Beautiful Boy (35 page)

On Thursday, Jasper has a soccer game after school. Daisy has swimming. Karen and I divide the driving.

I have found a quiet place in a corner of the clubroom near the pool to write. Looking up, out the window through the slats of shutters, I see a dark form curve up and break the water, followed by a pair of kicking feet: Daisy doing her laps. The coach, poised and tanned and lithe, a former All-American swimmer who has taught all three of our children, crouches at the end of the lane, encouraging Daisy and the other swimmers. I lose sight of her among the lines of bodies in their blue suits until she returns back down the lane in the opposite direction, her powerful arms pulling in arching freestyle strokes. I remember when it was her big brother Nic in the water, his lean dolphin body cutting through the pool.

"Hey, you, mister, let's skedaddle."

It is Daisy, dripping after a shower, wrapped in a beach towel.

There is no news.

Some of the panic in which I lived during these crises seems to have lifted. I worry, but I am not sick with worry. I'm getting better. I'm letting go. I'm in abject denial.

It must be like a soldier in a trench during a bombing raid. I've shut down every nonessential emotion—worry, fear—concentrat
ing every neuron in my new brain on the moment in order to stay alive.

I am in a silent war against an enemy as pernicious and omnipresent as evil. Evil? I don't believe in evil any more than I believe in God. But at the same time I know this: only Satan himself could have designed a disease that has self-deception as a symptom, so that its victims deny they are afflicted, and will not seek treatment, and will vilify those on the outside who see what's happening.

After dinner, Jasper asks me to quiz him on math and his words of the week. Then he and I read a
Mad
magazine together.

In bed, I grab one of the novels on the tottering stack on the nighttable. I will never get through all the books. I'm so tired at night that I read a page, maybe two, and fall asleep. Karen joins me.

A page. Two pages. I am asleep.

The telephone rings. I ignore it. In my half-consciousness I have decided that it's a serviceman we called for an estimate on some repairs. I think, It will wait until morning.

The phone rings again. I'll get the messages tomorrow.

No, Karen says, you had better check.

The first call is Nic's godfather. Nic just called him and left a message. "He's in Oakland." My friend's voice is in a state of alarm. "He says he's in trouble and needs help. I don't know what to do."

My heart pounds.

The next message is from Vicki. Nic called her, too, leaving a similar message. "I lied about Joshua Tree because I didn't want you to worry that I was in Oakland. I'm sober. Please, we're in trouble. We need plane tickets back to LA." He tells a convoluted story about how they got there, but the bottom line is that he and Z. are at the home of a crack addict in Oakland who is out of his mind and they have to get out.

Nic is in Oakland.

Brutus stiffly follows me upstairs, shuffling his weary paws along the concrete. I fill the teakettle and place it on a flame on the stove.

I return Vicki's call. She is unsure what to do—whether or not to pay for a plane ticket. I understand, but, no, I say. If it were me, I would not help unless he wants to go into rehab. Then maybe.

I hang up.

I call my friend. He is calmer than when he left the message. He says, "Listen," and plays the message on his answering machine over the telephone. We hear the slur in Nic's voice. "I need help. I can't call my dad. I don't know what to do, please give me a call." He leaves Z.'s cell phone number.

"It's so sad," my friend says. "Part of me wants to drive to Oakland to get him and part of me wants to wring his neck."

Once again, Nic is here and he is high. For some reason, I'm aberrantly calm as I think, If he is here, what might he do? Might he come to our house? What do I do if he does? Would he go back to Karen's parents' like that time Nancy found him in the downstairs bedroom? Would he break in again?

Karen emerges from our bedroom. She asks, "Do you think he might go back to Nancy and Don's?"

She is worried about the same thing. He probably wouldn't go there, but, would he? We debate whether we should call them. It would worry them. But it would be worse not to warn them and then to have Nic show up. We call them.

Where else might he go?

The next day, Nic leaves another message for his godfather and one for his mother, this time saying that the girlfriend of the crack addict with whom they were staying showed up and gave Nic and Z. money to fly home.

I'm working at the Corte Madera library, a stack of books at my side.

I have brought my laptop and I'm writing and writing, an attempt to contain something that is fast (once again) spiraling out of control.

The phone is on vibrate because of the library and it starts its mad shaking and rattling as if possessed. I pick it up from the table so the noise doesn't disturb anyone. On the screen, in sickly green letters, I see that it's Nic's girlfriend's phone.

I have no desire to hear more lies. I turn it off.

Later, as I am driving to pick up the kids from school, I listen to the message. Nic says that he and Z. are driving back from Joshua Tree and are finally in cell phone range. He says, word for word:
"Hey, Pop, we're driving back from Joshua Tree and we're finally in cell phone range again..."

I am struck not just by the lie, but by its intricacy. He could have said, "I'm back in LA." He could have checked in without saying any more than hello. But he thought through the original lie and built on it, bejeweling it with detail so that I would never question it. And I would not have if I didn't already know it was a lie. By now I have heard about the web of lies by addicts. "Substance abusers lie about everything, and usually do an awesome job of it," Stephen King once wrote. "It's the Liar's Disease." Nic once told me, quoting an AA platitude, "An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie about it. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it." Part of me is convinced that he actually believes that he will find it for you.

I listen to the message a few times. I want to remember it.

Did he forget that he called his mother and his godfather and told them that he was in desperate peril in Oakland? After everything, does he assume that my dear friend would not call me if he was worried about Nic, if Nic was desperately in danger in an Oakland crack house? Does he not know by now that his mother, with whom I have ridden this hellish rollercoaster, will of course call to check in with me to talk about what, if anything, we should do? And not only about what to do. Just to talk to the other person who loves Nic the way she does.

The message continues. He's not slurring. He sounds fine. He says he misses and loves me.

"Hey, Papa, it's me, Nic. I just found out that you know the truth of what happened."

I check my messages. Nic called. Again. There's a slurriness. He has talked to Vicki, and he knows that I know that he was in Oakland, not Joshua Tree, and he tries to cover his tracks. "I just didn't want to worry you," he says. "And also I didn't want to be pressured to come see you while I was in the Bay Area and I had no idea this guy was going to turn out to be such a psycho. And neither did Z. We got out of there the best as we could ... I'm safe now ... Anyway, I'm sorry I lied to you."

I am in the living room sitting on the couch. Something catches my eye: a pile of newspapers on the floor. On top is an
SF Weekly.
I look closer. A
Bay Guardian
and a flyer from Amoeba Records, his favorite store. I stare at them and it sinks in. No.

I ask Karen if they are hers. No, aren't they yours?

Nic broke in again. I'm certain.

Karen is certain.

We are certain.

No.

Our hearts pound. We start looking around the house.

Karen stops and asks if they could have been left by a friend who was visiting from New York, staying with us last weekend. Could they be his? I call him. The newspapers are his.

We are paranoid and crazy. It's not only the addict who becomes paranoid and crazy.

I haven't returned Nic's calls because I just can't face talking to him now, not until he is sober. Off every drug. Not "I'm just using Klonopin to get off the meth," or "just a Valium to help me come down."

I love him and always will. But I cannot deal with someone who lies to me. I know that sober and clear-headed and in his right mind and in recovery Nic would not lie to me. In a way, I am grateful for the blatancy. It has taken away one thin layer of my uncertainty. Normally I am in some hellish purgatory, not knowing what is true and what isn't, whether he is using or not, but now I know.

I have, above my desk, photographs leaning against books on a shelf. There's a recent picture of Karen and another of her when she was a child, a ruminative, dark-complexioned girl with short hair and a striped sailor shirt on a beach somewhere. She looks like Daisy, or, rather, Daisy, with her sparkling gaze and dark eyes and hair, looks like her. There are also pictures of Daisy. In one she wears moccasins and blue underwear and is closely inspecting Moondog's tolerant face. There's a picture of Jasper when he was an infant in Karen's arms and Jasper dressed up in a red flannel loden coat, silk purple raja pants, a knitted green flannel hat with gold tassels and fluffy pompoms, and, on his feet, genie shoes embroidered with gold thread with curled-up, pointy tips. There are team pictures of Daisy and Jasper posed in their swim goggles. There are pictures of Nic. In one he is about ten, wearing jeans, a blue zippered sweatshirt and blue sneakers. His hands are in his pockets and he looks at the camera with a gentle smile. There is a more recent picture of Nic, too. A broad smile, in baggy trunks and bare-chested, from when he met us in Hawaii. It's my son and my friend Nic in recovery, and he is all right.

I cannot bear to have it stare down at me. I put it in a desk drawer.

Jasper has become adept with Garage Band, a music recording
and mixing computer program. He has constructed a haunting and beautiful song.

"It's a sad song," I say as I enter the room where it's playing.

"Yes," he replies quietly.

"Are you sad?"

"Yes."

"About?"

"We ran the mile at school today. I couldn't think about anything but Nic."

I tell Jasper that there are places we can go where other kids with brothers or sisters or parents with alcohol or drug problems go.

"What do you do there?"

"You don't have to do anything. You can just listen to what other kids say. It can help. If you want, you can say something."

"Oh."

"Do you want to try it?"

"I think so."

He hugs me tighter and longer than he ever has before.

In the morning, the sun shines through a hole in the gray-black sky. It's like a klieg light is shining on the garden. There is a yellow circle surrounded everywhere by a diffused patchwork of gold, rust, and dying white hydrangea—the dying colors of autumn. The poplar trees are nearly bare; all but a few leaves are gone, and the trees' naked white branches reach skyward into the gray shimmering light. Only the magnolia has blooms—three white flames.

A load of firewood was delivered for the winter season. This morning my goal is to stack it with the kids. As we work, I am thinking about, what else, Nic. I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic. I don't know what will happen. I believe deeply in his good soul and brain and at the same time I have no illusions about the severity of this illness. No, to be honest, right now I do not feel optimistic at all.

It comes down to where Nic is. I'm optimistic—not overly optimistic but optimistic—when he's in recovery, disconsolate and pessimistic when he isn't.

Strangely, the thought of being cut off from Nic used to send me into a panic, but now—today, at least, today at this moment, at least
—I am all right with the concept. But then I think, Nic could die. Stacking wood, I think, Nic could die. I stop for a moment.

I would miss having Nic in my life. I would miss his funny phone messages and his humor, the stories, our talks, our walks, watching movies with him, dinners together, and the transcendent feeling between us that is love.

I would miss all of it.

I miss it now.

And here it sinks in: I don't have it now. I have not had it whenever Nic has been on drugs.

Nic is absent, only his shell remains. I have been afraid—terrified—to lose Nic, but I have lost him.

In the past, I tried to imagine the unimaginable and I tried to imagine bearing the unbearable. I imagined losing Nic by overdose or accident, but now I comprehend that I have already lost him. Today, at least, he is lost.

I have been terrorized by the fear that he would die. If he did, it would leave a permanent crack in my soul. I would never fully recover. But I also know that if he were to die, or for that matter, if he stays high, I would live on—with that crack. I would grieve. I would grieve forever. But I have been grieving for him since the drugs took over—grieving for the part of him that is missing. It must be grief. At least it feels exactly like Joan Didion describes it in
The Year of Magical Thinking:
"Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life." (Ah, so that is what they are. It's a relief to know.)

I grieve, but I also continue to celebrate the part of him that is untouchable by meth or any other drug. I will never let a drug take that from me.

"Insanity is the insistence on meaning," wrote Frank Bidart in a poem. Yes, but this human brain of mine requires meaning—at least an approximation of meaning. The meaning I have come to is that Nic on drugs is not Nic but an apparition. Nic high is a ghost, a specter, and when he is high my lovely son is dormant, pushed aside, hidden away and buried in some inaccessible corner of his consciousness. My faith, such as it is, comes with a belief that Nic
is in there and he—Nic, his essence, his self—is whole, safe, and protected. Nic strong and clear and filled with love—Nic may never again emerge. The drug may win the battle for his body. But I can live knowing that Nic is in there somewhere and that the drug cannot touch him where he is in there somewhere he is there.