Crystal Clean (17 page)

Mario and I got along well and I felt comfortable doing business with him. In the beginning, the exchanges were made in public.

“Keem? You ready?” Mario’s English was much better than my Spanish was, but Mexicans always have problems pronouncing my name.

“Sure. Forty-five minutes? Same place?”

“Okay. You call me.”

Right on time, I called Mario as I pulled into the furthest spot I could find at the Wal-Mart parking lot in Caldwell. Five minutes later, a small blue pickup truck drove by with Mario behind the wheel, and I pulled in after him, seamless and smooth. We didn’t acknowledge each other. It wasn’t necessary. I fell in behind him and we drove until he found a place where he felt comfortable
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usually some rural stretch of road or around an industrial area. He pulled over and I did the same. He walked back to my car and dropped a plastic-wrapped package through the driver’s side window, picking up the roll of bills I’d already set on the outside armrest. Then he walked back to his vehicle and drove away. The whole thing from the time we pulled over took less than a minute. We never spoke during those meetings. It was all business:  short, sweet and efficient. Then I’d drive to my office to double-check the weight and start making calls.

I met with the district supervisor of special education. There were two programs she suggested that would be good placements for Andy, and invited me to visit each of them to determine which would be the most appropriate for his needs.

The school I chose had a strong program and the teacher was an advocate for her students participating as much as they possibly could with their typical peers.

So again, I went through all the I.E.P., assessments and paperwork required to transfer him, and Andy went back to school. There were a couple of accidents in the beginning, but by the end of the first month, he was back to normal. I took it as a sign that he was happy. His new teacher was outstanding at communicating with me, not only with the notebook, but also with phone calls. She was upbeat and positive. There was a male aide
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a rare thing in special education
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who Andy seemed to especially like, and best of all, for my son at least, was that every Thursday, they went swimming at the YMCA, and to the B.S.U. student union building to eat lunch. Swimming is one of his favorite things to do...especially if there’s a chance he might see a blonde chick in a bikini.

Chapter 1
7

Allan started working full-time installing rain gutters. He enjoyed his job and the people he worked with and it soon became apparent that he’d found a place he intended to stay. He was taking pride in himself again and that seemed to give him a sense of independence.

Then, one night, he went to brush his teeth and I did the same. I waited in bed, listening as he let Puppet out for the last time. I arranged our pillows and turned off all but the little light on my side of the bed. And I waited. And waited.

The house was quiet and the hallway dark. I sat listening to stillness and heard nothing else. I got up and looked out into the hallway. All the lights in the house were off and there was no sign of Allan or Puppet. I walked through the kitchen and checked the backyard. Nothing.

Coming back through the house, I noticed the door to his bedroom was closed. Sick, blue light from his television set showed through the crack beneath the door. I stood there, not knowing what to do, when I heard him saying something in a low voice. Then I heard a bark. That was the night Allan stopped sleeping with me and started sleeping with the dog.

When Kilo went to prison and asked us to take care of his dog, I was honored. I had known Puppet since she was first born. The runt of a litter of pit bulls, she was so small that Kilo carried her in his pocket. She was his baby and he was her Asian, as he would say. I adored Puppet. As she got bigger, I would play with her, getting down on the floor with a towel between my teeth and growling; she would catch the other end and we would play like canine mother and child. Of course, she could stay with us and we would take good care of her until she and Kilo were able to reunite.

             
My affection toward her soon faded, though, as Allan showered all his attention on her. She was the one he played with and cuddled with on the couch at night. She went everywhere with him on the weekends
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even just to the store to buy cigarettes
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while I stayed behind, uninvited. He bought her pretty collars and toys and took her for grooming.

In the evenings, Allan sprawled out on the couch, dozing in front of the television, with that damn dog’s head in his crotch. I
hated that lazy-eyed bitch, and every morning after he affectionately told her goodbye, throwing me a “see ya’” over his shoulder as an afterthought, I threw her outside for the day. Dog shit filled the backyard because Allan never bothered to pick it up in all the time she was with us, and I did not intend to clean up after his whore. I wasn’t able to enjoy my own backyard due to the stench. I couldn’t stand looking at her. I knew how irrational and immature I was being, but I couldn’t help it.

I was hurt and humiliated, but I couldn’t talk to Allan about it. What was I going to say? We’d never defined our relationship before and had never spoken about sleeping together. Before that night, it never crossed my mind that he would want to stop sleeping with me. I was so determined that this would work, that we were right for each other. If I could only find the right combination of doing and giving what he needed, everything would work out. As awful as it to felt to be dumped, knowing I’d been dumped for a dog was fucking humiliating.

Every night after work, Allan lay on the couch absorbed in some television show, smoking pot and caressing the dog. When Andy was in bed for the night, I’d go back to my empty room where I would sit smoking meth and listening obsessively for any sign that Allan might come back to me. Around eleven, he’d take Puppet outside one last time before they’d retire to his room, closing the door behind them.

Even if I’d had the guts to confront him, what the hell would I say? Why her and not me? What does she have that I don’t have? The whole thing seemed so bizarre to me, yet it still hurt. Worse than that, it was embarrassing.

The unbearable weight of my heart in my throat brought tears to my eyes, and the only remedy I had for the pain was to get high and stay high. Meth’s ethereal smoke snaking its way into my lungs and brain eased the pain that clenched me at my core. It was all I had.

I started playing poker online in 2004, when Internet gambling was still legal. It became my new obsession and I bought every book I could get my hands on, subscribed to poker magazines and studied the pros. I played at my office, mostly in the middle of the night
while Andy and Allan slept, or during the day when they were at work and school. As empty and dark as that room was, it was far less lonely than being at home.

Any game I could find in Vegas, I could play online twenty-four hours a day, and I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the dark years of addiction. Not because I’m a bad poker player or unlucky at slots, but because I’m an addict and gambling had the same effect on me as meth. It took me out of myself for long periods and disconnected me from the world.

The thing about being an addict, though, is that it never mattered how much meth I had or how much money I won. It was never enough. I always wanted more, more, and more. For me, there was no reason to quit and every reason to keep going. The drugs and the money flowed like the ocean tide: no matter how much went out, it always came back. There was no foreseeable end and as with the ocean, it was easy to get lost in the vast emptiness.

I was incessantly buying things I didn’t need, filling my office with pretty things for gift baskets I never made.
I gambled like a fiend and smoked meth constantly
. I was running out of ways to run away from myself.

I was on call most nights and never knew when I would have to go to the jail to write a bond. I spent many of those nights downtown in my office getting high and gambling. It was better than being at home where I would stay up all night listening for Allan. Listening for him to get up and come to me, tell me he loved me and sleep in my bed again as he had when Andy and I first moved in with him. I obsessed about Allan and with nothing but movies for distraction, my thoughts consumed me, threatening my sanity. In the morning, I would hear him get up, play with the dog and get in the shower. I felt stupid being jealous of a dog, longing for attention that never came, and my sadness would turn to rage for which there was no release. Away from the house, alone in my office, gambling away money for hours, getting high all night, allowed me temporary relief from the sorrow and rage bottled inside me. Gambling and meth swallowed me whole and in that space, I had no thoughts, no pain and no sadness. For a little while, I was free.

One night I started playing seven-card stud at a three hundred dollar-minimum table. The poker
God
s were on my side that night. I had never been on such a winning streak, and within five hours, I had turned three hundred dollars into just under twenty grand. The high I experienced at the virtual table that night far surpassed any high I ever experienced with drugs. In the early morning hours, in a room where the only light was the sick glow of
the computer monitor, I played standing up. I smoked less than usual, as the elation of winning was powerfully intoxicating. I couldn’t lose. I knew what everyone was holding, and my body rocked back and forth in rhythm to the falling cards. I was invincible that night. I felt electric.

Three hours later, it was gone: not just the excitement, but also all the money, plus another five hundred in bets I made attempting to win it all back. Chasing the dragon. Gambling was just like meth for me. No matter how much there was, it was never enough, and I wouldn’t stop until it was all gone, and with it the numbness. Just like that, I’d be back inside myself again, and I was such a mess that I didn’t fit anymore.

Everything I’d been originally running from was buried far beneath all that I’d piled on top. It wasn’t even that I thought I would fix my life at some point in the future. My intention was to keep running because I was afraid to stop. I knew how bad I hurt inside and I did all I could to avoid feeling that pain because I didn’t know what to do with it.

I could take care of everyone. Except me. In my mind, I wasn’t worthy of what I gave to others. If I had deserved love and attention, I wouldn’t have had to ask for it, or hope for it in vain. I wasn’t taking care of myself, and I was disappearing. I didn’t know I was slipping away until it was too late, and by that time I was so far gone, taking care of myself wasn’t even an option.

If Proust was right, and happiness exists only so we can experience unhappiness, causing grief that develops the powers of the mind, I should have been the smartest motherfucker alive. If that were true, though, I wouldn’t have decided to take Allan on vacation to Mexico.

It was October of 2005 and he was selling his timeshare because I was tired of making the payments and he couldn’t afford them, but he had a balance so we used the points to reserve a condo in Cabo San Lucas. Now, I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s ever smuggled drugs
into
Mexico, but I knew Allan still liked coke once in a while, so I brought half an ounce as a surprise for him.

When I emerged from the bathroom to give him his present, his jaw dropped and he let out a
hunh
sound. “You crazy bitch!”

“I am not a bitch,” I said, and he hugged me and we started railing up lines.

I daydreamed of Mexico for weeks before we went. I had visions of us swimming in the ocean, dancing in clubs and walking on the beach at night. As pathetic as it sounds, I actually thought that once he was away from his lazy-eyed whore for a while and we could spend some time together with no other distractions, things might be different. But it was pathetic. And stupid. Mexico sucked. We went parasailing and I chartered a private boat for deep sea fishing one day, but other than that, we pretty much hung around the condo and did coke while Allan smoked pot he bought from a local.

Actually, it was fine with me. I didn’t bring any meth because I only liked to smoke it and didn’t want the hassle of smuggling paraphernalia. I did a lot of coke that trip, but the high is nothing compared to meth and I ended up sleeping most of the time.

There were two bedrooms and we slept in separate beds. The first morning, I woke up very early and slipped into bed with Allan. He rolled over and fucked me. We didn’t have sex. He just fucked me, and that was that: a chore he wanted done and out of the way. I stayed in my own room the rest of the trip.

When we got back, the Garnett situation began to escalate. I started getting pulled over for no reason. One officer would stand at my window asking me questions about where I was going and where I was coming from while another shined his flashlight around the inside of my car. Twice, there was a K-9 unit present, and they would walk the dog around the perimeter of my car. The staff at the bar I spent so much time in told me that the men’s room was plastered with papers similar to the ones that were scattered on our street that day. They were also getting calls from what was obviously a man disguising his voice as a crazy woman asking for me and saying he needed to buy meth.

I met with Larry, the attorney I’d hired for Allan and Kilo, explained what was going on and asked what it would take to have him on retainer. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “When and if the time comes, I’m your lawyer.”

All the trouble Garnett was causing should have been enough to scare me. Multiple run-ins with the police should have scared the hell out of me, but they didn’t. This is how sick I was:

I saw myself as a righteous woman being attacked by a deranged psycho. I knew that I was too smart to get caught with anything, and his efforts to bring me down were annoying at best. He was a thorn in my side, but I never saw him as a threat. He was so crazy and his claims so outrageous, that I thought I had nothing to worry about. Eventually, the police would grow tired of harassing me and, finding nothing, would see Garnett for what he was
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someone who desperately needed psychiatric care.

As for Allan...I did every dumb-ass thing in the Desperate Woman’s Handbook. I sent myself lavish bouquets with notes saying I missed me. I stayed out all night even when I wasn’t on call, or when Andy was spending the night with Chuck. On these nights, I rented hotel rooms. I spent a lot of nights in hotel rooms during the last year we were living together. I went through his wallet when he was asleep, not looking for anything, but just to touch the things that he touched. I wrote long letters, on more than one occasion, that make me want to claw my eyes out today when I look at the words. I did all those things, trying to make him jealous, I suppose, but jealousy only exists when there are feelings involved. So I spent a lot of time slamming my head into a wall.

Dear Allan,

I’ve been waiting for the right time to talk to you. I’ve been patient, understanding, and supportive while kids, families, jobs, friends, bills, your legal issues and everything else under the sun has taken precedence in our lives. I have tried many times to talk to you and started more letters than I can count. I’ve walked the streets alone at night and cried more tears than you can imagine. I don’t know what to do anymore, but I feel like I’m dying inside. I don’t like the way I feel and the more time I let pass, the more things happen to further confuse and break me. I’ve come to dread being at home at night because of the emptiness that fills the house. I would rather be here in this dark, quiet office than at home where I feel invisible and isolated.