Separating Riches (11 page)

“Yes, but honey, you might be talking to men just like your father,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“Ah, yes. Ice breaker it is then,” I said with a laugh.

Back to College —
Chris Blackstone-Livingston
,
and
Emily Morton

Melinda dropped me off at the entrance to the Eucalyptus Grove, behind the Life Sciences Building. I crossed over the Strawberry Creek, inhaling the earthy smells as I followed the path until I saw a young girl sitting on a bench, studying in the shade of the eucalyptus trees.

“Are you Emily?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Are you Chris?” she asked, putting her thick history book into her backpack.

“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. Did my secretary explain to you why I asked for this meeting?”

“She said you had a few questions about my application for the scholarship award,”

“Yes, that’s right. Actually, I only have one question, and it may be an uncomfortable question for you, is that all right?”

“Yes, ma’am. That lady detective, Meg Bumgartner, already asked me some very personal questions. I don’t mind.”

“Good. My question is, what caused you to start drinking?” That was the only question that I wanted to hear from Emily herself. I already knew the answer from Meg’s report, but it was very clinical. I wanted to know the cause behind the emotions that drove her to drink. I knew that Emily was twenty-years-old, a sophomore with a 4.0 grade point average, with plans to be a doctor. She was the perfect college student, except that she drank.

“What caused me to drink?” she asked, uncertain.

“Yes, that first time. Why did you pick up that bottle and put it to your lips?”

“Oh, the first time,” she repeated.

She probably had an answer for the overall drinking problem, but was caught off guard by my question about the first time she drank. I thought maybe if I told her my story, she’d be more incline to tell me hers.

“Let me tell you about my first time. I was ten years old when I decided to satisfy my curiosity about how it tasted. My parents hosted several parties throughout the year, and it was easy to sample the different liquors they offered. I liked the way it burned my throat and then sent butterflies into my stomach. But I really started using alcohol as a crutch when we moved away from my hometown and my best friend. I was so terribly lonely for her, but I couldn’t explain it to my parents. You saw the commercial for the scholarship, right?” She nodded. “Then you know how far I had to fall before I was ready to give up drinking completely. So, I told you my story, now tell me yours. What caused you to drink that first time?”

She took a breath. “I was thirteen, smart, shy, and overweight. I had large breasts that the boys made fun of, and the girls were jealous of. I was really shy, scared of everything, and I didn’t fit in. I snuck into my father’s liquor cabinet one day, you know, just to see what whiskey tasted like. When I discovered how quickly it dulled the loneliness, I began siphoning out small amounts, trying to keep the buzz going.”

“And your father never caught you?” I asked.

“Oh, sure. He caught me, and grounded me for a week. But by then it was too late. I kept a stash in my room under the sanitary napkins, and another in the garage just in case Mom found the bottle in my bedroom.”

“You were quite determined to drink, weren’t you?” I asked, remembering how my parents unknowingly made it easy for me to get my next drink. I didn’t have to work at it at all. Not even when they caught me drinking and punished me, time after time.

“Yes,” she said. “Because as silly as this might sound, liquor was my best friend.”

I nodded. “Oh yeah, I totally get that. So when did you break it off with your best friend?”

“Oh, um,” she hedged. “When I saw your commercial on TV.”

I chuckled. “Well, you’re honest, I’ll give you that. So, now, tell me, how do you plan to stay sober?”

“The college has a sobriety group, that I’ve already joined,” she stated.

“That’s commendable,” I said, “but what’s your plan to be less lonely and shy?”

She looked at me like I was crazy, and maybe I was. But if that was the root of her drinking, she needed to at least acknowledge it for what it was. That’s what helped me climb out of that gutter, when I realized I was drinking to escape myself.

“You understand,” I continued, “that if you accept this scholarship award, you will be in the spotlight as the girl who was a drunk. You’ll be the star of our next commercial and on the cover of all the media materials we use. You will probably find that you suddenly have hundreds of people who want to be your friend. How will you handle that?”

She looked like the deer caught in the headlights, not sure which way to run. I thought for a moment that she might even turn down the award. I knew from her case file that her parents told her to get a job and pay for her own tuition. Just like my parents kicking me out because they were at their wits end, Emily had been cut off as well.

“Okay, now don’t panic, Emily,” I said. I waited for a couple of students carrying backpacks to pass by before I continued. “If you have the courage to accept the award, this will be a good thing for you. It will force you to come to terms with your loneliness and provide you with ample chances to make friends, providing that you can differentiate between real friends and leeches, that is.”

“Do I really have to be in a commercial?” she asked.

Damn!
“No, you don’t, Emily. The scholarship is yours whether you help promote it or not.”

“Really? You’re going to give it to me anyway?” she asked, as if she felt unworthy.

“Yes, really. My wife, Melinda, and I, believe that you deserve this chance to stay sober and graduate. No strings attached. Well, other than the staying sober part and keeping your grade point average up.”

She jumped up and hugged me, and then apologized for it. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to invade your space.”

I stood up beside her. “That’s all right, Emily. This is quite the occasion for a hug, don’t you think? I’ll have my secretary mail you the appropriate papers to sign. Because you’re not of legal age yet, you’ll need to have your parents cosign with you.”

“Will they owe something if I fail?” she asked.

“First, you’re not going to fail. As they say, failure is not an option. Second, no, they will not owe us anything. The Livingston-Blackstone Scholarship Program is about giving back to people who need help. It’s about paying it forward, and not about taking it back. Now, when you get into medical school that will be a different story.” The LBSP committee had decided that it would be just too expensive to eat the cost of having a student fail in medical college, so we added the clause that payment would be due upon expulsion from college or failure to pass the drug test.

“I’ll do it!” she shouted. “I’ll do the commercial, and anything else you need me to do. That’s the only way I can ever repay you for helping me.”

“No, Emily. That isn’t necessary. As I said, it’s not about taking it back, it’s about paying it forward. If you want to repay us, do it by graduating sober.” I was beginning to sound like my mother, except I never finished college.

“I still want to be in your commercial. Like you said, I think it will go a long way in forcing me to step out of my shell and make friends. Sometimes people just need a little push in the right direction.”

“Oh, I’m so happy for you,” I said, taking her hand in mine. “You’re going to make a great doctor someday.”

Back to College — Melinda Blackstone-Livingston

The ad agency that we hired to shoot our commercial also handled our marketing. For the last month, even before the commercial aired, they had prepared marketing kits and shipped them out to colleges nationwide. Still, I brought several cleverly designed kits with us, so that I could personally give them out to the admission officers at Berkeley.

After I dropped Chris off, with a kiss and a pat on her butt, I circled around and found the Sproul Hall building, where the admissions and registrar’s offices were housed. The building was built in the forties, and had four huge columns, with a volute or scroll-like ornament at the top of each column. It always reminded me a little of the San Francisco County Courthouse, where I had to pay for my speeding tickets when I was home on college break.
Aw, good times.

Once I had introduced myself to the receptionist, I was immediately ushered into the Director of Student Information and Records office. I introduced myself and handed him my bag full of goodies. The kits not only had a DVD of the commercial, but applications, pamphlets and coupons for root beer.

“I’m not sure who to give these to,” I explained, as I handed them to him. “I’m Blackie, I mean, Melinda Blackstone, and, uh, that’s Blackstone-Livingston, and anyway, my wife and I started a scholarship program for students with a drinking problem. If you have a student with that problem, we’d be grateful if you’d give them one of these media kits.”

“Sure, I know who you are, Blackie,” he said.

I looked at him closely. Gray wavy hair, close shaven, square jaw, white shirt, tie, no jacket. The name plate read Tomas Wilson. I didn’t recognize him. “Do I know you, sir?”

“No, I don’t believe that we’ve ever met. But I am aware of your school record. As I recall, you were one infraction away from being expelled.”

I laughed, and then choked when I saw that he wasn’t. “Yes, well, I’m actually here about another student that was dismissed from school because of me. John Mooney. Do you remember him?”

“Yes, I do. But if I recall…” He clicked the keyboard on his desk to activate his monitor. “I don’t think it was because of you. Let me check your record.”

“You don’t?” I was floored. How could it not be because of me, when John had believed that all these years? “I don’t understand. Why would he think that I was the one that got him expelled?”

“That I cannot answer because there’s nothing in your school record to indicate that you were involved,” he said, tapping the mouse a couple of times. “It does, however, say that you’ve done some unsavory things while you were here, like strip poker, naked beauty contests, oh yes, and here’s my favorite one, make-them-squeal finger contests.”

I blushed. Not because I was embarrassed, but because the memory of the finger contests was making me hot. I made every single one of the contestants squeal, so in order to pick a winner, the girls would have to make me squeal instead. It wasn’t as easy as they thought, but I sure the hell did enjoy their trying. The winner or winners, got to spend the weekend with me at one of my father’s chateaus, without his knowledge of course.

“Ahem,” Tomas grunted.

Time to come back to the present… after one more delicious finger jab. “Oh, sorry. You were saying?”

“I was saying that John is not mentioned in your school record,” he stated.

“Could you tell me exactly what John was expelled for?” I asked. Something wasn’t adding up right and I had a tingly feeling at the back of my neck. Unless that was a left over reaction to my contest memories.

“I think that I’ve said too much already. If it wasn’t for the fact that your father is on the school board, I wouldn’t have said anything at all.”

“Well, hell, why stop now, then,” I jibed. “Look, I’m trying to help this guy out but nothing is the way I’ve been led to believe. Someone is trying to play me, and I want to know why.”

He sighed. “John was expelled for hacking.”

“Hacking?”
What the hell?
“But I thought he was a chemistry major?”

Tomas shook his head. “No, actually his major was Radio Broadcasting, with a minor in computer programming. The chemistry class was probably an elective to supplement his grades.”

“Does it say what he tried to hack into?”

Tomas looked at his computer again. “A radio station playlist.”

“That’s weird. So he got caught, then what happened?”

Still looking at his computer, Tomas clicked his tongue against his teeth as he concentrated. “The owner of the station didn’t press charges but demanded that John be suspended, and upon his return, never be allowed to use a college computer again. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t come back to school after he was suspended. He wouldn’t be able to finish his computer classes, which was a big part of his program.”

“What an idiot,” I said. “I think I can piece together the rest of it. The owner of the radio station was my father. Am I right?”

“Yes. So that might explain why John holds a grudge against you,” Tomas said.

“Guilt by association. Story of my fucking life,” I snarled. Once again the sins of the father had been visited upon his daughter.

I texted Chris to see if she was ready to go. She replied back that she’d be a little while longer, so I decided to visit my old stomping grounds and have a beer. I told her where I’d be, and to text when she was ready to go, and she reminded me of the two limit promise. I had promised Chris that I would never drink more than two beers, and never touch the hard stuff, ever. I planned to stick to that promise. Maybe someday soon she would trust me enough not to have to remind me. I just needed a place to think, to rationalize, to figure out why John hacked into my father’s radio station. And what better place to think than in the pizza parlor with the loud jukebox blaring, and the kids chattering away.