This River

by James Brown

  The clerk glances at his watch.

  “It’s open until midnight. We stop serving dinner at ten but you can still order appetizers. Any luggage tonight, Mr. Brown?”

  “No,” I say. “We just need some sleep and food before we hit the road again tomorrow.”

  But first things first. I need a few drinks before we check into our room, so we head straight for the lounge. The place is dead. Aside from the bartender, we’re the only ones there, and he lets my son sit next to me up at the bar. Logan looks at the appetizer menu.

  “I’ll have a double Smirnoff on the rocks. Son,” I say, “what would you like?”

  “A coke,” he says.

  “You ever try a Shirley Temple?”

  “Huh?”

  “Sometimes they call them a Roy Rogers. This is back in the day.”

  The bartender is from my generation and knows what I’m talking about.

  “You’ll love it,” he says, “and if you don’t, we’ll get you a regular coke. Anything to eat?”

  “Buffalo wings.”

  I smile at my son.

  “Make that two orders,” I say. “He’s a growing boy.”

  Buffalo wings are one of his favorite foods, and on many occasions I’ve made them for dinner with him in mind. His brothers like them too, and I take a special pleasure in cooking for the boys. Regrettably, I usually drink as I prepare the meal, and I’m too drunk to enjoy it with them when I serve up the plates.

  After a couple rounds of double shots, my head begins to clear and my hands are steady again. Leaving the bartender a generous tip for letting Logan sit at the bar with me, and for pouring me heavy drinks, we go to our suite. To a kid who hasn’t stayed in many hotels, this is a big deal, and despite the circumstances, he’s thrilled and awed by the orderliness, the luxury, the spaciousness.

  “Dad,” he says, flipping the light on in the bathroom, “this is bigger than our kitchen.” He hurries to the window and pulls back the drapes. “Check out this view. You can see the whole city from here.”

  I’m pleased he’s excited, but the ease and comfort that came with drinking the vodka is fleeting, and my mood suddenly changes to paranoia. How could I be so stupid? I paid the clerk with a credit card, and if the cops are after me, as I’m certain they are, they could phone the different hotels to see if any James Brown checked in tonight. I know Paula is worried about Logan. I know Paula is worried about me and went to the police. What I don’t know is how thoroughly they intend to check out her complaint.

  I step behind the sofa.

  “Help me move this?”

  “What?”

  “I need you to push while I pull.”

  Together we drag the sofa against the door. It just fits, not an inch to spare on either side of the hallway.

  Logan is the voice of reason.

  “This because of the cops?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t think it’ll stop them. If they want to get in, they’ll get in.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, but we’ll give the bastards a run for their money. C’mon,” I say, “help me with this chair.”

  Onto the sofa we wrestle its two matching chairs and a writing desk. It’ll take some serious shoving to get this door open. Perched at the top is the coffee table, which will be the first thing to fall, alerting us, when they try to bust through. I’m proud of my ingenuity. I’m proud of my foresight. Though in hindsight I recognize my behavior as bizarre, at the time it seemed perfectly normal to me. The hunted are desperate, and I was, to my mind, the hunted.

  I stand back and look at our handiwork.

  “Now let the fuckers get in. Either way,” I say, “at least we’ll sleep a little easier tonight.”

  But when it’s time to turn off the lights and slip under the covers, when my eyes finally close, and only then out of sheer exhaustion, I’m visited again by my first and earliest memory of death.

  In it, I’m five or six years old, playing along the concrete pathway of the house next door to ours in San Jose.

  There is a window on the second floor of this house. The window is open. The back of a couch is pushed against it.

  I look up.

  Why, I don’t know. Maybe I hear something. Maybe it’s instinct. But I see the baby perfectly, its little bald head, and I remember initially being more puzzled than alarmed.

  In the remembering, the fall always occurs in slow motion. In real time, it takes only a second, and I hear clearly the slap its newly formed skull, still soft, makes against the pavement. A thin stream of blood leaks from the temple. I am only several feet away.

  The mother leans out the window.

  “My baby,” she says. “My baby.”

  The slap of the skull echoes through the years, and I attribute it to age, to becoming a parent myself and realizing that no agony can be greater than the death of one’s child.

  The thing is, I could’ve saved that baby.

  The thing is, I could’ve put my arms out to break the fall. But I just stand there, and sometimes, when I think too long about it, I see one of my boy’s faces in that baby. When you can prevent a death but do nothing, you might as well consider yourself an accomplice to murder. Shock. Paralysis. Cowardice. These are no excuses for failing to act.

  Same place. Same year.

  I’m playing outside when a little black girl from down the block, just learning to ride her bike, rolls down her driveway into the street with a big smile on her face just as a car speeds by. As she lies dying in the street, I am amazed at the length of her intestines, stretching ten, maybe fifteen feet across the asphalt, and when the ambulance arrives the attendant scoops them up and puts them back inside her, gravel and all. Her last words are “Mommy... Mommy,” and like the baby that falls from the window she too sometimes visits me at night.

  I wish I would’ve seen the car coming.

  I am awake now.

  The red, glowing numbers of the clock on the bedstand read 4:06 a.m. Oddly, though I’ve only slept a few hours, I’m completely rejuvenated. I’m full of energy. I feel great. No hangover. No lingering memories of death.

  I’m ready for breakfast, the newspaper, a quick stroll around the block. But Logan is still fast asleep, and I realize it’s not likely I’ll find a restaurant open at this hour. So I wait it out, at least until 5:15, when I take a long, hot shower. By 5:45 I’m clean and dressed, and it occurs to me that I should call home and let Paula know we’re okay. Then I’ll wake Logan. He can shower. Then we can get breakfast.

  I pick up the hotel phone and dial nine for an outside number. Of course I’m embarrassed about it all. Of course I’d rather not even call. But I know I have to, that I owe her that much. Paula picks up on the first ring, her voice groggy, though not for long.

  “Jim?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are you? What happened to Logan? Is he hurt? Are you okay?”

  “Take it easy,” I say. “He’s fine. We’re both fine, just a little scraped up.”

  “Let me talk to him. I want to talk to him.”

  “He’s still sleeping and I don’t want to wake him.”

  “Christ, Jim, your son, your own son. He could’ve killed himself. What the hell were you thinking jumping out of the car?” She pauses. “Where are you?”

  But I’m not sure I want to give up my location without some assurance that jails or institutions aren’t a part of the equation.

  “You won’t call the cops?”

  “No.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise,” she says. “I just want you both back home. I’ve been up worrying all night. Orlando will come and get you.”

  Orlando and I have been friends for close to thirty years. He’s seen me in good times. He’s nursed me through the bad times and tolerated too many drunken late-night phone calls. But this is absolutely not the time to involve him.

  “His mother is in the hospital,” I say. “She’s dying, you know. The last thing he nee
ds is you heaping my shit on him.”

  “Just tell me where you are.”

  I didn’t figure on her calling Orlando, though I probably should have, since in many ways he knows me better than she does and she needs his support and advice. I don’t have any game plan, either, other than to return home peacefully and see if we can’t put this mess behind us. I don’t know any other way to handle it. I don’t know if there is another way. All I can do is apologize and swear never to do it again. Unfortunately, the promises of this alcoholic are empty, for they are the promises of a person who, despite his best efforts, despite his best intentions, can’t control his drinking. It’s as if I have a mental blank spot where I’m unable, as the Big Book says, to recall “with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago.”

  “The Hilton.”

  “Downtown?”

  “On E Street,” I say. “But Logan and I are going out to breakfast first. Are you still taking Nate to his game this morning?”

  “Of course,” she says. “There’s no reason he should suffer because of you.”

  I agree fully. I wouldn’t want it any other way. The world does not, contrary to how I may act or what I might like to believe, revolve around me. We hang up shortly after that and not two minutes later the phone rings. It’s Orlando, and the conversation is short. I tell him to meet me at the hotel restaurant in an hour.

  “Bullshit,” he says. “I’m leaving now and you better not go anywhere.”

  At breakfast, it’s hard to look my friend in the eye. I know Paula has told him everything. The suicide threat. Jumping from a moving car. My shame and guilt and self-loathing is only intensified by Orlando’s presence. He knows I know better. I know I know better. I blame so much of it on the alcohol because I’m a different and better person sober, but once I start drinking I can’t stop, and because I can’t stop I despise myself for what I see as a fatal defect of character.

  “You’ve quit before,” Orlando tells me. “You can quit again. I love you, motherfucker. I don’t want to have to bury you.”

  “Dad?” Logan says.

  “What?”

  “Listen to him. Please. He’s telling you the truth.”

  My boy, after all I’ve put him through, has yet to break. But finally all he’s been holding inside rises to the surface and he begins to cry. Seeing his tears spark my own. A family of four and several others in the neighboring booths are eating and at least pretending to pay us no mind.

  I signed Nate up for soccer to keep him involved and busy and in shape for when wrestling season gears up. He plays for the Wolverines. The little kids’ soccer games start at nine on Saturday mornings. It’s about nine-thirty when we make it up the mountain, and though I’ve already missed the first half, I’m counting on catching the tail end of the game. We approach the street where we’re supposed to turn.

  “Make a left up there,” I say.

  But Orlando continues on straight.

  “Where you going?”

  “Let’s swing by your place first.”

  “But I’ll miss the game.”

  Orlando is silent. He’s up to something, though what I don’t know. I’m sure I ask but I don’t remember him answering.

  The next memory takes me directly to my house when I step into the living room and discover what under ordinary circumstances would’ve seemed like a surprise birthday party. Only it’s no birthday party. Art, another one of my best friends, is here, and he’s brought along a buddy I’ve met only once before. They’re both screenwriters who drove two hours in from L.A. Both belong to A.A., though their drugs of choice are pharmaceutical. My next-door neighbor is also present, a tough old man with sinewy muscles and a faded tattoo of a naked woman on his forearm. He’s in A.A., too, seventeen years clean and sober.

  They’re all seated at the dining room table and rise when I come in. My wife, whom I am not altogether pleased with at this moment, steps toward me. At thirty-one, fifteen years younger than me, she is staunchly resolute. I was once her professor. She was once my student. Now, apparently, those roles are reversed.

  “Your friends,” she says, “they’re here to talk to you.”

  Obsession, like mania, is a blessing and a curse. Properly channeled I am able to focus on my writing, my teaching duties, or physical exercise with what some may consider a frightening intensity. An ordinary chore that might take the average person an hour to complete, I can do in half the time or less. But the Law of Gravity is inescapable: What goes up, must come down, and the higher you go, the harder you fall.

  Elation and energy become depression and lethargy. In the crash, certain thoughts and images get stuck in my head and I can’t get them out by simply trying to think of something else. Distractions don’t work. Willing them away is futile. Once they’re locked in, and it can happen in a flash, I’m at the mercy of my own mind. The What-If Factor burrows itself deep into my consciousness, and fully awake or deep in dream, the most recent guest in my catalogue of guilt and psychosis is Heidi.

  Although we are divorced several years before she passes, although she tried to take my children from me, in the face of her death absolutely none of this matters. And whether it’s rational or not, I blame myself. My reasoning works like this:

  If we hadn’t divorced, she never would’ve met this other man, who wanted a baby by her, and so at the age of forty-three she never would’ve had her tubes untied and gotten pregnant.

  If we hadn’t divorced, there would be no complications due to her pregnancy.

  The baby is born fine.

  But ten days later, if we hadn’t divorced, the doctors wouldn’t have misdiagnosed her complaints of gaining weight rather than losing it after delivery as post-partum depression.

  If, after further complaints of shortness of breath and swelling of the limbs, the doctors hadn’t again misdiagnosed her ailment as a pulmonary embolism and put her on blood thinners, the boys would still have their mother. If, when the doctor draws a sample of fluid from her lungs, he hadn’t punctured an artery, she would not have internally bled to death.

  The bleeding can’t be stemmed because of the blood thinners they’d given her, and if when Andy and I followed her ambulance down the mountain to Saint Bernardine’s Hospital in the ghetto on the night she was admitted, she and the other man would’ve just listened when we insisted she transfer to a better hospital only a few miles away, maybe she’d still be here. Our marriage wasn’t always troubled. There were good years, especially in the beginning, and just because we divorced doesn’t mean I stopped caring for her. Heidi gave me the greatest gift of all, three beautiful boys, and for this I will always love her.

  Nonetheless, our breakup set into motion a series of events that lead to her death, and because I initiate the split, I feel accountable. The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is sit my boys down three days after Heidi is put on life support.

  “Your mother,” I say, “may not be coming home.”

  I say it with absolutely no intention of crushing whatever hope they may hold. I am trying only to soften the blow of what I have come to see as inevitable. I watched my father die on those fucking ventilators, tube stuffed down his throat, unable to talk, answering yes and no to questions by squeezing my hand until finally there is no strength left for even the slightest response.

  I was there to the end with Heidi as well. She goes the same way, the hand slowly weakening when they take her off life support, and now, myself in a hospital for those of troubled minds, addicts, and alcoholics, I relive her last days as I ride out the first throes of withdrawal. I shake. I sweat. I’m sick to my stomach. The nurses initially treat me with strong doses of Valium, and because my blood pressure rockets dangerously high, I’m given Clonidine, a powerful antihypertensive, to reduce the possibility of stroke. During this time, I spend eighteen to twenty hours a day in bed, in and out of consciousness.

  The doctors and nurses are doing what they can to minimize
the misery of detox and withdrawal, and I appreciate their good intentions, but knocking me out can be dangerous. Sometimes I need to wake up, and taking away that capability can leave me stranded in the coldest of dark waters. My brother and sister are the most frequent visitors in my dreams and rank at the top of my What-If Factor column.

  What could I have done to save them?

  What should I have done to save them?

  And why didn’t I see their suicides coming, especially Marilyn’s, since I had knowledge of the signs and symptoms from our brother’s?

  My experience, and what I’ve learned from friends who’ve found themselves in my position, is that rehabs are generally pretty much the same. Most are built around the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, distinguished more by class and money than methodology. There is rehab for the poor and indigent and the accommodations reflect it. There is rehab for the rich—elegant housing with private rooms with views of the Pacific or the Hollywood Hills, places made famous by their celebrity clientele whose careers often take precedent over sobriety.

  Then there are Behavioral Modification Centers, like the one I’m at, that tackle the psych cases alongside alcoholics and addicts or any combination thereof. The building, its layout and design, is no different than a hospital with its orderlies and registered nurses and drab rooms with curtain partitions. Instead of medical doctors, however, you have psychiatrists who come around to your room periodically, make notes on your chart and chat a few minutes before moving on to the next patient.

  Since I’m out of it the first week, I don’t do much talking. But by the fifth or sixth day, they begin weaning me off the Valium and slowly reduce my dosage of Clonidine as my blood pressure stabilizes. The routine, once I’m on my feet again, revolves around group counseling, lectures, and films on the damaging effects of alcohol and drugs on the mind and body, regular attendance at an on-premise Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meeting, and daily one-on-one sessions with a psychiatrist or drug and alcohol counselor.