I feel a disorientation, a force pulling me in different directions. I wonder if Doug is the source of this feeling or if Mom is or if I am. Why was the house dark? What was it I saw? What is this black sick feeling I have now? There are different kinds of addictions.
I know she wants me to pretend that I didn’t see what I saw, to simply exclude it from the world that we acknowledge exists, the one where she has finally found an “honest man” who’s going to “take care of her” instead of another addict. Holding the two ideas in my head—the thing that happened and the fact that we are not to acknowledge it—has the strange effect of making me feel numb. This makes it easier to pretend. Anyway, I am the one who left for California, the one who hurt her by leaving, and the least I can do is bury my questions and suspicions of him, the gut feeling that he leads a double life. I owe her that. That’s what it means to be a good son.
She tells me about the time-share property they’re buying into and the great “family trips” we are going to have, all of us, Tony and me and Catherine and Matthew and Doug and her, one big family. I know she believes it, this perfectly adequate dream of a family. I know it’s my job to pretend to believe it too.
The flight can’t come soon enough and I feel a rush of relief when the jet engines shake the plane and I am pinned to the back of my window seat watching Oregon fall away beneath me, the Portland skyline, the mountains, the bridges, the endless silent pines. All those places to hide.
CHAPTER 29
THE PLACE WE MEET A THOUSAND FEET BENEATH THE RACETRACK
Everyone says Tony is going to die. Flesh tells me he saw him tripping acid at a party. While everyone was drinking and dancing in the living room, Tony was in the bedroom screaming because he thought there were bears on the wall that were going to kill him. Eventually, he just climbed out the window and left. I know he’s been doing coke because Duck let it slip at the Bowl one night that he couldn’t even hang out with him anymore. When I asked why, he covered one nostril and took a snort. Everyone’s got something to say about him, like he’s an action hero, a young Marlon Brando in tapered Dickies and karate shoes. “Your brother’s got a death wish, man. But that dude can take more drugs than any three people I know.”
They say it like they are impressed, like he’s a legend, like they respect him for it.
He puts a finger to his lips one afternoon as he walks out the door with the keys to the black Lincoln Continental Dad borrowed from Uncle Wes. “Don’t say shit. I’ll be back.” He gives me a sneaky smile. I look out the window and watch him drive off. He’s only sixteen with no license. He’s still gone when Bonnie gets home. She asks me where the Lincoln is. I tell her I don’t know but she figures it out soon enough. When Dad gets home, there’s a noise on the front porch so Dad goes outside. The keys are sitting on the doormat. There’s no sign of Tony but the Lincoln is parked down the street with the doors open.
We don’t see him for a couple days because he knows he’s in trouble and when he finally comes home, Dad yells at him to “get his shit together.” It’s a familiar fight. Dad is angry with him but also defends him. Bonnie is furious that he would take advantage of this sympathy Dad shows him. We all know he defends him like a wound, the way a boxer guards a broken rib.
“I just want him to see his next birthday.”
Bonnie has a long discussion in the living room with Tony about “his future.” He’s got that wild look as he sits on the couch, breathing hard, rocking back and forth, staring at something on the far side of the room. His hair is dyed black now, his tight surf T-shirts cling to his thin, muscled frame and broad shoulders, his jaw jutting out.
Bonnie lectures him for taking the Lincoln and tells him he’s grounded. He’s twitching, his head bouncing, his eyes going to all corners of the room. He jumps up and says, “Why do you care what I do?” She says she loves him and wants him to be safe and it’s clear he has a problem.
He says, “I just want to be with my friends. Can’t you understand that? I finally have people who care about me and you’re trying to take them away.”
Dad says, “Aren’t you tired of this shit?”
“Tired of what? I just want to be happy. Nobody wants me to be happy.”
Bonnie shows him the note from the guidance counselor at Westchester High that says Tony hasn’t been to school in three months. “You should see this. They sent it to us. Are you really skipping school every day? Where do you go?”
He stares at the purple slip with his name typed in the corner. “Nowhere. I just need space to think. Can’t anyone around here understand that?” He’s on the brink of tears. “My friends care about me. It’s not like how it is around here.”
Bonnie studies him, tilting her head, and says, “I’m just trying to talk to you.”
Tony has the crazy look and he stands up and screams, “No you’re not! You’re trying to control me!”
He stands over her, all six feet two of his skinny, teenage Dope Fiend frame attached to a handsome face and bloodshot eyes. Dad tells him to calm down but he just keeps shaking. “You don’t understand! Nobody understands!” He tries to walk out the front door but Dad blocks him.
Bonnie calls the police because she thinks there’s going to be a fight. I hear her say, “I don’t know what to do. I think my son is on drugs. Can you send somebody?”
Dad stands in the doorway and yells, “You have to go to school! What the fuck do you think life is?! What, are you going to hang out with your friends for a living?!”
“We’re going to have a big house where everyone can live and we’ll be fine! We don’t need you!” He stomps his feet like the time he broke his leg playing baseball in Oregon. He and Mom got into a fight and he just kept slamming his broken leg into the ground, tearing at the cast, saying, “I hate it here! I hate it here!” like he was holding his own body hostage.
There’s a loud knock when the cops come and as soon as Bonnie says, “The police are here,” Tony runs out the back door and disappears. The cop enters the house, a mass of walkie-talkie, black gun, black baton, and handcuffs. Bonnie says, “Our son is on drugs. He’s getting violent and we don’t know what to do. He just ran out the back.” The cop says he’s not going to go chasing some teenager around the street.
He asks what kinds of drugs Tony’s on, whether he has been violent before, whether he’s ever been arrested, whether he has any weapons and if he’s threatened to use them. He says Tony probably needs to go to drug rehab and there are some good ones around if they’re interested and to call if he tries to steal the car again.
When Tony finally comes home two days later, when he’s crying and says he’s sorry and he looks like he’s been dragged through a hundred miles of dirt and gravel with his hair messed up and his tapered Dickies torn at the knee, a stained Quiksilver T-shirt and a scrape on his forehead that he says is “nothing, don’t worry about it,” and they have a meeting with the guidance counselor at Westchester High who runs the Just Say No program started by the wife of Thatasshole Reagan to keep all us kids off drugs. In the meeting the counselor asked, “Straight up, do you have a drug problem?” Tony said yes.