Chancers

by Susan Stellin

  I’m thinking about the movie Papillon with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, who plot to escape a French penal colony, but when they get the chance Hoffman won’t go. Then I remember an old guy from the projects telling me that the first time he went to Rikers it was by ferry—the prisoners were chained to the benches. My mind is pinballing, barely landing on a single thought, but mostly I’m worried about how dope sick I’m getting.

  When people ask what it’s like to go through heroin withdrawal, I tell them to imagine the worst flu they’ve ever had, add a bad case of food poisoning, mix in a deep depression, and top it off with a good kicking. Now multiply everything by ten. That’s close to what it feels like, and I’m about halfway there right now. I’m aching all over, my eyes are tearing, my nose is running, and I keep breaking out in cold sweats. I’m so sick I just want to pass out.

  After we file off the bus, we get uncuffed and line up to be re-photographed, re-fingerprinted, and jammed into cells. There’s hardly room to stand at some points, but I manage to curl up on the dirty concrete floor. Names are called, people get moved, I’m dimly aware of what’s going on. It must be obvious that I’m in withdrawal because I get pulled out of the cell by a couple of guards.

  “Do you need methadone?” one of them asks.

  “Maybe just a hit to take the edge off,” I tell him. In five minutes, I’m thinking, I could feel almost normal.

  “We don’t give hits,” he says. “If you take it, you’re on the program. Probably mandated once you get out.”

  I’ve used methadone occasionally when I couldn’t get dope, but I don’t think it’s a great long-term solution. I’ve seen what it does to people, replacing one drug with another, still stuck in addiction. So as sick as I am, as much as I don’t want to feel this pain, I tell them I don’t want it—even adding, “I’m good.”

  They look at me, shrug, and put me back in a cell.

  I don’t know how long it’s been since my last hit, but I can’t keep the sickness at bay. Once I throw up, everyone curses at me and yells for the guard. I’m starting to shake, my stomach is cramping, I’m just hoping I don’t shit myself. Someone calls me an asshole for not taking the meth, but no one makes any move to help me.

  I’m facedown in the bullpen next to my vomit, surrounded by guys who hate me, and I don’t really blame them. I know I’m a fucking mess, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Eventually the guards come and put me in a cell by myself, where I finally pass out.

  —

  THE NEXT FEW days are a blur of withdrawal. At some point, I get moved to a dorm where inmates are detained while they’re waiting for their cases to get resolved. The most excruciating pain and nausea have slowly subsided, but the depression and anxiety are constant. My joints ache, I’m either too hot or too cold—it’s like I’ve been transplanted into someone else’s body and it keeps trying to reject me. I break into sweats for no reason, only to start shivering the minute I peel off some clothes. If I lie down, I want to stand up. If I try to walk, I have to sit. I’m dehydrated and hungry but I can hardly keep anything down.

  About a week after my arrest, I get woken up at the crack of dawn, along with all the other inmates who are due back in court. Once we line up for the bus ride to downtown Brooklyn, I’m handcuffed to a guy who makes it clear he doesn’t want to be anywhere near me.

  “Why am I cuffed to this skanky cracker?” he complains.

  That doesn’t do a lot for my self-esteem, but I’m sure he’s right—I’m wearing the same clothes I had on when I got arrested, which are grimy and smelly by now.

  When they open the gate to take us to the bus, it’s a beautiful spring morning. We only walk about twenty yards, but the air feels good and there are seagulls flying around. This time I look out the window as we slip and slide all the way back to court.

  My lawyer comes to speak with me before I see the judge. He mentions something about my immigration status. I tell him I’m a permanent resident—I’ve got a green card. He says it could still be an issue, which reminds me of all the times Susan brought this up. The other day, I signed a form saying I didn’t want to talk to anyone from immigration. I was three days into detoxing—I hardly knew what was going on—but it did seem weird that they knew I was at Rikers.

  I wonder if I should try to get in touch with Susan later, when my head is straight. But sitting in a holding pen, sick and depressed, I can’t imagine how the fuck I’d explain everything that happened since I last saw her. After all the times she tried to help me, it got to the point where I couldn’t face her. I was too ashamed to let her see what I’d become. Now I’ve sunk even lower, but I’m so exhausted by the withdrawal I can barely comprehend the fact that I’m about to be sentenced. I just lean my head against the metal bars and close my eyes.

  Once I’m called into the courtroom, it doesn’t take long for the judge to decide my fate.

  “Six months for each charge,” he says.

  I have three charges, so that’s eighteen months—way more than I expected. I look at my lawyer in a panic.

  “To run concurrent,” the judge adds.

  It takes me a minute to realize he means six months total—not eighteen. I close my eyes, thankful for this small break.

  My lawyer tells me he thinks it went well—it could’ve been much worse. With time off for good behavior, I’ll probably only do four months.

  May, June, July, August, I’m thinking. Out in September—just in time for Liam’s birthday.

  “Can you do me a favor?” I ask him. “Could you call my ex-wife and tell her what happened?”

  “Sure,” he says. “What’s her number?”

  As he writes down Anna’s info, I can picture her reaction to the shit I’m dumping on her. I wonder how she’ll explain this to Liam—or the rest of my family, if she decides to tell them. But mostly I’m just glad I don’t have to make any of those calls myself.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  June 2010

  Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

  In June 2010, I sent Graham an email message with the subject line: Are you alive?

  “That’s all I want to know,” I wrote. “Well, actually that isn’t all I want to know, but that would give me some peace of mind. Your phone isn’t accepting messages so even if you’re not going to call me how about just a reply with some sign of life?”

  Years earlier, this type of appeal would usually prompt some response from Graham—a photograph with his blurry reflection in a window, a misspelled text I’d scrutinize to gauge if he sent it when he was high. But this time, weeks passed without an answer. The message on his phone said his number was no longer in service. His website was down, his portfolio of photos replaced by a cryptic error message.

  He was on my mind because a friend had called to tell me about someone she knew who had died of a heroin overdose. With this seed planted, then watered over the course of many more conversations about her friend, I started to wonder if Graham had met a similar end.

  News about someone’s death generally arrives on its own schedule, whether it’s long dreaded or a complete surprise, but I put off contacting anyone who might know what had happened to Graham because I thought I could control grief’s timing.

  At first I was too overwhelmed with deadlines to face the prospect of mourning—or at least, that’s what I told myself. Then I had a trip planned to visit my family in Michigan, which I didn’t want to spend crying about Graham. But after I got back to Brooklyn I thought I was mentally prepared for the overdose I assumed had finally happened. I sent a delicately worded text to Anna, figuring she could at least tell me if Graham was alive.

  She didn’t reply.

  For weeks I debated whether this meant Graham was dead and she couldn’t face spreading that news, or she didn’t know where he was and wasn’t in the mood to type up a response. She and I hadn’t had any contact since I bailed Graham out of Rikers years earlier, but I began to worry that she might blame me for something I had—or hadn’t�
��done.

  “There’s no way to know why she’s not answering,” my friend Alex told me. “Maybe this means you’re not ready to find out.”

  More than anyone else in my life, Alex didn’t judge me for continuing to worry about Graham; she never told me I should just let it go. She bought me drinks, listened to stories about an ex she had never met, and offered guidance instead of the opinions most of us can’t resist doling out.

  Her advice boiled down to a consistent theme: that we all have to learn how to live with uncertainty, because some things are simply out of our control. It wasn’t a particularly novel lesson, but for anyone dealing with an addict, it’s a difficult one to learn. Even if you accept that there’s little you can do to influence the course of someone’s addiction—and I still struggled with that—it’s tough to strike a balance between detaching with love and giving up. I’m not sure I ever got it right.

  —

  BUT AFTER GRAHAM told me that Tracy had moved in with him, in late 2008, I really did try to put our relationship behind me. With the economy tanking and a midlife crisis looming, I had plenty of other things on my mind.

  I turned forty a few months later—throwing a big party to celebrate the occasion, not trying to hide from it. But it did feel like I’d missed out on the milestones most women hit by that point: engagements, weddings, and babies. Almost everyone I knew was married and at least thinking about kids; in April, my sister told me that she was pregnant. I was genuinely happy for her—I never begrudged any of my friends their growing families, partly because I had mixed feelings about juggling that work-life balance. But I was still hoping to find someone who made me feel the way Graham did, and I was still trying to switch gears with my writing.

  I was pitching plenty of ideas, including a story about bailing Graham out of Rikers, but I was getting back lots of “not quite right for us” rejections—or worse, just silence. In some sense, that was more frustrating than not having a partner. I didn’t feel like I had much control over what was going on with my career, but I actually felt okay about my personal life.

  After three years of therapy, I had decided to stop seeing David, sending him an email explaining why: “Therapy has been enormously helpful to me, in many, many ways, but something about constantly questioning and analyzing everything in my life was getting me down. I need some space to see what’s working, and what’s not, so I can get a clearer sense of what I still want to address or change.”

  I told him that all that self-analysis was starting to feel paralyzing; I was getting tired of second-guessing myself. If I sent another email to someone who hadn’t answered my first message, was I accommodating their nonresponsiveness, or was I being proactive by refusing to wait and wonder? Should I date a guy who I didn’t think was right for me, or was ruling him out too soon being overly picky? I felt like I’d lost my internal compass—I wanted to trust my instincts again.

  When David wrote back, I was relieved that he seemed to support my decision: “I do understand what you are saying, and I believe that the times when one steps away from therapy are very often times of real growth and change and consolidation, all of which I think will be the case for you.”

  It was. I felt like I had accomplished a lot since I started seeing him, but in the end, I think quitting therapy was my biggest triumph. I was done dwelling on the past—I had made peace with those hurts. I wanted to look forward, not back in time.

  But even though I had finally distanced myself from Graham, I hadn’t completely eradicated him from my life. Just when I thought I’d never hear from him again, he’d pop up in my inbox, drawing me back in—like in May 2009, when he sent an email saying his original case had finally been settled, so he wondered if I’d gotten the bail refund yet.

  I had. I just hadn’t given it to Graham, mostly because I assumed he’d blow it on drugs. But he’d already paid me back, so technically I owed him that money, and it sounded like he was totally broke. Tracy had turned out to be a nightmare, but she refused to move out and the bank was threatening to foreclose on his house.

  Graham wasn’t exactly asking for my help—it was a sort of roundabout appeal—but it was close enough that I picked up the phone. Maybe I couldn’t help him break free of addiction, but I’d just sold my own apartment, I’d written articles about real estate, I’d grown up with parents who discussed housing prices at dinner. This was one thing I knew how to do.

  I used the bail check as leverage to get Graham to meet me, hoping to convince him to call a broker and put his house up for sale. He still had a lot of equity he could walk away with if he found a buyer before the bankers swooped in. It galled me to think that some shady lender might end up with all that money.

  We met at a local bar one afternoon—not an ideal location, but all the cafés nearby were always crowded with people bent over laptops, and I wanted to be able to sit and talk. When Graham walked in, he looked better than the last time I’d seen him, but he was limping and had a big bruise on his neck.

  “I got in a bike accident,” he told me, pulling the collar of his jacket up higher. I didn’t know whether to believe him, but it didn’t really matter. I was there to talk about real estate, not whether he’d gotten into a fight.

  For a while, we caught up and laughed and he seemed almost like himself again; those familiar feelings were starting to stir. I didn’t want to ruin our reunion by bringing up an unpleasant topic, but I finished my beer and finally blurted it out: “So what’s going on with your house?”

  “Those fuckers totally screwed me when I refinanced,” Graham said, staring at the seltzer glass he was gripping. “My monthly payment ended up doubling, then a big job I was supposed to get fell through, so I was living off savings and when that ran out I got behind on my mortgage. I’ve been trying to sell some photos, but I’m so deeply in debt I don’t think there’s any way I can scrape together enough cash to get the bank off my ass.”

  Since I had loaned him the money to refinance—when I knew he was using—hearing that made me cringe. Maybe I should’ve insisted on seeing the terms.

  “I know you love that house,” I said, nudging Graham’s chin so he’d look at me. “But maybe a change of scenery would actually be good. If you sell now, you’ll have some money left to get back on your feet. Rent an apartment for a while, get into a program—or at least find a therapist and really try to quit.”

  I thought Graham might bristle at that reference to rehab, but he didn’t even flinch. “I don’t think a shrink can help me at this point,” he said, sort of wistfully. It made me livid to see him so resigned.

  “Well, then do it for Liam. Don’t you think you owe it to him to try to keep some of that money? I mean, even if you just put a sign out front saying ‘for sale: best offer,’ you’d be better off than doing nothing. Just take whatever price you can get. This is one thing you can’t afford to fuck up.”

  Now I was the one getting worked up, but I couldn’t tell if I was getting through to Graham. When we said goodbye, I gave him a long hug, trying not to cry as I watched him limp away. But I felt a little more hopeful after he sent me an email the next day.

  thanks for your advice and your right—it would be idiotic not to sell. it all sort of snowballed so quickley and i tried to pretend it wasn’t happening and then fear and panic made me hide from/avoid the obvious and here i am broke, scared, frustrated, and somewhat angry (at me). i’ve even felt like just packing up, cutting my losses and going back to london. start again! thank you for your advice and concern it’s very much needed and appreciated—it really means a lot to me. i didn’t get to the mortgage people today i was to busy in the city trying to sell photos (nothing concrete yet) i’ll deal with them tomorrow. somethings got to give soon and i hope its not me! seriously though i’ll give you a call if i need words of advice or otherwise (is that ok?)

  thanks susan,

  love graham. x

  I told him I was happy to help him, but he found an agent himself and had it
on the market within a few weeks. The day of the open house, I offered to meet him and go for a walk—something a friend had done for me when I sold. I didn’t even like my apartment and it was an emotional process, so I figured Graham would have a much harder time moving on.

  When I walked through his front door—already open for buyers—all these memories assaulted me, like they’d been waiting for me to come back this whole time. Wandering from room to room, they popped up like haunted house goblins: the day Graham took my picture, my book party, the police search. I wondered where we’d be if Graham had actually gotten clean. Maybe living here together. That thought made my heart ache, surrounded by couples making renovation plans. I found Graham in the basement, in the room he’d built for his photography gear. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  We rode our bikes out to a pier in Red Hook, sitting on a bench facing the Statue of Liberty. Graham was so out of it I’m not sure much about that day even registered with him. Mostly, he ranted about Tracy, and how she’d ruined his life.

  A couple of weeks later, he forwarded a message from his real estate agent, listing all the offers he’d received. At the top Graham wrote, “almost sold…”

  I emailed him back advice about finding a good real estate lawyer, telling him to make sure the contract didn’t have any loopholes that might let the buyer back out. “For all of your talents, reading through fine print isn’t at the top of the list, so I strongly suggest you have someone else look at anything before you sign!!”

  All Graham wrote back was “cheers!” That was the last time I heard from him for the next eight months.

  When he shut me out, I felt like Charlie Brown all over again, tricked after trusting Lucy. But I’d let myself get drawn into Graham’s drama, knowing where it would probably lead—just like when I googled his name a month later, I knew I might be upset by whatever I found. I just didn’t expect to stumble on hundreds of self-portraits he’d taken: extremely graphic photos of Graham smoking crack and shooting up. I slowly clicked through every single image, sure he couldn’t have meant to post them online.