My Lucky Life in and Out of Show Business_ A Memoir - Dick Van Dyke [69]
On the way to Hope’s, I said something to that effect. Margie gave me a look as if I had started to speak a strange language.
“But this is Frank Sinatra,” she said.
We walked in and were immediately hit by the thick, garlicky aroma of a rich Italian meal. I knew it was going to be a good one. Hope led us into the kitchen, where we were introduced to the man responsible for the delicious smell filling the house. Frank was at the stove, with his shirtsleeves rolled up, and wearing an apron. He had made the entire meal from scratch. Friendly and loose, he fixed drinks and served us dinner.
It was an evening of food, booze, stories, and laughs—everything except the one thing Margie wanted from Frank, to hear the famous Sinatra voice. Throughout the whole night, she tried to get him to sing, and he wouldn’t. Several times she heard him humming to himself in the kitchen. She then elbowed me, as if to say, See, he’s almost singing. Do something that will get him to sing.
With Frank, it clearly did not work that way. He did what he wanted to do, and that night he wanted to cook pasta, tomato sauce, and garlic bread, and afterward watch us bite into his own chocolate cake. He did not want to sing.
I understood.
There was also something that I did not want to do. Few people would have guessed what it was. But I had a problem with alcohol. I knew that the time had come to deal with it.
It was August 22, 1972, and I was alone in the kitchen, staring out the window at the expanse of desert. I wish I could have admired the arid beauty more, but I could barely see past my throbbing headache. I took a few aspirin. As I set my water glass down on the counter, I noticed my hands shaking. This was nothing new. I’d had the morning shakes countless times before. And that was just the most visible symptom of a condition that I had, until now, done a first-rate job of ignoring and denying—a drinking problem.
I do not know how much I drank. Some nights it was three drinks. Some nights it was double that and maybe even more. But how much I drank, whether it was one or a dozen, didn’t matter. The point was that I drank, and I had to face up to the fact that it was affecting more than just me. The rest of my family was suffering for it, too.
Just the night before, I had lost my temper with Margie for no reason, and now, as I sat in the kitchen sober and sore, I knew it was not the first time that had happened. Nor was Margie the only victim of such outbursts. I’d snapped at the kids numerous times, too. It was always at night and always after I had gotten in my cups.
I told myself that wasn’t me. But in truth, it was me. Maybe it wasn’t at one time, but I had become that person and I realized that if I wanted to be the man I thought I was, I needed to get help. That’s exactly what I did. I got out the Yellow Pages and called St. Luke’s Hospital, which advertised a treatment. A woman answered. I said that I had a drinking problem and wondered if they could help me.
“Yes,” she said.
“Do I need an appointment?” I asked. “How do I do this?”
“Come in,” she said.
“Now?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “Now.”
Margie and the children expressed concern and offered support as I packed a bag. Then I made the twenty-minute drive to the Phoenix hospital and began the process of trying to figure out how I ended up with a problem.
Alcoholic was not a term that came to mind when I thought about myself. For years, Margie and I did not drink. As I mentioned earlier, we kept a bottle of Early Times in the pantry for company, but neither of us ever unscrewed the top for ourselves. It was only after we moved to Brookville, Long Island, that I began to drink, and then it was only at parties.
I was the prototypical social drinker. I had a martini to loosen up. It got me past my shyness and helped me enjoy the night. Very quickly, though, I was enjoying the night with three or four cocktails, and then I did the same at home when