“You talking stink about me?” I asked them.
“Choke.” Erin laughed. The Hawaiian expression for a lot. All three of us were haoles, but we had embraced the Hawaiian language. Erin’s eyes darted around the station. “Let’s go outside for a sec.”
We stepped out into the bright Maui sunshine. This is it, I thought. They were about to tell me that they knew about my using. I quickly formulated my strategy. I would tell them that yes, I was using, that I had tried ice once to get closer to one of my dealers and hadn’t been able to stop. I would plead with them to keep it a secret. I didn’t know much about Erin, but I knew Dina wouldn’t judge me. She was my friend. She knew what went with the territory.
“We’re worried about you,” Dina began.
Her words brought me a little relief. I couldn’t stop on my own, that much was clear, but they would help me. I could wipe the drug out of my life, like it had never existed.
“We’ve noticed you’re getting really thin,” Erin was saying.
I knew I was losing weight, but this was the first time anyone had mentioned it. You don’t eat when you’re using meth, and even if you do eat, your metabolism is running so fast you can’t keep weight on. I had even had to buy new uniform pants.
Dina said, “You told us you were anorexic when you were a teenager. We’re worried you might be going down that road again.”
I searched their faces, trying to figure out if they were really trying to get at something else. They looked sincere. And concerned.
“I know I’m getting thin,” I said. “I’ve just been so stressed. With work and everything.”
“You’re a ripper,” Erin said, “and everybody knows it, but there’s limits, girl.”
“You have to start taking better care of yourself,” Dina said.
“I know,” I said. I was touched by how caring they were. How they really wanted to help me. MPD takes care of its own. For maybe ten seconds, I considered telling them the truth—one of many times I thought about coming clean to somebody. But of course I didn’t.
“Come out with us after work tonight,” Erin said. “Have a burger and a milkshake.”
“We’ll fatten you up,” Dina said.
“Sure!” I said, enthusiastically. “I’d love to come. Thanks, guys.” That was my usual tactic—agreeing to attend a social event and then not showing up. Or dropping by for a few minutes at most—just long enough for people to know I had been there.
True to form, after work I texted Dina that I would try to stop by, but instead I worked late at the station and then went home for a couple of hours. I needed to fit in a hit before meeting Keawe.
After Erin’s and Dina’s comments, I tried to gain some weight by eating as much as I could and drinking a lot of protein shakes, but Keawe mentioned my weight loss too, a week or two later.
“Have you been talking to Erin and Dina?” I asked him.
“Nah, but you’re losing your curves, babe. Your okole is getting bony,” he said, slapping my ass. I was surprised that he would notice. Generally, he liked me thin. His wife was thin, and it made me happy to be thinner than she was.
I started making the trip to Honolulu with some regularity. I carried the ice in my jeans pocket when I was flying back and forth, oblivious to what would happen if it was discovered. I didn’t worry about getting searched by security. I had my badge, but also, when you’re using you feel like you’re untouchable anyway. I never got caught. Once I left my ice packet in the rental car and when I went back for it, two guys were already cleaning the car.
“I think I forgot something in my car,” I said.
“No,” one of them said, and snickered. “We didn’t find anything.” Both of them started laughing, and I knew they would be smoking my ice as soon as they got off work. Assholes.
Every time I flew to Honolulu, it was the last time. Every time I got a packet of ice, I told myself it was the last packet. In reality, I was using more and more. At first I’d go to see Angel once a month, and then it became every three weeks. Seven months into using, I was making the trip every two weeks.
My drug use was progressing, but my work was progressing also. Because I wasn’t sleeping, I was working all the time. I dug deep into the narcotics network; people began to trust me and I was building up a CI base.
I was getting lots of praise at work, and letters of commendation from the chief about my cases. I needed three years on patrol before they could promote me, and I had only six more months to go. With all my narcotics work, I was a shoo-in for vice.
10
My birthday fell on a Saturday that March. I knew Keawe had the day off so I scheduled a day off for myself too. As the week went on, I kept waiting for him to say something about it. He knew the date, and though we hadn’t done much for my birthday the previous year, this year I was fixated on it. Keawe and I had been together for eighteen months now, and I expected more from him.
My friends at work bought me a little cake on Friday and sang to me. I told everybody I had plans for Saturday and sat home alone, waiting for Keawe to call. My mom called. My sister called. My aunt and Mimi and a couple of my cousins called, and I told all of them that I was celebrating later with a bunch of friends. A lie: I had no friends, except my fellow cops. What girl in her twenties doesn’t have friends? All I had was work. And meth. And work. And more meth.
And, I thought, Keawe.
By evening, when I still hadn’t heard from him, I knew I wouldn’t. My meth paranoia had started to kick in, and I decided that he was punishing me, that he had found out about my ice use and wanted to make me pay for it. I had been smoking meth all day and now smoked even more. I paced around my apartment, wanting to throw things, wanting to jump off the lanai. I couldn’t stop thinking about Keawe, and about another man who wouldn’t be calling on my birthday. My father, Ian.
I was twenty-seven years old and hadn’t seen him in almost eight years.
After my father moved out of our house when I was in high school, he hid from our family, keeping his new address and phone number a secret from us. He didn’t want my mom knowing where he lived; he wanted to keep as much distance between them as possible. All I had was his work number, which his secretary answered, so in order to see my father I had to make an appointment with the woman he left my mother for.
It was horrible. I was a teenage girl who wanted her father to love her, and he had no time for me. I refused to have that kind of relationship, so when I was nineteen, on Father’s Day, I found out where he and his secretary/girlfriend, Claire, were living and I showed up at the house. It was a beautiful walled home in the Albuquerque country club area. I was furious to see him living there while my mom was struggling to pay the mortgage each month.
The house had a little stream running through the front yard. A fucking stream. To reach the front door, I had to go through a gate and walk over the bridge that crossed the stream.
I was all dressed up in nice suit pants and a black sweater. I rang the doorbell and of course she answered.
“Oh, hello,” she said.
“I want to talk to my father,” I said. I held a Father’s Day card for him in my left hand.
He came down and we all stood awkwardly in the foyer.
“Happy Father’s Day, Dad,” I said, and handed him the card.
“Thank you,” he said.
“I need to talk to you.” I glanced at the secretary. “Can we talk alone?”
“I have no secrets from Claire,” he said.
“Please,” I said. “It’s really important.”
“Alli,” he said. “What is it? I don’t have a lot of time.”
But we were so close! I wanted to shout at him. I was a daddy’s girl!
“Let’s go sit down in the library,” Claire said.
We walked down the hall and through a kitchen that seemed to be made all of copper—copper sink, copper island, copper pots hanging down from a rack on the ceiling. In the library, there were hundreds of b
ooks on the built-in shelves, but they didn’t look like books anyone would read. They almost looked color-coordinated, chosen for their covers and not what was inside.
“Sit down,” Claire said. She and my father sat side by side on a plush loveseat and I sat across from them on an uncomfortable upright chair. A ridiculous-looking cat jumped on Claire’s lap and she sat there petting it while they both stared at me.
“Well,” I said nervously. “It’s just about our, our relationship. I need it to be different.”
My father didn’t say anything. I glanced over his shoulder and saw a picture of me on the mantel. You fake fuck, I thought. How dare you have a picture of me in your house when you wouldn’t even tell me where you live?
“I miss you, Dad. I want to see you more. I want to be able to call you directly instead of making an appointment,” I said. “I want you to call me and ask me out to lunch.” I poured my heart out to him in a way that I hadn’t done before. I had always kept my thoughts to myself. All the while Claire glared at me, and my father sat there like he was obligated to do so.
Glancing around the room, I saw pieces of furniture that had been in my grandfather’s house. My grandfather—my father’s father—had been a wonderful man, and I had loved him, but as he got older, my father had frozen him out of the family business. When he became unable to take care of himself, my father left him in a caretaker’s house across town. He died alone, and my mother, sister, and I hadn’t been welcome at his funeral.
What right do you have to his furniture, you fuck?
My father stared at me, giving no reaction. When I finished talking, he said, “It sounds like I can’t give you the kind of relationship you want.”
“What, Dad? Why?” Tears welled up in my eyes.
“I just can’t give that to you. There’s no room for that in my life.”
“There’s no room for me in your life?”
“I guess that’s all I have to say,” my father said.
“I better go.” I got up and walked to the door, fighting tears.
As I left, my father tried to hug me. When I was little, he had been very affectionate with my sister and me. He had given great hugs. But now, I thought, Hug me? After you told me you didn’t want me?
I crossed over the stream and back to my car.
Sobbing, I drove back to my mom’s house. I cried and cried in her arms all night and never talked about it again. My mom would ask me about it now and then and I would completely close down. I detached from that day, from him, but I always felt so hurt by what he had said to me.
After that day, my father and I never spoke. The odd birthday card came, usually signed by her, and for my twentieth birthday he had sent me a Swarovski crystal bear—Swarovski was a passion of Claire’s, so I knew she picked it out, not him. Every year, I held out hope that he would call on my birthday. My mom sent him emails updating him on my whereabouts, my activities, but he never replied. He and Claire moved to Florida, but we only found that out much later. He hadn’t called when I graduated from the academy. He hadn’t called at all.
I hadn’t seen or spoken to him since that Father’s Day almost eight years ago.
“Asshole,” I yelled, not sure if I was addressing Keawe or my father.
To calm myself down I started speedballing—taking Oxycontin and mixing it with meth. I had seized the oxy on a traffic stop, and I took it to try to mellow me out, but it just made me crazier. I’m not an opiate person. Uppers are my thing. I thought I was going to die a couple of times during that weekend because my heart was beating so fast. Finally I got smart and stopped the Oxycontin, but my withdrawals were insane. I stayed home from work on Monday and was really sick. So sick I couldn’t even smoke meth for a few days. But in the end I thought, If I can get off the Oxycontin, I can quit meth any time I want.
Keawe called me on Monday. “Hey,” he said. “I didn’t hear from you all weekend. Whatcha been doing?”
“It was my birthday,” I said.
“Oh shit, I forgot!” he said, and I could tell by the spontaneous way he spoke that he was telling the truth. “You must be so pissed at me, Alli. Geez, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he said. “I’ll get you a present. We’ll celebrate.”
“Great,” I said. Right, I thought.
• • •
Shortly after my birthday, I made a trip home to New Mexico to see my granddad, my mother’s father. He was terminally ill with lung cancer. He had been diagnosed in the late fall and had been given a choice: no chemo and he would be dead within three weeks, or chemo and the possibility of six months. We were all happy that he had chosen chemo. We were in month five now, and with no one really able to predict how long he was going to live, I knew I needed to spend some time with him in Albuquerque.
It was the first real break I had taken from work since I started at MPD.
I was high the entire time.
“I need more time, Alli,” Granddad told me as we sat in the courtyard of his house, soaking up some early April sun. He glanced across the courtyard at his studio and nodded sadly. Granddad had been a professor of architecture, but later in his life he had become a painter of some renown.
“I still have ideas for paintings I want to do. There’s just not enough time.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
“Do you like your work?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I answered. “I love my work.”
“That’s good. Me, I wasted too many years. In my heart I was really a painter. It’s important to find out what you are in your heart.”
“I guess I’m a cop in my heart,” I said.
He nodded wisely. “I guess my granddaughter is smarter than I am,” he teased. “Me, I wasted too much time filling my life with things I didn’t want to do.”
It was painful later to think I was high during that time. I knew that this would be the last time I saw him, and I felt such shame as he told me how proud he was of me. No, I wanted to say. I’m not smarter than you, Granddad. I’m a drug addict.
My shame catapulted me into extreme using. I had figured one packet of ice would last me through my whole trip to Albuquerque, but it didn’t. After a few days I had to go out looking for dope.
I took my granddad’s nice Subaru and drove down East Central, heading into the projects, where I clearly didn’t belong. The War Zone, we called it. I found a prostitute who introduced me to a pimp who said he could get me some dope for two hundred dollars. I gave him the two hundred and he gave me a plastic baggie, but when I opened up the plastic bag, I saw that all it contained was the powder residue from crack pipes.
I was so desperate, I snorted the residue. My nose burned so badly I thought I would have to go to the ER. My right eye felt like it was going to pop out of my head.
I drove around a little bit longer, until I saw a woman smoking crack. When I asked her where she got her dope, she introduced me to her pimp, who found me some ice. It wasn’t as good as the ice in Hawaii, but it got me through.
Another prostitute introduced me to a guy who gave me dope but also took me to the casino. I wasn’t willing to prostitute myself for the drug—I still had money—so I just obliged him by going to the casino with him all night. In the morning I got home just before everyone was getting up. I took advantage of my mom’s alcoholism. She would pass out at seven, my grandparents would go to bed at nine, and I would be out and back home in the morning before they got up.
I lost that time with Granddad. I know he would be proud that I’m sober now, but I wish I had been then. Or I could have used that time to talk to him about my addiction. He knew all about addiction.
Granddad had been sober for more than twenty years at this point, but Mimi offered him a martini one night. “I’m sure it’s okay,” she said. “It can’t matter now.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to miss a single minute.”
When I left, I gave
him the tweed newsboy cap I had been wearing all week. He had admired it. “I don’t need it,” I told him. “You have it.” I was pleased that I could give him something, even if it was such a silly thing. He was wearing tracksuits at that time, and the last I saw him, he was wearing a purple velour tracksuit with that tweed cap, sitting at the kitchen table with a blanket on his lap.
I went home to Maui and swore off dope, vowing that Granddad would live and I would get sober. I actually stopped using briefly and started to gain some weight.
Two weeks later, I got the call that Granddad had died. I turned around and headed back to Albuquerque. The department was very understanding. I had already taken time off to visit him, and they were happy to allow me another week to go back to his funeral.
I had some sober time at the funeral. My cousin Ken was high on heroin at the funeral, but not me. I barely fit into my clothes because I was gaining so much weight.
I thought I had beat it. I was hell-bent on living in the right. I was done. I was never going to pick up again.
And I was going to stop my affair with a married man. When I went back to Maui, I planned to break it off with Keawe. I had been so upset that Keawe couldn’t come to the funeral and thought, That’s it. He’s not here when I need him. Ever. It’s over.
But without meth I felt exhausted, tired, emotional. I felt I couldn’t handle the situation with Keawe without it. In classic addict behavior, I used Granddad’s funeral as an excuse to pick up.
I relapsed pretty hard while I was in Albuquerque that second time. I could only take two hundred out of the ATM every day, so I stole a thousand dollars from my mom and went and gambled. I lost it all and then the next night I stole another grand and won it all back. I spent eight hundred one night on crack and meth with a crackhead and made up some story about how the car got towed and I had to get it out of the yard and pay all these fees.
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