Flotilla

by Daniel Haight

  About 9 o’clock that night I’m in my bedroom, still fuming, when the phone rings. It’s Riley and he’s laughing his butt off. “Hey baby,” he says laughing.

  “Where have you been all day? I’ve been trying to get more info out of you and she’s denying everything!” I was ready to reach through the phone and throttle him.

  “Of course she’s denying everything, what do you expect?” He was still laughing.

  “Whattaya mean?”

  “I made it up.”

  His laughing and my current state of mind made me a little slow. The sentence took a few seconds to register. “What?”

  “I made it up. I was yanking your chain.”

  I went mad … seriously. Completely bonkers. He hung up on me, still laughing, as I screamed at him like I did at Emil at the good ol’ Mugu Rock. Marty and Mom ran into my room convinced I caught my balls in a light socket or something. I tried to get Stacy back on chat but she was offline and Mom wouldn’t spring for a phone call. “It’s too expensive…emergencies only,” she said. Relationship emergencies didn’t count, I found out. I was frantic; I sent an email to Dad late that night. He got back to me the next morning. Sounds like I screwed up … he would do what he could. I waited on pins and needles.

  Dad decided in his infinite wisdom to cut me a break and explain the whole thing to Ethan who in turn explained it all to Stacy. Imagine a father sticking up for his daughter’s boyfriend – it doesn’t happen often but in the end they both went to bat for me. Now that I think about it, this was a huge favor. Stacy and I spent a lot of time making up and inventing steamy scenarios via instant messenger and email for ‘make up time’ when I got back out there. We had a relationship to mend.

  But what to do about Riley? Great prank but I was still pissed that he’d pulled it on me and I wanted some payback. I asked Dad and all he said was “Hey, I just saved your relationship.” Miguel? I didn’t bother asking. It was necessary to get Riley … it was a moral imperative.

  A gay kid in my English class was offended when I asked him what I wanted but then he decided it was funny after all. He gave me a picture of himself with his digits on the back and I mailed it off to Riley, courtesy the Pac Fish offices that accepted mail for all colony residents. The first picture he ignored, the third or fourth, I got an email from Riley. All he wrote was “IS THIS YOU?”

  I had forgotten the prank and replied back “What?” Then he breaks open with this story about a rapist sending him pictures and planning to ‘do something’. He sounded genuinely freaked out and it was all I could do not to give the game away. I stayed with my “I know nothing” line. I took a picture I had of Riley and started putting his face on a variety of beefcake pictures to email them. I started getting updates from Stacy when his mom heard and freaked completely out.

  She had the IT staff at Pac Fish trace the mails and demanded they run it down as a potential terrorist threat. The gay kid used a fake address and they never traced it farther than the high school library computer. He didn’t know what high school I went to so it was a perfect cover.

  Probation ended, finally. I had my last visit with my probation officer, a last urine test and that was that. Mom was happy but she still got on me about school and Stacy. The tone of the conversation was the same except for Instead of ‘slacking through high school because of your hoodlum friends’, I was ‘slacking through high school sending emails to your girlfriend’. We fought about once a day over something and the whole house was on edge because of us.

  As luck would have it, I got stuck one night about three weeks before the end of the school year. Marty and Madison were out at the store and I was up in my room playing video games while Mom had her friends over for cocktails. I stopped for a biology break between rounds and on my way to the bathroom I caught part of a conversation that sounded like it had something to do with me. I stuck around for a listen. It’s always jolting to hear your parents discussing you like a kid you barely know. She was answering someone’s question.

  Mom sounded a little buzzed when she said “Who knows?” Another muffled voice said something I couldn’t make out and Mom responded. “Some girl he met out there. I swear the only reason I sent him out there was because it was either that or county jail. In county, he’d have been the girlfriend instead of having one!” The girls broke up laughing at that one … Glad you think rape is funny, Mom.

  “It’s just that…I don’t know where he’s going these days,” she confessed to the wall. “He was such a sweet boy when he was younger and then, he was drinking and getting arrested every month. He turned around after the last summer, working on the boat with his dad but now he’s starting to go back the other way again!”

  The conversation went downhill from there and I was burning at every word. The fact that Mom just dumped my business out there like that in front of a bunch of old cows – man … it just blows my mind sometimes. I felt like she was betraying me but it was more like ‘betraying me and doing something I’d never do to you.’ I stood there, listening to them and getting nauseous from rage. After a while, I just went back to my room.

  I never told her that I had heard what she said. She always had my problems chambered for whenever she was in a corner she didn’t like. “I may not be the world’s best mother,” she’d yell shrilly, “but I was there to get you out of jail!” What else could I say after that? Stacy was sympathetic but she was over a hundred miles out to sea and there’s only so much anyone can say or do in that situation.

  I had another “Big Fourth” moment the next day. Mom and Marty busted me for drinking some of Mom’s cheap tequila while they were at some RV & Boat Show. Madison was gone and I had the house to myself. Normally, that’s a chance to kick back in my boxers and watch some movies on the big TV. I was looking for something to eat when I saw the bottles on the top shelf of the pantry. Mom and Marty had some margaritas from the night before and she bore some grains of salt. I wanted to see if I could handle it now, and took a half-shot while I was standing pants-less in the kitchen.

  If you haven’t had some in a while, the peppery taste of cheap tequila tastes like the expensive stuff. I had that half-shot and before I could say “that was good” I was pouring myself two more. I carried the tumbler back out to the living room and nursed it through two old sitcoms – “I Love Lucy” and “The Brady Bunch”, I think. Took another two and balanced a tower of crackers on top of a plastic tub of hummus to carry back to the television. By the time I was done, the half-bottle was down to a quarter and I was caroming off of the furniture to get back and try and add enough water so that it looked like none was missing. What did they care? It’s not like you can taste the difference if you mix it.

  Well, they did taste it. Marty noticed that the Sauza had turned a weird color during their absence. He took a small taste and his eyes narrowed. Mom had a sip and there wasn’t anything else to say. I just imagined that this is what happened, actually, because I was sleeping it off in my room when they burst in.

  Of course they smelled it on me. I was under the covers and sweating – I practically reeked of booze. Marty was pissed and called an immediate Family Meeting. I’m a mean drunk and a sloppy one, it turns out. I slumped into the couch as Mom and Marty both sat down and said, “Boy, we haven’t had one of these in a while. Who’s knocking over the trash cans this time?”

  “Still the weisenheimer, Jim?” Mom asked. She slapped me, hard, across my face. I was still buzzed and it didn’t really hurt.

  “I didn’t raise you to be trash,” she hissed. “I didn’t work to put myself through college while Madison was doing chemotherapy, I didn’t re-marry, we didn’t make this home so you could get blitzed and turn into the loser you so obviously want to become!” She reached out, grabbed me by the collar and gave me this little Alpha Shake. Marty reached out to stop her but it was over before he could move. “What’s gotten into you? Why do you want to do this to yourself?”

  That actually was a great question. I h
adn’t the slightest idea and I wished someone would tell me. Why did I want to drink? I knew what it did to me – knew what a hangover felt like. I knew that every time, every time, I’d come out of it going ‘This is the last time I do this.’ So why do it again? I was 14 at the time and the concept of addiction was fuzzy to me. I was sort of hungover when they discussed it in health class.

  Before I could answer, Marty stepped in. He’s a slight man, but with powerful shoulders and he works out a lot. I never took him for a tough guy but he was both pissed and concerned. That brought the toughness out.

  “Here’s what it is,” he said. “Ala-Teen. 30 meetings in 30 days.” My head was buzzing and I wasn’t exactly sure what he was saying. This was all so confusing…why couldn’t they let me sleep? “You have a problem, Jim, and we need to know how to deal with it.”

  I was furious. AA? They wanted me to go to AA? Man, all I did was slip a little after months … months of keeping it together! This makes me an alcoholic? I was ready to give them all of this information but the tequila was keeping me from putting it together. All I got out was “justhadafewdrinks…”

  “Enough is enough, Jim,” Marty answered. “You’re 14, you shouldn’t be drinking at all. If this is where you are at 14 I don’t know where you’ll be when you’re 18 or 25.” When he stood they both seemed to be standing very far away from me. “Anyway, this is out of your hands. We’re going tonight and you’ll go every other night until you leave for your Dad's place.”

  I started swearing at the both of them. Swearing like that little girl in ‘The Exorcist’. I even surprised myself. For a few seconds, I thought maybe it was a trick, like someone was doing an impression of me, but then I realized the truth. I couldn’t believe I was saying stuff like this but I was. Mean, vicious insults that started with ‘you’re not my real Dad’ and ended with ‘I know why Dad left you’.

  When I want to be an ass – I really outdo myself.

  I ran out of words, finally, and waited for the killing stroke. Mom and Marty received what I said in silence. Marty’s face was wooden and Mom looked like she wanted to cry. Marty broke the silence.

  “You’re a mean drunk, Jim,” was all he said. “This is a really ugly side of you.” That's something we all could agree on.

  It took an effort on Mom’s part not to take the top of my head off, but she managed. “I’m ashamed of you,” Mom said and then stalked off to the kitchen.

  Marty didn’t move … he was staring me down. He didn’t look so much angry as hurt and disappointed. All my anger and meanness came down 'Mom was here and Dad was out there.' Dad was out on the ocean because he couldn’t get it together to live here on the land. Me and Madison couldn’t make up a single, normal family out of the pieces we had to work with. Mom vents a bunch of crap to her friends and it made me feel like she didn't care about me at all. I needed a month to process all of this but right at the moment, however, I was a drunken teenager in my underpants, wrecked on the couch. The room was spinning violently, instead of just pleasantly rocking. It was the hallmark of oncoming puke instead of just a standard buzz.

  I’ve been drinking so much that I know the difference now. Maybe I do need help.

  I was sullen and silent as we drove to my first AA session. Not Ala-Teen for some reason, I guess that was on a different night or too far away. Marty changed his evening plans and we ate early. We showed up at the meeting in Pamona just in time to hear the opening introductions. Marty didn’t pressure me to do or say anything and I just spent the time listening to what some of these guys and gals had gone through to get to whatever got them here. The coffee was pretty good.

  I still wanted to get out of going to any other meetings. I came up with stomachaches and I sprang homework assignments on them. Marty shrugged and pointed to the car.

  Gee, you think he was on to me?

  I’m not saying that what I heard in those meetings had any impact on me. I heard some truly horrific stories and it made me realize what a whiner I had been. I didn’t let this onto Marty, though. I kept finding ways to make each trip as irritating and time-consuming as possible. He never took the bait, he just made sure my butt was in the chair every time and that I was to listen politely.

  I tried to smuggle my headphones into one meeting – he snapped them up and pocketed them. I never saw my headphones again. I tried asking for them but he gave me this violent look. I shut up after that.

  So no big moral here ... they got me to the AA meetings. I didn’t have much of a choice and I went. I didn’t get much out of them and still no closer to why I liked to drink. The shame of it made me depressed and those last few weeks at home before I shipped out again were pretty tense.

  Mom came to my room the night before I left and shut the door behind her. I was packing my stuff into my sea bag from the Winter Break trip. We hadn’t had much to say to each other this whole time and now I was bracing myself for The Big Speech. It was going to be painful for the both of us.

  “I guess we’re saying good-bye the way we did last year,” she said hesitantly. When I didn’t reply, she added, “That’s pretty sad, Jim.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re too young to be this messed up. I asked you a question last year … do you remember?”

  “Not really.”

  “You don’t remember what I asked you in the Denny’s last year before I dropped you off and you went away from me for three months?”

  “No,” I lied. I did remember the question. I remember breaking down and crying in public and feeling like such a wuss afterward. Some things, you just want to forget. Who, me? Drink? No, I don’t like to drink. Cry in public with your mom? You must be trippin’, dude. I don’t do stuff like that…I’m a tough guy.

  There were times, lying in my bunk and dog-tired, that I’d remember those moments. Or I would simply be feeling low about how things were going, about how hard the job was, and my thoughts would return to that painful moment. My dad would see the look on my face. “Your sins are weighing heavy on you tonight,” he’d say and then stay out of my way.

  I hated guys like Mitch, who didn’t live with the same guilt that I felt, the shame I felt, for screwing up what should have been an otherwise perfect life. Doing my probation, I’d look at the other kids around me who weren’t thinking about anything beyond grades or clothes or getting laid or high or whatever. Kid things, not adult things. They certainly were not worried about getting their records expunged when they turned 18 or getting violated on their probation because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even if I didn’t drink before, I’d start because keeping everything straight in this world is a gift beyond anyone’s ability to give.

  Even me.

  So I lied to my mom and told her that I didn't know. It was so much crap …. She could see on my face that I knew exactly what she was talking about. This time, she wasn’t content to just leave it for Dad and the Colony to straighten out.

  “I asked you why, Jim,” she said. “Why do you drink?”

  “I don’t kno-“

  “Don’t know doesn’t count this time,” she said. “Everything. Everything you’ve been through and you’re still drinking.”

  “I drank once!” I fumed. I toed the line, didn’t she see that?

  “You were passed out, you idiot!” she flared. She called me a knucklehead or an idiot when she wanted to say something worse but censored herself out of parental duty. “You drank until you passed out and you’re almost 15 years old. You seriously think half of a bottle of tequila isn’t a problem?”

  “No, but…” I just gave up. She wouldn’t understand it. She’d lecture me like this and then she’d be back with her hen party on Friday or Saturday, boozed up and ‘venting’. They would understand her, but no one would take the time to understand me. That’s why I drank … but it was more than I could put into words for her. I really wanted this conversation to be over but we weren’t done yet.

  “But what?”

 
“…nothing.”

  “So what’s up? Why do you drink?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you not know, Jim?” she yelled suddenly and I jumped. “If you don’t know, who does? I’ve known you for your entire life and now I feel like I don’t know you at all!”

  We stood there, staring at each other, for seconds and then minutes. I had no response and I eventually started staring at the floor. Mom had a way of breaking me down until all I could do was stand there and take it.

  “Something’s wrong, Jim – this isn’t acceptable. You know that, right?” The evening air was filled with the hum of street noises and I had no choice but to nod. ”This has to end. Somehow, some way – you’re going to figure out why you drink and stop doing it or this is going to ruin you.” Seconds passed while I processed this. She turned and left the room without another word.

  The next morning, Marty drove me to the dock and we made the entire 90-minute drive in complete silence. I felt like my life was irrevocably broken with Mom and Marty. Our lives were a house that had just burned to the ground. I had no idea what tomorrow would bring.

  It was a clear, hot day when I arrived back on the Big C. Another trip out in Ignacio’s fishing boat and I spent most of the trip in the pulpit at the nose of the ship, just enjoying the breeze and letting the dip of the boat be my little extreme-sport diversion for the trip. Ignacio, for his part, had about as much to say to me as he ever did. The rolling didn’t bother me like it did back in December.

  Actually, I enjoyed it – it was like going back out to your favorite vacation spot. You relish those little details that you didn’t realize that you missed. When he spun the wheel to head into the Maze, the old Asian lady who I saw when I first arrived here waved to me and I waved back. Her name was Greta Lee and she was friendly. I knew that. I felt like an old sea dog because I knew that.