The End of My Addiction

day.
    Still, my mother did not let her illness stop her from carrying on her active social life or helping Eva with her young son, Emmanuel. She also insisted on arranging a Legion of Honor ceremony for me. Mindful of having had to cancel the last time, this time she invited a smaller number of guests, mainly people who lived in or not too far from Paris. Otherwise the plans were all the same, including a videographer to record the event. Unfortunately she could not attend the ceremony on January 26, 2000; she was briefly in the hospital with respiratory problems. And my brother and sister chose not to attend.
    When my mother returned home from the hospital, I picked up the tape of the Legion of Honor ceremony from the videographer to show to her. I prayed it wouldn’t be too embarrassing—or too damning. Would the toll of my drinking show?
    We went into the living room and I turned on the television and VCR, while she settled herself on the sofa and lit a cigarette. As I sat down beside her, she raised her head and gave me a look of loving concern that simultaneously soothed me and filled me with guilt for the sorrow my drinking had brought into her life. I pressed play on the remote control, and her gaze shifted to the television screen.
    The show began outside the Hotel Lutetia on Boulevard Raspail, a Belle Époque gem with its façade lit up cheerfully on a cold, clear night. I had supplied the videographer with a tape of some of my music, and here at the beginning of the soundtrack was a song I had written the previous spring at rehab in Vermont. It was called “My Gift.”
    A quick cut (the videographer had done a marvelous job) shifted the scene into the magnificent lobby and a brief montage of me greeting varied guests. I had given my mother no help with the arrangements beforehand, but I at least had managed to get there early enough to welcome the first guests as they arrived. Accompanying me for moral support was my new girlfriend, Danielle, who for good measure had brought her little dog, a great favorite of mine. I had twenty-four hours of abstinence under my belt, along with Valium to prevent acute withdrawal, and three double espressos.
    I was greatly relieved at my appearance on the video. There I stood, well groomed in an elegant suit, my eyes bright and open, a cheerful smile on my face, no hint of the turmoil within.
    I watched ninety-two-year-old Jean Bernard, a world pioneer in oncology and hematology—and our family’s first pediatrician—approach me with a spring still in his step at his advanced age. It was moving to see him smiling like a proud uncle. But I also felt slightly uneasy (as I had that night), because I surely didn’t deserve such kindness; it could only be a holdover from his long friendship with my family.
    There were Philippe Coumel, who was then chief of cardiology at Hôpital Lariboisière; Jean Dausset, winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in medicine for his research in immunology, and his wife, Rosita, who’d been close friends for more than ten years; Bruno Durieux, former minister of health under Mitterrand; and former prime minister Raymond Barre, then mayor of Lyon, France’s second-largest city.
    The videographer’s microphone picked up Raymond Barre’s “ Bonsoir, cher ami ,” as he came up to me, smiling widely and kissing me on both cheeks. Again I felt a disconnect watching the tape, and sitting beside my mother the pang was even sharper. I looked at Raymond Barre on the screen and thought, “That is not the practiced smile of a politician. That is a smile of real affection. How could I merit that?”
    I studied myself and thought, “It’s amazing. I seem normal. My voice is steady. They are fooled for the moment and can’t see what a wreck I am.”
    I glanced at my mother and saw her joy. She leaned toward the screen as if to enter the scene through her gaze.
    I turned back to the television. The video had moved upstairs to the Boucicaut Room, named for a marshal of France and one of the greatest knights of the Renaissance era. Ten years earlier, my father had received his Legion of Honor from Raymond Barre in the same room.
    The separation I felt between myself and my video image widened as the video showed Raymond Barre telling the assembled guests that he had been delighted to join Nobel laureate Jean Dausset in compiling my preparatory dossier for the Legion of Honor and was especially pleased to be able to bestow the award personally. Was he