Once my case is called, I try to focus on all the back-and-forth between the judge and my lawyer—a different guy than the one I met Saturday night. They’re rattling off arrest charges, discussing evidence, and talking about legal codes I don’t understand. It all makes this whole situation sound way worse than it really is.
I’m still trying to figure out what’s what when the judge impatiently bangs his hammer. He sets bail at $1,500 and schedules another hearing for Friday morning—four days from now. My lawyer quickly explains that I’m heading back to Rikers and suggests I find someone to bail me out.
I try to catch another glimpse of Susan, but before I get a chance I’m hustled out the door and back to the holding pen. I’m wondering if she’ll post bail or if this was her way of having one last look at me. I can’t believe this is how it’s gonna end, after months of trying so fucking hard to get her back. I want to run back into the courtroom and explain everything to her—that the gun wasn’t mine, that the explosion wasn’t my fault, that it’ll all get sorted out—but I know she’ll never believe that I wasn’t using. I’m sure that’s all she really cares about, besides the fact that I’m now in jail.
By the time we get back to Rikers, we’ve missed dinner so all we get is a cold sandwich while we go through intake. It’s another tedious process, another long night trying to fall asleep with a million depressing thoughts bouncing around my head.
Early the next morning, I get woken up by the sound of planes taking off from LaGuardia Airport. It makes me wonder when Susan is leaving to go see her family for Christmas. I really hope she has the heart to post bail before she goes. I was hoping the judge would just release me, but I might have to call Anna and ask her if she’ll do it. I’m dreading that conversation, but I don’t know how much longer I can put it off.
The day drags. Every minute seems to last an hour, the boredom broken only by inedible meals. Just as I’m bracing myself for another sleepless night, a CO comes in and starts calling out names, followed by “Bailout!” A buzz of anticipation ripples around the dorm. I’m hoping but not really expecting to hear my name, so when he shouts, “Ma-see-an-doe!” at first I’m not sure I heard right.
I grab my stuff and rush up to the CO, who checks our IDs and says he’ll be back in a bit. But it’s after eight by the time a prison bus picks us up, trundling between buildings to collect other inmates. Eventually we get dropped off near a parking lot, where a city bus will take us to Queens Plaza. We’ve each been given a single-ride MetroCard to get home, but someone says the next bus isn’t leaving for half an hour.
I don’t have a coat and it’s freezing out, so I go inside the visitors’ waiting area next to the parking lot. Grabbing one of the newspapers lying around, I practically shit myself: Susan’s name and phone number are scribbled in pen on the front page. I know she bailed me out—that was on one of the forms I had to sign—but I didn’t think you had to come out to Rikers to do that. It looks like her handwriting, but why would she have written her number on The New York Times and left it here? It’s too fucking bizarre.
With her number in front of me, I pluck up the courage to call her from the pay phone—collect, so maybe that’s why she doesn’t pick up. I pace around for a bit, wondering if I should ask to borrow somebody’s cell. There’s a girl by the door who’s giving her boyfriend a hard time about getting busted. She’s got a phone in her hand so I decide to give it a shot.
“Could I use your phone for a second?” She looks at me warily so I add, “I just wanna let my girlfriend know I’m out.”
“Make it quick. It’s a prepay and I ain’t got many minutes left.”
“I won’t be long,” I promise. “She’s not too happy with me right now.”
“Neither is my girl,” the guy says.
“You got that right,” she tells him, swiping him on the head before giving him a kiss.
The phone rings for a while before Susan answers—her voice is wary when she says hello.
“It’s Graham,” I tell her. “I’m still at Rikers but I borrowed someone’s phone so I can only talk for a minute. I just wanted to say thank you. I can call you when I get back to my house—it shouldn’t be too late.”
“Don’t bother,” she says.
I figured she might be angry, but I didn’t expect that icy response. It just confirms all my worst fears as she launches into the longest rant I’ve ever heard from her.
“It took me an hour and a half to get home from Rikers. One bus and two subways, after hours of waiting around. And I had to withdraw fifteen hundred dollars from my bank account—which I’d better get back soon because I have to pay my mortgage. So obviously I’m pissed off and tired, and by the time you get home it’s going to be late and I’m really not in the mood to hear whatever excuse you’re going to come up with to try to hide the fact that you were doing drugs and some girl you were partying with spent the night, which I know because she got arrested with you—”
“You mean Izzy?” I interrupt. “I’m not sleeping with her, if that’s what you’re suggesting. She came over with Tye—they’re friends of mine, I’ve told you about him. And it wasn’t a party, we were just hanging out. I wasn’t using. I know the cops are saying they found stuff, but they trump up all these charges and half the time they don’t stick. Like the gun they’re saying I had—it was a BB gun. That’s what caused the explosion, did you know that?”
Susan just listens, not really saying much. I can tell she’s done with my excuses, done with me.
The girl whose phone I borrowed is looking at me impatiently, waving her hand for me to give it back. I hold up my index finger, trying to stall her.
“I have to go,” I tell Susan. “Can I call you tomorrow? When are you leaving for Michigan?”
She doesn’t answer, so I tell her I’m sorry and thank her again. I wait as long as I can before hanging up, hoping she’ll say something, but the only thing I hear is silence.
—
WHEN I GET back to Brooklyn I hardly recognize my house. The broken windows have been boarded up and the yard is littered with bits of trash and glass—it looks like an abandoned building. I find the key hidden under my stoop, unlock the door, and fumble along the wall for the light. Nothing could have prepared me for what I see when I switch it on.
The place has been totally ransacked. Not just the mess from the explosion, more like looters came through with bats and knives. Every drawer has been emptied out, pictures pulled from the walls, furniture overturned, and the whole living room is covered with tiny white balls.
At first I can’t figure out where they came from, but then I see that Liam’s beanbags have been cut open. As I try to take it all in, I spot the broken frame from a Gilles Peress photograph that used to hang above the couch, which is now on its side halfway across the room. When I pick up the photo—one he took of a child running with a flag in Bosnia—I feel sick. The glass is broken and the picture looks like someone put a foot through it. Gilles gave it to me years ago when I helped him install an exhibition of his work.
I head downstairs, stepping over piles of towels and laundry in the hallway. Even Liam’s room has been torn apart, his bed tipped over, his clothes and schoolbooks tossed around, pictures of him playing soccer pulled off the wall. Did he come by and see this? What must he have thought when he opened the door? I pick up a photo I took of him and put it back on the dresser.
My room is even more of a wreck—prints and negatives and camera lenses scattered all over. I look around for my laptop, but I can’t find it anywhere, then I panic remembering the money I left in the desk and the watch my dad gave me—also gone. Every so often I see reminders of Susan: photos and cards and the little tripod she sent me, which I wasn’t supposed to open until Christmas.
My head is spinning. I’m so fucking angry I want to put my fist through the wall. I can’t believe they’re allowed to do this, like I’m some drug kingpin they’ve been planning to raid for months.
I can’t
stay here—it’s too depressing—so I find my phone and call a guy I know from the projects.
“It’s Graham, I just got out,” I tell him, knowing he must’ve heard what happened. “My house is a fucking disaster. Those assholes totally trashed the place. Can I come over? I really don’t want to be here if they come back.”
—
BY THE TIME I stumble home the next morning, I’m feeling more like I can deal with things—figure out how to replace the windows, put my house back together, call Liam’s mum. I’m dreading that conversation, but I need to talk to her before this all gets blown out of proportion.
When I eventually get her on the phone she doesn’t say much, except that I should call my parents since they know I was arrested. I ask if I can talk to Liam but she says she thinks it would be better if I wait until after the holidays. There’s no point arguing with her—Liam is sixteen, so I’m sure he’ll do whatever he wants. But she flat-out tells me she doesn’t want him staying with me as long as there’s all this chaos in my life. She didn’t know I was using drugs, so now that she does, I don’t know what to tell her. First Susan, now Liam—I feel like I’ve lost both of them. I’m upstairs with the windows boarded up, looking at the wreckage around me, and I don’t know what the fuck to do next.
I put off calling my parents, hoping I can come up with a way to make this situation seem less bad, but an hour later my phone rings. The caller ID flashes MUM & DAD.
I’m tempted to let it go to voicemail but I pick up, picturing my dad on the crappy old phone in their hall.
“Graham, is that you?” he asks. The connection to Scotland crackles.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Are you alright? Your mother and I have been worried sick.”
“Anna said there was an explosion,” my mum says—she must be on the phone in the living room. “What happened? Was Liam there? Were there drugs in the house?”
The barrage of questions annoys me. The last thing I need right now is to get put on the spot.
“I’m fine,” I say, trying to think of a plausible story. “It’s not that bad, really.”
“Not that bad?” my dad says. “You were locked up in jail—how much worse can it get?”
I tell them it’s all a mistake, that I was having a party and a broken radiator exploded. Some friends had drugs at the party and the cops overreacted, but my lawyer told me the charges would end up getting dismissed. I don’t know if they believe me, but I’m telling them what I think they want to hear.
“What’s this about a gun?” my dad asks.
“Remember when I told you I found that old gun in somebody’s trash down the street? The cops must’ve come across it when they were searching the house. It was in pieces, there weren’t even any bullets.”
I promise I’ll call them in a few days and tell them not to worry, everything’s fine. But after I hang up, I feel like shit about lying. I just don’t know how to be honest about what’s really going on.
I pull the crumpled paperwork I was given out of my pocket and try to work out all the arrest charges listed: criminal possession of a weapon, reckless endangerment, criminal possession of a controlled substance, criminal use of drug paraphernalia. The form says I was just arraigned on the drug possession charge, but I can’t tell if the cops actually found anything besides the pipe. They sure fucking tried hard enough.
Later in the afternoon, I send an email to Susan, thanking her for bailing me out and promising I’ll get the money to her ASAP. I don’t want her to worry, so I let her know the arrest really isn’t a big deal.
My lawyer said he’s going to get it dismissed as no drugs were found and the gun was a BB gun with plastic caps. He also said i should sue as they had no warrent and searched for 2 days and i have several things missing and broken.
I don’t hear back from her until after midnight. She sends a long email describing what happened when she went to the courthouse the first time, what the charges are against me, and where I’m supposed to go for my next hearing. It’s all very businesslike—the only bit that’s slightly personal is at the end.
I did get the sense that things weren’t necessarily handled the way they should’ve been (re: the search warrant, how the charge kept changing), but I can also imagine that the situation was complicated by the fact that there had been an explosion and it probably wasn’t clear at first what caused it.
After rereading her email, hoping I missed some sign that she might be able to forgive me, I click the button to close it. I didn’t miss anything. It’s clearly over between us.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
January 2007
Upper West Side, Manhattan
As the ball dropped in Times Square and 2007 arrived, I wrote in my notebook, “I keep thinking about all the lies.”
“You’re going to go back over everything that happened,” Graham had warned me. “All the things I said, all the things I did—and you’re going to doubt me.”
He was right. And it wasn’t because of the explosion, which wasn’t really his fault, or the fact that he was still smoking crack, which wasn’t really a surprise. It was because I called the therapist he had supposedly been seeing and found out she didn’t have a Scottish patient with a drug problem.
“I know you can’t talk about clients because of patient confidentiality,” I explained when I called her. “But if you’re not seeing a Scottish photographer who came to you because of a drug problem, you could tell me that, right?”
She paused before answering, pondering the ethical loophole I’d drawn.
“Because he’s been arrested,” I added, eliding my own dubious motive for calling. “I just bailed him out of jail. So if you do have a patient who fits that description he really needs help now.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s possible I had a consultation with someone like the person you’re describing, but I probably would’ve referred him to another therapist. Addiction isn’t really my specialty.”
That revelation blew me apart. All summer and fall, Graham had talked about how much “Debi” was helping him—negative behaviors he was addressing, questions she had asked, how she’d “laid on a plate” the root causes of many of his problems. One night in November, he walked off in the middle of a fight, telling me he really needed to talk to her.
“She said I should call if I was having an emotional reaction that was overwhelming,” Graham explained, leaving me standing outside a Chinese restaurant on St. Marks Place. “I’ll be back in ten minutes. I just want to find somewhere quiet so I can hear her.”
I had my doubts at the time—how many therapists interrupted their dinner to take a call from a distraught client? But I didn’t doubt Debi existed; I just didn’t believe he was going to call her. Tompkins Square Park was two blocks away.
That memory made me furious. I’d spent thousands of dollars on therapy, plumbed the dark corners of my own psyche, pored through all the journals I’d kept since third grade. Meanwhile, Graham was feeding me lines he’d probably read in a self-help book he picked up for a dollar at a stoop sale. Even worse: I believed he was seeing a therapist because his behavior did actually change.
But once my anger faded—and with Graham it usually burned out quickly, like crumpled paper—I thought about how desperate and alone he must’ve been feeling to conjure up a shrink who gave him advice. And if he knew he needed help (it turned out he did have one appointment), why didn’t he try harder to find someone?
Maybe if he had called another therapist, if he hadn’t been so stubborn, if he’d had insurance and counseling was covered, there wouldn’t have been a crack pipe in the house when the windows blew out. And we might’ve had a chance to get back together, but that possibility was gone now. When he got arrested, Graham crossed a line and I wasn’t going to follow him where he was headed.
I sent him an email just after the New Year, our non-anniversary weighing on my mind. I kept picturing him in his dark house with the windows boarded up, th
e cold wind sneaking in, the ghost of my surprise visit a year earlier slithering around the couch, the bed, the stairs, and the floor. I wondered if he’d swept up the tiny white pellets that looked like snow.
“I really think it would help you a lot to find someone to talk to—a real Debi,” I wrote. “I know you’re scared to do that, and worried that it won’t help. All I can say is that I was way more resistant than you were when we first started seeing David, and when I finally started being open with him, it changed my life.”
Graham wrote back: “i don’t know what happened to get me here. your right—i need to stop doing things myself. i’m scared to go to someone and fail.”
When I read that last sentence, I cried. It was one of those moments that made me think Graham was still reachable—that if someone could just get through to him, maybe he could be pulled back from the brink. But those tears were tainted with guilt and the bitter taste of failure: I already knew that that “someone” wasn’t going to be me. And by that point, so did he.
—
JUST AS GRAHAM was distancing himself—no more phone calls, only a few emails—my own life yanked my attention away. Over Christmas, my doctor had called to tell me the results of a biopsy I’d gotten before I left for Michigan: The spot on my forehead was skin cancer.
It wasn’t a devastating diagnosis, just a small basal cell carcinoma; my mom had already had the same surgery twice. But the black crisscrossed stitches left me looking like Frankenstein, and the Tylenol with codeine I was taking barely made a dent in the pain. I wasn’t supposed to drink, exercise, or do yoga—all of my avenues for escape—and I didn’t want to go out because of the scar on my face.
So I didn’t have much time to feel sorry for Graham; I was too busy feeling sorry for me.
During my days on the couch, I reread Daniel Gilbert’s book Stumbling on Happiness, which Graham had found in a giveaway box on his street. I’d read it first and hadn’t ever given it back, a deliberate omission in our post-breakup exchange of T-shirts, photos, and CDs.
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