meeting was on 84th Street in an old church basement. One evening a blonde woman in a nice suit with perfectly cut hair and a manicure spoke about how she had suffered delirium tremens and thought her bed was full of snakes, crashed a car into a wall, and was found passed out and naked outside her sorority. Priscilla was from Texas, and we couldn’t have seemed more different, but the way she described her drinking, the guilt, remorse, and shame, I knew I needed to ask her to be my sponsor. Also, her brother had died when she was in her twenties. I waited until the last moment and then ran after her as she strolled down West End Avenue. “Will you be my sponsor?” She smiled, took out her wallet, and handed me a card. “Of course. Call me tomorrow.”

I called her, and we met for coffee. I followed her to the Korean manicurist where you could get a mani pedi on Tuesdays for eight dollars. I had chewed off all my nails, so I sat with her telling her about my day and how hard it was to live with Libbet, the alcoholic professor. The Korean manicurist kept shaking her head. “Find a new place to live,” Priscilla said. “And stop biting your nails.”

Although I had stopped drinking, I was deeply depressed, so depressed that rituals, like getting gelato at a certain store after our sessions, were comforting enough to seem vital. One late afternoon in December of 1985, I was walking downtown and east from Hazel’s office when I realized there were a half dozen police cars parked outside of Sparks Steak House, which was next door to my gelato place. There were two chalk outlines on the sidewalk outside the restaurant and blood visible, but I wanted my post-therapy, Oh-my-god-my-parents-were-selfish-monsters hazelnut gelato. Apparently, Paul “Big Paul” Castellano, a kingpin of organized crime, had been executed along with Thomas Bilotti, who was part of the Gambino crime family. Mafia stuff was not a big deal with me since I’d attended grade school with Karen Costello, whose grandfather Pinky Costello had been a major player, and Sam (the plumber) DeCavalcante’s son had taught math at Lawrence High. We were from New Jersey, so the mob was everywhere.

“Can I get past the barrier?” I asked the huge New York City cop blocking access to my destination.
“And why would you do that, young lady?”
“To get gelato.”
“Two mafia crime figures were executed fifteen minutes ago. Both of them were shot in the face. The sidewalk’s closed.”
“I really need the gelato. Please.” I smiled like the nice girl I was, but he was unmoved.
“Honey, there’s a Hagen-Daaz place on 6th Avenue.”
He didn’t understand. Certain things made it possible to live. I had superstitions: I refused to look at Hazel directly because I loved her, and she’d probably die. I had to bring coffee to our sessions, purchased at a Greek diner on 3rd Avenue. I needed that gelato. Otherwise, like before, the world would end.

And then I stalled. One late afternoon I emerged from the subway and was lost. I couldn’t remember where I lived or where I was going. I had a full-blown panic attack outside of the 72nd Street subway stop. I found a phone booth and called Priscilla. “Hey, darlin’.”
“I’m lost. I mean, I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Where? Where are you?”
“The 72nd Street subway, 72nd and Broadway.”
“You’re going to a meeting, Molly. It’s Tuesday, and you’re going to 84th Street. You got off too soon.”
“I can’t do this, Priscilla. I need to move again and get a divorce. I hate my job, and my parents were so selfish. I’m tired and angry.”
“Yes. After we say goodbye I want you to hang up and then walk to that bakery, can’t remember the name, get a cookie or something and a coffee, then go to the meeting. Call me after that.”
“Priscilla, I’m afraid.”
“And pray. When you hang up. Just pray. Say something like, “God, I need help.” That’s all.”
“Can I leave the god part off?”
“Absolutely.”

The new living situation was bad. At the beginning of the second week I lived there, I returned from therapy to discover my crazy roommate throwing a party for her graduate students. I tried to slip into my room undetected, but just as I had my hand on the doorknob, Libbet shouted for attention. “People, this is Molly, my new roommate. She is an alcoholic who goes to AA. Her husband was beating her.” While I had yet to discuss anonymity with Libbet, I’d assumed she knew not to out me to dozens of strangers. I was frozen, afraid to turn around. Finally, I sort of twisted and glanced over my shoulder. Twenty or thirty nice-looking young people were staring at me with pity. “Hey,” I opened my door and closed it immediately.

I sat down on my futon mattress and tried to plan an escape. I had no money, few friends, an ex-lover boss, a treacherous mother, a mean sister, a dead sister, and a depressed, violent husband I needed to divorce. Unbeknownst to me, a sober student was standing outside my room, deciding whether or not to knock. He didn’t, but after I celebrated my ninety days in AA and was asked to speak, he came up to me during the break and introduced himself. “I stood there for ages. Your face was so sad. I felt terrible.”

The Sicilian was calling me at work daily. I didn’t want to make Mildred screen his calls, so I answered, listening to him beg me to come back, promising me he would never hurt me again, that we could live somewhere else, and that he would stop drinking. When I hinted at a possible legal separation, he called me “a fucking bitch” and slammed the phone down. Finding a different place to live was crucial. I put my hand up at an afternoon meeting where so many actors complained about their auditions it was called the “actor’s whining meeting” and briefly described my living situation and the fact I needed to move again. “I’m Barbara. I’m looking for a roommate. I just kicked my boyfriend out.”

She lived on 69th and Broadway, and while her place was really a one bedroom, the front room was divided from the back bedroom by a minuscule kitchen featuring a refrigerator on one side and a sink, oven, and counter inside a small space on the other. The front room was large enough, by New York City standards, to be like a small studio with several windows that faced 69th. Since it was above a Greek diner, you could hear ghostly voices at three o’clock in the morning ordering “chicken soup, two eggs over-easy with bacon,” a faintly comforting buzz of kitchen noises, quiet enough to stay asleep but something that told you people were eating things in the middle of the night and you weren’t alone.

The isolation of Flatbush Avenue had been intense. The colors there were muted, gray, and faded yellow. My new neighborhood was full of Korean grocery stores selling brightly colored flowers and people walking quickly, sometimes smiling and looking you in the eye. If I asked a question, people spoke to me. I didn’t feel unclean and unwelcome. Being shunned by the Hassidim had taken a toll.

Although Barbara and I weren’t best friends, we were company. We both owned small black and white TVs with hangers stuck in their antennas. We spent many Friday nights separately but together, each of us in our own space, sitting on our Jennifer convertible pullout beds, eating ice cream from the carton, and watching bad television.

Barbara didn’t have much more sobriety than me. There was an unspoken recommendation that newly sober people avoid dating. Having suffered at the hands of our partners, we were happy to obey. I was able to get all my belongings out of Libbet’s apartment and into a waiting cab in a single trip. She had discovered a South American grain in the Andes whose name I didn’t understand, quinoa, and was currently negotiating with a local farmer to import the grain into the United States. It was almost the last day of the month, so I left her a terse note that referred to “lifestyle” issues and my key on the kitchen table.

My nephew Julian was having a birthday party in Fort Green, Brooklyn, and Brigid invited me. I was planning on going, happy to have contact with my sister, and promised Hazel, my psychiatrist, that I wouldn’t see the Sicilian. I lied. A month had passed with endless phone calls; flowers sent to me at work, and cards swearing his love. I was bored, restless, having a horrible time at work and since the Sicilian kept referring to how much money he was earning as a cookie salesman, I found myself agreeing to see him after the party. I refused to go to Flatbush Avenue but agreed to meet him at five o’clock in the evening on Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. I also lied to Pricilla. At four thirty I kissed my nephew goodbye and caught the train to the meeting place.

I spotted him the moment I emerged from the subway. He was standing against a post; smoking, completely dressed in black, face stark white beneath his dark hair. My heartbeat sped up, my breathing became shallow, my shoulders and neck stiffened, and I felt something I hadn’t felt since the night Alison threw him into the snow. I felt terror. But I didn’t stop walking towards him. I didn’t know how. I could no sooner break my promise despite my understanding that he was capable of killing me, and I no longer wanted to die. There was a fog rising from the ground, mist, and early winter twilight. The Sicilian looked like a vampire. I wished I’d said goodbye to my parents with more affection because it felt as if I was walking towards my execution.
“You look beautiful.”
I moved beyond his reach. “Thanks. I was at Julian’s birthday. party”
He nodded. Lit another cigarette. “Let’s get a drink.”
“I can’t. I’m sober.”
“Well, come back to our house with me.”
“No. I live in Manhattan now.”
He smoked the cigarette and then threw it away. Grabbing my arm, he started dragging me up the street, hailing a cab with the other arm.
“I’m not coming with you. I’m going home.”
“Your home is with me,” he screamed. “You fucking whore!”
The street was relatively empty but there were a few people that turned around and then hurried away. One man stayed where he was. “What are you looking at, asshole?” the Sicilian said.
“Maybe you should let her go,” the man said.
“Maybe you should go fuck yourself,” the Sicilian said.
He started dragging me down the street again. The subway into Manhattan was on the corner, and I broke away from him and started down the steps. Grabbing me by the hair, he pulled and I fell, hitting my head. He dragged me back up the stairs by the hair. The man had put down the groceries he was carrying and faced the Sicilian. “Let her go.” The Sicilian banged my head on the stairs again. The man grabbed him by the shoulders. The fog was so thick I could barely see him.
“Call the police. Do you know him?”
“He’s my husband.”
The man looked at me with such sadness and contempt it felt physical. He let go of the Sicilian and somehow moved between us. The Sicilian ran into the fog and disappeared. I never saw him again. The man looked at me, picked up his groceries, and said, “Get some help.” And left.

I put a token in the turnstile and boarded the waiting train. I felt something on my face. It was blood from my head. People were staring at me. I sat down and tried to stop the blood.
“Here,” a hand holding a package of tissues appeared. I looked up into the clear, green eyes of a young woman wearing a business suit, her hair in a tight bun. I felt very inferior.
“Thank you,” I wiped the blood and the tears off my face.
She sat next to me. “Who did this to you?”
“My husband.”
“Are you in danger?”
I shook my head. “I left him. He doesn’t know where I live.”
“They’re bullies, you know. It’s not because you’re weak, they pick strong women, and then they hurt them.”
She took out a card and wrote something on the back. “Here. This is the address of family court. You need to get an Order of Protection and have it served. He’ll be arrested if he comes near you.” She stood up. “This is my stop. What’s your name?”
“Molly.”
“Go there tomorrow, Molly. He’ll never stop until he kills you or hurts you so badly that your life will be ruined. Don’t ever let anyone do this to you again.”
“My father used to hit my mother. Just when he was drunk.”
She shook her head. “Stop it. You can stop it.” The train pulled into the station, and she got off.

Somehow this person who could have avoided speaking to the crying, bleeding woman on the train had decided to help. If I didn’t do something the look that man had given me, the look so many other people had given me, while we fought in public, a mixture of pity and disgust would be justified.

Family court solidified how rapidly my descent from a normal life into one shadowed by addiction and domestic violence had occurred. Women and children were scattered along the benches, the women wearing furs and cashmere, others in discount windbreakers, worn coats and sweaters. Clearly, immunity from making terrible mistakes had little to do with wealth or education. I sat in the waiting room with women who had broken arms, legs, head injuries, visible bruises, a few in wheelchairs, and their sad, angry, bored, wide-eyed children, the small ones quiet while the larger ones were either pretending to read or kicking the wall. When my name was called, I walked towards the judge with a sense of shame. Why I, the victim, should feel shame is a mystery, but then human nature isn’t exactly a straight line. The judge was a middle aged man with a stern but not unkind face. “Why are you here?”
“I need an Order of Protection from my husband.”
“How long?”
“One year.”
“Granted. Don’t ever let me see you back here, Mary Ellen Moynahan. Domestic violence is a cycle, and your husband is a dangerous bully. Look around the room. They don’t change. But you can. Once can happen to anyone. Go on with your life.”

—Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach