This Is Not Over Part 16

L.A.

I knew he wouldn't say Beverly Hills. He probably pretends he's straight outta Compton.

Dawn's a great name. A new day, every day.

Thanks.

Not like Thad. What's a Thad?

A phony douche bag, maybe?

You look like dawn. All bright and clean. A fresh start.

Ha ha. If he only knew his mother had accused me of staining her sheets.

I've got to go. Good talking to you, Thad.

Talk again?

In your dreams.

"Who was that?" Rob says.

"Salina," I say. "Another heartbreak."

We exchange smiles, a brief moment of solidarity built on our presumed superiority. We drive on.

26.

Miranda

I'm sorry about how we left things.

I never meant to control you.

I've made a lot of mistakes, I know that.

I want the best for you.

How's your work going? I'd love to see more!

Thank goodness all this is by text. I could choke on my own disingenuousness. Calling his art "work," using an exclamation point at the end . . . next thing it'll be smiley-face emojis.

Thad's ignored my texts for the past day, and I can't avoid the realization that he doesn't have to get in touch ever again, now that there's no money in it. I try to tell myself that he's consumed by his art. A few hours ago, he Instagrammed a new painting that looked a lot like the last one, only with slightly different colors, but maybe that's what artists do, that's why it's a series. He's working, that's all. He'll be back in touch soon.

Unless I've sent him over the edge, and now he's on a binge. I shouldn't have delivered the news so callously. I punched him in the gut, and you should never do that to an addict.

If the devil himself had designed a drug, it would be crystal meth. It's cheap, and Thad can smoke it (he always hated needles), and it's even more potent when smoked (what a bonus). It increases dopamine, which brings on a pleasure so intense that nothing else in life can compete, and changes his brain so that he's slower and dumber and less capable of resisting. He's a hamster on a wheel.

I find myself playing a familiar game. It's called "Was It Then?" I run through Thad memories and wonder which was the fork in the road, the missed opportunity, the time when he could have become an upstanding citizen, if only I'd made the right choice.

When I chose to use formula rather than to breast-feed because it seemed more sanitary and less invasive . . .

Was it then?

When I let him cry it out in his crib, rather than comforting him. I thought it was a victory that he stopped crying altogether, that I'd made him a little man.

Was it then?

When he started having tantrums that lasted not minutes but hours, screaming and kicking with such ferocity that I sewed a version of a toddler straitjacket so that he couldn't harm himself, and I'd sit outside his room with a pillow over my head, crying and helpless, and I told Dr. Paolini something's wrong, it has to be wrong, and even though a mother knows better, I allowed him to pooh-pooh me and say it was just a phase, and I left Thad alone with all those big feelings, all that fury, and that phase went on for not months but years.

Was it then?

When he delighted in art projects, even as a young child, and I bought him all the supplies, and I dutifully hung his creations on the refrigerator, but I was so busy, I made myself so busy with housework and cooking and volunteering and clubs, because even then, he scared me. I didn't tell anyone that, not even Larry. I was so ashamed. But those were moments when I could have sat down beside him and drawn pictures myself. They would have been awful, I'm no artist, but the time spent . . . the time I failed to spend . . .

Was it then?

When he asked Larry to do father-son activities with him, sometimes Larry would, but not nearly as often as Thad wanted. I didn't push Larry because, deep down, I was jealous. What about mother-son activities? Those happened all the time. Me chauffeuring him here, and buying for him there, and arranging for him to be with his friends, and eating dinner with him while Larry was still at work, me questioning, Thad giving short answers. It's a painful thing, being found so uninteresting. I didn't know what made Larry so intriguing to Thad, except that Larry was unavailable, and I was right there, all the time.

Larry worked longer hours once Thad came along. By necessity or choice? Coincidence or avoidance? Did Larry dislike fatherhood, or did he dislike being Thad's father? I can't say, can't know, because he wouldn't share that, any more than I'd share my jealousy. Some things can't be spoken.

Was it then?

When Thad was eleven, he came home smelling of alcohol. I dismissed it. Where would Thad have gotten alcohol? I'd picked him up and dropped him off at a friend's house, and I knew those parents well. They were home, and they were supervising. There would be no open bar at the Schultzes'. So he went upstairs and went to bed, after he pecked me on the cheek.

He never pecked me on the cheek. He must have been rubbing my nose in his bad behavior. Or the boy who never cried was crying out for help.

Was it then?

He didn't like to do anything organized. No sports or clubs. Not even art lessons; just art, on his own.

If Thad had played soccer or baseball or basketball, even if he'd been a benchwarmer, or if he'd been on the debate team or the chess team, even third-string, I know Larry would have shown up for the games, the matches, the meets. Larry wanted to be a spectator; he wanted to cheer. That was the father he'd planned to be.

If I'd encouraged Thad-no, insisted-that he partic.i.p.ate in some after-school activity, anything to make him feel even temporarily like a winner, or get a job, something to limit his free time, idle hands and all that . . .

Was it then?

I spied without having the backbone to do anything with the information I gathered. I told myself I was monitoring, but I never had the guts to confront. He had condoms when he was thirteen. I counted them so I'd at least know if he was using them. There was a bong in his closet. Over time, it was gathering dust. I never found the paraphernalia of anything more serious, and I told myself that he'd experimented, and he was finished now.

Was it then?

After the dentist visit-my first encounter but far from my last with the term "meth mouth"-I returned home full of fear and self-loathing. I'd been in denial, I was a bad mother, and I couldn't avoid the truth anymore. When I saw Larry, I wept in his arms. I had failed our son.

Larry held me. He said we would get through it, together. What he really meant was that he was taking over, thank you very much, and a big part of me was relieved.

Larry said that Thad didn't need a drug program; he needed structure. He needed consequences. We could provide that. He felt that the dentist was well-meaning but alarmist in his inpatient recommendation. What does a dentist know about rehab, anyway? We could handle this. I was to be the presiding corporal to Larry's general.

Larry seemed as sure as the dentist had. And I didn't live with the dentist. So I went along with Larry's plan.

I was the one who had to implement the consequences Larry devised. But after hours of Thad's yowling and diatribes, I'd start to wobble and, eventually, buckle. Not all the time, but enough to encourage Thad. To make him think he could win if he persisted.

There were many little betrayals of Larry along the way, before the big ones. Larry gave a consequence that I thought was too punitive, one that I knew I wouldn't be able to follow through on, and instead of speaking up, I would invalidate it. I'd sneak Thad his favorite food, or let him out of his grounding early. He would spin such glorious stories, perhaps as a reward, all about the things he was going to do with his future, and what he'd realized about the perils of drug use. "They don't make me creative," he would say, "they just trick me into thinking I am. I'm smarter than the drugs now, Mom."

All the while, what I was really doing was trying to make him love me. If I released him from prison, if I granted him early parole, wouldn't he have to love me?

I like to think he believed those things while he was saying them, that they were his own hopes for himself. He wanted to be smarter than the drugs, and he knew I wanted that for him, so he said it like it was true. I was the receptacle for all his wishful thinking.

All that wasted time, with me trying to do what I obviously couldn't, subst.i.tuting one denial for another, while Thad's progressive disease progressed.

Was it then?

I finally told Larry that the plan wasn't working, that Thad was getting worse. Larry went into research mode, finding the best adolescent treatment facility he could.

Thad began attending intensive outpatient treatment five days a week, where he surprised us all with his seeming compliance and two months of clean urine tests. Then came the overdose, and that awful ambulance ride where I revisited every mistake I'd ever made and prayed for another chance. Thad spent a few hours in the ER, followed by a week in the psychiatric hospital. We were told he might be bipolar, it was hard to make a definitive diagnosis until Thad had been clean for a while.

We said he had been clean for a while, we'd seen the test results; the psychiatrist said that Thad had confessed to his continued use throughout the program. "He was tricking the test," he said, "maybe using someone else's urine."

Someone else's urine. The words every parent dreams of hearing.

Thad's confession may or may not have been true, but it got him kicked out of the intensive outpatient treatment program. They told us that his needs exceeded their capacity. Join the club.

We tried three different inpatient rehabs. He never lasted more than six weeks. At the first, he physically attacked another boy while on a meth bender (the rehab didn't know how he'd gotten the meth). He was ejected from his next rehab after he started a fire while trying to turn cleaning supplies into meth. Then there was the locked facility in Utah where we paid out of pocket and were told he had "incited the other boys to riot." When Larry hung up, he went silent with rage. Then he finally said, in a voice so caustic I felt burned by it, "So Thad's got leaders.h.i.+p skills that we never suspected."

Home again.

Was it then?

Thad begged us to let him stay for good. He said that sending him away was only making him worse, and indeed, it did seem so. He now had acne, and open sores, and his teeth were worse from the clenching of his jaw. The dental work cost thousands.

I can't know if it really was the meth fueling him, if he was that out of control or if those were calculated risks, exit strategies. Larry felt sure that it was the latter. He'd lost his patience with making calls to colleagues, and with Thad's willful decision to remain an addict. That's how Larry saw it, no matter how many books I left lying around that said Thad was in the grip of an insidious disease. Larry felt that Thad was choosing to destroy his own life, and ours.

Thad did stay home, because Larry had given up on finding a new placement, and he went back into an outpatient program, one with such low standards that no one could be denied treatment. There were dirty drug tests, and sneaking out, and stealing from us.

Someday, we privately rea.s.sured ourselves, he would be eighteen. Then the world would give him his consequences, and he would have to learn, finally. We would no longer be responsible.

He was, after all, still attending his "treatment" program. At least those were three hours each weekday when I knew he wasn't using.

We told ourselves we'd tried everything. But was it true?

Was it then?

Strangely, Thad was showing up for school and getting good grades. He claimed the meth helped because he was able to stay up all night and study; I didn't even bother contradicting him anymore. He said that he was going to go to college, and when he did, he'd leave all this behind him, like meth was child's play. It was a facsimile of opening up to me, and even if he was spewing nonsense, I was happy just to have that much connection with him.

Then I learned that he was dealing drugs. I was crushed. I'd thought he'd confined his problems to our home, but to think that he was leading other kids, other families, down this same path was devastating.

I did something I'm not proud of, something I would certainly never admit to Larry, something that may have planted the seeds for what was to come: I started to give Thad money again. Yes, I knew it would support his habit, but I couldn't stomach the alternative.

Was it then?

I told myself it could have been much worse. He really was going to school, and he would be accepted to college. His skin had cleared up, and while he was still thin, he wasn't malnourished. The surliness and the rages had abated. He was a functional addict, and there are plenty who aren't. He seemed to be keeping it under control. Was it what I wanted for him? Of course not. But it was the best I could do.

Larry had stopped attending family sessions, and he didn't ask about the results of the drug tests. Once again, Thad was my domain.

I hadn't given up. I was just trying a different approach. It was one that I wouldn't talk about at Nar-Anon meetings, and eventually, I stopped attending those altogether. I did reading into the harm reduction approach, and that seemed more attainable than total abstinence. But I knew that Twelve Step was all or nothing, black and white. They'd never approve of what I was embracing, which was the lesser evil. Fighting to put Thad into one more rehab wasn't going to get him to college. Thousands of people go to rehab and they overdose anyway. Some of them die.

When he was accepted into UC Santa Barbara, perhaps on the strength of a personal essay on overcoming drug addiction, he was obviously excited. He was seeking pleasure in something outside of meth. There was good reason for optimism.

Only he went away and started to binge and tweak and there was the hospitalization for the seizure and another overdose . . . was it then?

Or is it now?

I just told him I'm cutting him off. I didn't use those words, but that's what he heard. If I stick with that, it could be what he needs to really get himself together, once and for all. Or this could be the thing that causes him to feel hopeless and use, perhaps in large amounts. He could overdose again, and this time, he might not wake up.

I don't know which way to go now, same as I didn't know all those other times. There's no road map to follow. I try to tell myself that he's responsible for his own actions, but I also know that meth has stunted his development; it's short-circuited his brain. He's stalled at the age he first started using seriously. That means he's got the judgment and impulse control of a twelve-year-old, if that. And I've abandoned him.

Nar-Anon would say that every day is an opportunity. Thad's still alive, so I did something right. Where there's life, there's hope.

I have to believe that.

27.

Dawn

I'm so alone, I can't stand it.