Determination (30 page)

“I will. I care about Em, and I don’t want to hurt him either.”

“Okay, man, I’ll see you next week. I think Alex is off—maybe I’ll bring him with me,” Mike said as he picked up the cooler at his feet, obviously ready to be away from the conversation. He looked tired and worn all of a sudden. I hoped whatever weighed on him, Alex would be able to take care of him.

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“I’d like that. See you then.”

After walking Mike to the front of the house and watching his black Jeep disappear around the corner out of our subdivision, I went back inside. I jogged up the stairs and into my room to get the package of stuff we’d brought home from the school. When I told Mike they were going to fast-track my application because of my father, it wasn’t exactly a lie. He had given them a huge donation, but I still had to write an essay and would be admitted or not based on their requirements.

They had made that very clear. However, my dad seemed to be optimistic, so between us, we’d picked up most of the pamphlets for majors and the catalog of class descriptions. The College of Arts and Sciences consisted of over a dozen different departments with everything from psychology to physics. I grabbed my backpack, which overflowed with stuff from the college, and brought it downstairs. Of course, the woman in admissions had mentioned that all of it was available online, but my eyes got so tired from reading stuff on a screen. Plus, physically organizing different subjects that caught my interest would be easier for me than bookmarking a dozen different web pages to look at later. So, with my highlighter in hand, I started looking through my different options.

In order to write the admissions essay, I needed to have at least some idea what direction my life would take. The problem remained that I had no clue what that would be. If I couldn’t come up with a major, I needed enough information to fake something for the paper so I could get in. I looked through the pamphlets. I didn’t really have the aptitude for chemistry, physics, or math even before I became a junkie, so I tossed those on the discard pile. Philosophy would be interesting, but I had no idea what you could really do with that, aside from teach philosophy, so I put that down as a maybe. With each successive subject, I categorized it as something I’d like to look into, a maybe, or a no. The last subject I came across on which to make a decision was English. Within the English major, there were several different options, one of which was creative writing. I’d always liked writing papers in school, far more than Brian, anyway. The directed writing exercises Dr.

Fisher gave me were hard, but I enjoyed doing them. I wondered if maybe I could write for a living. Freelance writers generally didn’t Determination

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have to work in an office and could set their own hours. I put that on top of the pile to talk to my dad about. For something this big in my life, I didn’t trust myself to make the decision alone. I just hoped he wouldn’t want me to follow in his footsteps and go into business or something. I didn’t really want to deal with people.

The late-afternoon sun was beginning to set, so I went downstairs and started to wash potatoes so I could put them in the oven. After a bit of compromise, my father decided I could do things to start dinner that didn’t involve working on top of the stove. At least until the seizures were under control. I pulled two steaks out of the refrigerator, then added them and a bottle of marinade to a large bowl. Once the potatoes were in the oven and the steaks were marinating, I set the stuff I wanted to talk to Dad about in one of the empty spaces at the table and busied myself by chopping vegetables for a salad.

“Wow, Jamie, that looks great,” Dad said as he came in just before I finished chopping up the tomatoes. Still in full business attire, but divested of his briefcase, he popped a couple of green pepper strips into his mouth.

“Hey, Dad,” I said, sounding for all the world like one of those

’60s sitcoms.
Hey, Dad! Isn’t everything great, Dad?
Though I don’t think I ever saw one where the sweet little son turned out to be a junkie in rehab.

“I’m going to go change, and then I’ll be back down to help.” He grabbed a few radish pieces and ate them straight from the bowl. “I missed lunch today, and I’m starving.”

“You must be, but I don’t need any help. I’m just going to throw the steaks in the broiler—the potatoes and salad are ready. There’s some French bread on the table,” I told him as I threw the tomatoes into the bowl and used a couple of large spoons to mix up the salad. When I turned around to put the bowl on the island, I noticed he was looking at me. “What?”

“Where did you learn to cook like this?” he asked, and his voice had lost the joking quality from a few minutes before. I stared at the island, moving the salt and pepper grinders around on the polished granite surface as I tried to decide what to tell him. Over the last several 194

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weeks, he hadn’t shown any signs of balking at my past, so I decided to be honest. Without looking up, I answered his question.

“Steven made me learn how to cook. Usually, I learned the hard way when I overcooked pasta or a steak,” I pulled up my shirt to show him the scar on my abdomen. “I got this because I tried to improvise one night when we ran out of pasta sauce. He threw hot lasagna at me and gave me second-degree burns. That’s what life with him was like.”

I chanced a glance up and wished I hadn’t. My dad just stared at me with an awful, horrified expression. “Yeah, so I learned how to cook, do laundry, clean, and, uhm… stuff like that.”

“I have to know. What you said about being in pornography…

was it true?” The pain in his face and his voice were so hard to face, but I didn’t turn away.

“Not long after he took me off the streets, he started giving me drugs. He said they would help me deal with things better because I was still having nightmares. After a while, he told me that I owed him—for the drugs, for the roof over my head, for the food, everything.

One day, he told me to get in the truck, that he’d gotten me a job. I thought he meant at a fast-food place or something, but he took me to the studio. I… he… he had to give me drugs so that I could even… do it.” Unable to stand the look on his face any longer, I went to the refrigerator to remove the steaks. He caught me in a hug before I reached for the handle.

“I’m sorry, Jamie. You shouldn’t have had to face any of that.

You’re a stronger man than I am to deal with everything you’ve dealt with and still be able to function,” he told me in a low, muffled voice with an awkward back pat.

I couldn’t look him in the eye, so I nodded and went back to making dinner. It took a few minutes of painful silence before he went upstairs to change clothes.

“IN AN earlier session, you mentioned that your mother isn’t a part of your life anymore,” Dr. Fisher said quietly to start out that day’s session. I dreaded the words that would surely come next, and I wasn’t Determination

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disappointed. “How old were you when that happened, and can we talk about how that came about?” I wondered if she could actually hear the way my chest ripped open with the questions. I’d grown to trust her over the past few weeks, but could I trust myself to talk about it?

“Uhm…. Well, I was seventeen when it started, I guess,” I mumbled and pulled my feet up into the chair with me. My tennis shoes squeaked against the leather, and I couldn’t even focus long enough to worry about getting the chair dirty. My knees pressed against the pain in my chest, and I wrapped my arms around them. Even though I knew I had nothing to fear from Dr. Fisher, I still tried to make myself as small as possible so my mother couldn’t hurt me.

“Were you still living in Alabama at that time?” Dr. Fisher asked as she took copious notes on a small legal pad. I didn’t even bother trying to read them upside down. It didn’t matter what she wrote. The ugly truth was stained all over my skin. I saw it every time I looked at myself.

“Yes. Brian and I started dating when I was seventeen,” I explained, and his name on my lips caused another torrent of pain to flash across my heart. “We hid it from everyone because, down there, that was one of the worst things you could do, but I loved him. My mom had let us start camping out in our little tree house in the backyard that summer, and we used it to be together away from prying eyes.”

The memory tore at me, picking at the ragged bits of my soul around where Brian had ripped himself away. “The next morning, we didn’t hear her calling because of the radio and the fan that were going, and she came out to wake us for church. She saw us naked and entwined in bed, and… I don’t know—she just went nuts. She started rocking back and forth and praying or chanting or something. Then she was really calm, but I knew things were going to get much worse. She dragged us to church and had the preacher talk to us about our sin, but I told him it wasn’t a sin because I loved Brian. Soon after that, my mother moved us to San Diego to get me away from Brian. I didn’t know it at the time, but she also wanted to send me to this gay rehab place called the Sunshine Center.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Dr. Fisher said, and there was a coldness in her voice I didn’t think I’d ever heard before. “Homosexuality isn’t some 196

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kind of disease you can cure. That’s why places like the Sunshine Center don’t work. They prey on the bigotry and fear of the upper class and milk them for everything they can even though they know that they can’t ‘cure’ those kids.”

“Well, it certainly didn’t work for me. Anyway, she told me that she was going to call the state of Alabama on Brian’s foster family and have him taken away if I didn’t agree. I didn’t really understand at the time because I’d been pretty sheltered as a kid. I thought she really could have him taken away, so I went. I stayed for a year, but when Brian turned eighteen and was no longer in danger, I left. A couple of days of being homeless and starving on the street, and I called home to see if I could work things out with them. My mother told me I was no longer their son and never to come home.” My voice cracked with the admission, and I wrapped my arms tighter around my legs.

“I know that this is hard for you, but there are a lot of hard things in a person’s life that can impede their recovery. Getting them out there and dealing with them will help your chances of staying clean. It’s so hard at first, but eventually, it will get easier,” she said quietly, and I nodded in resignation. I knew I had a lot of unresolved issues when it came to my mom and how she had just thrown me away. It did help to know that Dad wasn’t on board with her plan, but Jesus, she was my mother. Mothers are supposed to love their kids no matter what. A flash of Carolyn Schreiber’s face went through my mind, reminding me of her love for Brian. She accepted that he was gay, and though she didn’t like it very much, she still loved him even though he did porn. Carolyn was a good mother, and I’d lost her too when I lost Brian.

“Okay,” I acknowledged without much real hope. I didn’t think I’d ever get over the hateful tone in my mother’s voice when she had told me I was no longer her son.

“Tell me about leaving Alabama,” the doctor said as she returned us gracefully to the session. I closed my eyes and could almost feel the misting rain on my face. Brian’s cry of pain still rang in my ears, echoing in my heart.

“I… uhm… God, she kept me in my room for the few weeks before the move. I knew we were leaving because I watched her pack up the house, but she wouldn’t let me see Brian to tell him. I flat-out Determination

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refused to put my stuff into boxes because I did not want to go. So she and Dad packed for me.” A memory surfaced then, one I had buried deep in the back of my mind with the rest of that horrible time. “Wait, I remember that she sang hymns while she packed, just happy as could be, but my dad stayed quiet. He looked… sad, like he didn’t want to go either. Damn, I was so upset, I’d forgotten that.” My dad really hadn’t wanted to leave Alabama. He had spent a lot of time looking over at my mom, like he couldn’t believe what the hell was happening.

“Did either of your parents discuss the move with you?”

“No, my mom just said we were moving away so that she could save my soul. I hated the things she said about Brian, that he was evil and trying to corrupt me. He wasn’t.
I
kissed
him
that very first time. I initiated our relationship. God, I loved him,” I choked as a tear rolled down my cheek, thinking about how beautiful our relationship had been.

“What happened the day you left?” Dr. Fisher’s voice turned soft, like she knew how much pain the conversation caused me. The tears came freely then, remembering our last heartbreaking kiss. Part of me died that day—that hopeful, childlike part that used to tell me everything would be okay.

“I was in the house, trying to talk to my dad and get him to change his mind. He never said anything by way of argument, only that we had to leave. I heard the roar of the huge truck outside with all our stuff as it pulled away, and then a terrible scream drowned it out. I ran outside to see Brian sobbing on our front lawn as he watched the truck drive away. I actually felt my heart break. The pain of his scream felt so… intense. I ran to him, threw my arms around him, and begged him to forgive me. He was crying… sobbing, really, and he asked where we were going. I told him San Diego. It was pretty much as far as my mother could get us away from Alabama and away from Brian.”

Hiccupping sobs began to accompany the tears as I continued the story, the pain of it still so awful. “He told me that he would find me, that he would come to San Diego. I knew it was impossible, but it gave me hope, and I kissed him with everything I had. I begged him never to forget how much I loved him. Then I got in the car with my parents and left him crying on the side of the road. It was the first moment in my 198

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life when I felt truly helpless.” Of course, it certainly wasn’t the last, but that initial humbling time shattered my ideas of family and security.

“Okay, you said that she got you to go to the center by threatening Brian. Did she take you there herself, or did your father take you for your… stay?” The hesitation in her voice made me think that maybe she had another word for it: incarceration or imprisonment, maybe.