Beautiful Boy (22 page)

She shakes her head. "And you know the rest of the story. I snorted so I could work all night. I snorted when I wasn't working. I knew I had a problem," she continues, "but I'm only here because a colleague threatened to report me if I didn't voluntarily deal with my addiction."

Another patient berates her. "You performed surgery while you were high! You
should
be reported. You could have killed someone."

The counselor turns to this patient and, without raising her voice, says, "Didn't you say that you had a DUI and you fell asleep at the wheel? You could easily have killed someone, too."

Some stories are beyond my comprehension. A small, jittery woman who almost disappears inside her bulky sweater and sweatpants remembers her son's last birthday. "I was on crack," she recalls. "I left home, left my son, left him with my husband. For crack. He's three."

A woman with pale skin, limp blond hair, and misty golden eyes tells the group that a judge sent her husband to this program as an alternative to jail. Her husband, a GI with buzzed hair and a short-sleeved shirt buttoned up to the collar, sits rigidly on her right. He stares blankly ahead.

She says that, high on meth, he attacked her, banged her head against the floor. She managed to dial 911 before she blacked out. Later, when it is his turn to speak, he thanks God that the court allowed him to try rehab instead of jail. "I still cannot believe that I attacked my wife, who I love more than my life," he says. "But now I understand my problem. I'm graduating next week and I'm looking forward to coming home and beginning a new life."

His wife will not meet his eyes. She looks horror-struck.

There is a coffee break.

Sitting in the cafeteria, Nic, indicating the woman's husband with a flash of his eyes, tells Karen and me that the wife would be safer if he were locked up. "He is one scary motherfucker," Nic tells us.

The meeting resumes. More heartbreaking stories, more tears.

At the conclusion of each session, the counselor always asks if anyone has anything to say before the group adjourns. Family members often say how proud they are of their loved one and how much better he or she seems. Fellow patients sometimes cheer on the session's sharers. This day, in the room of fifty or more people crowded together in chairs around the snaking oval, Nic speaks up. He directs his words to the GI who had attacked his wife.

"I'm sorry, but I have to say something to you, Kevin, because as you said, you're supposed to get out of here next week." Nic stares across the room at him. "I've been in groups with you since I've been here, and though everyone else seems sincere and open, genuinely trying to learn about their addiction, there has been no indication that you get what this is about. The program requires humbleness, and you are arrogant. It doesn't seem that you really understand and admit that you're powerless over your addiction. You constantly interrupt people. You talk a lot, but you don't listen."

Then Nic looks at the man's wife. Her wide-open eyes pour tears. She trembles like a terrified animal.

Nic speaks to her. "I'm saying this for you, because I'm worried that Kevin needs more time before he goes home. I don't want anything to happen to you."

No one, not even the counselor, says a word. The man looks as
if he might lunge across the circle at Nic. Then he and the rest of us stare at his wife, who is gasping for breath between guttural sobs. Through her tears, she finally speaks up, steeling herself, sitting taller, addressing Nic. "Thank you," she says. "I know. I don't trust him." A woman next to her puts her arm around her shoulder.

She turns toward her husband and speaks sharply, wildly, into his face: "If you ever touch me or the children again—"

She cannot finish her sentence. Her sobs erupt from her roars.

The man looks at his wife. The expression on his face is not one of remorse or love or sorrow. He appears wounded and embarrassed and enraged. He sits erect, his eyes darting around the room.

Finally the counselor speaks, ending the session. She thanks everyone who shared, and she adjourns us. Kevin's wife makes a startling beeline across the circle and, still sobbing, hugs Nic, thanking him.

Her husband, immobile in his chair, glares malevolently across the room.

As we leave, Karen whispers to Nic, "Watch your back."

In the program, patients keep journals, and Nic shares an entry with us: "How the hell did I get here? It doesn't seem that I long ago that I was on the goddamn water-polo team. I was an I editor of the school newspaper, acting in the spring play, obsessing about which girls I liked, talking Marx and Dostoyevsky with my classmates. The kids in my class are in college. This isn't so much sad as baffling. At the time it all seemed so positive and harmless."

It is Nic's third weekend at the hospital, and I am here for another family visit. After the group session in the morning, Nic, on a day pass, will visit the inn where we are staying.

Nic is open and emotional, even expressing his gratitude for the chance to go through this program. He seems sincere. Next he broaches a new subject. He wants to know if college is still an option. He knows that he has made enormous mistakes, but he will do anything if he can still go to Hampshire. He is excited about the school. Because he understands his drug problem, he promises to attend AA meetings regularly and to work with a sponsor. He has been told that many colleges have substance-free dormitories, and he will request one. He understands that relapse will mean that I will follow through on my threat and withdraw my support and he will be out of college and on his own.

In the car, as we drive to the inn to meet Karen, Jasper, and Daisy, Nic tells me what made him change his mind. Others in his group therapy sessions heard that his parents were willing to send
him to college and they ganged up on him. The general consensus was summed up by a man whose drinking and drug addiction had estranged him from his parents and siblings. "Are you out of your fucking mind?" he howled at Nic. "You have
parents?
They love you? They are still willing to send you to college? Go to college. Don't be a fucking idiot. I would do anything for a chance to go to college."

I think over Nic's request. "Karen and I will talk about it," I say. "I'll talk to your mom. We'll have to make our agreement clear. I think it might work if you really want it and think you can pull it off." I still fantasize that everything can be fine.
Nic will stay sober. He understands his problem. Thank God he hasn't done more damage to his life—to his body and brain—to his options for the future. He can still go to college, get a degree, a good job, have a loving relationship .. . Everything will be all right.

I drive to the inn, a rundown resort with grapevines, a cracked swimming pool, cracked tennis courts, and old horses wandering through the property. Nic is nervous when I drive through the gate. This will be his first visit with Jasper and Daisy since he entered Ohlhoff nearly three months ago.

Nic is elated at seeing Jasper and Daisy and, in spite of their initial reluctance—the last time they saw Nic he was coming down from his high and depressed, angrily leaving for Ohlhoff—they are happy to see him. He plays with them in the icy-cold water and they bat tennis balls back and forth. I sit at a picnic bench under a grape arbor and watch as Karen joins them and the foursome play croquet. As they knock the balls around, Nic asks the kids about school and their friends, and he tells stories about a cat that lives on the hospital grounds. When it is time for me to take Nic back to the hospital, Jasper and Daisy seem perplexed. We continually do our best to explain what is going on with Nic, but in their eyes he seems fine. They don't know why he can't come home with us.

On our way back to St. Helena, Nic tells me about two other events of the week. The first is disheartening. Stephen left the program—simply and unceremoniously left one midafternoon, walking down the long road that leads from the hospital to Calistoga. Later the patients learned that he immediately relapsed at a bar. Nic was saddened but not completely surprised. "On the surface,
he seemed committed to staying sober," he says. "He knew that he risked losing his wife and that gorgeous baby. But he never took it that seriously. He blamed his wife for their problems. Blamed his parents. Blamed everyone but himself. He never got it."

His other news is harder to believe. Whenever someone completes the twenty-eight-day program, a goodbye ceremony is held among the patients. The graduate asks another patient to "stand up" and speak for him or her, sending the graduate out into the world. These ceremonies are designed to embolden the graduate and inspire newcomers.

The morning Kevin, the GI, was to graduate, he had approached Nic. "You are a brave fucker," he said. "I have to give you that." Then, shocking Nic, he asked him to stand up for him at his departing ceremony. "I respect you," the man said. "I've been watching you and know that of all of us, you're the one who is going to make it. You're young enough not to have fucked up your life too bad. You have a loving family. And you are so damn smart. I want to make it more than anything I have ever done. I'm going to prove that you're wrong. I'm going to make it."

Nic agreed. "So I stood up for him," he says. "I said that I hope and pray that he makes it—that he works his program. I said, 'I hope so for you and for your wife and children.' Later I watched them leave—he and his wife. They both gave me hugs. They were holding hands when they walked away."

I am nervous a week later when, following Nic's own graduation, I pick him up. The car windows are down, the air is warm. Nic speaks brightly about the future. His optimism comes through not only in his lucidity, but in the way he holds his body, confident and strong, and in his eyes, which are once again filled with light. He says that he is committed to staying away from drugs. I share his hopefulness, but I know that sobriety is far easier in the safe, structured environment of a rehab program, and so mine is a tentative hope. I need to believe that everything is going to be all right and at the same time I am unable to accept that it will be.

Things are easier at home, though there is occasional tension. I worry when Nic leaves the house for AA meetings. I worry when
he seems distracted or down. I worry when, in August, it is time for him to head off to college, this time three thousand miles away.

Hampshire College is on a former apple orchard that retains the feeling of a farm. The college offers an impressive, stimulating liberal arts program and hundreds of majors and courses. If those aren't enough, Hampshire is part of a five-college consortium, which includes the University of Massachusetts, Amherst College, Smith, and Mount Holyoke. Nic can pick and choose from the courses offered at the other campuses. A shuttle bus connects them.

Karen and I fly east with Nic to help him settle in and get ready for freshman orientation. We eat at the Indian restaurant Nic and I discovered when we took the college tour more than a year ago.

"Turn right at the light," Nic yells. "Right, right, right!"

In the morning, we drive to campus. It is warm and sunny. Families are busy dropping their children off at their respective dormitories in vans, station wagons, and, in one case, a limousine loaded with suitcases, trunks, a stereo system, a drum set, and several computers.

Nic's room in the sober-living dormitory is small but comfortable. After dropping off his suitcases, we follow posted signs to the center of campus for the welcoming barbecue. Karen and I survey the incoming freshmen for potential drug dealers.

At the end of the meal, various deans speak to the assembled families. Afterward, I seek out the dean of students and ask her about drugs on campus, explaining that my son has recently been through two rounds of rehab. She admits that marijuana is rampant, but correctly notes the obvious. "Drugs pervade every college campus in America, and every city, so a young adult must learn to live among them."

She directs me to the head of the college's health services, who writes down her name and telephone number and says that she will help Nic in any way she can. She'll guide him to twelve-step meetings and introduce him to other students in recovery. "He's not the only one," she says. "There is a lot of support for people who want it."

***

"Hey, Dad," Nic says on the phone after Karen and I are back in California, "it's me, Nic."

He is calling from his dorm. As he speaks, I imagine him wearing a worn-out T-shirt, his pants sagging and dirty, a black belt with metal studs holding them onto his hips, Converse sneakers, and his long curling hair pushed back out of his eyes. He seems excited about his school. Hopeful this time, hopeful as before, I continue my academic fantasy after we hang up, see him on campus, walking to his classes with his backpack on. I can hear his voice speaking out in discussions about dialectical imperialism, Nietzsche, Kant, and Proust.

A month later, he sounds OK, but I detect his nervous breathing. Before he hangs up, I hear him sigh. I know that this is not easy. Nic is giving it the old college try.

Besides classes, he has regular sessions with a drug and alcohol counselor recommended by the school. As we had agreed, he attends AA meetings and finds a sponsor, a grad student at the University of Massachusetts who has a group of students over to his house every Sunday morning for muffins, coffee, and a meeting.

He reports in regularly and the weight on my chest begins to lift. As things get back to seminormal, he tells me more about his teachers. He speaks about new friends. He reports on the AA and NA meetings he attends throughout the week.

A month later, Nic suddenly stops returning my phone calls. I assume he has relapsed. In spite of his protestations, and maybe (though I'm not sure) his good intentions, and in spite of the room in the substance-free dorm—which was not, Nic claimed with annoyance, substance free (he reported that the sounds of late Friday and Saturday nights included carousing, falling, stumbling, and throwing up)—Nic hadn't stood much of a chance.