Crystal Lies (16 page)

As I bent down to scrape the remnants of my soggy French toast from my plate into the garbage can beneath the sink (since we have no luxuries like garbage disposals), I totally fell apart. I lost it. I started sobbing so hard and uncontrollably that I collapsed onto the kitchen floor. And there I sat, knees pulled up to my chest, hunched over in a heap of flannel pajamas and bathrobe, and I cried.

“Mom?” I heard his voice. It was smaller now, more like the old Jacob or maybe even the little boy who used to pick me surprise bouquets of flowers when I was feeling down. “Are you okay?”

Despite my need to reassure him, to pull myself together so he wouldn’t feel bad, I was unable. I just kept crying.

“Mom?” he said again, his hand on my shoulder now. “Should I call someone?”

I continued sobbing.

“Should I call Dad?”

At the sound of that question, which felt more like a threat or a rude awakening, I looked up and shook my head. “No, I…I’m going to…to be o…okay I’m…just upset.”

“Yeah.”

I started to stand up, and he reached down to give me a hand. Then I stood and looked him in the eyes. “I can’t take it anymore, Jacob,” I told him. “I think I’m really losing it.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I can see that.”

Then I saw my brown paper bag, still sitting under the sink where I’d stashed it earlier. Out of sight, out of mind. I wished. I reached for the bag and pulled it out, setting it on the counter. “I believe these are yours, Jacob.”

He looked puzzled but then slowly opened the bag and looked in. I could tell by his expression that he was surprised. And this was a little confusing since he’d obviously seen that I’d looked under his bed. Surely he knew that I’d discovered them.

“Where did you find these?” he asked, still staring at the bag in fascination. Almost as if he liked what he was seeing in there, as if he was proud.

“Underneath your futon mattress.” My heart was beginning to pound. I knew I was getting in way too deep right now, but what choice did I have? I couldn’t pretend like this was nothing. Still, what if Jacob got angry? What if he was under the effect of some chemical even as we spoke? I’d read stories about people who’d done crazy things under the influence of drugs. How could I be sure he wouldn’t do something violent now? I glanced over to the phone, not far from his elbow.

“So you think they’re mine?”

I pressed my lips together. “Jacob, they’re not mine.”

“But someone else might’ve put them there, Mom.”

“Jacob, please, don’t lie. I don’t think I can take it.” I was trying to keep my voice calm, but it was hard to breathe, hard to think, infinitely hard to reason.

“But there are people who’re trying to get at me,” he continued. “They might’ve planted them there.”

“Jacob,” I said slowly. “Please, I need you to be honest with me this time. I can’t take any more lies today.”

He exhaled loudly. “Okay, you’re right, Mom. They’re mine.”

But here’s what took me by surprise. Instead of being relieved that he was finally telling me the truth, I felt my knees growing weak and my stomach knotting. I wondered if there were times in life when the truth was just too much to bear. Would I rather hear lies?

“Let’s go sit down,” I told him as I made my unsteady way into the
living room, then collapsed on the couch. Jacob sat in the old rocker across from me. He looked uneasy, perched on the edge of the chair like a flighty sparrow, as if he was ready to bolt at any given second. I leaned back, picked up a pillow and clutched it to my midsection, and took a deep breath, bracing myself for honesty. “Okay,” I said,“tell me what’s going on.”

He looked down at his feet and said nothing. “Jacob,” I continued,“I need you to talk to me. Tell me why you have hypodermic syringes hidden beneath your bed.” Still nothing.

“Jacob,” I tried again,“I know you have a drug problem, okay? There’s no point in pretending like everything’s okay. I admit that I was pretty shocked to find out that you—that you’re using hypodermic needles though. To me that makes everything a whole lot more serious.”

He looked up now. “Why?”

“Why?”
I was taken aback by his nonchalant response. Wasn’t it obvious? We were talking about needles!

“Why do you think using needles makes it more serious?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure.” I was getting that blurry feeling now, like Jacob was going to muddy the waters again. “It just seems pretty serious to me,” I finally said.

“The needles are safe,” he assured me.

“The needles are safe?” I studied him, wondering how this messed-up kid could actually be my child. Had aliens kidnapped him, taken him to the mother ship to perform a lobotomy, then returned him when no one was looking?

He nodded. “Yeah, I don’t, like, reuse them or anything. And I’m very careful about everything. I sterilize stuff and make sure—”

“Wait,” I told him. “Wait a minute. You think that injecting yourself with…with… What do you inject yourself with anyway?”

He sighed.

“Jacob, please, I need you to tell me. It’s not as if I’m a policeman. I’m your mother, for heavens sake. I love and care about you more than anyone else on the planet. If you can’t trust me, you can’t trust anyone.”

He nodded. “Meth,” he said in a quiet voice.

“Crystal meth?”

He nodded again.

“As in methamphetamines?”

Again, the nod.

“As in the drug that people manufacture out of fertilizer and chemicals?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You’re shooting
that
into your body?” I tried to suppress the hysteria I felt rising in my voice. I tried not to imagine the little boy I’d worked so hard to care for and protect and how I’d fretted and worried about him when he’d caught the latest flu bug. How could this child of mine have been shooting chemicals and fertilizer substances into his flesh?

“What’d you think I was using?” He laughed then, but it was a sad, hollow laugh. “It’s not like I have a lot of money, you know. Pump monkeys don’t get paid a whole lot. And Daddy Big Bucks isn’t being too generous with me these days. Crystal meth is the poor man’s cocaine, you know.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Well, now you do.”

Fresh tears slipped down my cheeks.

“Oh, crud, don’t start crying again, Mom.” He stood up and started pacing. “It doesn’t help anything when you get all upset. In fact, it just makes me want to go out and get some more—”

“I’m
not
getting all upset,” I said quickly and wiped my wet face. I
took a deep breath and sat up straighten I wasn’t about to give him any excuse to go out and get high. Not that I thought he wasn’t already high. Whether he was on his way up or down, I had no idea, but I knew something about him was not right.

“Look, Mom.” He sat back down on the chair. Then leaning forward, he looked intently at me. “It’s not like I’m hurting anyone. It’s my own thing. It makes me cope with life better, you know? I mean it’s like my medical treatment. I can function when I have it. Without it…” He looked down at his hands. “Well, I’d rather be dead.”

I thought about this. In a way it was a somewhat convincing argument. I’d heard about addicts that “self-medicate.” Maybe that was what was going on here. Maybe I should just let it go at that, go back to bed, and deal with this crazy thing in the morning. But then, I reminded myself, I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly at the moment. “But what if the crystal meth kills you?” I asked.

He laughed. “No one ever dies from meth.”

“How do you know that?” I asked. “I read something in the paper almost every week about somebody overdosing or dying as a result of drugs.” Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration, but I knew I’d read a few stories. And they had chilled me to my soul.

“Well, it’s probably not crystal meth.”

“But how do you know that?” My voice was getting loud again. “Because I would know, that’s all.”

“Do you even read the newspaper?” I challenged him. “Do you watch the news? What do you really know about this crud you’ve been shooting into yourself, Jacob? What do you
really
know?”

“I know it makes me feel good.”

I sighed. “It’s ruining your life, Jacob. Can’t you see that? And it’s hurting everyone around you. Can’t you see it?”

He looked back down at his feet again.

“Jacob,” I quieted my voice. “I talked to my counselor today, and she told me I have to give you an ultimatum.”

His head jerked up. “An ultimatum?”

“Yes.” I steadied myself, and I think I even breathed a little God-help-me kind of prayer. “You can only live here…in this apartment…if you’re willing to seek treatment.”

“Treatment?” He jumped to his feet now. “What kind of treatment?”

“Drug-rehab therapy. I have the phone number of a place right here in town called Hopes Wings.”

“You want me to go into rehab?” He shook his head and walked over to the front door. “No way.”

I sighed. “Then, I’m sorry, Jacob, but you can’t live here.”

“Fine!” He turned and glared at me with angry brown eyes. “I won’t miss this crappy place anyway.” Then he walked out and slammed the door so hard that a candlestick on the window sill fell over.

I took a deep breath, then went over to pick up the candlestick and look out the window. Dawn was just beginning, but the street still looked grim and gray and cold—bleakly cold. And, of course, Jacob had stormed outside without bothering to get a coat. But, I reminded myself, he had a sleeping bag in his car. He would probably be okay…at least for now.

As I trudged down to the laundry room, I felt as if I were carrying my entire life on my shoulders. My backpack of laundry items felt like it was filled with heavy stones, stones of guilt, and the laundry basket contained every single mistake I’d ever made. By the time I reached the laundry room, I was out of breath and couldn’t even remember what I’d come down here for.

“Hello, Glennis,” said a cheerful voice.

It was the old man I’d met down here a couple of weeks ago. But my mind was so weary it took me a moment to remember his name. “Jack,” I finally said, as if I were giving the answer on a game show. Perhaps I should’ve said,“Who is Jack?”

“You feeling all right?” he asked with a creased brow.

I shrugged. “Just tired, I guess.”

“How’s Jacob doing?”

I was surprised that he remembered the name. “Not so well,” I admitted as I set my laundry basket on the washer next to his.

He nodded as if this wasn’t too surprising. “Reckon he doesn’t want to come to AA with me then.”

I shook my head. “He doesn’t want help of any kind.”

“That’s too bad.” Jack turned back to his task of moving wet items from the washer into the dryer about ten feet away.

I just stood there watching him, as if I were hypnotized. He moved back and forth between the two machines, carrying just a few items at a
time, until the dryer was full, and he, one by one, loaded in his quarters. Finally, his task completed, he turned and looked at me, more closely this time. “Now don’t take no offense at this, Glennis, but you really don’t look too good.”

I sighed. “I don’t feel too good either.”

“You wanna talk about it?” He scooted a white plastic lawn chair from across the room and set it next to another one, then sat down and patted the empty seat beside it.

I sank into the seat and shook my head. “I had to throw Jacob out last night,” I began. “Or rather this morning.”

He nodded as if this was a completely normal thing for a mother to do, then waited for me to continue.

“I discovered a lot of hypodermic needles in his room yesterday. And after I confronted him, he admitted that he’d been using crystal meth.”

Jack shook his head. “That stuff will kill you.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I told him. But he said that’s not true. He said it’s perfectly safe.”

Jack rubbed his chin. “I reckon this is your first lesson about addiction, Glennis. You can never trust an addict.”

“But he’s my son, Jack. I told him he could be honest with me.”

“Honesty is something an addict just don’t get. Take it from me, I used to tell one falsehood after the next. I’d say anything to get folks off my back, anything to get me my next drink. It’s just the way the mind of an addict works.”

“Then how can you help them?” I demanded.

“Reckon you can’t.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “Not unless they’re willing to help themselves.”

“Yes, I’ve heard that.”

“But you threw him out?”

“Yes, that’s what my counselor recommended. She said if I didn’t, I would be an enabler.”

He nodded. “Your counselor is right.”

“Then why do I feel so horrible now?” I asked him. “Why do I feel so guilty that I’m certain I must be the worst mother in the civilized world? Maybe even the uncivilized world. I can imagine that third world mothers do a much better job than what I’ve done.”

“Can’t blame yourself, Glennis. Doesn’t do no good. Your Jacob is the only one who can fix this thing.”

“But what if he won’t? What if he goes out and shoots up so much of that stuff that it kills him?”

“That’s the chance we take.”

“The chance we take?” I demanded. “Don’t you think there’s a pretty good chance that my son’s life is going to be destroyed by this, Jack? Am I supposed to sit idly by and wait until the police or the hospital calls to inform me that my son has just died of a methamphetamine overdose? Or maybe he’ll get in a car wreck while he’s under the influence. Maybe he’ll kill someone else as well as himself. Or maybe he’ll get hit by a train while he’s so high he can’t even see it coming. Or maybe—”

“Or maybe he’ll get so sick of his drugs that he’ll wake up one morning and say enough is enough,” added Jack.

“I wish it were true.”

“In the meantime, you’d better be taking care of yourself, Glennis. When was the last time you had a good night’s sleep?”

“I can’t even remember.”

“Did you know that people who go around driving cars or operating machinery while sleep deprived are as dangerous as drunk drivers?” He nodded as if to accentuate his point. “I saw that on the
Today
show last week.”

“Are you suggesting that I shouldn’t be operating that washing machine?” I asked, eying my basket of dirty laundry still sitting on the washer.

He chuckled. “S’pect that won’t hurt none.”

I got up and went over to fill the washer.

“But you need to take care of yourself, Glennis. You need to be eating right and getting enough sleep.”

I put the last item in and began digging around in my backpack for my roll of quarters. I knew I had put a brand-new roll in there just days ago. I dug and dug but couldn’t find anything. Finally I dumped the contents of the backpack out on the folding table and really searched.

“Whatcha looking for?” asked Jack.

“My roll of quarters,” I told him. “I just put it in here.”

“Where do you usually keep that backpack?” asked Jack.

“In the coat closet,” I told him. “With the extra laundry baskets.”

“Is it possible that your son might’ve—”

“No!” I turned and stared at Jack. “Jacob wouldn’t take my laundry quarters. My son may be an addict, but he’s certainly not a thief.”

Jack nodded, but I could tell he wasn’t convinced.

“I probably just misplaced them,” I told him as I turned away and began reloading the backpack. “I’ve been so absent-minded lately. Who knows what I may have done with them.” Then I turned back around just in time to see Jack putting the last quarter into my washing machine. He pushed them in and closed the lid.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

He smiled. “Just my good deed for the day.”

“But what about the soap?” I questioned, reaching into my backpack for my laundry soap.

“It’s in there.”

Now I felt foolish. I’d just jumped all over this kind and generous
man for suggesting that Jacob may have taken my quarters, and now he was helping me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re probably right. It’s possible that Jacob did take that roll of quarters. But he’s never done anything like that before.”

“Addiction changes you,” he told me. “Makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do.”

“I guess.”

“You gotta understand, Glennis, the thing that drives an addict is getting his next drink, his next high. Nothing else matters. Can you understand that?”

“I’m trying.” I sighed. “But it just doesn’t make much sense.”

“Never does,” said Jack,“to someone who hasn’t been there.” He put his hand on my shoulder now. “Why don’t you go back to your apartment and have a little rest.”

“But my laundry—”

“It’s all right,” he assured me. “I’m gonna be down here for a while. I’ll take care of it. You just promise me that you’ll take a nap.” He was guiding me to the door now. “But I can’t—”

“Don’t you worry about nothing, Glennis. Just go on up there and lie down and rest a bit. You hear?”

And so, feeling like a zombie or a robot with Jack holding the remote control, I trudged back up the stairs, lay down on the couch, and fell fast asleep.

When I woke up, I remembered Jack and the laundry. Surely it had been done some time ago. But when I opened my door, there sat my basket of meticulously folded laundry, with a folded piece of white paper on top. I took the basket into my apartment and picked up the paper, wondering if perhaps it was a bill for laundry services, but it appeared to be a note.

Written in blue ink and uneven handwriting, the note said,“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Unsure as to the meaning of what I assumed Jack had written, I used a plastic magnet that Sylvia had given me at More-4-Less that said “We Save U More” to adhere this mysterious note to my refrigerator.

Then I put away the laundry, taking time to notice how neatly Jack had folded each piece, with such precision and care. But I did little else that day. It seemed that every ounce of energy I’d ever had was completely spent or lost or maybe even stolen. It was as if I had nothing left for anyone. Not even myself. I slept a bit, then wandered aimlessly around my little apartment. But time after time, I found myself standing in front of the refrigerator, not because I was hungry. I couldn’t remember what
that
felt like. But because I couldn’t quit staring at those words. Oh, I’d heard them before, but what did they really mean? What did they mean for me? Was it meant to be prophetic? Was Jack saying that God had given me Jacob and now he was taking him away? And that I should thank him for that?

Finally the long day was almost over. Sitting in my sweats, I curled up under a blanket to watch the eleven o’clock news, mostly waiting for the weather predictions since I was concerned about Jacob being homeless just when it was beginning to get really cold. And the forecast didn’t look good, with near freezing temperatures tonight, and colder tomorrow. How cold did it have to get before a person got hypothermia? Jacob was probably crashing at Daniel’s again. But suddenly I needed to know my son was okay. It wasn’t as if I planned on doing much actual sleeping anyway. And if Jacob’s car was parked at Daniel’s, I would at least know that he was sleeping someplace warm. Of course, there were other issues to worry me about that, but at least my son wouldn’t be dying from exposure. Still in my sweats, I hurried down the darkened steps, noticing again that the outdoor light was still out. Then I dashed over to the parking lot and into the Range Rover where I finally felt safe.

I slipped the key in the ignition and remembered how I’d never considered myself much of a night person before. I’d always depended on Geoffrey for any evening excursions. But, of course, that had all changed these past couple of months. Still, I didn’t want to think about Geoffrey just now. Maybe I was repressing things, or even in denial, but whenever thoughts of Geoffrey intruded into my otherwise muddled mind, I would push them far away. One has only so much room in one’s mind when it comes to madness.

I drove slowly over to Daniel’s duplex dump, looking both ways down all the side streets. But I didn’t see the Subaru anywhere. I even went by the Red Devil, but it had already closed for the night. I tried a couple of other spots where Jacob used to hang out, but my search seemed futile, and finally I had to give up and return home.

Feeling even more like a crazy woman for running around in the middle of the night like that, I tiptoed up the darkened stairs so as not to disturb my neighbors, but halfway up I realized I didn’t have my apartment key with me. I fished around my sweats pockets just to make sure, but it wasn’t there. I hadn’t brought my purse, so I didn’t even have my cell phone. All I had were my car keys and the clothes on my back. I went back down the stairs and sat at the bottom and tried to think. That’s when I noticed I didn’t even have on real shoes. I was wearing a pair of old slippers that my mother had given me for Christmas years ago. It was getting colder now, and all I had on was my sweats. Not unlike my son, I had taken off without thinking to get a jacket. I suppose madness runs in the family.

I don’t know how long I sat there before it occurred to me that if I hadn’t taken the apartment key with me, that meant I probably hadn’t bothered to lock the apartment door. Feeling hopeful and foolish, I dashed up the stairs to discover it was unlocked.

Not only was it unlocked, but someone was inside. Of course, I didn’t realize this until I was safely in and had locked the door and turned the
deadbolt. I heard movement in the hallway, and before I could find anything like a baseball bat, which I didn’t have anyway, the intruder appeared.

“Jacob?” I said in shocked surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to pick up some things,” he said in a quiet and sober voice.

“Oh.” I looked at him, trying to discern his condition—was he high or not? But I couldn’t really tell.

“The door wasn’t locked,” he told me. “I was getting kind of worried that something might’ve happened to you.”

Jacob was worried about me?“Really?”

“Yeah. I thought maybe you’d had an emergency or something. I didn’t think you’d go off and leave the door unlocked like that.”

“I haven’t been thinking too clearly today.”

He nodded. “Well, I just wanted to pick up some warm clothes and stuff.”

“That’s fine.” I took a deep breath to steady myself. It would be so easy to say,“Oh, just forget everything I said last night. It’s okay; you can stay here.” But I remembered what Dr. Abrams had said, what Jack had said, and I decided to stand firm. “Get whatever you need, Jacob.” Then I turned away so he wouldn’t see the tears in my eyes.