The End of My Addiction

stood up to sing, and she was transformed, a titanic figure who had suffered all the sorrows of life and remained strong at heart.
    That took my whole mind deeply into the music as Bette Midler continued to sing. When we finished the song, I stopped playing. After that spontaneous duet, one of the greatest compliments I have ever received as a musician, silence was the best encore I could offer her.
     
    Arif’s friendship was a great support. He never judged or criticized me for drinking, only encouraged me to do everything I could to stop. In New York the bars close at four a.m. If you are an alcoholic and you have not drunk enough by last call to be able to go to bed and sleep, and if like me you cannot stand drinking beer, which can be bought in all-night markets, and you do not have any liquor at home, you are in trouble. One night that happened to me, and I decided to go see Arif. I went to his building on Central Park West and told the doorman, “I’m going to the Mardins’.”
    The doorman recognized me from previous visits at less ungodly hours and said, “Are you sure, at this hour?”
    “Yes, yes,” I said.
    He called Arif on the intercom, and then said I could go up.
    Arif’s drinks were famous among his friends as Mardinis. He came to the door in his robe, and I said, “I need vodka.”
    He brought me a glass of vodka, and I drank it gratefully. Arif said, “More?”
    “Yes, please.”
    He brought me another glass, I drank it, and he said kindly, “Now it’s time to leave.” It was an embarrassing moment, but Arif handled it beautifully, and I was then able to go home and sleep. He knew I was too drunk to listen to anything he might say about getting sober.
    I was tremendously lucky to have Arif as a friend during those troubled days. Lucky, too, to be friends with Maurice Blin. I met Maurice around the same time I met Arif. Maurice was seventy-two and I was thirty-five, but he became my best and closest friend. He and his wife, Melita, frequently invited me to their homes in New York and Southampton. He had a great zest for life. He played the cello, if modestly, and it always delighted me to play their beautiful Steinway for Melita and him. When he asked people to dinner, he cooked for them himself with talent and love. Despite the difference in our ages, he was like a charismatic older brother. One of his sons told me good-humoredly, “People say he talks much more of you than of his own children.”
    After my drinking became a problem, Maurice was convinced that all I needed to do was give up hard liquor for good Burgundy and I would be able to drink in moderation. He even gave me a book on the wine-drinking cure for alcoholism. I knew this wouldn’t work and didn’t try. In AA they call this “trading seats on the Titanic .” Maurice never lost hope for my recovery, however, and always said, “Try again. Try again.”
    While I was locked up in the psych ward at Lenox Hill, Maurice’s health began to fail. Until then he’d been remarkably active, riding his bike or swimming every day. But now he had cancer, and he left heartbreaking messages on my answering machine asking me to visit him and saying, “Why are you dumping me when I most need you?”
    When I was taken to Marworth, I figured that Maurice would die before I could return to see him. He was very weak, and over the next few months he became much weaker and was sometimes incoherent. But I was able to visit him a few times in Southampton and more regularly when he was moved into Cabrini Hospital in New York City, near Gramercy Park.
    In December Maurice died, and a few days before Christmas I went to the funeral. It was an enormous loss and I was sad, but not letting myself feel all the sadness. I had reacted the same way when my father died of cancer in November 1991. It was seventeen months before I could cry in mourning for my father, while I was hiking in the Alps near a spot where he had taken my brother and sister and me when we were small.
     
    As New Year’s Eve approached, Joan suggested that we make a reservation at a restaurant to celebrate both the New Year and my not drinking since leaving Marworth. I had 115 days of sobriety, the longest I had managed. I told Joan, “AA and rehab both say not to celebrate too much. I didn’t celebrate Hanukkah, I didn’t celebrate Christmas, and I’m not celebrating New Year’s. One day at a time is the watchword, and one day should be like every other day. I’ll