Beautiful Boy (38 page)

School was canceled, so we stayed in Inverness for a few days. Finally, when it resumed, we headed back home. The teachers talked to the children about the earthquake and other things that scare people. The children wrote about their experiences. "I was at the beach," Nic wrote. "I was looking down into a sand pit. I heard that a person was thrown out of a swimming pool. The earthquake made me feel dizzy." At recess, a boy stood on the playground, rocking and swaying. When the principal asked if he was OK, the boy nodded and said: "I am moving like the earth, so if there's another earthquake I won't feel it."

As I walk around the block crowded with people out on a Saturday night, I remember the little boy and feel the way he felt. I navigate through each day like him, on guard, wary of the next upheaval. I protect myself the best I can. I move like the earth in case there's another earthquake. Like now, bracing myself when I flip open the cell phone and call Z., prepared for whatever comes.

She hands the phone to Nic.

"So it looks like there's a bed at Hazelden in Oregon. You will have to call and speak to a counselor in the morning."

"I've been thinking about it. I don't have to go. I can do it myself."

"You tried that and it didn't work."

"But now I know."

I sigh. "Nic..."

I can hear Z. in the background. "Nic, you have to go."

"I know, I know. All right. Yeah, I have to go. I know."

After the initial burst of bravado, Nic seems resigned. He also seems mystified. "I thought I could stay sober because I wanted to," he says. "I thought being in love like this could keep me sober, but it couldn't. It freaks me out." After a pause, he says, "I guess this is what it means to be an addict."

Moving like the earth so I don't feel this new earthquake—this latest relapse. I walk under streetlamps, an austere sky overhead. Cars streak by. I walk back to the gallery.

On Monday, Nic speaks to a counselor at Hazelden, and afterward he tells me that he is going to Oregon.

I book a flight knowing that he may not show up.

Next I hear from him that he is packed and ready to go.

Z. is driving him to the airport. I call Hazelden to be sure that someone will pick him up when he arrives, but the man who answers the phone says that there is no record that Nic is arriving. When I protest, I am transferred to a supervising counselor, who explains that Nic was not approved for admission.

"What do you mean he's not approved for admission? He's on his way."

"Why is he on his way? He was not approved."

"No one told us."

"I'm not certain why, but this is the decision."

"But you can't ... He is on his way to the airport. We have to get him into a program while he's willing to go."

"I'm sorry, but—"

"Can he come tonight and begin detoxing while we figure out where he'll go next?"

"I'm sorry."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"If he flies up here, no one will be meeting him."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"We have some recommendations of other programs." She gives me the names.

I hang up and call Jace. He says he'll make some calls. Jace calls back with the name of a hospital in the San Fernando Valley where Nic can detox.

I call the doctor who runs it and arrange for Nic to be admitted. Then I call Z.'s cell phone again and explain what happened. Instead of going to the airport, I say that Nic should go to the hospital. I provide the address. At least he will be safe in a hospital. If he shows up.

John Lennon sang, "Nobody told me there'd be days like these." Nobody told me there would be days like these. How do people survive them?

After midnight, Z. drops him off at the hospital. Nic is given medication to begin detoxing. As the nurse explains, he will spend
most of the first few days sleeping. The alternative to medication is the well-documented hell of cold turkey, which many addicts cannot endure. Crawling out of their skin, depressed and distraught, feeling hopeless and in acute pain, they will do anything to feel better—they will find drugs.

I regularly check in with the nurses on the ward, who assure me that he's doing all right. One says: "Given the quantity and variety of drugs in his system, it's a miracle he made it in. I don't think his body could have survived another month."

His mother and I explore options for where he can go next. Once again I ask Dr. Rawson for advice, and he queries some friends and colleagues. I check on the programs recommended by the supervisor at Hazelden. We ask the doctor who is detoxing Nic for his suggestions. Over the course of these days, Vicki and I each make dozens of telephone calls. We talk to admissions reps and check Web sites. We continue to get contradictory advice. Some programs charge forty thousand dollars a month, but the experts agree that Nic will need many months in treatment this time. We can't afford forty-thousand-dollar months. Some people we speak to are as pushy as used-car salesmen. One place recommended by Hazelden sounds appropriate and is more affordable than many others. Then someone tells me that it is a hardcore program in which punishments for breaking rules include cutting the grass with scissors. This may be useful therapy for some people, but Nic would go crazy. Maybe I'm wrong. I have been wrong about so much.

At least he's safe for the weekend.

I talk to another nurse attending to Nic. His blood pressure has been extremely low, though it is better today. He hasn't eaten much since he arrived.

She asks Nic if he is up for coming to the telephone. He walks to the nurses' station and picks up the phone.

"Hey, Dad."

His voice is hardly audible. He sounds extremely, extremely depressed.

"How's it going?"

"It's hell."

"I know."

"But I'm glad to be here. Thanks. I guess this is what they mean by unconditional love."

"Just go through this. This is the worst, but it will get better."

"What should I do next?"

"We'll talk about it when you're feeling a little better. Your mom and I are working on it."

In fact, Vicki and I are overwhelmed trying to find a place that will give Nic the best chance. Dr. Rawson continues making calls and sending emails to his colleagues around the country on our behalf. He tells me that "this experience in advising you has made me more convinced that making a selection of programs in the mental health/substance abuse service system is like reading tea leaves."

Nic calls on the third morning of his detox and asks me to call him back on the pay phone down the hall.

"It's worse," he says, sounding weak and miserable. I imagine him standing in a hospital hallway—well lit, white—tethered to a pay phone by its metal cord. Slumped over. Supported by the wall.

"I'm tired. All the fears come in. Confused. What is happening? Why? Why does this keep happening to me?"

He cries.

"What is wrong with me? I feel as if my life has been stolen."

He cries.

"I can't do this."

"You can," I say.

More calls today. Vicki and I have conference calls with the intake people at rehabs around the country, in Florida, Mississippi, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Massachusetts.

We finally choose one in Santa Fe. I am uncertain. After sifting through what Dr. Rawson calls "a non-system comprised of rumor, marketing bullshit, best guesses and fiscal opportunism," we made the best choice we could, but I'm unsure. Is it the right one? How can anyone know?

Nic calls again. He says that he should stay in LA and, at most, work in an outpatient program.

I counter: "I know, and I think that a part of you knows, that
you need to go somewhere and stay there until you have done the hard work of figuring out what is wrong and what you can do."

"Why do you still care?"

"I still care."

"Why can't I do it myself? Why do I need to go into another program?"

"So you can have a future. Last week when I knew that you could die at any moment, I couldn't bear it. I live with the knowledge that you could black out or overdose or go psychotic or do some irrevocable damage or die—it could happen anytime."

He answers, "I live with it, too."

Together we weep. It's a startling moment for me. In the trenches these past months, I have held back tears, but now they pour forth. Nic is in the hallway of a hospital somewhere, leaning against a wall, and I am on the kitchen floor, crying.

Before hanging up, he says, "I cannot believe that this is my life." Then he breathes in and says, "I'll do whatever it takes."

Early on Tuesday morning, his mother picks him up at the hospital in the valley and drives him directly to the airport, where she convinces a security agent to allow her through the checkpoint so she can escort him to the gate and onto the flight to New Mexico.

She calls me from the lounge. Nic has boarded the plane and it's backing up from the jetway. I see her standing there with her cell phone to her ear, looking out the window. I see Nic on the plane. I see him as he is—frail, opaque, ill—my beloved son, my beautiful boy.

"Everything," I say to him.

"Everything."

Fortunately there is a beautiful boy.

Unfortunately he has a terrible disease.

Fortunately there is love and joy.

Unfortunately there is pain and misery.

Fortunately the story is not over.

The jet pulls away from the gate.

I hang up the phone.

***

I see a small lilac box with tulips painted on the top and sides. A music box. Daisy's. I open it and a ballerina springs upright. She dances. I inspect the inside of the box. It has small compartments, all empty.

Like a jumbo assortment of See's candy, the box has hidden layers. I carefully remove the topmost felt tray. Under it, set on black felt like an artifact in a museum, is a plastic syringe. I hold the syringe up and turn it over in my hand, examining it, and then put it aside. I pull up the next felt layer and see, in one of the small compartments, tiny packages the size of small stones, each one wrapped in Kleenex. I pick one up and examine it, unwrap it slowly. It is Nic's tooth. There is blood on the root. I pick up the next small package and unwrap it. Another tooth.

I wake up.

I go into the kitchen, where Brutus is flat on the floor, his hind legs splayed out. He cannot move. Karen places a towel under his belly and, using it as a sling, slowly lifts him, helping Brutus stand. His frail hind legs tremble, but he is able to move forward.

The vet prescribes a new medicine. We cannot contemplate putting him to sleep. Not Brutus. I don't think Daisy, who every evening before bed wraps herself around him, could take it. I don't think Karen could. Or Jasper, who for hours a day would sit in a chair in the garden and throw a tennis ball for Brutus, who would retrieve it, return to Jas, and spit it out onto his lap. None of us could. If we have to, we will. This, too.

After school, Karen, Jasper, Daisy, and I enter the office of the family therapist. We feel enormous trepidation. The kids sit hunched on a leather couch. They squirm in their seats, almost crawling into their sweatshirts like turtles retracting into their shells.

The therapist is a young man with a trimmed beard and dark eyes. He speaks in a soft, reassuring voice. "Your mom and dad and I met," he says to the kids. "They told me a little about what's going on in your family. They told me about your brother, Nic, and about his addiction. It sounds as if you have had a hard time."

Jasper and Daisy stare at him, intently listening.

"It's very scary to have a brother who uses drugs," the thera
pist continues. "For a lot of reasons. One of them is that you don't know what will happen. I know you're very worried about him. Do you understand where he is now?"

"He's in rehab," Jasper says.

"Do you know what that means?"

The therapist explains and then tells the kids about other children like them who are in this situation—about how hard it is. "It's normal to feel confused if you have a brother who you love and who you may be afraid of, too."

The kids eye him sharply.

The doctor leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. He looks closely at Jasper and Daisy. "I'm going to tell you a word you may not have ever heard before," he says. "The word is
ambivalence.
It means that it's possible to feel two things at once. It means ... It means that you can love someone and hate them at the same time—or maybe hate what they're doing to your family—and to themselves. It means that you can want to see them very badly and at the same time be very afraid of them."

The kids look uncomfortable, but less so. Then Jasper speaks. "Everybody is worried about Nic." He looks over at me.

"You're looking at your dad," the therapist says. "Does he worry about Nic?"

Jasper nods.

"Do you worry about your dad? Especially after the hospital? They told me about that, too."

Jasper looks down and offers a barely observable nod.

In his office on this wintry evening, the children's initial hesitation is replaced by what feels to Karen and me like a cautious sense of relief. The more we talk, the taller they sit up on the couch. We talk about things that are undeniable and yet have never been adequately acknowledged.

The therapist says that even though Nic is safe for the moment in rehab, it's probably scary to think about the future. Plus, just because he is safe doesn't mean that everything is fine.

"After Nic's thefts, whenever something is missing, I go into a state of panic thinking Nic has been in our house again," Karen says.

"Panic is the exact right word," responds the therapist. "You return to the state when you felt under attack."

We describe the stack of our friend's newspapers by the fireplace. Karen and I both thought they were papers that Nic would have brought into the house. Before we discussed it, we went into a state of high alert. I didn't want to worry her. She didn't want to upset me. But both of us thought: Nic was here. Will he break in again? It turned out fine, but it took a toll.

The doctor explains how triggers like the newspapers can return us to a state of panic. He then asks about other triggers, and it dawns on me. Of course.