As the end of the day neared, though, I could tell my husband was worried he wouldn’t be able to make it through the night without a fix, even though he didn’t have the heart to say it. “I’m going to go home and get a couple of things,” he said. But I knew what he was really going to do. I felt crushed as I watched him walk out the door of my hospital room, leaving his newborn son behind, and I couldn’t imagine that the hurt I felt could ever heal.
“I’m going to raise this baby with or without Larry,” I said to myself. Despite the chaos of my life, when I held my son in my arms and looked into his eyes, all I felt was pure bliss. I had a respite from the disillusionment and fear. The love I felt for him immediately was so unconditional, so all-encompassing.
I thought of my mother and wondered if she had ever felt such unconditional love for me. She loved me, but not like this, I thought. It became even clearer to me that my childhood hadn’t been “normal,” and I resolved that I would never allow my child to feel the way I had when I was growing up.
This love I felt for my baby was the purest I’d ever experienced. I hadn’t even been aware that a love like this was possible. It was beyond what I felt for my husband, which was enormous, but still romantic love.
So, my son taught me how to love. It saddened me to acknowledge that he was born to such imperfect parents. I knew all too well what that was like, and it was the last thing I wanted for my kid. I vowed to love and protect him as much as and as best I could, even if it meant dying for him.
I still hoped and prayed that the baby would help Larry get clean, but the prospect of being a father only seemed to make his addiction worse. His fears and insecurities overwhelmed him, and he started to get high twice a day sometimes. “Why would you rather shoot dope than come home to us?” I asked him. But he had no answer for me.
I couldn’t let him hold Little Larry when he was high. And he was always high. So I finally got desperate enough to force him to make a choice. It was no longer just about me. Every moral value I’d ever had resurfaced and shifted me inside. I had to do the right thing.
“I won’t do this anymore,” I told Larry. “It’s us or the drugs. You either have to get clean, or you have to leave.”
He looked at me as though he’d seen this coming.
“I can’t stop,” he said. Then he paused. “I’m not ready to stop . . . and . . . and I’m too afraid to stop,” he continued. “So it’s better for you both that I leave.” I’d never heard more heartbreaking words in my life.
“You knew this was a risk. You should never have married me. I can’t do this to you or my son. You deserve so much better. I know I’m a loser, and I’m not going to drag you down with me.”
It may sound strange, but in that moment, I could see a glimpse of the man I’d fallen in love with. He was a good man with a bad addiction. He left because he didn’t want to hurt us anymore. My anger would come back soon enough, but I couldn’t feel hatred toward or want revenge against him. My heart broke for this man who was giving up everything he’d truly wanted for a chemical. It was tragic.
But for the safety of my son, I had to be willing to say good-bye and hand the man I loved over to his demons. The demons, quite simply, had won.
Of course, I was terrified about being left to raise our son alone. “What’s going to happen?” I asked Larry. “I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
“I don’t know what’s going to happen either,” Larry said.
When he walked out the door, I wanted to crumble. I didn’t know if I’d ever see him again. I didn’t know how long he’d survive. As he left, I watched him through the window with the tears streaming down my face and Little Larry in my arms. I tried to memorize the way my husband looked as he got into a friend’s car without ever looking back at us.
I knew that the first thing he would do was get high.
I also knew it was better for my son and for me that Larry had left. But I couldn’t help but feel devastated and abandoned. There I was, alone with my six-month-old baby. I didn’t have a job anymore. I had no money or prospects for getting a job. Exhausted, I lay down on the bed and held Little Larry in my arms for a long time. That’s when I made a promise to him and to myself. I looked down at Little Larry, so tiny and innocent. He had no idea of the turmoil he’d been born into. “You won’t remember this moment, but I will. I’m making you a promise for life that I’ll always take care of you and love you unconditionally, no matter what. You’ll never have to settle for crumbs like I did. Your life will be filled with love. I’m giving you all of me—my heart, my soul, every piece of myself that I have to give. It’s me and you.”
Then, I had another conversation, this time with God. It was a very spiritual moment for me. “God, I’m asking you to help me because it’s all up to me now, and I will not let my son down. I can’t, and I won’t.” You know how little kids have imaginary friends? Well, God was like my imaginary friend. I didn’t have to keep secrets from God because He already knew everything. He was the witness to the promise I made to my son, and that promise gave me the strength to go on.
Certainly, after all that had happened to me, parts of my heart had closed, but Little Larry kept parts of it open for me. He was the light. I couldn’t let myself wallow or fall apart. I had a purpose—a reason to keep getting up in the morning.
Nevertheless, the harsh reality was that I didn’t have money for food or rent. I couldn’t even afford a babysitter so I could look for a job. I didn’t want to go to my parents for help, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to turn, even though I knew full well they might say no again.
That was the first time I shared Larry’s secret. I felt I had no choice but to disclose his addiction to my parents. My fears were well founded, because just as my mother had turned me away a few years earlier, this time she said, “You’ve made your bed, and now you’ve got to lie in it.”
“But, Mom, I have a baby now, and I don’t have a job to pay the rent! He’s your grandson! Can’t I come home for just a little while until I can get money coming in?” I felt so ashamed. I had married a drug addict, was now alone with a baby, and had no job. What had I become?
“Absolutely not! I can’t handle your problems. I have my own.”
I started to sob. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t have any options left! I have to go back to work, and who will watch the baby then?”
It stung like hell. She knew how much I loved my son, and I just couldn’t understand how my mother could turn away her own daughter and grandchild, considering our desperate situation. Did she love me? Did Larry?
My grandmother did help me out a bit financially, but she didn’t offer to take me in. I understood why. She was afraid of the drugs. She could see the fear in me after what I’d experienced.
Then I thought of Larry’s mother. She was compassionate, buying diapers and clothes for the baby and cooking food for us, but she was already taking care of her daughter’s two children because her daughter was also an addict. “Why won’t your parents help you?” she asked me.
Oddly, the humiliation of all the rejections gave me the strength to keep going. The next day, I applied for government assistance. Then I set about finding a job, asking my sister or a friend to watch Little Larry for an hour or so while I went to interviews.
The first job I got was such a blessing, because my boss was enormously kind to me at a time when I needed it most. In order to go to work, however, I needed a day-care center. The cost was $475 a month, which was more than I could afford combined with the rent I was paying.
So I moved out of the apartment I had shared with Larry—the home where I thought we’d live happily ever after—and found a cheaper place that included heat in the rent. Unfortunately, the landlord would shut the heat off at night to save money, which gave Little Larry a terrible croupy cough. For a while, doctors even thought he might have cystic fibrosis.
The thought of leaving my baby with strangers at the
day care added to my anxiety and worry, but at the same time, it was peaceful not worrying about Larry coming home high. I could rest in the pure joy of my son. We cuddled in bed together while I read to him. We shared a bond that none of my life’s challenges could touch.
The government paid for Little Larry’s formula and some dairy products. That was it. Even though I was grateful for the assistance we got, at the end of the month, no matter how much I juggled, the numbers just didn’t add up. I ate a lot of peanut butter during that time, and my cupboards were filled with those boxes of awful macaroni and cheese.
Our financial situation meant I still couldn’t leave Larry’s ugly drug world behind entirely. I found out that he was still working, and on Fridays I would drive over the George Washington Bridge to 125th Street in Harlem, where I had taken him to buy his drugs. I had to catch him before he spent all of his pay on heroin.
My sweet neighbor babysat Little Larry when I made my weekly drives to Harlem. She was the only person outside of my family who knew that Larry had left us, although she didn’t know he was a drug addict. She just knew that I was struggling. My fear was that she would close the drapes and ignore me if she knew the truth.
Every time I crossed the George Washington Bridge and drove into Harlem, a crime-ridden area at the time, my heart raced. What would happen to Little Larry if I got raped or shot? But I felt hopeless enough to take the chance, because I couldn’t think of any other way to take care of my son.
The first time I saw my husband on the streets after he walked away from our home on that day when I thought I might never see him again, he wouldn’t look me in the eyes. He couldn’t face me. While I was relieved to see that he was still alive, I no longer felt the connection between us. Obviously he was going downhill fast. Whatever hope I’d held on to that we might be able to reconcile was shattered. But I fought back the tears and kept my focus on getting the money I needed to care for my child.
Larry wasn’t living anywhere; he simply surfed the couches of friends and probably passed out on the floor of one of the shooting galleries most nights.
I’d drive to the corners where I knew he hung out, and I’d swallow my fears as I approached some of his junkie friends. “Which gallery is Larry in? Have you seen him?” I’d sit parked outside the one they indicated, waiting for him to come out.
As soon as I saw him, I’d jump out of the car and yell, “Lar! Lar!”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot,” Larry would say, handing me a few bucks as he walked away. I’d look into his hollowed eyes. He had become painfully thin, and his cheeks were sunken. Every time I saw him, he seemed to have moved further away from us. In that state, Little Larry and I didn’t matter to him. Had he ever known me? Had I ever known him? My heart broke a little more each week.
One night, I had to wait so long for him that I entered the shooting gallery to look for him. It was like stepping into hell—beyond anything I had been capable of imagining. Worse than any movies I’d seen. If someone had walked in with horns, a tail, and a pitchfork, I wouldn’t have been surprised. The place was filthy, with bottle caps and dirty needles lying on the floor. It smelled of booze and what I could only characterize as death. Junkies were all over the floor in varying states of consciousness, many with needles still in their arms. Some of them were probably dead. Perhaps they’d overdosed, or they were just so high that they appeared dead. Some of the ones who were still conscious came up to me, pulled at me, tried to touch me, and begged me for money.
Once I found Larry in the gallery, seeing him in that place was more than I could bear. He’d officially become the kind of addict he despised—the type he’d always considered himself better than. But he couldn’t deny it any longer. He was now a true, die-hard junkie.
I winced and ran out of there as fast as I could. He followed me outside and gave me some money, trying to convince me once again that he would straighten himself out. “Everything will be okay,” he said. But I never went back inside one of those shooting galleries again. No matter how desperate I became, it had been too traumatic for me to ever repeat the experience.
Trying to find my junkie husband to get money to take care of my kid was just about the worst thing I had ever had to do. I felt like I was selling my soul. I was living in two worlds—the loving cocoon I was trying to create with my son and the dreadful hell of junkies with arms swollen like Popeye’s from shooting up. The kind of people who would steal anything from you.
Until I could make enough money on my own, however, I couldn’t see a way to make the break from Larry entirely.
In spite of all of this ugliness, I was determined that my son’s life would be filled with joy. From my point of view, that included keeping his father’s secret. If people had known, how would they have treated us? I didn’t want the other day-care parents to be afraid of my kid. Not allowing people to find out about Larry’s addiction became a way to protect not just Larry, but also our son.
When I picked Little Larry up at day care at the end of each day, we wouldn’t go home for dinner right away. Instead, I’d take him to the park. I’d place him in a swing and give him a gentle push. We’d dig in the sandbox. Sometimes we’d go to the library and look at books together, or I’d take him to a nature center. I’d find all the free, fun things for a child and parent to do. It was our precious time together, and I was trying hard to rebuild my life.
My son brought me so much happiness. His face lit up when he saw me, and he asked me endless questions. Whenever someone else was around, he didn’t want to share me with them.
When Little Larry was about 18 months old, Larry got arrested for drug possession and landed in the county jail for a month. I’d managed to become a bit more financially stable by then, and I vowed I would never go see Larry in jail. But his mother pleaded with me to go. I also swore I wouldn’t take the baby to see him, but she said, “If Larry sees the baby, it’ll help him.”
As I sat at the jail with all the other women holding children on their laps while they waited to see the fathers, I wanted to vomit. This wasn’t the person I wanted to be. This wasn’t the person I ever thought I’d be.
When we were taken to see Larry, he looked at us in horror. “I can’t believe you’re here! You should have known better than to come here! I don’t want you to see me like this. And you brought the baby?”
Surprisingly, though, jail turned out to be a blessing for my husband. It was his rock bottom—the turning point that made him finally want to get real help. I told my parents about the situation, and this time, they agreed to help. It was a huge surprise, and I was happy to accept their assistance because we needed it so desperately. I was stunned when Mom offered to research rehabs and found a new one for Larry to try. “I’m going to help you get back on your feet,” she said.
When Larry was released from rehab, he no longer had a job. So my father took him to a construction site one day and showed him the ropes. Since Larry was smart and had some construction experience, he was able to acquire the skills quickly. Soon, he discovered a whole host of talents he’d never known he had.
We started spending time together now and then, testing the waters, and eventually Larry asked if he could come home. Naturally, I was reluctant. Even though we didn’t have much money, Little Larry and I had created a happy life for ourselves. I didn’t want to upset what we had, and my gut said no!
I still loved my husband, but I didn’t trust him or know if I ever could. When Larry was clean, he was the man I’d fallen in love with, and that man was good and kind. But when he was using drugs, he turned into someone else, and Little Larry was getting old enough to emulate the adults around him and ask difficult questions.
“If you move back in, how do I know it won’t happen again?” I asked. “How can I trust you after everything you’ve put me though? You’d have to stay clean this time, Larry. I mean it. Otherwise, you’re out of here.”
“I know. I get it. I really want this now.”
“Little L
arry’s getting older and will absorb everything he sees. I won’t allow any junkies in our lives ever again. They can’t be around us at all. You understand that, right?”
“Yes, I really want to stay clean, and I don’t want to see those people anymore. It’s too dangerous. If I see them, it’s too easy to start using again, and I really don’t want to go back there. But I can’t get straight unless I’m with you. I need you.”
That was such heavy guilt to lay on me. If I truly had that power, I could help him change his life. If I didn’t, I’d end up heading down that same awful road again. As scared as I was, I also knew that if I turned Larry away, he would end up back on the streets. So in spite of my better judgment, I took a deep breath and let him move into our cold apartment with us. Our broken family was finally piecing itself together again.
Terror churned just under the surface in every cell of my body. But I had to hope that we could rewrite our story this time.
In what felt like no time, Larry had mastered carpentry skills and learned how to mold and fabricate gorgeous copper trims and how to create beautiful custom homes. He truly was a talented and hardworking man who was no longer just working at a “job.” He had a profession, a real career, and he was able to provide for us financially. It gave him a new focus that kept him occupied doing work that he excelled at and enjoyed. For the first time in a long time, my husband felt useful, normal, and hopeful. That allowed me to feel hopeful too. Was “normalcy” truly a possibility for us? I wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything, and I started to fall deeply in love with my husband again.
Eventually Larry’s talents advanced to such a degree that he was able to start his own business. He loved it, and people admired him for it. He found beauty and purpose in how he made his living, and I’m sure this helped him stay clean, maybe even more than our little family did.
Unlocking Secrets Page 5