Well, my friend, that day’s today.
I hit the ground with outstretched hands.
And now I see you weren’t my friends
Cuz the ones who’d helped me
Had been there all along
So I guess that I …
I guess that I was wrong.
You can twist it round which way you like.
It doesn’t really matter who was right.
I’m here standing tall again
And now I know my real true friends
So in the end
In the end again, I turned out all right.
In the end …
In the end again, I turned out all right.
Turned out all right.
He sure did. He was terrific, and on his feet again. By the first of September, Nick was up and running.
19
Scrambled eggs at midnight
Those first days of September were busy for Nick. He was constantly running, calling people, setting things up, organizing, writing, recording, rehearsing. It was as though he felt he had to make up for lost time. By the middle of September they had completed their recording, and so professionally that we are marketing it now to major labels.
By mid-September he had a band, a tape, a stack of songs, and bookings. It was unheard of. But typically Nick. And Knowledge seemed to me even better than Link 80. To my ears, it was a more grown-up sound, and I could even understand the words now. But the best of all of it was that Nick was so happy. He was up on his feet again, and he was having a great time.
As always, Nick made me feel part of it. He showed up often late at night, after rehearsal, close to midnight, and usually brought some or all of the band members with him. He had me make scrambled eggs for them. He loved the way I cooked them, soft and mushy, taken off the fire at just the right time, with melted cheese in them. He could eat a dozen eggs at one sitting, and urged the others to eat them. When they didn’t finish what was on their plates, he ate theirs too, telling them what a great cook I was. I didn’t want to disappoint him by telling him he was the only human on the planet who thought so. He also loved my French toast and my tacos. But scrambled eggs were his favorite. Sometimes when he was home, we’d go down to the kitchen late at night, and I’d cook for him. I always tried to give him the feeling that I’d been waiting all night to do that. And in a way that was true, it was an opportunity for us to talk, and to share things. It was when he always let his guard down, and shared his problems. I cannot even think of making scrambled eggs now without thinking of Nick. In fact, since he’s been gone, I haven’t had the heart to make them. I know it would make me sob to do so. I would give anything in this world to cook them for him again, to share one of those moments with him. It will be a long time before I make scrambled eggs again. I’m not even sure I could now.
I remember one night particularly, when he showed up with half a dozen friends, after a rehearsal with the new band. He was driving them hard, but he had places he wanted to get to, and he knew they could do it. I had made scrambled eggs, as usual, and a ragtag looking group of kids was sitting around my kitchen table, with tattoos, assorted pierces, funny hair, they looked like a dinner party in a bad movie, and they sat there with my flock of little pedigreed dogs at their feet, in my kitchen, discussing the virtues of pit bulls. Something about the incongruity of it struck me as hysterically funny. I just stood there and laughed. I felt as though I were running a high-end trailer park for young musicians. But it was just what I wanted and I loved it. It was all part of Nicky, and it meant so much to me that he shared it with me, and wanted to include me. I’ll never forget the thrill when he would introduce “my mom … over there … give her a hand …” from the stage at a concert. It made me giggle.
Anyway, he was busy in those days. So was I. The kids were back in school, and I was putting my life back together. It had been two months and some since Tom left, and I was still sad. But I was trying to get up off my ass and make the best of it, as Nick had. It had been a long hard summer, and I was glad it was over.
Nick and I met for lunch a couple of times, but he really didn’t have much time, and we were supposed to meet one Friday afternoon for lunch in mid-September. It was September nineteenth, and I had kind of a tight schedule because I was going out with friends that night, and I wanted to get my hair done, which seemed frivolous but it was all part of the new me I was creating, the new life I was ready to address now. He called late that morning, and had slept late, he was feeling lazy about lunch, but something in his voice caught my attention. He sounded sad or quiet or lonely or something, or maybe he was just sleepy. I asked if he was okay, and asked him bluntly if he was lonely or sad, and he laughed and said no, and to stop worrying about him. He had come for scrambled eggs a few nights before, so I had just seen him. But he was too lazy to come across the Bay for lunch. I volunteered to cancel my plans later that afternoon, but he said not to. He promised to come to dinner with me and the kids on Sunday. It was a tradition he almost always followed. He came home for Sunday night dinner, and more often if he had the time. But in the past few weeks he had been pretty busy. He had just finished polishing up his recording in the studio two days before, and he was playing a concert that night, on Friday.
I discovered later that he had a date that afternoon with a woman he’d seen in a centerfold and had pursued. He had lunch with her instead, and I’m glad. We had said everything we needed to by then. I’m glad he had some fun, and apparently he was crazy about that woman. It was their first date, and it was a success. They made a date for the following night too, and afterwards she wrote me a long letter.
Nick had also made overtures to John recently, which he had told me at our last lunch. They were on good terms, but not immensely close, and hadn’t seen each other in a while. They both had busy lives, and Nick had always been closer to me than to his father, but he spoke of John lovingly, and had made a date with him for lunch the following week. They didn’t do that often, as sometimes Nick found his father harder to talk to. It wasn’t for lack of love on their part, we were just more used to each other, and to baring our souls to each other. Maybe we had more in common, and our styles were similar, in opening up to people. And men so rarely seem to open up to each other. I was more a part of his daily, hourly struggles. And sometimes talking to Nick, and listening to him, was like looking in the mirror for me, with a few added splashes of color, and some ripples. But there was a deep resemblance of spirit.
In any case, we never got together that afternoon. He went off to lunch with his centerfold, and I got my hair done.
That night I came home from dinner early, and went to bed, but found I couldn’t sleep, which was unusual for me. Usually I fall asleep seconds after my head hits the pillow. But that night, I tossed and turned, got up, and finally took a bath. I went back to bed at four-thirty in the morning, and fell asleep at last at five in the morning. Nick and I must have gone to sleep that night at exactly the same time, from all I could determine later. I must have been feeling him close to me, part of my soul, racked and troubled. I never knew why I couldn’t sleep that night, but I feel certain that some instinctive part of me knew he was in trouble. I was thinking of him when I fell asleep. And the phone rang at nine o’clock the next morning. It was Julie.
She didn’t cry. She didn’t scream. Her voice sounded perfectly normal. All she said was my name in a monotone.
“Danielle.” I think I knew without knowing.
“He’s dead.” The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them.
“Yes. He’s dead.” She sounded startled that I knew it, but I didn’t.
“You’re kidding,” was all I could say. “You’re kidding … you’re joking … he’s not dead … you’re kidding.” I couldn’t stop saying the same words over and over and over. I must have said them a hundred times to her, over and over, like a machine that couldn’t stop spitting out all its screws and nails going haywire, irreparably broken … yo
u’re kidding … you’re kidding … you’re joking …
“He’s dead!!” she screamed at me finally. “I’m NOT kidding.” In a burst of words, she told me what had happened. He had taken a massive overdose of morphine. They had found him on his knees on the floor, his head bowed on his bed, the needle beside him. He had died instantly, they said. But Julie knew what I did. Nick knew that he had had an anaphylactic reaction to the same substance three times before, and they had told him without a doubt that if he did it again, it would kill him. From what Julie could guess, he had done roughly twice to five times the quantity he had done before. He wanted to be sure this time. And he was sure. Paul had left him alone finally at four-thirty that morning, just as I was slipping into bed after my bath. For the first time ever, Julie had left for the night, to go to a midnight mass in Santa Cruz. Nick knew that this time she would not be there to stop him. Her husband, Bill, would have checked him the next morning between six and seven, and had, and that was when he had found him. Nick knew that no one was there to stop him, or save him. He was entirely alone this time, taking a substance he knew would kill him and enough of it to be sure it did so. It was a method of suicide called “Toss it to the Fates” by the experts, like Russian Roulette. The intent was there, but he had once again taunted the fates to take him or save him. And this time they had taken him.
It made no sense because things were going so well for him, and he was so happy. The concert had gone brilliantly the night before. Had he been secretly depressed, or had he been manic? But whatever he had been, however charming, however talented, however beautiful, however loved, however desperately we had tried to save him from himself, he was gone. He had made sure of it this time. There wasn’t, and never will be, a way to know if he truly meant to do it this time, or just threw caution to the winds and decided to ride the edge one more time, a game of Russian Roulette like no other. Or did he mean to do it? Perhaps the disease had finally overcome him, that and the fact that he had been forced to face his own limitations while he was on tour and lost Link 80. But he had been so excited recently about his new band, Knowledge. What had happened that last night? What had gone on in his head? What was he thinking? Despair, or manic folly? We will never know now, and can only second-guess him. But I have learned since that manic-depressives rarely kill themselves while in the depths of depression. They wait to do it until they feel better, are slightly manic, and have the strength to do so.
He left no note, no clue as to what had gone wrong. He had called a dozen friends between three and four in the morning, and all the while I had been pacing. He could have called me, but he also knew I might have heard, I might have known, I would have tried to stop him. And he didn’t want to be stopped this time. He saw to it that neither Julie, nor I, nor Paul, nor even his friend Sammy the Mick were near at hand to stop him.
I gently set down the phone, as racking sobs enveloped me. And without reason I ran down the stairs, down … down … down … sobbing … toward nothing… My own words rang in my head over and over again … are you kidding? … are you kidding? … this time God was. The flame that had been so bright, that had lit my life for so long, had been suddenly, silently extinguished. I could not even conceive of the darkness that began to engulf me.
edge rider
lost boy
we love you
20
A sea of yellow roses
Somewhere in those first minutes after Julie’s call, I called three close friends, and at some point that morning, I know they came over. They were Nick’s friend and mine, Jo Schuman, Kathy Jewett, and Beverly Dreyfous. My friends Victoria Leonard and Nancy Montgomery came later. The rest is a blur of faces and sounds and agonizing memories, intense pain, and constant tears. I felt as though my heart had been sliced in half with a machete. I could not even begin to conceive of what had happened, and what it would mean to me when I came to my senses. The prospect of it, the vague reality was so horrifying as to taunt me with madness. But for my children’s sake, I had to at least pretend to think straight and of what I had to do for them. I had to think of them now.
I called John with shaking hands right after Julie called, and he was so stunned he said very little. I asked him if he wanted to come and tell the children with me, but he thought it was better if I did it before he got there. He was in the country, and it would take time for him to come. He promised to come as soon as he locked up the house in Napa, and could get to town to be with us. And I suspected Nick would have wanted me to tell his siblings. But I could not bear the thought of what I had to do now. All I could look at were the tiny steps I had to take, inch by inch by agonizing inch. I could not look beyond that. All I knew, as my three friends arrived, and I forgot how they had gotten there, or why, was that I had to tell my children. For the moment, those three women, Julie and Bill, John, and I were the only people who knew what had happened. I knew that if the children saw crying faces all around them, babysitters, housekeepers, any of them, all of whom had been with me for one or two decades, the children would know instantly that tragedy had struck us. Alternately hysterical and calm, I felt like a zombie, but I had to think of them now. Not even Nick. But his siblings. The rest would have to wait till later.
Two of the children had slept overnight at friends’, and I had to bring them home without arousing their suspicions unduly. I called them and said they had to come home for lunch. They were furious at my imposing myself on them and interrupting their fun. But I said I wanted to have lunch with them, and they complained bitterly about it. And in the meantime, I knew I had to hide from the others.
It was noon before I had all five rounded up. Zara, the youngest, was to turn ten in a week. Max, eleven, Vanessa twelve, Victoria just fourteen two weeks earlier, and Sammie fifteen. Hard ages to sustain a loss as great as this. And my greatest fear was for Sam who was his soul mate. She adored him, and he was her hero. He was a hero to all of us, and to all those who knew him. He had accomplished so much, and had so many victories, after the tough hand life had dealt him. Nick was not a loser, but a winner.
There is a small sitting room off my bedroom, a sunny room with a pretty view and yellow flowered furniture. I waited for them there, where we always have family meetings because of its size and cozy feeling. They looked annoyed as they walked in. I was being unreasonable, ruining their Saturday, and they said so. I was about to ruin it irreparably, and deliver a blow none of them would forget in their entire lifetimes. I felt like an executioner, thinking of them and not myself. And they laughed at me as I asked them to form a circle, and we put our arms around each other tightly. It was something I had never done before, but I could think of no other way to do it. I wanted to have my hands on each of them, and them touching each other, enclosed, tightly, as one, as though to remind each other that even with this mortal blow, the circle of our love would not be broken. And Nick would still be in it, as he had always been, and always would be.
They teased me and called it a group hug. Someone said it was dumb, but as they saw my face, my eyes, they must have known, and they suddenly looked frightened. With good reason. I spoke up quickly, telling them that I was going to tell them something so terrible, so awful that they would not forget it, and I hoped never to tell them anything so terrible again. Sam’s eyes were directly across from mine, only inches away, and as I looked into hers I began to cry and she asked in a choked voice, “What is it?”
“It’s Nick,” I said.
“What … why …” Their terrified eyes all met mine at once and I cut right to it.
“He’s gone,” I choked out.
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?” Sam looked panicked.
“Gone … he’s gone … I love you … I love you all so much … just as he loved you … he died this morning.” There was no other way to tell them, no better way to deliver a lethal blow like that one. And as though I had stuck a knife in each of five hearts, in unison they screamed, a sound I will never forget … long, hideous, howling
screams of pain as we all sobbed and hugged each other. I will never forget delivering that death blow to them. I knew that whatever I did from that moment on would never be forgotten, would make a difference to how each of them lived their lives, and how they got through it. It was an awesome burden.
We cried together for a long time, and I told them that whatever they did now, however they chose to face this was their choice … if they wanted friends with them, if they needed to go out, if they wanted to be alone, or stay with me … whatever they did or needed or wanted was fair and reasonable (as long as it was not dangerous to them). But I pointed out to them that there was no right way to do this, and all I asked of them was that they be loving to each other.
They moved as one body from then on, drifting from room to room, crying, sobbing, talking, holding and hugging each other. I was as stunned as they were, as unable to understand or absorb it.
The household learned the news quickly then, and everywhere around me was a sea of sobbing people. The rest of the day is a blur of faces and tears and tragedy. People came and went. I had to make plans and decisions. We were suddenly talking about his funeral, and it sounded absurd to me … his tie … his shirt … his skateboard … his dog, maybe … his meds … his nurses … his anything … but his funeral? That was crazy. Even now there is a ring of disbelief to it.
The bishop came and talked to me. All I did was cry. We set the day for the funeral. John arrived and made phone calls for me. I went over lists of names, spoke to no one, checked on the children, made decisions. I called Julie. Her home and her life and her heart and her children were as disrupted as mine. She was his other mother. The tag-team mothers had lost in the end. He had slipped right through our fingers, through no fault of ours. He had done it himself, just like a big boy, a grown-up. We had lost him. I still could not absorb it, or understand what it meant for our future.
His Bright Light Page 27