Deborah McDowell

I had no business owning a bar.

The plan was high tea with tidy Scandinavian sandwiches, a cafe spot for contemplation, romance and conversation. If I got lucky, I could ditch my low-paying journalism gig, and maybe for once in my life support myself.

My tea house experiment quickly morphed. Poets asked to read their poetry. A steady stream of musicians popped in asking for gigs. “No pay,” they insisted. Guitar cases, violins and cellos set up shop in the corners of my cafe. Guiding this runaway production seemed natural. Twenty years later, it’s an enduring late-night scene. Musicians from Taj Mahal to Mose Allison have called my place their favorite spot. Alcohol flows like water.

How did this happen? I hate booze. I was discerning enough most of the time to stay away from the hallowed ground where savvy bartenders held their posts. The bar, the magic land, where sexy liquor bottles glow with beguiling promise. Whenever I did step into the sacred bartender territory, familiar faces would gather round, pull up stools, and boom — it’s a party! Without thinking, with my own cocktail dissolving whatever remained of my good sense, all drinks were on the house. I'd pour myself another. The night ignited.

Twenty years of therapy, and I should have known better. The deep-dive dangers of alcohol in my family were legendary. I celebrated my 30th birthday at Tavern on the Green in New York City, where the night ended with my mother dancing unsteadily on a table and tossing her hair like Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita. When she lifted her skirts to show the waitstaff her knickers, I fled. Booze buried one family member after the next in avalanche after avalanche of trouble.

I’m a fourth-generation Finnish artist and cocktail tippler. My great-grandfather inherited a prosperous Helsinki stoneyard, the rare pink granite a testament to beautiful possibilities. He lost everything and died of cirrhosis of the liver before he was 50. His son, my musician grandfather, drank half a bottle of vodka a day well into his 80s. He was in and out of lockup, his excesses adding to the torments of a family burdened by war and displacement. It was my grandfather who gave me a little money to start my nightclub journey. Though he never saw the dream come to life, his memory is always present: on the wall above the ticket booth hangs his ivory-keyed accordion.

I had married my first husband in a ceremony in my mother’s apartment on Riverside Drive as an orange sun melted over the Hudson River. I was 23, with a crown of white roses garlanded round my head, and my family’s attention was turned toward my grandfather. The women in my family made a pact to keep the frozen aquavit bottles away from his grip. “Just keep pouring him coffee,” my mother whispered as our team of sisters huddled together. “Spike it with a sleeping pill,” said Aunt Mimi.

My soon-to-be in-laws were straight-laced academics, Midwestern socialites unaccustomed to messy family situations. I more than once overheard my father-in-law call us peasants. My grandfather’s broken English was thick and hard to understand. I loved him, and I loved his familiar beer breath mixed with the woolly sweater smell of the old country. He felt like home. We were immigrants making do in this new country with odd jobs, hard work and big ambitions.

The wedding commenced with me in a fright, guts churning, nauseous with anticipation of what was to come. My grandfather sang the melancholy Romani song I had chosen. When he finished it would be the cue for my brother to walk me down the wedding aisle. I closed my eyes and listened. The sad familiar melody suddenly made me woozy. I was going to be sick. I threw myself into the bathroom, locked the door, dry heaved into the toilet, then slunk down on the floor in a heap. My brother ran after me. “Let me in,” he whispered. “It’s time.”

“I can’t go out there,” I sobbed as I opened the door. I was having second thoughts, and not just about the celebration. Suddenly the marriage seemed wrong. What was I getting myself into? I longed to stretch out on the cool tile until all the guests cleared out.

“Get up off the floor, there’s a whole room waiting for you.” I tried to talk him into understanding my side, to take care of things, to take care of me. I wept into my skirt. My mother came pounding on the door insisting I get my act together. “You’re ruining this for all of us.”

I straightened my dress, blew my nose and made my way into my mother’s living room where the 40 guests waited. Familiar faces smiled at me as I walked past them. During the ceremony, all I could think about were how the too-snug heels I’d borrowed from my mother didn’t match my dress.

We cleared back the rental chairs and danced on a makeshift dance floor. My brothers saw to it that the guests had plenty of shots to toast the now-married couple. In the reception hubbub, I saw my grandfather grab a bottle of beer. Aunt Mimi and my mother were red-faced now and tipsy, but I ran to them to revamp our strategy as I saw my grandfather snatch a shot glass from the silver tray my brother was carrying. I clutched my mother. Rolling her eyes, she gave me a kiss on the cheek, shrugging her shoulders as she tossed down her own shot.

Later, from across the dance floor, I watched my grandfather take hold of his coat, pull his fedora over his eyes and rush out the door. There was a look of concern on my new husband’s face. Guests thinned out as the night carried on, and my grandmother sat watching from the window for her husband’s return. Soft snow was falling on the piles of garbage lining the street from the weeklong trash strike. My grandfather had been gone for hours when my mother commandeered brothers and cousins to go out and look for him.

We watched from the window as the posse carried my grandfather back through the falling snow. They had found him passed out in a bar on Broadway. In front of the wedding guests, and with the fresh-faced youth holding him up, my grandmother slapped my grandfather across the face. My brothers carried him past the in-laws, past the wedding cake table and into bed.

After the guests had left, my brothers and I folded and stacked the chairs. We had some laughs, did a few dishes and restored my mother’s apartment. Snow fell through the night. In the morning, I stepped out into the cold air. The snow had turned the heaps of garbage up and down 82nd Street into mounds of sparkling white.

All these years later, I sit in my nightclub after hours, after tidying up, after the band loads out and I say to myself, “Magic land.” I switch off the stage lights, and as I turn off the lights behind the bar, the liquor bottles lose their glow, receding into the shadows.