by Shaw Sander
Malcolm was always working and couldn’t talk there, and I didn’t want to bother him at home.
Still, I wished for a touchstone, something to remind me of my real life in Seattle going on without me. Chicago was filthy, a weighty chain around my neck, trying to suck me back into its misery. Everywhere was poverty, burglar bars, aggressive signage full of NO’s, concrete, pavement, miles of brick buildings, no trees, huge potholes, shitty roads, angry people, fear and danger. The small beauty one might eek out of the city was limited and unavailable to most city inhabitants, being tucked close to the lakefront. Seattle’s geographic beauty and welcoming spirit were nowhere to be found in the flatlands.
Except with Amanda. By contrast, Amanda’s quiet background hospitality was a godsend. Dinner appeared, the fridge was stocked with farmer’s market bounty, wine was placed in my hand. The bathroom was bursting with organic products, the towels were huge and fluffy. Colin found me some pot to quiet my nerves and the slow burn down my throat gave me no regrets. Interesting books were everywhere, quiet places were offered, exercise possibilities laid out.
All publicity about Dew’s event was fronted by Amanda. She never let it touch me.
I slept the sleep of the dead, waking instantly at sunrise, dressed and ready for another exhausting round of hoping for tiny changes in my firstborn, my golden boy, my life’s blood.
He had calmed down considerably and even used some old family in-jokes, smiling slightly, a little bit shy, as if it was awkward coming back to himself. Peanut and I were deeply relieved to see each moment.
His slight stutter returned.
We’d told the doctor this phenom, that his lifelong minor speech impediment completely disappeared during this psychosis. His psychiatrist had clearly taken a mental note of that, an interesting tidbit to recount to his colleagues later.
Yet there were still moments of spontaneous tears and frustrated rage, such as this one.
“You’ll never trust me again,” Dew wailed, near tears as we sat in the dayroom
“That’s not true!” I immediately rushed to assure him, though I knew instantly, feeling it physically in my gut that yes, it was exactly true.
I would always wonder if he was going to lose it this way again. That child could still read me like a fucking book.
Chapter Six
Measure upon measure, here a little, there a little, Dew came back enough after five agonizingly long days to be released from the hospital into my care. There was the family counseling session, the meeting with the social worker, our plan for after-care, the shrink appointment back home. We shook hands with the doctor, thanked the staff, and Dew got his clothes back.
“How’s the outside world look?” I asked as we drove up Lake Shore Drive. A roadside electric construction sign flashed “Workers on LSD Next 2 Miles.”
“Too bright,” he said, squinting his forehead. “But good. Good to be out. Can we stop for some cigarettes, please? And can you loan me ten dollars until I get the bank thing straightened out?”
He’d maxed out his credit card and taken too much money out of his debit account in too short a time, buying wildly the two days before he was hospitalized. His money was frozen, his bank cards useless, despite five grand sitting in his savings. We hadn’t had the long moment yet to go to the bank and deal with it. I was also worried because Dew’s patience was about minus fifty and the least little glitch enraged him. Facing a bank’s bureaucracy might land him in jail if it didn’t go well.
I couldn’t take that chance, alone with him in such a gloomy, miserable town. I didn’t want to have to chase after him, or have him go off again.
I handed him cash.
Amanda’s home expanded to include one more and we began relocating Dew to Seattle.
The basement boxes had to be sorted through. A pile was made, bagged and driven to a thrift store. Dew’s whole life, as he put it, sat in another pile of keep-able, ship-worthy goods. Angry, near tears, and resigned in short bursting cycles, his arms flailed about as he vented.
A car caravan lugged the seven boxes and one bicycle crate to FedEx. Even with my discount, it cost Dew a significant amount, his first indicator that this manic episode was going to be expensive as he cleaned up his trail of despair. This helped feed the victimized angry cycle he seemed to be looping.
Though flattered he felt comfortable enough around me to be himself, the energy he gave off was exhausting.
I cried when I had moments alone, still trying to reach my friends.
At night I made him take the terrible drug that paralyzed his body but left his mind active, forcing him to lie down and endure the terrors with no way to fight back.
Seven days, I made him promise me, seven days of taking the drug at night, remember how the doctor said the psychotic break affected your brain chemistry and the Seraquel was needed to balance it out?
Seven days, he agreed.
Grateful, I couldn’t believe this towering giant still listened to his mother.
Peanut and Chad returned to Madison when I promised that Dew and I would come see their new place once we got his shit together in the city. I loved her more after this family event than I ever had.
The first night I sat in Amanda’s darkened front room, the leather couch pulled out to make Dew’s bed. I “lit” the electric fireplace, watching the fake flames glow in the dark. From an easy chair, I watched my firstborn draw one breath after another, not moving except for his chest, recovering in horrible, tiny increments from the fried circuits he’d put himself through, his brain firing off like Pop-Rocks, his body paralyzed with Seraquel.
I wondered in the dark if our family would ever be the same, if he would have permanent damage from this one episode, if these things were one to a customer.
Hours I sat there, staring at his skinny form, the streetlights bleeding in through the window’s closed wood slats, the tinny fireplace making a humming sound. I turned it off after Dew made moaning noises. I needed to hear his every utterance. My child needed to live. No Hendrix scene here, no vomit-choking on my watch, and hopefully, Universe willing, no Ziller redux, either.
I left a voice mail for Cora, this being an occasion when my need to hear her voice was greater than my respect for her coupled relationship. Her Sherry had always gone green-eyed whenever Cora and I were in touch, but forty years of friendship was greater than Sherry’s paranoia.
“It’s bad, Cora. It’s Dew. Call me.”
The trash cans were oozing slimy food garbage and underneath were ruined mementoes of Dew’s childhood, high school and college years. Torn and smeared were photos of prom, the second girlfriend, the current one. His writing, art and sentimental doodads were ruined, unsalvageable. A favorite pair of Dew’s raggedy-ass jeans sat on top of one trash barrel in the alley behind his former friend’s apartment, the pouring rain making our already dreadful task even more miserable.
A painfully skinny black homeless man came walking down the alley, a belt wrapped almost double around him.
“That’s my coat he’s wearing. And my belt, too. How much cash do you have, Mom?”
That question still hurt him after being responsible for his own finances and life for the past six years, now dependent on his mother. But he didn’t have time for pride.
I handed him everything in my purse and he walked quickly toward the guy.
“Hey, mister. Buddy. I’ll give you forty bucks for that coat.”
I waited for him in the car, wanting to stay out of the transaction. My own child, buying his clothes back from a street person. What horrific chain of events had led up to this point? How ephemeral everything was that we think solid---jobs, money, relationships, even geographic locations. A couple brain chemicals later and ka-blooie. Two weeks previous his life had been perfectly set in Chicago, and now, nothing held him here, not one shred or person.
I looked in the rearview. The skinny man was holding Dew’s hand and praying for him.
Dew hopped into the car
.
“It’s a two hundred dollar Cole Haan jacket, Mom. Thanks for the money. I’ll get it dry-cleaned. I got a blessing, too.”
“Maybe it’s the start of something good. We could use it. Okay, so you own one extra pair of jeans and now a jacket. What does Trent still have?”
“My laptop, my guitar and case, and my passport.”
“His girlfriend won’t let you in?”
Dew had hopped the secured fence and pounded on their back door while I’d waited. They had no front door accessible without a key, either, no bell to ring. It was a fortress, and his valuables were walled inside.
“Nope. She said if I come back, Trent’s gonna call the cops and arrest me for tresspassing.”
“What a great idea. We’re going to the police.”
It was the antithesis of the event’s beginnings, the yang to the yin in my own head. Chicago police could be brutal, but we had been spared that outcome by Amanda’s rescuing Dew off the street. It could just as easily have ended a different way, with him in Cook County Jail and then Cook County Psych Ward.
But now, the cops were on our side.
Twenty minutes later, we met two Chicago police officers out front of the barred apartment. Dew sounded a little crazy, giving far too much detail and dangerously too much personal information.
“Cut to the chase, Dew,” I interrupted him after lengthy minutes, the cops getting impatient. In a motherly gesture, I removed his sunglasses, making sure he made eye contact with the two officers. “This kid who lives here, Trent, has his laptop, guitar and passport. He won’t give them back.”
“Is this true?” the cops asked Dew. He nodded, quieting down.
The cops jumped the stair railing and pounded on the apartment door.
Star, the girlfriend, fronted as best she could but when she eventually caved and produced Dew’s guitar, the cops began to understand Dew was telling the truth.
“Star, I’m Annalee, I’m Dew’s mother. Now you know there’s a case that goes with that guitar. Just turn around and go back inside and get it, please.”
I knew young women were frightened by grey-haired mothers like me so I puffed up as big as I could, giving her the steely eye. Saying she’d take another look, Star disappeared into the apartment while the cops lectured Dew on letting his shit out of his sight and taking drugs to get into this mess. Head hung, Dew concurred, apologizing, swearing never to do this again.
A moment later Star suddenly found the guitar’s case but swore the laptop was nowhere inside. Trent would be back at seven, she said, and she’d tell him to find the laptop.
“There’re drugs inside,” Dew said flatly after we’d left, all of us agreeing we’d try back at seven. If we needed to call the cops again, they said to do so. “That’s why she was scared.”
“Why didn’t you want the place busted? I would think you’d be pissed and feel righteously vindicated since they are trying to rip off your stuff.”
“Star’s cool. I had a huge crush on her freshman year. I still like her. It’s not her fault Trent’s an asshole.”
“Well, I wanted to throttle her. She knows the stuff’s inside.”
It made me furious, some twenty-year-old white girl punk trying to stand up to the cops, playing against a boy who still has the hots for her, manipulating the situation.
“Don’t take it out on Star, Mom,” Dew angrily snapped at me. “And talk about humiliating, Mom, taking my sunglasses off in front of the cops and Star? Like I’m fucking six years old.”
Dew spat out the window, suddenly seething next to me.
I was stunned but he had a point.
“You’re right about that. Sorry. I hadn’t even thought of it. I apologize.”
He wasn’t ready to let go of the anger yet, his dignity still bruised, his world throbbing over his complete reversal of fortune.
To fill time before our seven-p.m. climactic meeting, we went to Manny’s on Roosevelt Road. Dew wolfed down the vegetarian special and I refrained from ordering tongue for the sake of my sensitive vegan boy. It felt wonderful to be in that homey Jewish deli again.
Chewing my corned beef, I wished I’d gotten the pastrami. My throat was so tense and dry the extra grease would have helped me swallow. I wickedly thought about mayonnaise and smiled to myself. I’d be thrown out for such a sin.
“We can go to Target,” Dew said, his head hanging low over his plate. “It’s right by here. I have to return more stuff. And GNC is around the corner. Do you think Walgreens will take the phone cards back?”
“No. I asked them three days ago.”
I’d pulled the assistant manager aside and asked for a quieter place to talk before I had burst into tears. No, ma’am, I’m sorry, she’d whispered, we can’t take them back after they’ve been activated at the register but good luck with your son.
“GNC needs a manager’s approval. I went in there, too.”
We sipped tea and waited, trying to stretch out four hours of waiting until the big confrontation at Trent’s over Dew’s remaining possessions.
I parked the rental car on Taylor Street, then Dew and I walked to the alley behind the apartment complex. It was starting to rain.
Trent was on the back stairway, just going into the apartment door.
“Hey, Trent,” Dew yelled. “Gimme my stuff.”
Trent held up his hand and disappeared inside, closing the door.
“Was that ‘gimme a sec’ or fuck you’?” I asked, sure we would have to call the goddamn cops again.
“I think it was gimme a sec,” Dew said, surprisingly optimistic.
It seemed highly unlikely to me that we’d get what we came for, but the scene had to be played out or, I knew from adult hindsight, Dew would always regret it. It was like the assortment of his things we’d boxed to ship back to Seattle: dishes, banged up thrift store kitchenware, a few books, minimal clothing, posters, a toolbox, the sewing machine I’d gotten him. In the end half of this stuff wouldn’t mean a thing to him but since his life was reduced to ashes and rubble, it all became important.
Suddenly the door opened and Trent came toward us like an automaton, carrying the laptop’s box and a basket with Dew’s passport, license, and some receipts. I was completely baffled as he brought it right out to us and handed it to Dew. We must have frightened the bubblehead girlfriend enough earlier to scare him vicariously. I felt triumphant.
“Trent, I’m Dew’s mother. Sorry to meet under these awkward circumstances. Thanks for bringing us our stuff. Open the box, Dew and check it. Trent, you stay right there until he does.”
Mothers of friends are formidable. I stared at Trent without blinking, holding him there with my eyes.
“It’s all here. Call me sometime,” Dew non-sequitered-ed as Trent turned and walked away.
Dew didn’t mean that but he was feeling magnanimous. After the loss of so much, we’d finally won one. The passport was a relief, and the Mac seemed to be all there, every accessory still nestled in the foamboard cut-outs.
“Totally cool,” I smiled as we walked out of the alley, the rain pouring down in sheets.
“That was awesome. He just handed the shit back, like it was the right thing to do. I never thought we’d see your stuff again, frankly.”
“Me, neither. I wonder what got into him?” Dew puzzled until we reached the street.
Sitting in front of Trent’s apartment was a Chicago police car on completely un-related business, the cherry-top flashing right into Trent’s living room window. Made more distinct by the grey rainy dark contrast, we realized Trent must have been scared out of his mind that they were coming for him. What a stroke of sheer coincidence.
“Thank the Universe for that one,” I said, laughing for the first time in days. “I never thought I’d be so happy to see a Chicago police car. Maybe,” I giggled, trying to imagine the hyper-paranoia with which Trent must have been seized, “Maybe he flushed all his drugs.”
I told Dew’s dad to deal with Dew’s
car. It was in his name, anyway. One call to his clan and they dispatched a member to drive it away.
There were advantages, I supposed grudgingly, to that family.
Dew and I headed up to Madison to see Peanut and Chad’s new place, maybe have a little vacation before we flew home and give Dew a chance to say goodbye to his graying dog. I spent two days helping Peanut clean the funky Victorian’s first floor, taking her to Target for household goods, showing Chad what he needed to handyman-up to reach satisfactory levels. Talking non-stop, Dew followed his sister around, still uncomfortable in his own skin, still resisting the anti-psychotic he needed to take at night.
When we all went out for breakfast Dew went to the restroom and there was a moment alone. I implored Peanut to take him off my hands for three hours, my eyes filling with tears, saying I had to rest, I needed silence back at the hotel, alone time. Her pretty white fingers covered with rings grasped both of mine as I cried for a minute, her bracelets jangling across the table.
“Of course I can, Mom. I’ll find him something to do. You go rest.”
It was the first alone, silent peace I’d had in over eight days.
Getting naked was a priority. My skin had been bundled into clothes 24/7 because of proximity to everyone.
The bubblebath was soothing, while an episode of “Law&Order” let me further drift away into zombie-state. None of my friends answered their phone, except Malcolm, who wished me well, said he was in the middle of lunch rush, and had news for when I got home.
A two-hour nap put me right and I woke to the telephone and the sweetest voice that ever whispered erotica in my ear.
“Annalee, it’s Cora. Is he alive?”
“Yes, he’s alive. And that’s the bottomline. Drug overdose, psychosis, five days of commitment. I’m a wreck. Where are you?”
