The scariest thing for me about Andy is that he can’t tell me what’s going on with him. When he’s sick, he can’t tell me where he hurts. Sometimes, since I’ve been sober, he’ll bring his pillow and crawl into my bed in the middle of the night, wriggling himself close and tucking his head into the curve of my neck before drifting away. I’ve been sober four years now, and he’s done this only a handful of times. My instincts tell me he’s having bad dreams, but there’s no way to be sure. I ask him, but it’s moot. He can’t tell me. He doesn’t understand.
Andy talks in his sleep and sometimes I can understand the dreamy non-sense, but most of the time the Andowneese is too garbled for even me to understand. He laughs in his sleep, too. Funny, raspy giggles and full belly laughs. I watch him sometimes. I have since he was tiny. I watch as his eyeballs move in R.E.M. beneath his lids, and I wonder what his dreams are made of, but I’ll never know because he can’t tell me.
That’s why I’ve adamantly refused to hire outside babysitters or use the respite care available to me through Medicaid. If something happened to Andy, I would never know, and I will not take that chance.
I knew something was going on, but I had no way of knowing what. Frustrated and feeling helpless, I pulled him out of school and made an appointment with the director of special education for the district to discuss our options.
Frustration and helplessness are inadequate words to describe what I felt. I was enraged, and I had nowhere to put that anger because my rage was toward something I couldn’t identify. By all accounts, nothing out of the ordinary was happening at school. Those accounts, of course, did not include Andy’s, so they were incomplete as far as I was concerned, but there was nothing I could do.
Something was wrong at school. Something was happening or had happened to my son, and not only will I never know what it was, but there wasn’t a Goddamn thing I could do about it.
I remember picking him up from school the last day he went. I wanted to destroy the classroom. I wanted to scream until I had no voice. I wanted to smack those looks of pity off the teacher’s face. Instead, I collected his things and left quietly, ignoring their polite goodbyes.
At home, I was exhausted and angry - not at Andy, but at the situation - and I didn’t want to feel that way. I wanted to be numb.
While Andy was in the shower, I smoked frantically, trying to make the feelings go away before he was finished. It’s hard to get high when you’re crying.
When he was in his jams, I sat on his bed and pulled him up to my lap. “Are you okay, Andy?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Okay, well, you don’t have to go back to that school again.”
“I sowry. No, no, no poop in annunderware. Enna trwy again tomorrow.”
“No, honey, I know you didn’t mean to poop in your underwear, but you don’t have to go back there.”
“Enna trwy again. I sowry.”
I sighed. “Sweetheart, it’s okay. We’ll find you a new school.”
He wrapped his skinny arms around my neck, kissed me on the mouth and whispered, “Enna twry again.”
“Andy!” I pulled him away so I could look at him. “I’m not mad at you.” Then why am I raising my voice? “You’re all done at that school, okay? You don’t have to go anymore. All done.” I searched his eyes. “Understand?”
“Enna watch Star Wars, essa Jedi.” He started pointing to the posters on the walls of his room. “Essa Wook (Luke) enna Vader, enna spookies (storm troopers.)”
I felt beaten. “Sure, bug. Go ahead.”
“Essa little pizza?”
“It’s not dinner time yet,” I said closing the door. “Wait until Allan’s home.”
I stood there in the hallway for a minute, listening to my son talk to the characters in his movies, acting out his favorite parts and growling like Chewbacca, and I felt utterly alone and not nearly numb enough.
I didn’t want to call Mom yet. Everything was too close to the surface and I knew I’d start crying immediately, turning the subject from Andy to my inability to cope with everyday life. I’d wait until I got high. Until I was numb. The meth wouldn’t take away all the emotion, but it might be enough to get through explaining to my mother why I’d removed Andy from school.
I couldn’t wait too long, though. She would want to know immediately and if not, why not. I sat on my bed, rocking back and forth, smoking, smoking and trying not to cry. Trying desperately to block out the anger and helplessness I was feeling, I made a macabre game of refusing to let the tears that brimmed in my lower lids fall. If they did, I thought, I would come apart. I thought of them as a watery, fragile dam. Everything inside me was shaking loose: my bones, my organs, my veins and muscles. It wasn’t visible on the surface, but inside I felt like a house of cards and if those tears fell, the wind would blow. I couldn’t let them fall, and I wouldn’t allow myself to wipe them. They had to recede themselves.
So I smoked. For two hours, I did nothing but rock and smoke, and eventually, the tears receded and I felt calm. I transferred the bail bond line and when Allan came home I fixed dinner, moving through the evening like a robot. I felt cold and empty - a huge improvement. I’d rather feel nothing than too much.
Craig arranged things between Mario and I and we began doing business together. He brought his translator the first few times, but after that, he started meeting me alone. He was picking up English fast, and I knew a little Spanish. I bought an English/Spanish dictionary for us to use when we needed to.
When Craig needed money, I sent payments via Western Union to some little town in Mexico I’d never heard of. I paid him everything I owed.
Mario and I got along well and I felt comfortable doing business with him. In the beginning, the exchanges were made in public.
“Keem? You ready?” Mario’s English was much better than my Spanish was, but Mexicans always have problems pronouncing my name.
“Sure. Forty-five minutes? Same place?”
“Okay. You call me.”
Right on time, I called Mario as I pulled into the furthest spot I could find at the Wal-Mart parking lot in Caldwell. Five minutes later, a small blue pickup truck drove by with Mario behind the wheel, and I pulled in after him, seamless and smooth. We didn’t acknowledge each other. It wasn’t necessary. I fell in behind him and we drove until he found a place where he felt comfortable - usually some rural stretch of road or around an industrial area. He pulled over and I did the same. He walked back to my car and dropped a plastic-wrapped package through the driver’s side window, picking up the roll of bills I’d already set on the outside armrest. Then he walked back to his vehicle and drove away. The whole thing from the time we pulled over took less than a minute. We never spoke during those meetings. It was all business: short, sweet and efficient. Then I’d drive to my office to double-check the weight and start making calls.
I met with the district supervisor of special education. There were two programs she suggested that would be good placements for Andy, and invited me to visit each of them to determine which would be the most appropriate for his needs.
The school I chose had a strong program and the teacher was an advocate for her students participating as much as they possibly could with their typical peers.
So again, I went through all the I.E.P., assessments and paperwork required to transfer him, and Andy went back to school. There were a couple of accidents in the beginning, but by the end of the first month, he was back to normal. I took it as a sign that he was happy. His new teacher was outstanding at communicating with me, not only with the notebook, but also with phone calls. She was upbeat and positive. There was a male aide - a rare thing in special education - who Andy seemed to especially like, and best of all, for my son at least, was that every Thursday, they went swimming at the YMCA, and to the B.S.U. student union building to eat lunch. Swimming is one of his favorite things to do...especially if there’s a chance he might see a blonde chick in a bikini.
Chapter 17
> Allan started working full-time installing rain gutters. He enjoyed his job and the people he worked with and it soon became apparent that he’d found a place he intended to stay. He was taking pride in himself again and that seemed to give him a sense of independence.
Then, one night, he went to brush his teeth and I did the same. I waited in bed, listening as he let Puppet out for the last time. I arranged our pillows and turned off all but the little light on my side of the bed. And I waited. And waited.
The house was quiet and the hallway dark. I sat listening to stillness and heard nothing else. I got up and looked out into the hallway. All the lights in the house were off and there was no sign of Allan or Puppet. I walked through the kitchen and checked the backyard. Nothing.
Coming back through the house, I noticed the door to his bedroom was closed. Sick, blue light from his television set showed through the crack beneath the door. I stood there, not knowing what to do, when I heard him saying something in a low voice. Then I heard a bark. That was the night Allan stopped sleeping with me and started sleeping with the dog.
When Kilo went to prison and asked us to take care of his dog, I was honored. I had known Puppet since she was first born. The runt of a litter of pit bulls, she was so small that Kilo carried her in his pocket. She was his baby and he was her Asian, as he would say. I adored Puppet. As she got bigger, I would play with her, getting down on the floor with a towel between my teeth and growling; she would catch the other end and we would play like canine mother and child. Of course, she could stay with us and we would take good care of her until she and Kilo were able to reunite.
My affection toward her soon faded, though, as Allan showered all his attention on her. She was the one he played with and cuddled with on the couch at night. She went everywhere with him on the weekends - even just to the store to buy cigarettes - while I stayed behind, uninvited. He bought her pretty collars and toys and took her for grooming.
In the evenings, Allan sprawled out on the couch, dozing in front of the television, with that damn dog’s head in his crotch. I hated that lazy-eyed bitch, and every morning after he affectionately told her goodbye, throwing me a “see ya’” over his shoulder as an afterthought, I threw her outside for the day. Dog shit filled the backyard because Allan never bothered to pick it up in all the time she was with us, and I did not intend to clean up after his whore. I wasn’t able to enjoy my own backyard due to the stench. I couldn’t stand looking at her. I knew how irrational and immature I was being, but I couldn’t help it.
I was hurt and humiliated, but I couldn’t talk to Allan about it. What was I going to say? We’d never defined our relationship before and had never spoken about sleeping together. Before that night, it never crossed my mind that he would want to stop sleeping with me. I was so determined that this would work, that we were right for each other. If I could only find the right combination of doing and giving what he needed, everything would work out. As awful as it to felt to be dumped, knowing I’d been dumped for a dog was fucking humiliating.
Every night after work, Allan lay on the couch absorbed in some television show, smoking pot and caressing the dog. When Andy was in bed for the night, I’d go back to my empty room where I would sit smoking meth and listening obsessively for any sign that Allan might come back to me. Around eleven, he’d take Puppet outside one last time before they’d retire to his room, closing the door behind them.
Even if I’d had the guts to confront him, what the hell would I say? Why her and not me? What does she have that I don’t have? The whole thing seemed so bizarre to me, yet it still hurt. Worse than that, it was embarrassing.
The unbearable weight of my heart in my throat brought tears to my eyes, and the only remedy I had for the pain was to get high and stay high. Meth’s ethereal smoke snaking its way into my lungs and brain eased the pain that clenched me at my core. It was all I had.
I started playing poker online in 2004, when Internet gambling was still legal. It became my new obsession and I bought every book I could get my hands on, subscribed to poker magazines and studied the pros. I played at my office, mostly in the middle of the night while Andy and Allan slept, or during the day when they were at work and school. As empty and dark as that room was, it was far less lonely than being at home.
Any game I could find in Vegas, I could play online twenty-four hours a day, and I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the dark years of addiction. Not because I’m a bad poker player or unlucky at slots, but because I’m an addict and gambling had the same effect on me as meth. It took me out of myself for long periods and disconnected me from the world.
The thing about being an addict, though, is that it never mattered how much meth I had or how much money I won. It was never enough. I always wanted more, more, and more. For me, there was no reason to quit and every reason to keep going. The drugs and the money flowed like the ocean tide: no matter how much went out, it always came back. There was no foreseeable end and as with the ocean, it was easy to get lost in the vast emptiness.
I was incessantly buying things I didn’t need, filling my office with pretty things for gift baskets I never made. I gambled like a fiend and smoked meth constantly. I was running out of ways to run away from myself.
I was on call most nights and never knew when I would have to go to the jail to write a bond. I spent many of those nights downtown in my office getting high and gambling. It was better than being at home where I would stay up all night listening for Allan. Listening for him to get up and come to me, tell me he loved me and sleep in my bed again as he had when Andy and I first moved in with him. I obsessed about Allan and with nothing but movies for distraction, my thoughts consumed me, threatening my sanity. In the morning, I would hear him get up, play with the dog and get in the shower. I felt stupid being jealous of a dog, longing for attention that never came, and my sadness would turn to rage for which there was no release. Away from the house, alone in my office, gambling away money for hours, getting high all night, allowed me temporary relief from the sorrow and rage bottled inside me. Gambling and meth swallowed me whole and in that space, I had no thoughts, no pain and no sadness. For a little while, I was free.
One night I started playing seven-card stud at a three hundred dollar-minimum table. The poker Gods were on my side that night. I had never been on such a winning streak, and within five hours, I had turned three hundred dollars into just under twenty grand. The high I experienced at the virtual table that night far surpassed any high I ever experienced with drugs. In the early morning hours, in a room where the only light was the sick glow of the computer monitor, I played standing up. I smoked less than usual, as the elation of winning was powerfully intoxicating. I couldn’t lose. I knew what everyone was holding, and my body rocked back and forth in rhythm to the falling cards. I was invincible that night. I felt electric.
Three hours later, it was gone: not just the excitement, but also all the money, plus another five hundred in bets I made attempting to win it all back. Chasing the dragon. Gambling was just like meth for me. No matter how much there was, it was never enough, and I wouldn’t stop until it was all gone, and with it the numbness. Just like that, I’d be back inside myself again, and I was such a mess that I didn’t fit anymore.
Everything I’d been originally running from was buried far beneath all that I’d piled on top. It wasn’t even that I thought I would fix my life at some point in the future. My intention was to keep running because I was afraid to stop. I knew how bad I hurt inside and I did all I could to avoid feeling that pain because I didn’t know what to do with it.
I could take care of everyone. Except me. In my mind, I wasn’t worthy of what I gave to others. If I had deserved love and attention, I wouldn’t have had to ask for it, or hope for it in vain. I wasn’t taking care of myself, and I was disappearing. I didn’t know I was slipping away until it was too late, and by that time I was so far gone, taking care of myself wasn’t even an option.
If P
roust was right, and happiness exists only so we can experience unhappiness, causing grief that develops the powers of the mind, I should have been the smartest motherfucker alive. If that were true, though, I wouldn’t have decided to take Allan on vacation to Mexico.
It was October of 2005 and he was selling his timeshare because I was tired of making the payments and he couldn’t afford them, but he had a balance so we used the points to reserve a condo in Cabo San Lucas. Now, I’m sure I’m not the only person who’s ever smuggled drugs into Mexico, but I knew Allan still liked coke once in a while, so I brought half an ounce as a surprise for him.
When I emerged from the bathroom to give him his present, his jaw dropped and he let out a hunh sound. “You crazy bitch!”
“I am not a bitch,” I said, and he hugged me and we started railing up lines.
I daydreamed of Mexico for weeks before we went. I had visions of us swimming in the ocean, dancing in clubs and walking on the beach at night. As pathetic as it sounds, I actually thought that once he was away from his lazy-eyed whore for a while and we could spend some time together with no other distractions, things might be different. But it was pathetic. And stupid. Mexico sucked. We went parasailing and I chartered a private boat for deep sea fishing one day, but other than that, we pretty much hung around the condo and did coke while Allan smoked pot he bought from a local.
Actually, it was fine with me. I didn’t bring any meth because I only liked to smoke it and didn’t want the hassle of smuggling paraphernalia. I did a lot of coke that trip, but the high is nothing compared to meth and I ended up sleeping most of the time.
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