Under the Influence

by Joyce Maynard

  “I wanted to be your partner, Helen,” he said. “I would have been true blue. I would have loved to have gotten to know your son, if you’d let me. I wanted to be his stepfather, whatever that might have looked like.”

  “True blue,” I said bitterly, “so long as I abandon my friends. What have you done for us, besides putting them down? And not just putting them down, either. Snooping around in their finances as if they’re criminals. I was at rock bottom when Swift and Ava came into my life. They saved me.”

  “You actually believe that, don’t you?” he said. Whispering now. “You’re breaking my heart, Helen.”

  I stood in the middle of the room watching him. I knew if I said one word that conveyed regret, he’d turn around and come back to me, but I didn’t. I let him go.

  60.

  That night, after Elliot left, I went to a late-night meeting. It wasn’t my normal Tuesday night meeting, so there was a group of unfamiliar faces in the room that night—people who didn’t have to be home for young children, from the looks of them; people who used to hang out in bars and called AA their new nightlife. Because it was a young crowd, most of the stories they told didn’t relate all that much to where I was anymore, or where I’d been even back when I was drinking. Ten minutes into the meeting I asked myself what I was doing there.

  Most of the people in the room were in their twenties. They looked to be the kind of drinkers who had gotten fake ID cards when they were fifteen, hung out in front of liquor stores waiting for someone to buy them a cheap flask of gin, or drove around in cars with a few six-packs of beer. I didn’t see anyone in this group who looked like the kind of person who had waited until her son went to sleep before taking out the wine bottle, and drank it—the whole thing—alone in her apartment with the knowledge that come morning, when the alarm went off, she’d be getting him ready for preschool again. These weren’t people familiar with custody fights and guardian ad litem interviews, or court-ordered visitation schedules.

  Afterward, though, as I was headed for the door, a woman in her early twenties approached me.

  “You know the Havillands,” she said. More statement than question. The look on her face made it clear that she knew them, too.

  Hearing their name in this place caught me up short. I never associated Ava and Swift with my meetings. This was the dark side of my life—my real life, probably, though not the one I would have preferred. With Ava and Swift, I got to pretend none of this went on. No DUI. No guardian ad litem report. No handcuffs.

  “How did you know that?” I said.

  “My friend that I came with waits tables at Vinnie’s. When you came in tonight, she recognized you. She knows the Havillands, too.”

  It was no surprise that Swift and Ava would have made the acquaintance of a young woman. Ava made friends everywhere. I’d seen that already. Still, I asked what the connection was. Art, maybe? Dogs? Or perhaps—this seemed likely—she was one of the dozens of people who had at one time or another been the beneficiary of Ava’s kindness.

  She looked unsettled. “I know their son. Knew.”

  “Cooper,” I said. “Seems like everybody loves him.”

  “Yeah, well. Depends who you talk to. His father definitely thinks he walks on water and pisses perfume.”

  I could feel now that something was wrong here. As many people as there were who would tell you that Swift and Ava were two of the kindest and most generous human beings they’d ever met, this young woman was not going to be one of them. I didn’t want to hear the particulars of why, but she kept standing there in front of me. I felt as if she were staring me down.

  “I’m Sally,” she said. “They might not remember my name. Not that I’d suggest you ask.”

  There was a flatness to her voice, a bitter quality that made her seem a lot older than she looked.

  “Cooper and me used to drink together. When he came home from college on break, a bunch of us would hang out. He called us his townie girls. We even went up to his parents’ crazy expensive house at Lake Tahoe a few times, snuck into Squaw together. He wasn’t my boyfriend. Just one of the guys I did shots with.”

  Then this one time, they’d driven out to the beach together. Sally and her two girlfriends, Savannah and Casey, Cooper and two of his college buddies.

  “We were out on the dunes with a fifth of Jim Beam and some crème de menthe,” she said. “They must’ve given us some kind of drug. When Casey and Savannah and me woke up, our underwear and jeans were gone. All we had was our T-shirts. No cell phones, no money to get home.”

  “How do you know it was Cooper and his friends that did it?” I asked her. Maybe they’d left and someone else had come along. You never knew.

  “There was a picture of me. Looking”—and here she looked down—“the way you’d think. He texted it to a bunch of his friends.”

  “If something like that really happened, you could’ve pressed charges,” I said. “If this was true, why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “We did,” she said. “But then the Havillands’ lawyer got involved. Some killer asshole. They were going to say all these other things about me. How I got picked up for shoplifting in junior high. I told them I didn’t care; that was a long time ago. Then they dragged my dad into it. He’s a contractor, and he’d been building spec houses, with a lot of loans out. All of a sudden, the banks were telling him he had to pay up.”

  I just stood there, taking this in. All around us people were putting away folding chairs, turning off lights. I didn’t want to hear anymore. I wanted to go home.

  “Then poof, there was no more problem. Cooper’s dad made everything go away.”

  Including Cooper. He was back at Dartmouth in time for the start of classes.

  “Those people get what they want,” she said. “It must be pretty great being their friend. You just don’t want to be their enemy.”

  61.

  It was a Wednesday, only four days to go until the big birthday celebration. As we’d planned, Oliver was coming for a visit with me that weekend. Ava instructed me to let Oliver in on the plan. He was excited about it. “Kind of like I’m a secret agent,” Ollie said. Only Monkey Man wasn’t one of the bad guys, of course. Monkey Man was the hero, as always.

  When Ava had presented the Monterey idea to Swift, he’d made no objection. We’d been out for dinner together when she broached the plan to him. “You know how you promised Ollie back in the summer you’d take him someplace great if he won the swim race?” she said. “Well, time to pay up, buster. And since Tahoe’s a little too far to take him without his mom, we were thinking a day trip to Monterey would be perfect.”

  I’d already had a long talk with Ollie about not telling anyone about the surprise party. I didn’t tell him expressly not to tell Dwight, but Ollie seemed to understand early on that certain aspects of life on Folger Lane were best not discussed with his father and stepmother. Besides, Ollie would never spoil Swift’s surprise.

  The afternoon before the big party, a Friday, I drove to Walnut Creek to pick up Ollie. We’d spend the night at my apartment and on Saturday Ollie would go off with Swift on their road trip to Monterey, with strict instructions to be home no later than 7:00 P.M.

  That night, back at my apartment, I ran a bath for Ollie. As he peeled off his clothes, I reached for the bin of toys I kept for his visits: a G.I. Joe, a handful of plastic dinosaurs, his pirate ship.

  These days Ollie wanted privacy in the tub, and he was old enough that I let him have it, but I sat outside the door with a magazine, listening to him. It was something I’d always loved, and one of the ten thousand things I had missed since he no longer lived with me: the sound of my child taking a bath.

  I loved all the things little boys do in the bathtub when they’re alone, like making the dinosaurs talk to each other. One—a female evidently—was lecturing the other about being mean to his little brother. “Did not,” Boy Dinosaur said. “Did so,” Girl Dinosaur said back in a high voice. “You’re
mean,” said Boy Dinosaur. “You get on my nerves,” said Girl Dinosaur. “If you say that one more time, I’m going to slap you.”

  Then there were bubble noises—Ollie briefly submerging himself, as he liked to do, then the splash when he came up for air. Now he was making the sound of an engine—the boat, I guessed. The high-pitched female dinosaur, calling out for help. G.I. Joe to the rescue.

  At that moment, I wished he wasn’t going away with Swift the next morning. I wanted to keep him home with me, here in this safe place where I could read to him and play Memory Game and make him macaroni and cheese, and afterward, tuck him in to bed and listen to the sound of his breathing. I wanted him to stay being a little boy, and it suddenly felt that the time in which he’d be one might be almost over. The thought came to me then, as clearly as a billboard on the side of the highway: Don’t let him go with Swift.

  If I told Ollie that he couldn’t make the Monterey trip, he’d never forgive me, of course—any more than he had ever completely forgiven Elliot for insisting he put that life jacket on. (Elliot. Thinking of him now left a small hollow feeling in my heart. Ever since the night of the disastrous dinner party, I’d kept my cell phone close by and charged, just in case he called. It was ironic, I suppose, considering how I’d avoided his many calls to me all those weeks before. I’d thought about calling him, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had said such terrible things to Elliot; why should he forgive me? How could he? Even more ironic was that Ollie asked me where Elliot was. Even though Ollie adored Monkey Man, it seemed as if my son understood, too, that there had been something comforting in the solidity and steadiness of Elliot. For Ollie, as for me, it may only have been after he was gone that it became clear how good he had been for us.)

  But now Ollie was with me again, and if what he wanted was to go off on a road trip with his hero, I wasn’t about to tell him no. The two of them would have a great time, watching the dolphins and the sharks and the seals together—and then they’d drive home just in time for the big surprise. The party. Ollie loved it that he had such an important role in pulling it off. Getting Swift out of town so we could set things up was essential.

  Swift was due to arrive at six on Saturday morning. I packed Ollie’s bag the night before: a change of clothes, a few granola bars, a Baggie filled with Goldfish, some books to look at (though I doubted he would). He had asked me to charge up the digital camera I’d given him for his birthday so he could take pictures of all the cool stuff he’d see at the aquarium.

  Ollie was up and dressed by five, wearing the San Francisco Giants jacket that Swift had given him over his monkey shirt, which was tucked in so it wouldn’t hang to his knees. We were standing on the doorstep in the dark when the Land Rover pulled up and Swift rolled down the window.

  “Yo, sport!” Swift called out to him. “You ready for some serious guy time this weekend? I brought along a couple of machetes, in case bad guys hijack us along the road.”

  Swift tied a bandanna around Ollie’s head. And another around his own. “Don’t mess with us,” he announced, with that big hyena laugh of his. “We’re pirates.”

  Ollie looked at me. He knew Swift well enough to understand this could be a story, but he wasn’t sure, and he didn’t want to get it wrong.

  “He’s kidding, honey,” I told him. “There won’t be any bad guys.”

  “Just this one,” Swift said, leaning over to open the passenger door and biting down on his cigar. “Hop in, bud.”

  “We’re a couple of pirate guys,” Ollie said as I buckled him in.

  “Tone it down a little, okay, Swift?” I said to him, as he was unzipping the soft top. “You’ve got precious cargo.”

  “Don’t I know it. I’ll treat him like he was my own boy.”

  62.

  All that morning I resisted the impulse to call Swift’s cell phone and ask to speak to Ollie. My son wanted guy time, not check-ins from his mother. And anyway, I knew those two would be having too much fun for Oliver to want to spend one minute talking to me.

  After I’d had my coffee, I headed over to Folger Lane, where preparations for the party had gotten under way the moment Swift’s car pulled out of the driveway. Now there were three trucks parked outside, delivering flowers, tables, linens, glassware. In the kitchen, the team of caterers was setting out trays.

  Ava had called the day before to tell me the books were in—The Man and His Dogs, all one thousand specially printed copies.

  “I can’t wait to see how they turned out,” she said. “But I didn’t want to take them out of the boxes without you.”

  Ava was waiting for me in the large laundry room just off the kitchen. Close to a hundred corrugated cardboard boxes were stacked up against the far wall. Somehow Ava had managed to have the book cartons brought in through the back door without Swift’s knowledge, to be stored until the party in the one place in the house Swift never ventured. This was Estella’s exclusive domain and he had no idea how to use a washing machine, anyway.

  We slit open the first carton. I lifted a volume from the top of the stack, felt the weight of it in my hand, ran my fingers over the embossed letters on the cover. Ava had selected the most expensive option for the cover: red leather with gold stamping. It took me a moment before I realized the mistake.

  There was a misprint. The subtitle read as intended: The Amazing Life of Swift Havilland. But instead of The Man and His Dogs—the title Ava had selected—the letters read The Man Is a God.

  I looked at Ava’s face, to see how bad this was. But she was laughing.

  “Well, that’s not so far off base, is it?” she said. “The man is sort of a god. He may not have created the whole world. He just thinks he did.”

  Estella came in to see what we were doing. She picked up a copy of the book and turned the pages, studying each photograph carefully.

  After she went back out to the yard, Ava shook her head. “I’m such an idiot,” she said. “All those months of putting our book together, with all those pictures of parties and friends, and I forgot to include a single picture of Estella.”

  “She’s not the type to take offense at something like that,” I told her. In fact, there was no picture of me in the book, either. It would have seemed odd, putting one in myself, and Ava had never suggested it.

  There was a lot of work to do, but I wanted to take a few minutes to study the book. I took a copy out to the garden with a glass of lemonade. As many hours as I’d spent on this project—as familiar as I was with every photograph—I wanted to imagine I’d never seen the book before. I was some guest at the party—Swift’s motorcycle repairman, or his massage therapist, or Evelyn Couture, perhaps—picking it up for the first time and curious to know: Who is this man?

  Page one: the face of a baby, the image bleeding right out to the edge. Even at six or seven months old, the features were recognizable. His mouth was open wide, howling with laughter.

  For my husband, lover, and soul mate for all time—the dedication. In celebration of his first six decades on Planet Earth. The Milky Way Galaxy will never be the same.

  That was followed by a couple of pages of images from Swift’s childhood. Ava had decided that this part shouldn’t occupy a lot of space, and the photographs suggested the reason behind her decision. Swift had been a homely child who hung back in all the early pictures. An older brother and a younger sister appeared in the pictures too. (Curious, I had thought, while assembling the images for the book, that I’d never even heard their names. They were not on the guest list for the party, either. Neither was any other member of Swift’s family, if they existed, besides his son. Or any member of Ava’s family, for that matter. About whom, it had occurred to me, I knew nothing.)

  There was one formal family portrait from Swift’s growing-up years. Swift’s father looked like a hard man: square jawed, with dark narrow eyes and a stance that suggested military training. Beside him—but not touching, not even grazing her hand against his shirt—stood Swift’s mot
her. She was thin, nearly bony, with hollow eyes and a look of defeat, her mouth open in the photograph, as if gasping for breath. One hand rested on her younger son’s shoulder, less with an air of tenderness than control. She was keeping him out of trouble. She would not succeed very long.

  Then came adolescence, also skimmed over lightly. Swift was short and undeveloped looking, with a bad haircut and bad skin. One photograph showed him on what must have been some kind of school trip, in which the students had evidently gone camping—standing in a lineup, against a backdrop that appeared to be Yosemite, with a pack on his back. By now he had adopted the expression of the class clown, perhaps having realized that all the best roles had already been taken. He had one arm behind the back of the boy next to him—Bobby, who still attended all the Havillands’ dinner parties—and his hand was raised over Bobby’s head (not easy; the guy had a good six inches on Swift), his fingers forming a devil sign.

  The transformation came after. The wrestling team. Better acne medication, maybe. A date to the prom. (Not the hottest-looking girl. But she had large breasts, and even in what appeared to be their official prom portrait Swift seemed to be eyeing them.)

  The next picture showed Swift taking off for college with a couple of Samsonite suitcases and a bass guitar. (He’d played in a rock band for about ten minutes. A move also aimed at improving his standing with girls, maybe, considering the fact that the Swift I knew displayed little interest in music.) He was wearing tight pants now, with long sideburns and the top three buttons of his shirt left open. Standing stiffly beside him: the younger sister and his parents, looking baffled to be related to this person. By now the older brother must have moved on.

  This was the last image in the book in which Swift’s family of origin appeared. From all I could gather, this was pretty much the last time they existed as any kind of significant factor in his life.

  What followed was a surprisingly rapid rise. Fraternity membership. A good-looking girl on his arm. A better-looking one. The Corvette. A whole string of pictures depicting fraternity-style pranks (Swift dressed up as a woman, Swift mooning out the window of a Mustang convertible, Swift in a hot tub with three women. All drunk, from the looks of it.)