The following is an excerpt from The Lois Wilson Story: When Love Is Not Enough, the authorized biography of the spirited co-founder of Al-Anon. It is now a Hallmark Hall of Fame special starring Winona Ryder and Barry Pepper. It will air on CBS on Sunday, April 25 at 9:00 p.m. EDT/8:00 p.m. CDT.
The wind was whipping the rain against the kitchen windows. Lois sat at the white cast-iron table bobbing the tea bag in her cup and staring down at the vegetable sandwich she had thrown together on whole wheat bread. If only Mother were here now, she thought. How much time there would be just to talk, to get things out, to listen to her pearls of wisdom cultured from years of experience and a deep faith in her God. Matilda Burnham was a kind, loving soul who had great and usually very practical insight. It was she who told her daughter that Bill was sick, that his craving for drink was the devil’s curse, and that God Himself must find a way to shake it from him. But in the meantime, if Lois truly loved her husband, she must do everything in her power to help him, to pray for him, to encourage him to seek the Lord.
Lois believed Bill truly loved her mother. At least he always said so and showed her great respect and consideration when he was sober. But then why wasn’t he there when she died? Why wasn’t he there for her funeral? Why didn’t he express much deeper regret and remorse four days later when Lois bailed him out of the drunk tank once again? She knew what her mother would have said. A man who does this kind of terrible thing to a wife and family he loves has to be a very sick man who needs a great deal of love and help himself.
But how far must one go? How far do you let a man drag you down, force you to wallow in the muck he brings home? Did her mother really understand what she had gone through? What she was still going through? Her father, on the other hand, would just as soon have Lois leave Bill. “You can’t help this man anymore,” he would half-shout at her each time Bill roared off on another spree.
Soon, however, Dr. Burnham and his wife-to-be would be moving into their own place, and at least that source of household tension would come to an end. But then who would help her, she thought, when Bill made another of his feeble attempts to stop drinking on his own and began to shake and sweat? Who would inject him, as her father frequently did, with a strong sedative or give him a dose of that horrible smelling paraldehyde to calm his tremors?
Then again, maybe she was worried for absolutely no reason. The way things were going, Lois felt almost certain she would get a call one night and learn that Bill had been found dead in the streets, hit by a car, beaten to death, or dead from an overdose of liquor. Such tragedies were in the newspapers every day. Every single day. She grabbed her forehead and wished her mind would stop racing like this. Lois glanced at the kitchen clock. It was almost quarter to eight. Perhaps she’d take a hot bath and then start that new Somerset Maugham novel that had been on her night table for weeks.
It was well past midnight when Lois came to with a start. A loud noise from downstairs had awakened her. The bedside lamp was still on, and the novel she had been reading lay across her chest. She sat up and listened. Then she heard another noise, like something being pushed across a carpet, followed by those familiar grunts and groans and loud curse words. She didn’t have to hear anything more to know that her husband had finally arrived home, and in his usual condition.
Lois slipped out of bed, put her bathrobe back on, and walked slowly down the stairs to the entrance hall. Bill was lying halfway into the parlor. He had knocked over a lamp table, broken the shade and bulb, and was reaching for a nearby chair to pull himself erect. The trouble was, each time he clutched at it, he pushed the chair further away. His “goddams” and “Jesus Christs” were getting louder as his frustration grew. Lois switched on the hallway light to see better. What she saw was nothing worse than usual, but the brighter light stunned her husband momentarily and made him fall back down on his side.
He looked up at her. Bill, too, was soaking wet. There was a cut and several scrapes on his face, his nose was running, and saliva drooled from his mouth, across his chin. That terrible stench of cheap booze filled her nostrils. Suddenly she watched as her husband reached his arm up toward her, smiled that stupid drunken smile, and mumbled in a hoarse whisper: “There’s my lady. She’s always there. Come on, Pal. Give your boy a big kiss.”
The shame and revulsion from the incident at the pharmacy, the pounding headache she had suffered all day long, the ever-present pain of losing her mother, and now looking down and seeing the Bowery being dragged into her home once again—it all seemed to strike her at once. She couldn’t hold back. Lois later recalled slumping to her knees, leaning over her husband, and pounding him on the chest and arms, lightly at first, then harder and harder. She grew hysterical, saying, “I lie for you. I cover up for you. I can’t even look my own father in the face because of you. Every time you get drunk, I’m the one who feels guilty. Like it’s my fault. Because I couldn’t have children. That I’m not a good enough wife. But it’s not my fault! It’s not my fault! You can go to your bootleggers, your speakeasies. Where can I go? Tell me! Where can I go?”
The next thing she recalled saying haunted her for some time after that. In fact, Lois said, it haunted her right up until the day Bill finally found sobriety in Towns Hospital and began to get well.
“I thought tonight,” she recalled shouting through her tears, “that maybe I would never see you again. But you don’t even have the decency to die.”
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Order the biography from Hazelden Publishing.
Check out a preview of the movie on YouTube.