Recovered

by Robby Gallaty

  “Either sell the whole bottle or put the stuff in the oven on a cooking sheet, one or two bottles at a time—heat it up, place it in baggies, and you’re done. One trip a month gets you ten or fifteen thousand, and you enjoy your profit the other twenty-five days. No more frantic running around for nickel-and-dime business transactions.”

  I thought about what he was saying. In Southern California, we’d be safer. And San Diego wasn’t a bad place to be. The sun was appealing to someone living in a freezing apartment in February, taking icy cold showers. Seven months later, the window would close forever on anything like this involving airplanes. The attacks on the World Trade Center would see to that. But in February of 2001, you could still pack just about anything on a plane and take it wherever you wanted.

  “Come on, dude,” said Rodney. “San Diego is sun and surf, a whole new life. Easy money. There’s nothing here for you anymore—you have no family, right?”

  I looked up at him. The words were like a knife to the heart. It was true, but I didn’t like hearing someone else say those words.

  “I don’t know, Rodney.”

  He sighed, shook his head, and kept after me for four days. He really needed a buddy to go with him. And he had no choice about leaving. He had a permanent “Go directly to jail” card in New Orleans. He needed a clean slate.

  I had every reason to go, nothing tangible to hold me back, and a desperate need for something new. But in the end, I said no. Something deep inside wouldn’t let me pull that trigger. I wasn’t even sure why, but I chose the current hell over the promise of California.

  Call it the “still, small voice” inside. Call it an angel watching out for me, applying some invisible hand of restraint. Whatever it was, I’ve come to believe there are moments when our lives are teetering on the edge of some abyss, and there’s a gentle—or sometimes not so gentle—hand that takes hold of us, shelters us, protects us from our most dangerous threat: our own self-destructive impulses.

  That divine hand held me back from California.

  Chapter 9

  The Party’s Over

  I’ve never spent a colder, more desolate winter.

  Rodney left, so I had one friend fewer. As for family, I had nobody but my sister.

  Lori would come to see me in that freezing, dark apartment. “Just checking in on you, Robby,” she’d say. Then she’d walk past me into the apartment, look around, and say, “How can you live like this?”

  I felt ashamed, but at least the gloom of that place might keep her from looking into my eyes.

  Lori was in school at the University of South Alabama over in Mobile, working toward an engineering degree. But whenever she was home, she’d faithfully come “just to check in.” I was all bundled up in a cap and jacket, sitting under blankets, cold but too high to care much about it. That was why I spent whatever money I had on drugs. They sedated everything at once—the chills, the hunger, the remorse, the loneliness, and the general hopelessness. None of that came with you into the drug-induced state.

  “How’s school?” I’d ask, and she might not answer immediately. “It’s fine.” There was a catch in her voice, and if any light came through the window, or from a candle, it might have caught the deep concern in her eyes. She just couldn’t stand what was happening to me, worst of all the idea of a wall between my parents and me.

  “Go back to Mom and Dad,” she’d say. “Just go back home and tell them you’re sorry.”

  “I can’t do that, Lori. I’m not wanted. Mom told me they never wanted to see me again.”

  “Come on, Robby, you know how she is. She gets angry, but she doesn’t mean that. She and Dad are hurting badly over this. They’re missing you. Just go home. Get some help. Look, Pawpaw’s birthday is coming up in May. The whole family is getting together. You’re not going to miss that, are you?”

  I wouldn’t talk about any of it, and Lori wouldn’t stay long—she just couldn’t take it, and I knew she’d be weeping before she made it to her car. But on the way out the door, she’d take my hand and I’d feel the folded rustle of cash. It would be a fifty or even a hundred. I knew she didn’t have that kind of money, but she’d find it somewhere. She wanted to think maybe I’d get the heat turned back on, or the power. Or at the very least, get a meal.

  Instead, of course, the money went into the hands of the local dealer. I wasn’t evil. I wasn’t apathetic. I was just completely enslaved by a master that never relented.

  A couple of weeks passed by, then a couple of months—time didn’t have a lot of meaning. But life had ingrained the New Orleans calendar in me, and I knew Mardi Gras was becoming a distant memory. Also, in the back of my mind was my grandfather’s birthday—my whole family would be together, and I knew what my absence would mean. I felt a deep yearning to see them.

  That’s when Rodney showed up back in town from San Diego on one of his expeditions.

  “Dude!” he said on the cellphone. “Are you ready to party?”

  He described the new tattoo he’d just gotten inked on his arm. It was a scene of a dragon and a castle. “I can’t wait for you to see it.”

  “I bet it looks amazing. Did you bring any—”

  “You know it!” Rodney always came in town with no fewer than fifteen bottles of ketamine. Special K is a horse tranquilizer and, for people, a powerful hallucinogen.

  I said, “It’s going to be a weekend we won’t forget. Where are we meeting?”

  “Downtown, Dustin’s apartment.” Dustin was our cocaine connection. “I’m going to throw myself a welcome home party. Make sure you’re there.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  That night something came up. I was running late to the party—never made it, actually. I got a phone call on the way from Dustin. “Robby—Rodney’s dead, man,” he said.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “Rodney is dead.” He was crying as he spoke. “Don’t come here. We have to get rid of all this stuff immediately.”

  I knew the drill. Sadly, we’d been there before. Someone overdoses, you have to call the ambulance, and the police are going to be involved. It’s a possible crime scene until everything is sorted out, so there’s a lot of “evidence” to clean up. The detectives will be going over every corner, every inch with a fine-tooth comb.

  After the call, I sat and thought about it. Rodney liked being high, but he wasn’t reckless about it, like some. He had just started a new life, was finally happy. He was into some serious money. I heard what all was in his system, but Rodney knew how to pace himself through a party. It didn’t sound like him.

  What I also knew was that he had all those bottles, liquid gold. It was worth a whole lot of money on the street. Nobody seemed to be sure what had happened to all of his stuff during the “cleanup.” And then I thought about the guy who hosted the party—a coke dealer, a guy who had nobody’s complete trust. We called him friend, but that term was thrown around loosely. There was something shady about him—okay, there was something shady about all of us. But there were too many whispers about this guy. I had to wonder about his involvement in Rodney’s death.

  I also had to think, This could have been me. Maybe should have been. Maybe will be, next time. That’s where my head was during those cold, hard seventy-five days.

  Though I had my suspicion, the official word was that Rodney had been up for three days on crystal meth while traveling. He’d been using ketamine and cocaine. Whatever the details, his life was over. A little group of us went to the funeral home to pay our respects. We walked in quietly, through all the nice furniture and polite company. We signed the guest book, and we looked up to see our own faces in a photo collage—Rodney with his friends; Rodney as a happy child; Rodney with his family.

  How does someone get from there to here?

  In the parlor set aside for his loved ones, I wanted to see his body,
to know it was really Rodney, my friend. It didn’t seem real to me somehow. Somehow I got it in my mind that I needed to see the dragon and the castle on his arm. I wasn’t thinking straight, of course; he was unlikely to be in that coffin in a short sleeve shirt. The mortician wouldn’t have said, “Man, let’s show off his tats!”

  Still, I was making my way to the front when I saw there was no coffin. “He was cremated,” somebody told us. And that was that.

  For some reason, that really upset me. They burned his body to ashes before I could say my good-byes. Before I could get any closure.

  Just then, somebody pointed at us and shouted, “Those boys! Those are the ones who killed my son!” And every eye in the room turned toward us, all these well-dressed church people glaring at a ragged band of junkies.

  We pushed through the crowd. “Yeah, get out of here. You don’t deserve to be here!”

  We rushed to the parking lot and regrouped back at my place. Nobody could speak. We’d just been accused of contributing to the murder of somebody we deeply loved. And could there be some truth to that? Was his blood somehow on our hands?

  We sat in the empty apartment, some of us on the floor, a wisp of light coming in through the shades, and we were quiet for a few minutes. Then my friend Rick said, “I’m getting clean. I’m telling you, I’m getting clean.”

  I said, “I’m in. Let’s do it together, all of us.”

  “For Rodney.”

  Everybody said, “Yeah—for Rodney.”

  We meant every word of it, and I held to my convictions for two days. Until Dustin came over and said, “Listen, man, I know we’re all hurting. Eight-ball of coke, on me.”

  I hesitated, for about two seconds. Three and a half grams of coke would cover lots of varieties of pain. And at the moment I was in a pretty good number of them. I said, “Come on in, Dustin.”

  Another half-serious attempt at coming clean was behind me. I found solace in the empty moments of bliss that followed.

  From there, it’s a blur, but I remember somehow my sister was back. Standing in my apartment, bag of groceries in hand, giving me an intense look.

  “He’s turning eighty,” she was saying.

  “Pawpaw,” I said. I needed to focus.

  “Yes. Pawpaw.” She was after me again about going to my grandfather’s birthday party. We loved him so much. He was a World War II veteran who owned a dairy farm for years—the Gallaty family patriarch. My father bore his name, then me. I’m Robert III. So Lori was laying the guilt on me in broad strokes—our Pawpaw was near the end of his life, and I was going to sit it out, leave a big empty spot at the celebration? Really?

  “That’s not fair,” I said. “You know I can’t go there.”

  “Of course you can go there. If you miss it, you’ll never forgive yourself.”

  “I’m already never forgiving myself. Believe me.”

  She sighed heavily. “Come on, Robby. Please. Would you come just for me? I’ve never asked you for anything—just this one thing.” The tears were about to come. I hated it, and I shut that conversation down. Stonewalled it—changed the subject—until she gave up and went out the door, hurt as usual.

  I hated thinking of how much she worried about me. If time was running out for her grandfather, she had to wonder if the clock was running even faster on her brother, her only sibling. She would have done anything in the world to reach out and rescue me, whatever it took. But what could she do? Nothing in the world she could think of, other than to get me to a family party. It was the only weapon in her arsenal, and in the end, it hit the target.

  Watching her leave, I was as upset as she was. I just couldn’t let her see it.

  Getting high affords you time to think, whether you want to or not. Your heart races too fast to go to sleep. Your mind never stops, so most nights are spent tossing and turning in bed.

  I replayed every wrong choice I’d made. I relived the consequences of my actions. I thought often about my parents, wondered how they were doing and how angry they must be. One thing was certain: they weren’t beating down my door, asking me to come home.

  Maybe that’s what I wanted—forgiveness without having to ask for it. I was the Prodigal Son demanding that his father come get him out of the pigpen. I think we all know, deep down, the story can’t end that way.

  I knew Mom and Dad so well that I could guess how they were taking all this. Mom was the key. She was the rock-solid foundation to our family, tough because she’d learned it was necessary. My mother had been around addiction all her life, and she had a perfect understanding of how things worked in that world. Her dad had been a drinker all his life. Her brother followed in his footsteps, dying early after a battle with alcoholism.

  She knew all the signs, and she’d had her eye on me since I was little—my compulsive personality could quickly become an addictive one. As she watched me in all-out pursuit of basketball or music or DJing or anything else, she knew the potential for problems down the road. She understood my crazy passion was fine until I began to pursue the wrong things, which, of course, is what eventually happened.

  I can remember going to the store with her as a child. “Mom, look at this toy truck! It’s so awesome—can I have it?” I would beg and plead, trying to wear her down, and if she gave me a no, it meant no. I thought she was too tough, but in time I realized she was giving me exactly what I needed. There had to be solid boundaries when I was in hot pursuit, or I would chase something right over the nearest cliff.

  We called Mom “The Warden”—even Dad said it. She physically threw me out of the house twice after arguments, and she didn’t just look away and say, “Leave.” She gathered up everything I owned and tossed it all out the door. Afterward, she’d soften around the edges and ask for forgiveness. She was great about that. But she’d grown up in an addictive household, she knew it was hereditary, and she understood that for some people, love must be tough or it isn’t love at all.

  Then there was Dad—the perfect complement to his wife. Dad was my mentor, my buddy, my role model in every way for what a man should be. He had a tough exterior but he was soft in the center. It wasn’t coincidental that Mom had been the one to phone me about the $15,000. Dad didn’t like confrontation unless it couldn’t be avoided.

  He had his own way of molding me. Dad always gave me tough tasks at the shop. He wanted me to learn what it meant to work a tough, grueling summer day with no air conditioning, getting grease under my fingernails and paint on my clothing. I needed to pay my dues, and the easy life could only come much later, after I’d earned it. We worked on cars together, played basketball, and functioned as friends every bit as much as father and son. But he wasn’t the one to play the stern disciplinarian. I always knew his resolve would crumble, and he’d throw open his arms and say, “Let’s just forget the whole thing.”

  Good cop, bad cop—a tried-and-true formula.

  Mom understood that you couldn’t just throw your arms open for the addict and ignore the issue. Addiction is a war, and it’s not fought with pillows and warm hugs. Serious weaponry is required. So just about now, I figured, Dad would be saying, “C’mon, honey, let’s drive over there and check on him. Let’s make sure he’s all right—maybe take him some food and mend fences. What do you say?”

  And she’d be saying, “Nope. It doesn’t work like that. He’s done something terrible, there are consequences, and he has to get himself together. Then he can start mending fences with us.”

  Cold, unyielding, and a powerful expression of love that cuts through the blackest darkness. In the end, the tough love of my mother would save my life. I can’t imagine how strong she had to be for that level of personal discipline. Because she loved me as deeply as any mother for her child, but she knew what I needed, and if she hadn’t been there to give it, I wouldn’t be here now.

  The morning of the family party, I wo
ke up with a clear grasp of what day it was. What’s more, I knew I was going to go to the party. I hadn’t gone to bed with anything resembling that conviction.

  I have no idea what changed overnight. I just sat up in bed and knew. Some powerful impulse broke through just enough of my pride. I was able to tell myself I could go to the party and make an appearance. For Pawpaw’s sake. No big deal. It didn’t have to be a dramatic scene. Prodigal Dad didn’t have to come sprinting down the road to embrace me. Just a drop-in, a hug for my grandfather. I could shower, make myself presentable, and take care of business.

  When it was time, I snorted two Oxy-40s, showered in cold water, got myself dressed, and headed for the party. As I walked up to the door, I could feel my heart beating. What did I think I was doing? It was too late to back down now.

  I opened the door and there was my family—Mom, Dad, Lori, the others. Heads turned my way as I walked in. I put on a big smile and acted as if it were just another day. It was silent for a minute, then people resumed the laughter and conversation.

  Mom walked over to where I was standing. I wasn’t sure I could keep breathing. I could hear my heart pounding.

  “Hello, Robby. How are you?”

  Then I fell apart inside. It took all my strength to avoid melting down in front of Pawpaw and everyone else, but somehow I kept it all together. Mom could see what was going on inside me, though—she knew me too well.

  “I’m not too good, Mom,” I said.

  “I know.”

  “I need help.”

  She nodded, and I saw the sadness in her, the worry-lines around her eyes, and I realized just how deep were my parents’ wounds.

  I couldn’t hold in what I was feeling. With tears streaming down my cheeks, I said, “Mom—can I come to your house after the party?”

  “Yes, Robby. Of course.”