Carol had not felt so close to her son in months. During one of their talks, she brought up the subject of college. “Why don’t you put your application in for Nassau County Junior College?” she suggested. “You could take a two-year physical therapy course, and then, if you liked it, maybe you could transfer somewhere else. Maybe NYU.”
Richie nodded hesitantly. “They have to take you,” said Carol. “Even if your grades aren’t too good right now, you’re a citizen of the county. And we’re certainly taxpayers.”
Realizing that the suggestion and the need for commitment bothered her son, Carol put the idea away. The truce was too delicate to molest. She would bring college up later.
On Friday afternoon, February 25, in the very last hour of the school day, a lunchroom lady at East Meadow High noticed a group of boys suspiciously gathered around a cold-drink machine. She observed something small being handed from one boy to another, apparently some sort of transaction. She heard talk of drugs. She called out, “I see what you boys are doing. I know all of your names, too. I’m going to report you to the principal’s office.”
Richie was in the group. Upon hearing the accusation, he ran out of the cafeteria. But he must have known that the brief new world he had built in one week was tumbling down.
That night Richie went to Ryan’s bar and gained admission. Moving among the tables, greeting people he knew, he saw Fritz toward the back, sitting with a girl. Fritz beckoned, making room for him, sending the girl away. He had interesting news. He confirmed that if Richie could raise $200 by Monday, he could become full partner in the sale of ten thousand Seconals. Pharmaceuticals. The real thing. They were promised for delivery Monday night, in the parking lot of Roosevelt Field.
“Who’s dealing?” asked Richie.
Fritz shook his head. “It’s too big. Like, I can’t even tell you anything. Only it’s this absolutely dependable guy from Southampton. He’s never let me down.”
“I can’t imagine how many ten thousand would be,” said Richie.
“A lot.”
“Enough to fill a grocery sack?”
“Enough to last somebody ten years.”
Richie saw Brick across the room. Promising to keep Fritz’s offer confidential, he rose to confer with his friend. At that moment, police entered Ryan’s on an ID check. “Cops,” hissed Brick. “Tons of ’em.” Brick wriggled through the crowd and out the door without being stopped, even though he was over eighteen and not the subject of the law’s attention this night. Richie tried to follow, but an officer grabbed his arm and asked to see his identification.
Awakened, George got up from his bed and drove to the precinct house to retrieve his son. No charge was made against Richie. The police intention on such raids was usually to scare underage youngsters and warn them with a lecture on staying out of bars until they were eighteen. Because there was no suggestion of drugs being involved, because Richie seemed thoroughly chastened by the experience, because George could think of nothing to add to what the police had said, he did not scold his son.
The next night George and Carol went to a “Las Vegas Night” party for the retarded children’s charity. Russell was sleeping over at his Aunt June’s house. Richie found himself alone in the house at 8:30. Normally he would have found Mark or Peanuts or Brick, but instead he dialed his friend Bob Simmons, the one whose name he had mentioned to the psychiatrist. Bob was the type of clean-cut “straight” whom Mark referred to as “totally lame, a mama’s boy, the dregs of society as far as we heads are concerned.” But on this night, Richie needed him.
Bob and his steady girl, Cindy, picked up Richie. The youngsters drove around East Meadow for a couple of hours. Fresh snow had fallen, and when Richie spotted a vacant lot crowded with snowmen and a fortress built by little children, he wanted to stop. For more than an hour, they played in the winter night, hurling snowballs at one another, throwing ferocious body blocks into the snowmen and falling, laughing, shoulders in brief pain, “defending” the fortress against Cindy’s attacks, their merriment, their normalcy obvious to anyone, worried about the condition of America’s young, who might have encountered the scene.
Bob drove Cindy home first and kissed her goodnight. When he reached Richie’s street, he parked in front of the yellow house. But Richie was reluctant to go inside. For more than an hour he sat with his friend, listening to music on the car radio, talking of rock stars he liked, impressing Bob with his far-reaching knowledge of various little-known groups, mentioning that perhaps he would become an electronics expert someday and work with musicians. Bob allowed his friend to rattle on and on, sensing that Richie needed someone to hear him. Just before midnight, Bob finally begged off, explaining that he had to get up early to go with Cindy to the Brooklyn Museum on an assignment for art class.
“You want to come with us?” invited Bob. “It’s a great place.”
Richie declined. But he would call Bob late in the afternoon and perhaps the three could do something together, again, on Saturday night. As Bob drove away, Richie threw a halfhearted snowball at the car. In the rearview mirror, Bob saw Richie laughing. And he laughed, too. Drugs had not been mentioned during the pleasant evening, but Bob understood that Richie was trying to show how he could pass a clean Saturday night. I think he wants out of the drug world, thought Bob, as he passed the Blackstone corner.
Carol rose first the next morning, at eleven, a late hour for her. She and George had not gotten home until 4 A.M. after the Las Vegas Night party for her charity. Not until the last guests had left the hall and the proceeds from the “gambling” games had been locked into a safe could the couple leave, declining an invitation to have scrambled eggs at an all-night diner.
Making coffee and glancing at the Sunday paper, Carol began answering the phone. People were calling to compliment her on the party. It was a successful evening and Carol basked in the aftermath. Several thousand dollars had been raised for the retarded children’s shelter.
Around 11:30 A.M. George appeared and gratefully accepted a cup of coffee. He had worked hard the night before in twin roles as host and security guard, with his .38 at his waist. He told Carol he would spend most of the afternoon down in the basement, sorting out his sample cases and broken packages of spices and food mixes. That was fine with her, because she had a big load of washing and ironing to do.
Carol was in her bedroom gathering up clothes for the wash when Richie came in. His face looked well rested, his eyes clear. He was neatly dressed. Mother and son quietly discussed their Saturday nights. Richie’s had been successful as well. He told of the hours he had spent with Bob and Cindy. “I was home in bed asleep by midnight,” he said.
Carol nodded. “I looked in on you when we got home.”
He came quickly to his business of the moment. “Can I borrow the car, Ma?” Carol glanced up from her clothes. Her instinct was to refuse, quickly. Only a few weeks before, immediately after getting his driver’s license, she had lent Richie her car and he had been in an accident. His story was that he swerved to avoid hitting a squirrel running across the street and sideswiped a station wagon parked at the curb. Carol had been inclined to believe him, since it bore echoes of her son’s long-ago reverence for animals. But George suspected the boy had been stoned on drugs. He had been opposed to Carol giving in and signing Richie’s license application in the first place. But he’s the only kid his age around here without one, said Carol, and he needs it to get a job, and if he does, I don’t want to chauffeur him back and forth every day.
“What do you need the car for today?” she asked.
“I need to go to this girl’s house to study.”
Carol weighed her decision carefully. Despite everything that had happened, she clung to the belief that the heart of Richie’s trouble was his lack of confidence in himself, that he needed the burden of responsibility and the gift of trust. “All right,” she finally said. “I’m doing this against my better judgment. But I’ll give you this one more chance.�
�
Happily Richie took the keys and went whistling on his way.
When George asked Carol where Richie had gone, she told him. “I believe in confidence and trust, too,” he said. “But he wrecked another car just two weeks ago.”
Shortly before 1 P.M., when George and Carol and Russell were having lunch, the telephone rang. A man was calling to report that Richie had backed his car into an automobile in the parking lot of Dave Shor’s, a hamburger restaurant popular with youngsters. “I just want you to know the accident occurred,” said the man. “Nobody was hurt. And damage is negligible.”
George raised his eyebrows to Carol in an “I told you so” expression, but Carol urged him to wait until Richie could present himself in person and explain what happened.
When thirty minutes had passed, and Richie was not back, Carol went to the delicatessen to buy food for the evening meal. In her absence, the doorbell rang. George answered it. Sean O’Hara was standing there.
“Richie’s had an accident,” he said.
“I know,” answered George. “The fellow he hit called us.”
“No, Mr. Diener. I mean Richie had another accident, the second one today. He just hit a parked car and crashed into a fence.”
“Jesus,” said George. “Is anybody hurt?”
“No. But you’d better come. The police are there.” George drove with Sean to the scene, only a few blocks from his house. The Dieners’ 1966 Buick LeSabre was totally demolished. Another car parked at the curb was crumpled. George saw Richie standing several feet away from the crash. From the investigating officers, George learned that his son had been driving at high speed on the quiet, curving residential lane, had skidded on a patch of ice, had smacked into the parked car, had careened wildly, and had gone through a fence.
“He must have been going at least sixty to mess things up like this,” said one of the officers.
George went over to talk to Richie, but it was as if the week of peace had never happened. It was as if their relationship had picked up exactly the way it left off at the moment of the golden scissors flashing in the living room.
Richie’s eyes were red, and George knew the cause. He wore his mask of arrogance. He did not even nod as his father approached.
“Well, what are you on this morning?” said George sarcastically.
“Why don’t you just shut the fuck up,” said his boy.
George tensed. “Don’t start up with me, son. You just wrecked two cars.”
Richie walked away to join Sean. “If I want any of your lip,” he said, “I’ll scrape it off my zipper.”
George called out that they would discuss things at home, but Richie gave no sign of hearing him.
In reconstructing the afternoon, several people gave testimony. Mark remembered that Richie pulled up beside him and Brick around noon, shortly after winning Carol’s permission to borrow the car. “He leaned out his window at a stoplight,” said Mark, “and he said, ‘Happy days, I just took four Seconals.’ He said he was going to this chick’s house and try to score. But he must have flunked out because he went to Dave Shor’s restaurant and had his first accident there.”
Sean O’Hara’s mother remembered Richie coming to her house about 1 P.M. Her son went outside to inspect the Diener car’s right front tire. This was a few minutes after the first minor accident in the restaurant parking lot.
She watched the two boys shaking their heads and kicking at the tire. When Sean came inside, Mrs. O’Hara asked, “Is there a problem?”
“Yes,” said Sean, slipping on a jacket.
“Are you going somewhere with Richie?”
Sean nodded. “I’m going to follow him home and …” He hesitated. “Mom, if there’s trouble at Richie’s house because of this … can I bring him back here?”
“Of course.” Mrs. O’Hara liked the feisty redhead. And she knew, as did most of the parents of the youngsters in Richie’s circle, of the trouble. Despite George and Carol’s attempt to keep their lives out of neighborhood gossip, Richie had spread the war with his father far and wide.
At 3:45 P.M., Sean O’Hara returned home. His mother noticed that he was “visibly upset.”
“What happened?” she asked quickly.
“Richie had another wreck. He was trying to get me to race with him. He hit the curb … totaled his car. He wanted to take off and run away. I told him that wouldn’t solve anything. Then I went to his house and got Mr. Diener.”
“How was Mr. Diener?”
“Calm.” Sean looked at his mother in puzzlement. “Too calm almost.”
Sean said he had just dropped Richie off at his home, and that he was to pick his friend up again at six. Richie told Sean that once he explained to Carol what had happened, she would understand.
Carol and George sat in silence at their dining-room table, waiting for Richie to come home. There must be no raised voices, insisted Carol. We are lucky nobody was hurt. “I don’t even want to talk to him,” said George. “You do the talking. You’re the one without a car now, and without collision insurance.” Carol nodded. That seemed somehow less important to her than the tenuous bridge her son had walked on for a precious week.
When Richie came into the house near 4 P.M., he saw his parents waiting for him at the dining-room table. Pulling out a chair and lounging over its back, he waited silently for their first move. Carol examined his face before she spoke. In it was the flush of drugs, across his hands a tremor as they clenched the chair-back.
“Do you realize what happened, Richard?” she began, in a voice so low and controlled it seemed to be speaking the opening line of a poem. “You could have killed somebody. You could have killed yourself.”
Richie would not look at the woman speaking in the quiet voice. Instead he gazed out the glass patio door onto the redwood deck. Once he had played with the family of squirrels there. Once he had turned on there, on the spring night when thunder came from the sea. Several moments crept by before he found an answer for his mother.
“Maybe that would have been better,” he said, his voice even lower than Carol’s.
George would not have it. He shook his head in reproach.
Suddenly Richie came alive. “That’s right,” he said, his tone-rising. “Shake your fucking head at me.”
What do I do to set off his explosions? thought George. He’s not at all sorry. He’s standing there so stoned he doesn’t even realize what he has done.
Carol could feel the electricity beginning to crackle between her two men. She jumped back in, continuing to point out the things Richie should consider. If he ever bought his own car, the insurance premium would be enormous because of these accidents. He could even lose his newly obtained license from negligent driving. As she spoke, keeping Richie’s attention, George left the table. It seemed the best thing he could do, for his presence was salt in the wound.
Richie accepted everything his mother told him. She was right. She was definitely right. He would drive more carefully. He was indeed lucky that no one had been hurt. Contritely, he said that he was tired, very tired, and wanted to rest. Could he go to his room? Carol took his hand and squeezed it tenderly to give her permission.
Now Russell, the eleven-year-old second son, bounded in. Carol had promised to take him and a friend to the bowling alley. Wearily she remembered her obligation. Thirty minutes later, when she returned, the house was quiet once more. George was in the basement working. She could hear him moving boxes around. The music from Richie’s room meant he was there. She began preparing sandwiches and soup for a light supper.
Abruptly, Richie lurched out of his room and into the kitchen. He seized the telephone and dialed Brick. Carol turned from the stove because there was a new presence in the room. A stranger stood in her kitchen, a stranger with eyes burning, eyes drowning in a crimson sea, eyes little more than slits in a face suddenly puffy and worn and—Carol thought—oddly old. Richie began to talk at the top of his voice. Every other word seemed to be “fucker.
” He pronounced them vigorously, as if newly and proudly come to profanity. It was not that Carol had never overheard the words from her son before. But always in the past he had tried to hide his conversations. Now, for some terrible reason, Richie chose to fill his mother’s kitchen with obscene talk. He is forcing me to see him as he really is, thought Carol.
Richie hung up. “I’m going out,” he announced, his words sticking together like taffy.
Almost in pity, Carol gazed at her son. “You’re in no condition to go anywhere,” she said sadly. “You couldn’t make it around the block.”
Ignoring her, Richie bolted from the kitchen into the dining room, where he struck a chair and fell to the floor. The chair toppled beside him. Carol rushed to him, saw him sprawled in pain half on the tile of the dining room, half on the green carpet of the living room. My God, she thought. He’s taken an overdose. He’s dying.
But Richie staggered up, grabbing another chair to support himself. The twin crashes—boy and chair—brought George racing up from the basement.
“What happened?” he asked. Carol could not respond. She could only point. Words could not escape the ice in her throat.
Richie whirled and faced his father. “Did you tell the cops back there I was on drugs?” he yelled, jerking his thumb in the general direction of the second accident.
George was taken aback. Why was Richie suddenly angry over something he had not even mentioned at the table an hour ago? He did not answer.
“Goddammit,” said Richie, raising his right arm as a trembling club, “I asked you a question. I want an answer.”
So contorted was his face, so taut with rage, that George left the room. He had an idea. He walked to his bedside table. Outside, behind the slammed door, he could hear his son screaming, “Answer me!” George reached under the table to where he had hidden his .38 the night before when he returned from the charity party. It rested on a carefully placed wire, a secret nest George had built when his other gun had been stolen in the autumn burglary.
Richie Page 25