Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

by David Sheff

  We are among the first generation of self-conscious parents. Before us, people had kids. We parent. We seek out the best for our children—the best stroller and car seat recommended by Consumer Reports—and fret over every decision about their toys, diapers, clothes, meals, medicine, teething rings, inoculations, and just about everything else.

  Before long the crib is replaced by a single bed with zebra sheets. We take walks in the stroller and a Snugli, play in Berkeley parks and baby gyms, and visit the San Francisco Zoo. Nic's library overflows. Goodnight Moon, Pat the Bunny, Where the Wild Things Are, A Hole Is to Dig. I read them so often I know them by heart.

  "Milk, Milk, Milk for the Morning Cake."

  "From here to there and there to here, funny things are everywhere."

  "Dogs are to kiss people. Snow is to roll in. Buttons are to keep people warm. Boodly boodly boodly."

  At three, Nic spends a few mornings a week at a pastel-colored preschool a short walk from home. His day includes circle time; games like duck, duck, goose; painting and clay; and songs. "Pulling weeds, picking stones," Nic sings, "we are made of dreams and bones." There is outside time on the climbing structure and swing-set. He ventures out on his first playdates, formerly known as going over to some kid's house. Sometimes we meet other families at a park with a concrete slide that follows a hillside down under a canopy of oaks. Nic spins on a whirling merry-go-round.

  Nic is a natural architect and builder, constructing sprawling block, Duplo, and Lego Lilliputs. He loves Teddy Ruxpin, Pound Puppies, and the twin pandas. He scoots around the house on a big-wheeled tricycle and, on the red-brick front patio, in a plastic sky-blue convertible, a gift from my parents, which he powers like a Flintstones car with high-top-sneakered feet.

  We visit Train Town in nearby Sonoma, where Nic conducts a steam locomotive past miniature barns and windmills. We travel to Yosemite National Park—in spring, with wildflowers abloom, we hike to the waterfalls; in wintertime, we play in the snow in the valley watched over by Half Dome—and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where Nic is mesmerized by fluorescent jellies and circling sharks.

  There are puppet shows and board games and singing along with the bashing of a tambourine. Wearing a kimono and flannel pajama bottoms and holding a plastic guitar, Nic sings at the top of his lungs:

  Tingalayo, run my little donkey run

  Tingalayo, run my little donkey run

  Me donkey walk, me donkey talk

  Me donkey eat with a knife and fork

  Me donkey walk, me donkey talk

  Me donkey eat with a knife and fork

  Then he peels off the kimono and he's in his clown pajama top with polka dots, lime green and sky blue and cherry red. He's wearing fluorescent, swirly blue-green-pink rain boots.

  We walk down the sidewalk, him shuffling in the too-large boots, my big hand enveloping his tiny one, his plastic guitar slung over his shoulder. He stomps in every puddle.

  His eyes are thoughtful and the bronze sometimes melts into greenness, alive like the sea.

  He dances a funny little dance as he walks along, holding a yellow umbrella over his head.

  "Tut, tut, it looks like rain."

  This apparent idyll distracts us from a looming catastrophe. Vicki and I have spent Nic's first three years in the tired but blissful half-sleep of new parenthood and then wake up in the harsh light and oppressive chill of a shattering marriage. I maturely address our disagreements by falling in love with a family friend. Her son and Nic are playmates.

  Vicki and I share a devotion to Nic, but I am ill-equipped to deal with our escalating problems. When we visit a couples therapist, I announce that it is too late. My marriage is over. Vicki is caught off guard. It is not the first relationship that I have sabotaged, but now there is a child.

  Nic.

  At home when his mother and I argue, Nic finds refuge in the laps of the pandas.

  No child benefits from the bitterness and savagery of a divorce like ours. Like fallout from a dirty bomb, the collateral damage is widespread and enduring. Nick is hit hard.

  We divide the china and the art and our young son. It seems obvious that joint custody is the best approach; Vicki and I both want him with us and have no reason to doubt the prevailing wisdom, that it will be best for him to continue to be raised by both parents. Soon Nic has two homes. On the days I drop him off at his mother's, we hug and I say goodbye at the white picket gate and watch him march inside.

  Vicki moves to Los Angeles, where she remarries. We still both want Nic with us, but now that five hundred miles separate us, the informal yo-yo joint-custody arrangement is no longer tenable. Each of us believes with sincerity and vengeance that it is in Nic's best interest to be with us, not his other parent, and so we hire divorce lawyers.

  Some attorneys successfully mediate agreements, but many custody battles wind up in court. Usually it's traumatic and expensive. Our lawyers charge more than two hundred dollars an hour and require five- to ten-thousand-dollar retainers. When we learn that judges often follow the arrangement recommended by a court-appointed child psychologist after he or she conducts a thorough assessment, our wiser selves and drained bank accounts prevail. Nic has been seeing a therapist since soon after we separated, and we hire her to conduct an evaluation. We agree to abide by her decision.

  The doctor launches a three-month investigation that feels like an inquisition. She interviews us, our friends, and our families, visits our respective homes in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and spends long therapy sessions in her office playing checkers, cards, and blocks with Nic. He calls her his worry doctor. One day, while playing with a dollhouse in her office, he shows her the mother's room on one side and the father's room on the other. When she asks him about the little boy's room, he says, "He doesn't know where he will sleep."

  We meet in her office, among the toys and modern furniture and framed prints of paintings by Gottlieb and Rothko, and she hands down her verdict. Vicki and I sit in matching leather armchairs facing the doctor, an imposing woman in a flowered dress, iron-black curls, and penetrating eyes behind bottle-thick glasses. She folds her hands on her lap and speaks.

  "You are both loving parents who want the best for your son. Here are some of the things I have learned about Nic over the course of this evaluation. I don't have to tell you that he is an exceptional child. He is resourceful, sensitive, expressive, and highly intelligent. I think you also know that he is suffering from the divorce and the uncertainty about his future. In coming to my very difficult decision, I have attempted to weigh every factor and devise a plan that is the best for Nic—the best in a situation where there is no ideal choice. We want to minimize the stress in Nic's life and to keep things as consistent as possible."

  She looks at each of us in turn and then shuffles through a sheaf of papers. She exhales heavily and says that Nic will spend the school year with me in San Francisco and holidays and summers with Vicki in Southern California.

  I try to comprehend exactly what she has said. I won. No, I lost. So did Vicki. I will have him with me for the day-to-day of the school year, but what will Christmas be without him? Thanksgiving? Summertime? The doctor hands us copies of the document that outlines her decision. Using her desk to write on, we sign them. Inconceivably, in an instant marked by the scratching of a pen on coarse paper, I sign away half of my son's childhood.

  As bad as it is for Vicki and me, it is worse for Nic. Preparing for the handoffs, he packs his toys and clothes in a Hello Kitty suitcase with a pretend lock and key. I drive him to the airport. He says that he has a pit in his stomach, not because he doesn't want to see his mother and stepfather—he does—but because he doesn't want to leave.

  At first one of us always flies with him, but at five, he begins traveling on his own. He graduates from the tiny suitcase to a canvas backpack filled with a revolving arsenal of essential stuff (books and journals, Star Trek Micro Machines, plastic vampire teeth, a Discman and CDs, a stuffed crab). A flight atten
dant leads him onto the plane. We say "everything" to each other. It is our way of saying I love you, I will miss you so much, I am sorry—the jumble of feelings when he comes and goes.

  The flights between San Francisco and Los Angeles are the only times a parent isn't lording over him, so he orders Coca-Cola, verboten at home; flight attendants don't care about cavities. But such benefits are insignificant when contrasted with his fear of a plane crash.

  At five, Nic begins kindergarten at a progressive San Francisco school in a hundred-year-old redwood-shingled building, where you can wander in at snack time and parents are, for example, grilling quesadillas with the children. The school has stone steps and old barnlike doors that open onto a play yard with a bouncy, rubberized ground made from shredded recycled tires. There is tetherball, a redwood climbing structure, and basketball. The school is staffed by teachers dedicated to "the whole child," so the three Rs are integrated with an impressive music program; plays that the children write (during his first of many annual follies performances, Nic, cast as a mosquito, falls asleep onstage); art; noncompetitive sports such as freeze tag and broom hockey; inventive spelling; and the celebration of secular and religious holidays, including Christmas, Hanukkah, Chinese New Year, and Kwanza. It seems ideal for Nic, who, in kindergarten, displays his creativity in clay, finger-paint, and an inimitable wardrobe. A typical costume is a huge out-of-shape cowboy hat pulled so low that only his owl eyes can be seen peering out from beneath, a Keith Haring T-shirt under a fringed leather vest, blue tights under a pair of underpants, and sneakers with Velcro fasteners in the shape of elephants' ears. When the other children tease him—"Only girls wear tights"—Nic responds, "Uh-uh. Superman wears tights."

  I am proud of his confidence and individuality.

  Nic has an eclectic group of friends. He plays regularly in Golden Gate Park with a boy who has secret-agent aspirations. He and Nic slink soundlessly on their bellies, sneaking up on unsuspecting parents gossiping on park benches. They also play tag in the labyrinthine play structure, a series of interconnecting passageways inside geodesic domes. With another close friend, a boy with a rooster's crown of dark hair and piercing emerald eyes, Nic builds Lego cities and wood-block tracks on which they race Hot Wheels.

  Nic loves movies. Impressed and amused by Nic's taste in them, a friend who edits a regional magazine asks Nic to write an article titled "Nic Picks Flicks." Nic dictates his comments. "Sometimes kids have to choose a video, you know, and can't make up their mind which one to get but they have to make up their mind fast because the grown-ups have to go to the barbershop in ten minutes," he begins. He reviews Lady and the Tramp and Winnie the Pooh. "Dumbo is great," he says. "Great songs. Great crows." Of The Neverending Story, he says, "The story really does end."

  When I turned six, my mother baked a coconut-and-white-frosted giraffe-shaped cake, and my friends and I played pin the tail on the donkey. Nic goes to birthday parties at stables, Great America, Raging Waters, and the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum. Tea sandwiches or sushi, unfiltered apple juice, and wheat-free cupcakes are served.

  One afternoon, Nic announces that he wants to make a donation to the school's Toys for Tots Christmas program, and so he goes through his bedroom, weeding out most of his stuffed animals, games like Candyland and Chutes and Ladders, his trolls, and over-the-hill action figures. The bookshelves are stripped of many of the picture books to make way for the Narnia and Redwall series and E. B. White. Nic is trying hard to grow up, although selectively. He keeps the pandas and Sebastian, the stuffed Little Mermaid crab.

  Nic has antennae that detect, before most kids, upcoming waves of popular culture, ranging from My Little Pony to Masters of the Universe. Disney—101 Dalmatians and Mary Poppins—makes way for Star Wars. Nic and his friends discover Nintendo and begin speaking its impenetrable (for adults) language about minibosses, warp zones, secret levels, and pumpkins that give one-ups. One Halloween Nic is a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Michelangelo to his friend's Donatello). Another time he is Indiana Jones.

  Nic gets in mild trouble on occasion. When he spends the night at a friend's house, the two are caught making prank calls they learned about while watching The Simpsons. They call bars listed in the yellow pages.

  "Hello, may I please speak to Mr. Kaholic, first name Al?"

  "Sure, kid." To the crowd: "Is there an Al Kaholic here?"

  They break up laughing and slam down the phone.

  Next they dial random numbers from the telephone book.

  "Is there a John there?"

  After a beat: "No? Then where do you go to the bathroom?"

  Mostly, though, Nic is well behaved. One time in the comments section of his report card, a teacher writes that Nic sometimes seems a little depressed, which I share with his new therapist, with whom he meets one afternoon each week. "But," she continues, "he pulls himself out of it and is energetic, involved, fun—a leader in class." Other comments from his teachers are effusive praise of his creativity, sense of humor, compassion, participation, and stellar work.

  I keep a box in which I store his artwork and writings, like his response to an assignment in which he has been asked if you should always try your best. "I don't think you should always try your best all the time," he writes, "because, let's say a drug atick asks you for drugs you should not try your best to find him some drugs."

  Another assignment that goes into the box is a persuasive letter he writes to me when the students are asked to argue for or against whatever they choose. The note ends, "So in conclusion, I think I should be allowed to eat more snacks."

  Occasionally Nic has nightmares. In one, he arrives at school and he and his classmates have to submit to vampire checks. They are similar to the lice checks they have during an infestation. For lice checks, teachers, their hands protected in surgical gloves, move their fingers through each student's hair like a mother monkey, inspecting each follicle. With the discovery of a single nit, the infected child is sent home for delousing with Kwell and a meticulous raking with a fine-toothed comb. It hurts, bringing on the type of screams that can cause well-meaning neighbors to call Child Protective Services.

  In Nic's dream, he and his friends line up for the morning vampire check. Gloved teachers lift the sides of their lips to see if fangs have replaced their eyeteeth. The children who are vampires are instantly struck dead with a stake through the heart. Nic, recounting the dream in the car one morning, says it is unfair to the vampires, because they can't help themselves.

  I don't know if it is our constant watchfulness, the faces of missing children on milk cartons, or terrifying stories they overhear, but Nic and his friends seem unduly afraid. There is a small yard behind our apartment, but they won't play outside unless I come along. I hear other parents fret that their children are scared of the dark, cry at night, will not sleep alone, or fear sleeping over at friends' houses. After a story, before Nic goes to sleep, he asks me to check on him every fifteen minutes.

  I sing to him.

  Close your eyes

  Have no fears

  The monster's gone

  He's on the run and your daddy's here

  2

  Waaaake up!

  Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

  Up y a wake! Up ya wake! Up ya wake!

  This is Mister Señor Love Daddy.

  Your voice of choice.

  The world's only twelve-hour strongman, here on

  WE LOVE radio, 108 FM. The last on

  your dial, but the first in ya

  hearts. And that's the truth, Ruth.

  The crisp fall morning begins with Nic's recitation of the opening soliloquy from Do the Right Thing, one of his favorite movies. We dress and go for a walk in Golden Gate Park. "Look at those orangies," Nic says as we walk by the conservatory of flowers. "And, oh, the greenies and reddies and goldies! It's like last night the world was finger-painted by giants." Back home, Nic helps make pancake batter. He does everything but crack the eggs—he doesn't w
ant to get "gunky" stuff on his hands. He says that the pancakes should be Uncle Buck-sized. In the movie of the same name, they are so large that Uncle Buck uses a snow shovel in place of a spatula.

  Our apartment is a child's domain, no matter how much I try to isolate Nic's influence to his room. The place may have been cleaned the day before, but kid-sized clothes are scattered everywhere. There are board games (he trounced me last night in Stratego) and video games (we are on the penultimate level of the Legend of Zelda) and a multicolored sea of Lego in the center of the living room. In fact, Legos are everywhere—in the silverware drawer, under couch cushions, hidden among the roots of potted plants. Once, when my printer didn't work, a serviceman determined that the problem was a Lego cog jammed behind the daisy wheel.

  Awaiting the pancakes under a gallery of his paintings taped to the walls, Nic sits at the breakfast table, where he writes on lined paper with a fat red pencil. "We got to make our own pizza at school yesterday," he says. "We could choose cheddar cheese or modern jack. Hey, do you know how to spell the ooo word? They said that Jake kissed Elena and all the kids said, 'Oooooo.' Did you know that owls can turn their heads all the way around?"

  I place a pancake, disappointingly average-sized, in front of him. He pours on maple syrup, making sound effects—"eeeyaaa! hot lava!"—as I fix him a bag lunch of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, carrot sticks, an apple, a cookie, and a juice box.

  He dresses for school. While tying his shoes, he hums "Eensy Weensy Spider." We're running late, so I hurry him along, and he's soon in the backseat of the car, spitting on his Papa Bear doll.