The Adderall Diaries

by Stephen Elliott

  I meet a friend near the courthouse. She’s a professor of political science at Berkeley. We drive south and find a restaurant in a residential district nestled between the hills and the freeway leading onto the bridge. I have a beer, then another. I tell her what Hans said, his last words before he was led away, “He said, ‘I’ve been the best father that I know how.’ ”

  “By killing their mother?” she asks.

  “It was as if he was talking to me,” I say.

  “Does he know you’re writing a book?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Hillary Clinton is on the television above the bar. A scroll runs below her chin, repeating an earlier statement about what would happen to Iran if Israel were attacked. She says, “Iran would be obliterated.” It’s nearing the end of the Democratic primaries and it occurs to me that for the last five and a half months I’ve hardly thought about anything except Hans Reiser. I haven’t been following the news or playing cards. For more than two years I went to my friends’ house every Sunday night to watch television. But during the trial my friends had a baby and we stopped doing that. I saw the baby once and I held her awkwardly, terrified I’d drop her as she made circles with her tiny mouth. She was a colicky baby but recently she’s stopped crying. The trial is over.

  “You seem excited,” my friend says. We’re outside on the sidewalk near an ice-cream shop and a closed-down bookstore. There are lots of lights and teenagers everywhere.

  In the morning I’m back in court, mildly hungover. Hans is there but doesn’t get to say anything. The judge schedules the sentencing. Murder one is a mandatory twenty-five years to life.

  Du Bois asks for some words with his client. The two men lean toward each other, like lovers. They pat each other’s arms, whispering. Hans spreads his fingers over Du Bois’ shoulder, reassuring him, until Hans is taken from the room and returned to his cell.

  “What now?” I say to one of the reporters.

  “I’m so glad to be done with this bullshit,” he replies.

  When Hans said, “I’ve been the best father I know how,” he meant that he did it for his children, more specifically his son. I remember his testimony, the thing the jury absolutely had to know, was that Nina didn’t love Cori after the divorce. He interrupted his own lawyer to say that when Nina informed him she was leaving, she also switched her affection from Cori to Lila. Hans said it was important to understand that Nina changed this way, otherwise it would seem like he was contradicting himself and nothing would add up. None of us knew what he was talking about. I shook my head and whispered to one of the journalists, “What is he referring to?”

  “He’s gone off the rails,” he whispered back. But we were wrong. We were ignoring something consequential: the lattice of justifications a murderer assembles as he builds toward the crime.

  In one of the key pieces of evidence, the wiretapped phone call to his mother three weeks after Nina was murdered, Hans said, “She came up with these illnesses for Cori because she hated me… Cori understands his mother wants him to be sick and doesn’t really like him on some deep, conflicted level.” Hans sounded tired in that call, depressed, explaining to his mother that Nina was killing his son.

  On Friday, September 1, the last weekday before he killed Nina, Hans called District Supervisor Gail Steele. He wanted to know what she thought of his proposal to overhaul the child welfare system. Hans was certain the supervisor would take his proposal seriously. He had donated $2,000 to her campaign. But after calling six times that week, four times that day, he never called her again. The bureaucracy would not bend to his will so he took care of the problem himself.

  He did it to save his son.

  Except he didn’t. Nina had been with Hans for five years. She knew Hans better than anybody and she left him for his only friend. This is the moment, Hans told the jury, when she ceased loving their son. In fact, it’s the moment when Hans realizes Nina didn’t love him, and that maybe she never did. His mind went searching for a reason. Surely she understood he was a famous computer programmer? Her rejection wasn’t consistent with the identity he had built for himself. He had to reorganize the data; it was too much to take and he gave it to his son to carry. When Hans said, “I’ve been the best father that I know how,” he meant, “I killed the mother to save the boy.”

  When I asked my father why he moved while I was sleeping on the streets, he said I was a drug addict so he abandoned me for the good of the family. That was the story he put together. The opposite of the story I had put together about being an abused child. But some large part of me hadn’t wanted things to work out with my father, even then. I despised him for screaming. I disapproved of the way he led his life. He never hit me until after I left home and brought shame on him. I rejected my father. There was only my father and my sister, and my sister would be in college soon. My grandparents were dead. My mother’s family was in England. And my father moved and wouldn’t tell me where he went. The family my father left me for didn’t exist. He was referring to the family he didn’t yet have, the family coming soon, the family hoped-for. Or not. He was referring to himself.

  All systems of domination create stories of their own benevolence. The imperialists arrive to tame the savages. We tie the noose around Saddam Hussein’s neck, place a bag over his head, the floor swings open beneath his feet, and his dead body hangs in the gallows. I was traveling with President Bush in 2004, three days after the pictures were published of Abu Ghraib. He stood near third base in a little league stadium and gave the same speech he gave in every city. Except right in the middle of his speech he slid in one extra sentence. He said, “Thanks to our actions, Saddam’s torture chambers have been closed.”

  “Did he just say what I think he said?” I asked the local reporter next to me. The crowd cheered. They had no idea he was saying this for the first time. They thought it was part of the speech. But it wasn’t. It was the official response to evidence to the contrary.

  Hans Reiser killed Nina because she rejected him, but he will never know that. Something so selfish is beyond knowing. My father abandoned me to the streets because I had no forgiveness in me. I was eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and I sat in judgment of my father so he left me sleeping in some hallway and got a new house. Those people in that stadium weren’t concerned with the picture of a soldier giving the thumbs-up next to the body of a man packed in ice beaten to death by American soldiers. We were taking our revenge. Revenge for what? They rejected us, that’s what. We respond with the violent indignation of colonizers. We understand the world by how we retrieve memories, re-order information into stories to justify how we feel.

  “Thanks to our actions Saddam’s torture chambers are now closed.”

  “I did it for the good of the family.”

  “I’ve been the best father that I know how.”

  On the night of September 4, one day after Nina was killed, Hans visited the Redwood Recreation Area with his two children. He testified he wanted to teach them not to be afraid of the dark.

  Redwood, a giant park thick with trees and gullies and steep drops, stretches for miles, large enough to hike for days. The children were four and six and they didn’t know that they would never see their mother again. He said he gave the children flashlights and told them to look for deer. They walked the fire road into the park, failing to notice the broken lock hanging from the gate. It must have been quiet except for the pebbles and twigs crunching beneath them and whatever wind was forcing its way through the hills. They didn’t see any deer. An owl stared from its branch, unmoving, the beam crossing its feathers. On the stand Hans mentioned the owl three times.

  Two hundred meters in Cori and Lila stopped. They were at the limits of their fear. There were trees on either side of them. The only light came from the flashlights held in their small hands. What if one of them dropped a flashlight, or one of the bulbs burned out? What if there are good reasons children are afraid of the dark? Why were they in the woods, pinned benea
th a three-quarter moon? Years from now will the path open or will they remember the branches closing in on them? Hans Reiser marched through the woods with his children at night, the beams of light skittering across the branches, the owl and its disapproving beak watching, motionless. Most likely Hans was looking to see if Nina’s grave was visible, or he was trying to clear his head. But the owl wasn’t having it, and the children were afraid.

  19. Nicolas Rasmussen, On Speed: The Many Lives of Amphetamine (New York: New York University, 2008), 166.

  CHAPTER 10

  May/June/July/August; The Attraction of Controlled Violence; Hans Changes His Story; Boxing Miranda; Sean Sturgeon’s Confession; Threats in the Diner; False Prophets and Fierce Attachments; Father and Son

  At a boxing match in the Tenderloin the fighters circle each other wearing thick gloves, large padded headgear, crotch protectors resembling rubber diapers on the outside of their shorts. It’s an amateur bout, each fight lasts three two-minute rounds. Outside, a line of pedestrians forms on the street, staring through the bay windows.

  I see Miranda near the entrance. Her earrings are gone, her clothes are less revealing, there are no gold streaks in her black curls. I almost hug her but as I approach she leans away as if she were afraid of getting sick. I ask how she’s doing and she says fine. We talk for a moment about the upcoming state ballot. Large landlords are trying to end tenant protections, hiding their agenda under the guise of eminent domain reform. I’ve been getting political again, organizing events, printing flyers, and making T-shirts that say SAVE RENT CONTROL. Miranda says she’s already involved with a group working on the same issue. Then she says something about getting a bottle of water and walks off.

  I go back to my friends. People are screaming. There are an unusual number of beautiful women in the gym, unabashedly sexy, wearing tight shirts and pants, revealing as much skin as they can. They’re fighters or girlfriends of the fighters, drawn to the pursuit of controlled violence. I see Miranda on the other side of the room, looking away. For ten months I’ve been sending her notes, calling her, but she never responds. I walk over to her again.

  “What happened?” I ask. “I never heard from you after the Fourth of July.”

  “I didn’t want to talk to you then, or now, or ever,” she says.

  “But why?”

  I’ve said exactly the wrong thing. She stares through me with pure hatred. Or maybe I’m giving myself too much credit. Miranda pushes past me through the crowd toward the exit. I go back to the post in the middle of the gym and lean against it as the fighters beat each other with their large gloves and padded heads. At the end the fighters are drenched in sweat, barely moving. When asked why he liked using fighters as actors, David Mamet responded, “Because fighters are sad. ”20

  I met Miranda at a literary festival where I read a story about a young adult stalking the man who molested him. At the end of the story the molester reminds the young man that he had also kept him safe. Nobody else had hurt him when he was around. He places his hand over the younger man’s face and says, “I would do it again.”

  Wearing cheap black boots and a schoolgirl skirt that didn’t cover her knees, she was standing in front of me when I came down from the stage. She had a tiny ring through her lower lip. We talked for a moment before she said, “So when do we start dating?”

  “How about now,” I replied.

  We were matching each other, vying for who could be more easygoing, less afraid of falling in love. It was as if she had stepped from my own personal fantasy. But the initial excitement didn’t last more than a few hours. That night, walking back to her apartment, already the insecurities were showing through the cracks. She was a young sadist. She liked making boys cry. She knew I was a masochist from my writing, but she didn’t know how to hurt me.

  I tell myself I was just getting comfortable when she disappeared last July. But I’m rewriting history, calling up one set of feelings at the expense of another. I remember lying in bed, listening to her talk of revolution. “It never works,” I said. “Look at the Communists, Trotsky and the terror famine, Stalin and the twenty-five million. Violence always makes things worse.” I was lecturing her idealism. I’m more than ten years older than her and I was telling her to change the system from within. I didn’t take her ideas seriously. I imagine a cousin or an aunt patting Vladimir Lenin’s cheek, pronouncing confidently he’ll grow out of these crazy thoughts. But now I can see the force of Miranda’s will. Nothing is more dangerous than someone who is sure they are right.

  Back in my neighborhood, Caterina says, “Miranda was in love with you and you broke her heart. That’s all it is.” It’s Friday; Zeitgeist is packed. Caterina is a fun drunk, full of affection, vivacious. She’s here with her boyfriend who is like her—quick to hug people, possessed with an easy laugh. We’re all crammed together at picnic tables set in rows in the courtyard. I’ve always liked crowded places.

  “It might be true,” I say. I could subscribe to that narrative. The place where the story is supposed to fit is like an abrasion. In the narrative that involves Miranda and me I could be hero or villain. Either would serve as gauze for my feelings. But understanding is not always an option.

  Less than a week after the verdict William Du Bois visits Hans at Santa Rita Jail. He enters into the sally port, a small chamber with doors at either end. By design both doors cannot be opened at the same time. He passes through the port, then another locked door, into the interview room. The room is only five by six feet with two chairs and a table. There’s an emergency button on the wall. There’s no window except for a square of wired plexiglass. When Du Bois is ready to leave he’ll ring the bell and the guards will return and accompany him to the exit.

  Hans is already there in his red prison fatigues. There’s no more need for a suit, no jury to impress. He has his papers with him, a notebook and a pencil. It’s just been leaked to the press that Du Bois had negotiated a plea bargain before the trial started, manslaughter with a three-year sentence. The district attorney didn’t want the case to go to trial. If Hans had accepted the deal he would be getting out soon. All Hans had to do was produce the body and the body had to be consistent with the crime. But Hans turned him down. Richard Tamor, the assistant defense attorney, filed a sealed notice with the court expressing his opinion that Hans should have accepted the plea bargain. Du Bois did his job before the trial ever started. It was the best deal Hans was ever going to get, but that offer is no longer on the table.

  “This is your last chance,” he tells Hans. If Hans produces the body and takes responsibility he may someday get out on parole. Du Bois suggests they can return to Paul Hora, it might be possible to get the charge knocked down to murder two, and that maybe Hans would only serve fifteen years.

  There’s nowhere for Hans to rest his eyes except the linoleum. This is just the jail. After the sentencing Hans will be transferred to San Quentin for evaluation then shipped to another facility like Tehachapi or Lancaster in the Antelope Valley, where the medium-security prisoners live in double and triple bunks crammed into what’s supposed to be recreation areas. The short timers—thieves and drug offenders—have no space beyond their mattresses. Maximum-security prisoners, which include all murderers, stay in tiny rooms with a cellmate, released to the yard only two hours a day and often not at all. The California prison system is taxed well past the breaking point thanks to years of negligent governors pandering for votes, and Hans has earned his descent into that particular hell.

  “OK,” Hans says. He’s going to tell him what really happened.

  That day, Hans begins, he sat with Nina in the living room trying to convince her to give up legal custody of the children. She began to lose patience and finally said, “Hans, I have to go.” She called the children upstairs while Hans was still talking. Cori gave her a hug, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing as hard as he could. When she tried to kiss him he turned his head. Hans and the children watched as Nina ascended the
stairs along the side of the house, climbed into her van, and drove away. Then Hans ushered them downstairs where there were computers set up with speakers attached, and they worked educational software and played video games.

  Two hours later, at almost six o’clock, the bell rang. It was Nina and she was with Sean. She had forgotten her phone, which had fallen from her purse while she and Hans sat on the couch earlier.

  Hans followed her to the couch and then outside. He still wanted to talk about the divorce. Nina got in the driver’s seat, Sean next to her, Hans on the curb trying to get Nina to take him seriously. Nina gave Hans a thin smile. She only ever showed her true face to him. “You better give me my money every month, or I’m going to give Cori to Sean to molest,” she joked.

  According to Hans something rose in Sean, his face contorting into a painful mask. A streak of red flashed against the windshield. Hans says Sean punched Nina, gripping her by the throat, pressing into her tendons. Nina struggled, kicking at the open door, flailing as he crushed her voice box. Hans watched at the side of the van.

  Nina lay dead in the driver’s seat, her head to one side as if she were resting. Hans says a moment passed. The two spurned lovers had to decide what to do with the body, their animosity dissolving in the face of common cause. Hans gave Sean the keys to the Honda CRX and Sean left and returned with a large duffle bag. They got her body into the bag and filled it with rocks, loading the bag into the passenger seat. Hans told Sean to take the body to Monterey Bay Canyon, three hours south.