Suspended Sentence

by Janice Morgan

  I’d persuaded him to come here because I thought this place could help him. Instead of being caught up in fast-paced Cincinnati, he’d be back in the small, friendly town where he grew up. He’d be enrolled at a smaller college that took pride in nurturing students and push/pulling them through the hoops required of an undergraduate degree. And I was a faculty member there, chair of a small department. Yet even here, in this protected spot, and despite his presumed best intentions, there had been incidents. A DUI, for example. And him telling me beforehand that he thought it was unfair that he didn’t have a car. OK, so what about when he DID have a car? Two different ones over the years: an ancient white Camry that I gave him for free, and after that a black Camry that we researched, found, and bought together with his dad while Dylan was a student at the University of Cincinnati. And that was a couple of years ago when all he had were simple traffic tickets. Now, back here in Croftburg, he’d gotten another DUI driving my car to do an errand, or so he said. I found out later he’d used it to get beer, then drove while he was drinking to de-stress. Sure, he could handle it. No, you can’t! Guess what, NO MORE CARS for you, buddy! Go take a walk!

  And now, having transferred here and managing to get through two semesters, he pulls this stunt. And it wasn’t like all the other careless, stupid things he’d done in the past. No, this was a pre-meditated plan—at least the illegal marijuana-growing part was. I should have left him right where he’d been in Cincinnati. He could have continued his downhill trajectory there. If he was so hell-bent on destruction, he could have gotten locked up there instead of here where I live. What an idiot I’d been! Was there no end to this madness?

  I was working up a sweat and a rage. Toiling away in the bare garden plot, I could feel the sweat running down into my collar. Every time I came upon a new clump of grass starting to grow, I’d have to claw at it with the hoe; the roots were amazingly tenacious. No wonder I was getting a workout. Soon, I arched back in a full torso stretch and removed my long-sleeved shirt down to the tee underneath. For a moment, I felt a lingering cool breeze on my face and neck. It felt good. Before tying the shirt around my waist, I used it to dry my forehead and the sides of my face, my neck. The sun was climbing higher. I looked at the soil I’d been working on. I was making some progress; the offending clumps of grass were strewn on the sides of the plot like flotsam and jetsam on either side of a boat. No, more like all my best mom plans from the past now dug up and cast aside. I took a few sips of water, then picked up the hoe again.

  And then the whole circus of Keith Birchen’s impromptu visit. A blast from the past. And me trying to think it was probably OK. No, it wasn’t. It really wasn’t. When dealing with my son’s bipolar disorder and the potential for disarray it can cause, I always worry. So then I don’t know when I need to worry and when I don’t. Don’t know how to handle it. So, for example, before I left town, I met with Dylan at his apartment and he assured me that Keith was leaving in a couple of days. After that, of course, he would look for a summer job. I told him where I was going and when I’d be back. When Dylan introduced his friend to me, Keith smiled, chatted for a bit, and gamely shook my hand, while assuring me, “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of your boy.” How could I be so naïve? But then, how much control did I really have?

  My partner John and I then took off on our trip. Was I not entitled to a vacation like every other working person I know back at the office? It seemed that everything was fine. At least until our plane landed in Boston. Then my phone rang.

  Dylan’s voice on the other end sounded flat. “I’m feeling depressed,” he said. “I think I need to go to St. Clair.”

  This was the psychiatric clinic I had taken him to late last fall, when he’d had a crisis and needed to be checked in to stabilize for a few days. As we talked, I tried to find out more about what was going on, but the only clear message Dylan came out with was, “I don’t have any more money.” I reminded him about looking for a job. He said it would be OK. He could borrow some cash from Keith to get by. Our connection in the noisy airport wasn’t very good, so I told him I’d call him back later and we could talk more.

  But later when I called, there was no answer. By then we were at John’s brother’s house. In this more relaxed atmosphere, I could have gotten a better sense of what was going on. But my son didn’t answer, and he didn’t call back. Not that day or the day after. It didn’t surprise me because there had been many tempests in teapots before, a crisis where the sky was falling and then, just when I was ready to call in the first responders, suddenly everything was fine again. That was a pattern. And so I figured it would be like all the other times; Dylan would muddle through. Besides, he was with a friend who had a car. If Dylan really needed to go to the clinic, they could go. I was concerned, but it seemed too extreme to drop everything and fly back.

  Yes, Keith had a car all right. He also had a gun, an illegal one that had been stolen. In addition to a firearm, there was plenty of firewater around—another thing I didn’t know. About twenty empty bottles of vodka were all lined up on the floor around the main room of the apartment. I saw all this when I eventually entered it with a key to get Dylan’s meds for him after he called from jail. I was surprised they allowed me to do this, but they did. Just looking around at the tumbled decor, the med bottles in disarray on the kitchen cupboard shelf and on the counter, barely a scrap of food in the refrigerator, a picture emerged for me of what must have gone on there. The story behind the scene got filled in by what the apartment manager, Blaine, told me later. He was a vet who went to AA meetings on his motorcycle and lived quietly in the apartment below with his girlfriend and their child. After talking with him, I could only surmise glumly that with all the goings-on upstairs, those two guys could have been apprehended by the authorities at any time during the two weeks Keith was visiting. The truly amazing thing is that they both survived, and neither of them was shot!

  My back and arms were getting sore from the constant heaving and turning of the soil. I had to lean back again, pause, catch my breath. I could feel my heart pounding, feel a dry rasp in my throat. Time to reach for the water bottle again. The air was no longer cool; instead, I felt the heat of the sun on my arms, more sweat dripping down. I hated to wear a hat. It just made my head feel hotter, but it kept the sun off. Mostly, I wanted to get this job done. In a short while, I could shift to the rake.

  As for Keith, he had left before Dylan got arrested. The two apparently had a fight because Dylan insisted he give him the gun. Dylan told me later he needed the gun because he had to protect his investment in the marijuana, which Keith never found out about. It seemed that paranoia was growing in those planter boxes, too. Nobody knew about the forbidden plants except Dylan, until the police got a search warrant. What they were looking for was another gun that one of his drinking buddies had reported was there somewhere. They never found a second weapon, but they did find the hidden Schedule 1 plant installation. That was the third felony on top of the charge for wanton endangerment and the one for possessing a stolen firearm.

  The fact of the matter was—and this hurt me the most—my son had been flat-out dishonest with me. Here I was, being generous, noble, helping him through all the ups and downs, the challenges. Then, instead of just doing what he was supposed to—climbing up the path, getting his college degree, and landing a job for the summer—Dylan pulls this outrageous stunt. How could he do this to me?

  Betrayal, pure and simple. He was playing off my generosity, all my good intentions. Instead of openly disagreeing with me, he’d just decided to deceive me, keep me in the dark. No wonder he was slow to look for a job; he’d already decided to use his creativity to make money undercover. It would be much easier, much more fun. He was going to harvest his own pot and sell it in Cincy. Ah, but then, his Big Plan fell apart—and so did mine. Now, instead of being a heroic mom, I’d been cast without my permission in a low-budget B movie, a potboiler. Yeah, that’s the part my son offered me. No heroics here, folks,
just a quick crime show that won’t end well.

  The sympathetic landlord talked to me twice—and for a long time, too. Finally, he informed me gently that Dylan’s apartment would have to be vacated. “Everything out by the end of the month,” he said. “I’m sorry, but that’s how it goes.”

  This whole catastrophe felt like some kind of huge joke being played on me. I thought about the time I took Dylan to the therapist in Parksville, thinking that therapy, along with the right meds, was going to be part of the way toward better awareness and better choices. Of course, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do if your son has a mood disorder? And it might have worked out that way, too, in about ten more years. However, it just so happened on this particular day that a special copy of Newsweek magazine happened to be lying on the coffee table in the waiting room. Its cover photo showed a lush green plant with star-shaped leaves, sporting a frothy spray of flowers on top. And the feature article? It was all about the new legal pot industry in Colorado, how growers were making fortunes by producing both medical marijuana and its cousin, recreational marijuana. The distinction had to do with the particular type of cannabinoids and terpenes present in the resin-covered flowers. Photos showed skilled gardeners carefully tending plants in greenhouses, labeling each one. For sure, Colorado was on the edge of a bold, new experiment. Dylan pounced on the magazine and read avidly, showing me the highlights, until his name was called for the counseling session.

  So then later, in jail, Dylan revealed to me that this very article was his impetus to “kick it up a notch” and lay claim to his share of the entrepreneurial venture. If Blaine, the pot-smoking landlord wouldn’t go into the business (as a veteran with health issues, he preferred to stay under the radar on that one), then Dylan would. On his own, too. Not legal here in Kentucky? A risk, but well worth taking. Nowadays an enterprising person can learn even the most arcane horticulture right off the internet. Want to grow cannabis in your home? No problemo: here’s exactly what you need to do.

  Later, Dylan admitted to me that he’d made countless trips to Lowe’s on his moped (and probably in my borrowed car, too) to get lumber for planter boxes, red rocks, soil, and plant-boosting nutrients. Of course, there was the challenge of providing high-intensity lighting in a dark closet, so he’d had to wire up some mega-watt lights from the ceiling that would beam on day and night. He’d used his tools to rig up a ventilation system, too—ductwork to carry off any telltale odors from the eventual flowers. What amazed me was so much ingenuity going up through the roof right along with them. Then he’d sent off his order for seeds via the internet. No one would be the wiser after all these plans and precautions. In a few weeks, he planned to harvest a genuine cash crop of pot, enough to sell for a small fortune, enough to buy any car he wanted. Nobody would find out. Not even Keith knew there was a prime plot of weed growing right there behind the locked closet doors, and he’d been visiting for over two weeks.

  I was still furious, but there was righteous indignation in my anger, too. I was wronged, but I wasn’t going to take it lying down. I was going to survive. I’d find a way out of the B movie somehow. Sitting down on the wood-chip path beside the freshly turned soil, I pulled off my gloves and grabbed my water bottle. Gazing over the plot, I already felt a spark of satisfaction at one small thing I could do. If I couldn’t have any positive impact on my son’s life, at least I could fix up this garden.

  Taking a sturdy rake, I began smoothing out the soil, stopping every now and then to tamp down a resistant clump of clay, watching with satisfaction as it yielded and broke into smaller pieces. In no time, I was raking the soil in broad, long sweeps.

  With the end of the hoe, I could make four furrows crosswise in the garden plot. Not too deep, just enough to make a shallow trough. Rummaging in my basket, I located several packages of seeds. Tall zinnias were my favorites for their bright colors and the butterflies they attracted. I poured the contents into my left hand and held them closely; they were light enough to be blown away if I didn’t watch out. Dropping them into the furrows, I used my gloved right hand to pulverize and sift those remaining small soil clumps to cover them, just barely, then press lightly. I didn’t want to take the chance on rain, because that could take a while and there could be the wrong kind of rain, a pelting type that would carry the seeds away. Better to water them in. I unwound the hose and dragged it over to my plot. After a light shower, the soil and sun could do their magic.

  By the time I rolled the hose back up and trundled all my garden tools back home, I was hungry for lunch. I would come back, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day, with some small plants to put in: zucchini, cantaloupe, peppers, tomatoes, herbs. This afternoon, though, I would have to see about a lawyer. I already had a few ideas about that. I sighed. Ah, what I was really hoping for, after all this hard toiling under the sun, was finally being tired enough to fall into a deep sleep later on. For a whole night. Maybe.

  CHAPTER 4: GET TO GIGI’S HOUSE

  When did I first know that Dylan was a little different from other kids? I’m not sure. What I do know is that from the time he was a baby, he could be hard to comfort sometimes. I saw moms carrying their tiny babies in snugglies, babies who seemed perfectly content to be carried next to their mothers’ bodies. But I could never do that with Dylan. He would get restless. He squirmed, he fussed. At times, he felt more like a tiger cub than a baby. He never stayed long in a playpen, either. And for all his energy and curiosity, there were times during the first two years when he could get hard-core upset—and stay that way for what seemed like a very long time, while his dad and I tried to comfort him. We could not figure out why our efforts weren’t working.

  Once I remember Dylan was having a particularly bad evening. Both of us were. It was during the summer when he and I were at home alone, and everything had been fine until bedtime, and I put him into his crib. He was a toddler then, young enough that I could still carry him. It was early evening and he was just plain unhappy, tired, inconsolable. His crying filled the air. Who knows? In retrospect, maybe he was just hot and cranky. Or maybe he had a headache and couldn’t tell me. I talked to him, I picked him up, I tried different things, but nothing seemed to calm him. After a while, his being upset made me upset, too. Being patient and calm under duress is not something I’m good at—and I was especially bad at it when facing these challenging times alone. Mike was away on a trip for work. I was too much on the nervous end of things myself to be much use in calming down a child who cried and cried and couldn’t tell me why.

  If Mike had been there, maybe he might have managed better than me. He was way more inventive than I was in trying out soothing tactics. One strategy he eventually discovered, which could usually do the trick, was taking Dylan into the shower and holding him against his own body with the water falling over both of them. After a while, the combined forces of voice, body, and water somehow relaxed him. But me, I would not have tried to hold such a feisty, strong child in a slippery shower. Even I had enough common sense not to try that. Believe me, that kid’s strength was amazing; as a tiny baby, he had to be fairly wrestled into his clothes. As soon as he felt the slightest guiding pressure toward a sleeve hole, that little arm would resist my hand with a Paul Bunyan junior countermove. For him, it was a fun game, which he enjoyed immensely. He could laugh as hard as he cried. That’s one of my earliest memories of his temperament.

  This particular evening, though, fun games were out of the question. With Mike hundreds of miles away, I turned to the one person I was pretty sure could help us out, an older woman who often took care of Dylan while we were at work. Her real name was Susan, but she went by the name Gigi—short for great grandma, because that’s who she was to her own family. Back then, there weren’t many daycare places working moms could turn to, so Mike and I put out the call to find a trustworthy caretaker. Gigi answered, and we were so glad we found her. She was exactly what we needed: a steady, grandmotherly figure who knew how to deal with a wide variety of situa
tions. On this exasperating evening, I gave her a call and just hearing her voice gave me some hope of a peaceful resolution. “Come on over,” she told me.

  First, though, she gave me directions to the house where she was working as a caretaker for an elderly woman. Notes stuffed in my pocket, I carried Dylan outside and strapped him into his car seat in the back. He was still upset, but I told him not to worry, we were going to Gigi’s house. Still talking to him, I drove for what seemed like miles and miles on winding roads into the remote depths of the country. How I managed to get there even once I can’t say. I just know it was a confusing journey on a hot evening with the windows down, a toddler crying in the back seat, and me trying to navigate back roads I didn’t know even existed. There was no GPS back then, no smartphone. Once somebody gave you directions, you just went and made the best of it. Feeling lost was part of getting there.

  After a good half hour with dusk advancing rapidly, I finally found the last road Gigi had told me to look for, hoping I would soon come upon the house she had described to me. I felt sure that if Dylan and I could be with her for a while, she would talk and laugh and tell me what to do, and things would be OK again. I remember arriving, finally, just at dusk, the two of us piling into a small wooden house. Gigi greeted us, asking Dylan what was wrong in her wonderful grandma voice. By that time, after the excitement of the drive, feeling the wind on his face, seeing all the trees go by, the endless turns, he was starting to come around. He probably understood something was up when I first told him we were going to see Gigi. She was our in-state grandma because the other grandma lived far away and couldn’t always be there whenever we needed her. Still sniffling, he was intrigued by the house, wanted to investigate all the rooms. We explored with him a while, then Gigi led us back to the living room to comfortable chairs, motioning for Dylan to sit in her lap. After a few minutes, he jumped down to check out where the cat might be in the kitchen.