I have read those words dozens of times, and every time I end up in tears. I love the way Ben admired John’s muscles. How he talked about John’s humility. How he didn’t care if people called him a follower of John’s because that’s exactly what he was—“the Sam Gamgee of John Quaresma.” How proud he was to play that role of the loyal sidekick. How he questioned his faith in God but in the next sentence expressed his belief that he would meet John again in a better place where they would be able to share more memories together.
But my favorite part is at the very end, when he writes as if he is talking to John. “I just wanted to say this like I always will until I see you again, I love you Johnny, and I will always remember you, no matter what.” I imagine, reading those sentences, that John will always be alive for Ben and that, as different as they were, they will forever be kindred spirits. I imagine John shaking his head with that shy smile of his, letting Ben know that it’s okay to be true to who and what he is because that’s what John would want for him. That’s what John would expect of him.
“I’m worried about Ben,” Ali tells me a few weeks after John’s memorial service. “Sometimes I look in his classroom, and he’s just sitting there, his head in his hands, or he’s just staring off to space.”
She hesitates a moment. “Plus, a bunch of older kids are reaching out to him—kids I don’t trust.”
“Why don’t you trust them?”
“I don’t know. They’re nice and all, and I think they really want to help Ben, but I know they use drugs. He’s hanging out with them a lot, and I’m afraid he might be using with them.”
Pat and I talk to Ben, and he assures us that he doesn’t ever want to get in trouble with drugs like he did in seventh grade. “That was it for me,” he says. “I’m just making some new friends, and I’m careful. They’re good guys, and they watch out for me.”
He spends a lot of time reading and devours every Stephen King novel he can get his hands on. His favorites are It, Pet Sematary, The Stand, Desperation, Firestarter, Skeleton Crew, and Needful Things. He finishes one book and starts another and then another. One day I ask why he likes the horror genre so much—first the Goosebumps books, then the Fear Street series, and now Stephen King.
His brow furrows as he considers the question. “It’s the ‘what if’ part of the whole thing,” he says pensively. “All this stuff Stephen King writes about may not be real and may not even be possible, but what if? I love the ‘what if?’ questions.”
“What’s your favorite book so far?” I ask.
“It,” he says without a moment’s hesitation. He tells me the book is about a group of nerds and outcasts who call themselves “The Losers’ Club.” When each of them comes face-to-face with IT—an extraterrestrial shape-shifter that has terrorized the town for hundreds of years—IT becomes the monster of their imagination, the thing they fear the most.
Maybe that’s what Ben is doing. Facing his fears. Traveling the “what if” road. Wondering why life is the way it is.
He spends hours drawing warrior figures with blood dripping from their swords. The images—thickly outlined in pencil or black pen—concern me. One character, which he titles “J8-04,” is an alien-type figure with antennas coming out of a tiny one-eyed head. The creature wears a neckpiece with skulls dangling off a chain at each end, and his big-muscled arms hold a serrated sword in one hand and a gun in the other. His stomach is “ripped,” as Robyn and Alison might describe Mark Wahlberg’s physique, and his feet have claws for toes.
That drawing gives me the willies.
But Ben seems happy. We talk about John sometimes, though Ben tends to keep his feelings to himself these days. Maybe he’s remembering John’s words that “sentimental stuff sucks.” Every so often, he wears a shirt that Laure, John’s mother, gave him a few days after John died; it’s the same shirt John wore in the photograph I took of him and Ben at their eighth-grade graduation. After John died, I enlarged the picture and framed it. They were so happy, two growing boys ready for summer and then high school, arms around each other, big shit-eating grins on their faces.
Ben’s grades are good, all A’s and B’s, and his teachers describe him as hardworking and respectful. “He’s having a great year so far. He’s on task, working hard. His writing is good; he’s a good listener,” his history teacher says in November at the fall conferences. “His reading comprehension is top-notch. He’s really good at interpretation,” his English teacher says. The only B he gets is in his PE class.
Winter, spring, and summer go by, and then Ali is off to the University of Montana to start her freshman year. Robyn spends the fall of her junior year abroad in Australia, and Ben begins his sophomore year in high school. We see less and less of him as he hangs out before and after school and on weekends with his friends. As it should be, Pat and I reassure each other—and, to be honest, the time we have together now, after raising three children born within four and a half years of each other, is something of a gift. When Ben is home, he spends hours playing video games in the basement. Grand Theft Auto III is his favorite. One day I ask him why he likes the game so much.
“You can do anything,” he says, when I can get him to stop playing for a few minutes. “Drive cop cars and chase down the bad guys, beat people with baseball bats, rob banks, steal cars, put bombs in houses and blow them up, shoot helicopters out of the sky. You can go anywhere, be anyone you want to be. It’s a whole world I can disappear into.”
Disappear. That’s the word. It’s a slow process of withdrawal, beginning in the spring of his sophomore year and turning into a full-on vanishing act by the middle of his junior year. He withdraws into his video games and horror novels and spends every moment he can with his friends. A few new boys and girls have joined the group, but for the most part, these are kids he’s known since elementary school. As the months go by, he gets increasingly surly and uncommunicative. He even looks different. His eyes are huge, bulging out of their orbits, as if he is constantly startled or frightened.
I wonder if he has a thyroid problem—it looks to me as if his eyes are popping out of his head—and ask his doctor to check. His thyroid is fine, but he seems depressed, so the doctor suggests an antidepressant, which he takes for a week and then throws in the trash. He agrees to try a different antidepressant, gives that a few weeks, and then tells us he’s not going to take any more stupid pills. “Why are you trying to drug me?” he shouts at us as he heads out the door.
He skips dinner, choosing to eat at his friends’ houses. He takes two or three showers every day. He is angry, all the time, irritated with us, annoyed with any request to help with chores, pissed off at his teachers, irate when his friends don’t call him, fed up with life in small-town Walla Walla.
We ask him to sit down with us to talk. Within minutes, we’re arguing with each other. Pat and I practice what we will say, promise each other we will stay calm, try hard to be good listeners, but Ben is impatient and annoyed with these conversations. His knees jump up and down. His fingers tap the table. He gives us one-word answers. It’s clear that he doesn’t want anything to do with us.
The F-bomb starts flying. “This fucking teacher.” “What a fucking load of crap.” “I’m tired of this fucking school.” “I hate this fucking town.” Then, a switch, seemingly overnight, and it’s in-our-faces personal. “Fuck you and the fucking dogs and the fucking girls and this fucking family. FUCK you! Fuck YOU!”
Doors slam. He punches a hole in the bathroom wall and, a few weeks later, bashes his fist through the living room wall. We tell him to fix the holes, and he refuses. “Who cares about your fucking walls?” We leave the holes where they are, hoping he will feel some sense of guilt or shame, but he seems beyond remorse.
We confront him, almost on a daily basis. Or rather, I should say, I confront him. Pat dislikes conflict, which, paradoxically, is causing some heated disagreements between us. Pat grew up with an alcoholic father, and the way he avoided physical and emotional abu
se was to clam up or walk away and wait until the storm had passed. My way is the complete opposite—if there’s a problem, I confront it head-on, try to get to the bottom of it, and fix it. I grew up with four siblings, two older brothers and two younger sisters, all of us born within six years and all fiercely competitive. We used to have swimming races in the living room, diving off the wall radiators onto the carpeted floor and rug-burning our skin as we “swam” to the opposite side. We fought our way through our disagreements, sometimes drawing blood. But when the storm was over, we forgot all about it.
“I need to talk to you about something,” Pat says one night when we’re reading in bed. He places his book on the bed next to him and turns toward me.
Oh, shit, I think. I’ve done something to upset him. I feel like I’m always doing one thing or another that irritates him. And I’m annoyed with him, too, because it seems as if he keeps putting me in the Bad Guy role, the parent who typically initiates the conversations and does most of the talking. I don’t want to be the confronter—I want to stand quietly on the sidelines while my husband puts on the gloves and steps into the ring.
His voice is calm. Steady. Like a rock. Like him. “Today you asked me to talk to Ben, and I said I would. Then you got impatient. You wanted me to talk to him on your timetable. And you started telling me what to say and how to say it—don’t get angry, keep my voice down, tell him I love him, stuff like that.”
I don’t say anything because he’s right. I’m impatient and impulsive. And bossy. Screwing up left and right.
“I think if you want to say certain things to Ben,” he continues, “and especially if you want to say them in a particular way, then you should talk to him. Don’t ask me to talk to him on your behalf.”
I want to say, Well, why don’t you talk to him without me having to ask you to talk to him? But I don’t.
“I guess I just don’t understand why you have to keep stirring things up,” he says.
“Things are already stirred up!” I snap. My emotions are all roiled up. I’m just so sick and tired of the fighting, the stress and tension in the house, that awful feeling of needing to tiptoe around to avoid irritating or upsetting anyone. I’m walking on eggshells in my own home—a cliché if ever there was one. Actually it feels as if I’m stomping on glass shards, but to stick with the eggs cliché, what I’d like to do is take a whole carton of eggs, ten cartons of eggs, a truckload of eggs, and smash them one after another after another. I could throw them at a wall or stomp on them—it doesn’t matter. I just want to break something, anything. Eggs, dishes, windows, mirrors, anything that makes a mess and a bunch of noise.
I’m mad and I’m sad and I’m frustrated. Something is wrong, and what good does it do to ignore it, pretend it doesn’t exist, wait for it to pass?
“Kathy,” Pat says, taking me in his arms. “I’m sorry.”
It takes me a moment or two, but finally I say, “I’m sorry, too. I just want this to be over.”
“Me, too,” Pat says, his voice breaking. “Ben isn’t Ben. He’s not the boy we raised. Something is happening to him.”
“Drugs,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think you’re right.”
One afternoon, when Ben comes home from school, I ask him if we can talk. He glares at me but sits down at the dining room table.
“Something is wrong, honey,” I say. “I don’t know what it is, but Dad and I are concerned about you. We want to help.”
“Why do you always think something is wrong? Nothing’s wrong.”
I take a deep breath. “We’ve got holes in our walls, you seem angry all the time, and you don’t want to be anywhere near us. It’s as if we’re your enemy, and you can’t even stand to look at us.”
“I’m sick of you,” he says through clenched teeth. “I’m sick of all your questions. I’m sick of your attitude, the way you act as if you know everything. You’re always criticizing me; you’re always on my back.”
“If I’m on your back, it’s because I love you and something is wrong,” I say, willing myself to stay calm. “You’re not happy. You’re not yourself.”
“What does that mean? Who do you think I am?”
I ignore the question. “We think you’re using again,” I say, stating it as fact.
He stands up, red-faced and furious. “It’s always drugs with you, isn’t it? You always assume the worst. You lump me with your Juvies. You think I’m an addict just like you think everyone else is an addict. Who made you God to make that conclusion about everybody?”
And then he’s out the door with a slam that shakes the windows.
6
cielo/inferno
2002–2003
The leaves are shining orange, yellow, and red on this sunny fall morning, but I barely notice because I’m rushing to get to a staff meeting at the Juvenile Justice Center. I’m volunteering several days a week with both detention and probation youth and meeting with family members individually and in weekly groups. I even have a title: “Youth and Parent Advocate.”
Ben is in a hurry, too. He says he has a math test this morning.
I can’t find my keys. Sometimes I put them on the back of the sofa by the front door. Sure enough, they’re wedged in between the cushions. As I lift up the cushion, Ben’s wadded up gym clothes fall off the couch and out roll a marijuana pipe and film canister. The pipe is green and blue, glazed ceramic, a pretty little thing. I hold it up to my nose and smell marijuana. Not such a bad smell, really. I look in the film can. It’s almost empty.
Ben comes down the stairs, taking two steps at a time. He lands on the wood floor with a big thud, all 180 pounds and 72 inches of him. I stand there holding the pipe, looking at him. His face gets red, and I see flashes of anger, betrayal, fear.
“I’m going to quit,” he says, reaching for the pipe. I back away from him and put the pipe in my jacket pocket.
Ben is pleading with me. “Give it to me,” he says. “I’m taking it to school to get rid of it. Look in the film can—there’s nothing in it. I’m done. I swear, I’m done.”
“We need to talk,” I say, trying hard to stay calm and focused. “But you need to get to school, and I’m late for work. Tonight we’ll talk—you, Dad, and I.”
He follows me out of the house, walking past the 1993 Honda Civic we bought for him last year. I thought it was perfect because it has a driver’s side airbag. I want him to be safe.
I open my car door and put the pipe next to me on the passenger seat.
“Mom,” he says, holding the car door open. His voice is shaking. “I’m done. I swear I’m done.”
“We’ll talk later,” I say, putting the keys in the ignition and trying to close the door. But he’s stronger than me.
“Give me that pipe,” he says in a low, angry voice.
“No way,” I say, because now I have evidence. Proof positive that he is using at school, on the way to school, after school—who knows when. Before we just had our suspicions, but the pipe tells the story.
“Give it to me.”
“No,” I repeat. Suddenly he reaches over me to grab the pipe. I pick it up first, holding on as tight as I can, but he grabs it from me and wings it at the garage door, where it smashes into a dozen pieces.
He glares at me, defiant, as if to say “I won,” but there are tears in his eyes. “I mean it,” he repeats. “I’m done.”
I stare back at him, jaw dropped. I can’t speak. Who is this boy? Where is my son?
My mind scans backward through the years, seeking explanations. I remember the day of his birth, June 18, 1986, and the monitor signaling oxygen deprivation, the prolapsed cord, the emergency C-section. The tantrums when he was three—not the terrible twos, like most children. The school psychologist at the preschool screening, who told me that Ben’s fine and gross motor skills were a little underdeveloped. The bullying. John’s death.
Blame and shame. I must have done something wrong. My sisters think I “coddled” Ben,
and I suppose it’s true. I was always extra protective of him, maybe because of his traumatic birth and my never-at-rest fears that something might have happened to his brain in those six minutes when his oxygen was depleted. Maybe that’s why he had tantrums; maybe that’s why his hands shook when he held a pencil; maybe that’s why, as a young boy, he was a little clumsier than some of his friends.
When Ben was six months old, lethargic and flushed with a high fever, I rushed him to the doctor, who tested his reflexes and looked concerned. For some reason, perhaps hoping for reassurance, I mentioned the prolapsed cord and emergency C-section. I will never, ever forget what the doctor said in a strange syntax: “I can’t tell you not to be worried.” What was that, a double negative? Cancel out the negatives? I can tell you to be worried? Was he telling me, without wanting to actually say the words, “I’m worried, something is wrong”? But what—what was wrong?
“What do you mean?” I asked, somehow able to say the words, for the fear and panic were right there; my voice felt strangled, choked off. I could barely breathe.
He took another step back. “Well, I can’t tell you not to be worried,” he repeated.
I started to cry. Sob. Panic, memories, denial flooded through and over me. The doctor looked terror stricken, finding himself shut up in a room with a hysterical mother. Seconds later, he disappeared and his nurse stood next to me (I’ve wondered since if the doctor had a panic button), put her hand on my shoulder as I held my child tight, protecting him.
“Shhh, shhh, it’s okay,” she said. “Everything will be okay.”
What did he mean?” I asked.
“You have a sick child with a high fever.” Her voice was so soothing, it was almost as if she were singing me a lullaby. “Don’t you worry—everything will be alright.”
Well, really, I have no idea what she said, because there wasn’t one thinking brain cell in my body. I had to escape. I wrapped my arms tighter around my baby and somehow made it to the car, strapped him into the car seat, drove home. We had a minivan then, a maroon Plymouth—or was it blue?
The Only Life I Could Save Page 8