Up Till Now: The Autobiography

that if we got married you’d stop drinking. How can I marry you now?”
    She turned to me with her bright blue eyes and said to me in the voice only lovers know, “Don’t do this to me, Bill.”
    Don’t do this to me , she said, and she said it with such frankness and honesty that my heart just went out to her. It was a plea, it was a cry. I just couldn’t resist her. But by now, at least, I had some help. We had been to a dinner party with several other couples at Leonard and Susan Nimoy’s. At that party she was, as Leonard later described it, “erratic in her behavior.” I thought she had hidden it well, but apparently it had been obvious to everyone. Leonard recognized the symptoms immediately. The next day he called me and said, “Bill, you know she’s an alcoholic?”
    “Yes,” I said. “But I love her.”
    “You’re in for a rough ride, then.”
    I didn’t understand what Leonard was saying to me. I didn’t have the vocabulary. I was so certain that by loving her enough I could cure her. I know it’s a romantic concept, but I’d seen it work. I’d seen children flower and animals respond to love. I’d experienced the joy that love could bring to a life, happiness almost beyond description, and it was inconceivable to me that there could be something stronger than complete love. Particularly something so dark and destructive. I believed without any reservation that love heals. So what I thought Leonard was saying to me was that I had to love her that way, I had to surround her with the love and support that she needed to beat this.
    That wasn’t at all what he was saying. What he said was simple and clear and came from the depth of his own experience. “Bill, you know she’s an alcoholic?”
    I decided to marry her, perhaps believing that she would rely on me rather than alcohol to provide whatever it was she was looking for. I still believe that marrying Nerine at that time was the greatest sacrifice I could have made for her. I married against the advice of my family and friends, against my own good sense. But I thought it might be the only chance we had. That she would recognize how strongly I believed in her and would make a sacrifice of her own; she would risk giving up alcohol for me. She was my fantasy and I was going to heal her. During our wedding ceremony I read her a poem I’d written, pledging my love to her, and in return she said, “I pledge my sobriety to you.” We had a beautiful celebration in Pasadena with our family and friends. Leonard was my best man. “It’s wonderful that we’re all here tonight to celebrate the coming together of these two wonderful people,” he said, toasting us. “And Bill has asked me to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity. He doesn’t want to let this opportunity go by without telling about his latest book, which is available in most of your local...”
    Nerine and I danced the night away. I just didn’t want to let her go. She took down her hair that some Hollywood makeup personhad done, scrubbed off the makeup that a Hollywood makeup artist had applied, and there she was in her natural beauty. She was sober, and to that point it was the happiest day of my life. Imagine being able to point to one day and know it was the happiest day of your life. It was truly amazing. And finally we put all the presents people had brought into our car and drove home. We climbed into bed and I was ecstatic. Ecstatic, that’s the only way to describe it.
    I woke up about eight o’clock the next morning and she was drunk. Later we discovered that she had hidden bottles of vodka all over the house, in places we would have never dreamed of looking. There were small bottles at the bottom of the clothes hamper, in a small drawer hidden below my athletic socks. Places I would never imagine looking.
    I tried to understand her addiction. If I said anything about it she would immediately become defensive, she’d respond by becoming furious with me. “I’m not drunk,” she’d say in a slurred voice. “What makes you think I’m drunk?”
    “Because you’re slobbering.” “I’m not slobbering,” she’d insist, slobbering. She used all the clichéd phrases. I remember her telling me, “Alcohol is my only friend,” which I took as an accusation that I had let her down. Once, when she was drunk, she looked at me sadly and asked, “Why, Bill. Why?”
    I thought she was saying, Why am I drinking? When she was sober the next day I asked her