From the novel SONG FOR SUSIE EPP by Elma Schemenauer
Chapter 45
I was in the kitchen when my mother-in-law's Chevy pulled into the driveway. I allowed myself a bleak smile. Adeline was in for a surprise. Simon would be in rough shape by now. He hadn't eaten breakfast, and he'd been clinking his bottles in the bedroom for an hour or more.
I answered Adeline's knock with a mixture of anxiety and hope. Anxiety as I braced myself for her reaction to Simon's drunkenness. Hope because I thought maybe she could help. She might be able to get through to him where I hadn't. She was his mother; they shared a bunch of genes and a long history.
"How's by my son?" Adeline bustled in carrying a big blue soup pot. "I heard he caught the flu."
"Something like that." Bottle-flu.
Adeline jostled me into my kitchen and thrust her pot at me. "I brought you some chicken noodle soup."
"That was good of you." I cleared a space in the refrigerator. "It might fit in there." I stepped aside and let her wrestle it in.
"That's a lot of soup." I managed to shut the refrigerator door on the pot. "We'll be growing feathers before we finish it."
Adeline ignored my attempt at humour. "I brought Simon some cough drops, Russian ones." She rummaged in her purse and pulled out a red tin the size of a sardine can. "They're stronger than that sweet Canadian junk."
"Oma!" Emily darted out of the sewing room with Norine at her heels. "Come and hear. We learned the parrot to sing I'se the bye that builds the boat." She bounced on her feet. "We learned it to him the right way, not Uncle Ross's way."
A smile lit Norine's face. "We're making a boat."
"For Callum," Emily said. "A paper boat. Oma, come and see."
"Later," Adeline said. "I need to first give your daddy his cough drops." She opened the tin, and I caught a whiff of turpentine and camphor. Adeline extracted a couple of lozenges the size of horse pills, each wrapped in a twist of brown paper.
Emily reached for them. "Can me and Norine have one?"
I pulled my daughter's hand back. "They're too strong for you."
"We like strong."
"Let's see how they work for your dad first," I said. "You girls go into the sewing room and keep the parrot company." The encounter between Adeline and her drunken son was bound to be dramatic. I didn't want the girls witnessing it.
Norine ambled toward the sewing room, but Emily stood her ground, feet planted apart. "I want to see Daddy."
"Not now," I said. "Oma and I need to be alone with him."
Adeline grabbed Emily by the back of her tee-shirt. "Go already." She steered the child into the sewing room. After shutting the door on her and Norine, she bustled back along the hall to the bedroom door. "Simon!" she called, pounding on the door.
No answer.
Maybe he'd heard his mother arrive, and escaped through the window.
"Simon, son."
He coughed. Bedsprings creaked.
Adeline tried the door. The latch rattled in its metal eyelet. "I need to see you once." Her voice vibrated with concern.
Nothing.
She raised an eyebrow at me. "He's maybe too sick to open the door."
I shrugged. Let her do her own research.
"I wonder me…can we break that lock?" She backed away from the door, beckoning me to follow. "I'll say eins, zwei, drei. Then we'll run." She counted. We ran and hurled ourselves against the door. The latch screeched out of its screws and clattered to the floor. Adeline shot into the room. "Simon!" she gasped. "For shame!" She pounced on him where he lay on the bed in his rumpled pyjamas with a wine bottle in his hand. "Drunkenness is a sin. You know that." She yanked the bottle out his hand.
"Gimme that." Simon reached for it, but Adeline was too quick for her befuddled son. She swung the bottle away from him, scurried around me, and rocketed out of the bedroom.
"I'll spill this where it belongs," she called from the kitchen. Simon's face paled at the sound of liquid running down the drain. Glug, glug, glug.
Good for her. Three cheers for sweet Adeline.
"She'sh got no rrright to do that," Simon muttered.
"I'm glad she did," I said, plucking an empty beer bottle off the floor. "You deserve it."
Adeline loped back into the bedroom and grabbed Simon by the collar of his pyjamas. "Why are you bedrunken?" "What's loose with you?"
"You wouldn't undershtand."
She glowered around the room. "Does it give more bottles in here? Susie, help me look." She hustled over to the dresser, yanked a drawer open, and rummaged through it.
Suddenly my mother-in-law and I were allies. That gave me a good feeling, sort of. I hurried into the closet and searched among the blankets and pillows on the shelf. A wine bottle tumbled out, almost bonking me on the head. I checked inside the boots on the floor and found a bottle of beer in each of them.
I emerged from the closet and looked in the wastebasket, then behind the curtains. Adeline pawed through the bedding. Simon stood beside the bed leaning against a night table, stinking of alcohol. He didn't try to stop his mother or me, didn't seem to have any fight in him. We had the moral advantage.
Between Adeline and myself, we found ten bottles, some full, some part-full. We carried them into the kitchen, where she poured the contents down the drain. I made no attempt to stop her.
When all the bottles were empty, lined up on the counter, she barged back into the bedroom. "Simon," his mother barked, "get yourself dressed once."
He gave her a hangdog look and shuffled toward the closet. Adeline and I returned to the kitchen, where she started scrubbing the sink with bleach and detergent. "When did my boy start drinking?"
"After the teachers' Christmas luncheon." I blinked. The bleach made my eyes smart.
"Why?"
"We had a fight." I blinked again. "Then he drove down to Central Butte and bought liquor."
"What did my Simon and you fight about?"
For a moment I felt like spilling the whole story. It would be a relief, but I wasn't sure I could trust Adeline to that extent. "I'm sorry," I said. "It's a private matter."
She stopped scrubbing and gave me one of her search-light looks. "I'll pray for you, Susie. You and Simon."
"Thank you," I said. I meant it.
"Now let's make for Simon what to eat. A bowl of soup, and maybe a sandwich from cheese. And maybe a shtick cake. And coffee. Lots of coffee. Then I'll take him to Pester Warkentin."
"Pastor Warkentin?" I stared at her. "What will the pastor think?"
"It doesn't matter what Pester Warkentin thinks. "My boy needs to get right with God."
If you'd like to read more about Susie, Simon, and Adeline, ask for SONG FOR SUSIE EPP in a library or bookstore. It's also available from many online sellers including Amazon, Chapters Indigo, and Barnes & Noble.
