Savannah and Amy arrived at the apartment by 1 p.m. and the moment they did, Amy looked at my roommate suspiciously. I’m not sure why that was the case because, not that it should’ve mattered, she knew the nature of the platonic relationship I shared with Kristen and besides, we agreed long ago to raise Savannah separately, realizing that although it was an unconventional arrangement it would be the healthiest arrangement.
After visiting for a half-hour and then giving the spotless apartment an inspection of sorts, Amy left to visit family in Fort Myers. Then, after about an hour of fussing over Savannah, Kristen suddenly picked her up, brought her into the master bedroom and laid her down on the king-sized bed as the most putrid smell in the world began to attack me from every direction.
“WOW—she is really cute, Craig,” Kristen said. “And she shits like my ex-husband.”
“Does he wear Pampers also?” I asked my fantastic friend as she showed me how to change a diaper.
“No, but he acts like a fucking two-year-old,” she said as she suddenly covered her mouth to prevent anymore R-rated verbiage from slipping away.
At that point Savannah rolled over on the bed and smiled.
“Hooray, Savannah—that’s great!!” rejoiced Kristen as she applauded. “Craig! What’s wrong with you? Act excited, you idiot!”
“What for?”
“Because she just turned and rolled all the way to the other side of the mattress!”
“Big fucking deal. I did that in bed every night with her mother.”
“And stop cursing. Before you know it she’s gonna be repeating everything you say.”
After celebrating Savannah’s pooping and rolling, we brought her into the boys’ bedroom to do some army crawling on the thickly carpeted floor while she tried to put everything in her mouth. Then, suddenly, there was a loud and almost violent pounding on the front door.
“What’s wrong with you?!” Amy screamed at me the moment I turned the knob.
“What’s wrong with you?!”
“Why was the door locked?!” she demanded as she barged in.
“Because that’s what it fucking does! There are usually two little babies running around here and we’d rather them not stumble out on to the street and get flattened by a fucking truck! Is that okay with you, Amy?”
“Where’s my daughter?!” she demanded again.
“She’s in the bedroom with Kristen.”
“Oh, that’s just wonderful!”
“What’s your problem?!”
“Don’t worry about it!” she said as she stormed into the boys’ bedroom, grabbed Savannah and then stormed out of the apartment.
24
After Amy’s meltdown in the Cape she refused to allow me any access to Savannah. And whenever I called her stepmother’s condo she wouldn’t come to the phone and I would soon learn from Jane—her father’s new bride of six months—that my name wasn’t even on the birth certificate.
“Oh, this is such a bunch of fucking bullshit!” I told her. “And she has no right to prevent me from seeing my kid. I’m her father, everyone knows I’m her father and I’m not just gonna go away.”
Jane was about twenty years younger than Amy’s father who was almost sixty. She arrived on the scene and inserted herself in Amy’s life just a few weeks prior to Savannah arriving, eventually insisting that Amy and the baby live with her at the condo for at least the short term. But then she made a fatal error by attempting to insert herself in my life as well:
“Well—you know, Craig, you’re not the most stable person in the world, so maybe at some point we can arrange for a supervised visitation,” she told me.
And there it was. I knew it was coming. Indeed, I knew at some point my past would come back to haunt me in a terrible way and low and behold—a scarlet letter A for ADDICT was now burning a hole in my chest. Obviously, the virtue and value of being open and honest was overrated.
“Excuse me but uhhh…who the fuck are you?” I had to ask. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. You don’t matter. You’re not relevant. You have no standing. You’re not anyone to anyone.”
“And you’re not exactly father material—at least not yet,” she told me. “But I won’t give up on you, Craig, because with a little help from me you might just rise to the occasion.”
“Maybe you’re confusing me with the old man’s pecker.”
“Oh, how dare you!” she actually gasped. “You just wait and—“
“Listen, asshole, you’re just a fucking gold-digger, and judging from the dilapidated shithole hubby used to live in—not a very good one at that.”
“Why are you even getting into it with that stupid son of a bitch?” said the crusty old man in the background. “Just tell him to fuck off and hang up the phone!” I heard and decided I’d had enough of the bullshit and hung up first.
So, for the next several months I’d be given no access to my daughter, and though I wouldn’t hear directly from Amy I’d regularly get disturbing and occasionally threatening phone calls from a pathetic procession of underage boys, all of whom were barely out of high school.
“Don’t worry, man, I got it covered,” one of them once said to me.
“Tell me douche—what exactly do you have covered?”
“Being the father that Savannah deserves.”
“You don’t say?”
“Yep,” he went on. “I play with the little cutie all the time. I even change her diapers.”
“Who changes yours?”
“My mommy.”
“Does she suck you off while she’s doing it?”
“Yeah, you’re a real funny guy. I tell Savannah what a funny guy you are when I feed her breakfast each morning.”
“You’ve been feeding my daughter?”
“I certainly have.”
“Well I hope at least you’re breastfeeding.”
“I’m gonna fucking kill you.”
“Well you’re gonna get the opportunity real soon, brotha—REAL SOON,” I told him though I had no intention of heading to Jupiter with things the way they were, because I knew if I drove out there and was prevented from seeing Savannah I’d end up in jail.
“Oh, yeah? When exactly is that gonna be?!” the little boy asked as his voice cracked.
“Sooner than you can imagine—fuckhead. Sooner than you can imagine.”
25
Regardless of how it may appear at times, I’m really not a hopelessly hateful person. In fact, I’ve had longstanding dislikes for people that after a second thought and a little consideration I was easily able to change my way of thinking, shed the ill feelings and develop a meaningful appreciation and respect for those once despised. And, not surprisingly, after living in Southwest Florida and exposing myself to the gut-wrenching agony and perpetual humiliation suffered by so many devoted and unwavering Boston baseball fans—I was finally able to forget about the past, let bygones be bygones and develop a deep appreciation for…
The New York Yankees.
The pain inflicted by their perennial success was exquisite, and though it affected Bostonians like none other—championships won in the name of Gotham delivered a palpable malaise that descended across the entire area and each time it sounded a little less like shit. Of course, there would always be those who simply refused to shut their stinky mouths.
“Yankees fucking suck!” was suddenly trumpeted at me from behind as I simultaneously smiled with satisfaction and stepped into Tiny Tots Daycare to pick-up Kristen’s kids. But when I turned around to get a gander of what was making the awful noise there was clearly nothing to smile about.
“Oh, my God—Andrea!” I said as I covered my mouth in horror and sort of squinted at the awful aftermath of what had to have been a terrible accident. “What happened to you?!”
“I’m pregnant, dumbass, what do you think happened?!” she said with a smile as she held a belly full of baby with one hand and attempted to corral her already-ejected offspring with the other. “S
even months.”
“Wow.”
“And six-months horny,” she whispered in my ear before nibbling on it.
“Well I’m starving,” I said hoping to replace the subject with another that might also spark her interest and distract her from where this little chitchat was obviously headed. “Let me grab my roommate’s kids and we’ll head back to the apartment for something to eat.”
When we arrived I threw a couple of frozen pizzas in the oven and as the kids ran into the bedroom to play, Andrea held her back and with great difficulty attempted to lower herself onto a couch that was so old it was beaten into the floor.
“Oh, Jesus!” she moaned in discomfort as she leaned against the edge of the couch and then landed on the tired old piece of furniture.
“Pregnancy hurts,” I said.
“Oh, really? How would you know?!”
“Because it hurts just to look at,” I told her and the moment I did I knew I shouldn’t have.
“What do you mean?!”
“I don’t know. For some reason I find pregnant women…” I said before pausing and deciding whether or not to run with this, “—difficult to be around.”
And alas, having been widely praised for a brutal brand of honesty—this is probably not my most popular sentiment.
“AND WHY’S THAT, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE?!” Andrea asked in a way that made me think she was taking it personally.
“I’m not exactly sure…but I have some issues,” I said as it suddenly occurred to me that I might be a little more fucked-up than I originally thought.
“Well I know that!”
“Sorry. Let’s just forget I said it. I’m a fuck-up. Always have been…right from the very beginning.”
“Alright, but tell me something,” Andrea said with a coy smile. “What if the baby was…I mean, what if you and I were…what if the two of us were in a different situation?”
“You mean like in a scientific situation?”
“WHAT?”
“Like if we were in biology class or something? Like if you were some sort of a—.”
“I mean what if the baby was yours?!” she interrupted me...thankfully.
“But it’s not mine.”
“But what if it was,” she said as if that would make it better.
“That would make it worse…By the way, it isn’t—is it?”
“No, asshole—it isn’t,” she said as she fired laser beam bullets at me with her eyes.
And then she started to cry.
“I’m sorry, Andrea,” I told her and I really was. “Every now and then I think I’m funny or something and I just get carried away. I’m here for you, honestly. Anything you need is yours. Amy’s not letting me see Savannah so I’ve got plenty of time to spare, and I’d like nothing better than to help with the boys. You know, be a stand-in father-figure or something.”
“What’s Amy’s problem now?”
“She’s pissed-off and trying to make me pay for it, and now she’s talking about supervised visitation and I’m not gonna go for it. I simply refuse.”
“What’s her reasoning?”
“She hasn’t any. But I think she’ll use about a decade of doing dope if she needs to.”
The sad irony of the fact was that Savannah’s arrival required me to settle in the Sunshine State indefinitely, which, at least while I remained there almost guaranteed my continued abstention from heroin. Since I’d been entirely clean for the last eight months and for most of the past two years, had no history of doing dope in Florida and consequently, no potential exposure to what would be the typical triggers—there was nothing to be tempted by. And the birth of my daughter and the awesome responsibility connected to it only ensured I’d keep it that way and not commence with any new, self-destructive routines. Of course, this seemed to matter little to Amy, who was more than willing to stand by and let her stepmother dictate the terms under which I would be permitted to exercise my fatherhood.
In some respects I wish I could have sucked it up and given in to being “supervised,” but I just couldn’t do it. I’d already lost so much of my own dignity and self-respect that for my own sanity—I had to draw the line and hope Amy would eventually come to her senses. Savannah was six months old and if her mother felt she was too young to visit me in Cape Coral without her being present, I would have to accept that. But if I couldn’t be treated with enough respect to take my daughter to the park without being watched by a grown-up, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. For the time being I simply had to suck it up and suffer on without her. Then, in July Amy called and when I answered I was certain she’d finally realized she was being unreasonable.
“Did you and your family put a hit on my boyfriend?!” she demanded.
26
One evening in November the phone rang and it was Amy. I immediately assumed that during a moment of clarity, combined with Savannah’s rapidly approaching first birthday, she’d finally woken up and decided to include me in my daughter’s life.
“Craig, I’m so sorry,” she said in a scared, nervous voice. “What are you sorry about, Amy?! What the fuck happened?!”
“Uhhh…I ummm—“
“Well, since you’re apparently incapable of telling me what the problem is, why don’t you just go ahead and put that other bitch on the phone.”
“Who?”
“God, Amy—YOUR FUCKING STEPMOTHER!”
“Oh…they got divorced.”
“Well congratulate your father for me and then tell him to fuck off.”
“Okay, fine, but listen: I’m at the hospital. Savannah accidentally swallowed some pills.”
“WHAT?!”
Consistent with the flawed judgment she’d been exercising in recent months, Amy left Savannah in the care of a family member with a long history of mental illness. Consequently, Savannah, only about a year old and perhaps already tapping into an inherited ability to sniff out the drugs, stumbled upon some psychoactive medication that was left out in the open and intended to put a 250-pound manic depressive at ease. And, thankfully, perhaps in some way also attributable to the same genetic legacy, an unexpected tolerance to the powerful medication prevented Savannah from ever losing consciousness, and while the doctors frantically attempted to counteract the effects of the drugs, she slapped their hands away and roared in protest like a junky defending her nod.
“You owe me BIG TIME, Amy,” I said though I don’t think she made the same connection.
“Oh, wait a second—somebody here wants to talk to you,” she said.
With bated breath I waited and wondered what particular asshole in Amy’s inner circle felt the need to have a chat with me at a time like this.
“Mr. Goodman?”
“Yeah,”
“Mr. Goodman, this is Martin Merriman with DCF, and I have to say that I’m totally shocked by—”
“Wait a second,” I said to the individual whose tone was already pissing me the fuck off. “What’s DCF?”
“Florida Department of Children and Families,” he clarified with an attitude that was deliberately palpable.
“Oh, great—listen, I’ll be there in a few hours.”
“A few hours?”
“Yeah, my plane’s in the shop.”
“Well, you know the mother says you’re not in the child’s life, anyway.”
“Oh, well how convenient for the mother to say that,” I said. “Listen, I’m leaving right now.”
“Yeah, I know but you’re not here now, and the damage is already done,” Mr. Merriman said to me in the same dispassionate and judgmental tone I’d heard from just about every other city or state employee I’d ever dealt with. “I’m not sure your daughter is enough of a priority to you.”
“Listen to me you pathetic waste of desk space. I couldn’t give two shits about what you’re sure of. YOU are nothing but an insignificant little cog in an anemic agency known more for colossal failure than anything else. So why don’t you just watch your fucking mouth and lose th
e attitude and the tone or you’re gonna be reading about what an asshole you are.”
I’d recently learned that a well-worded but passionate attack with a few naughty words could sometimes move mountains, especially if I implied I was a writer. Sometimes, it even generated an apology, but all I heard in this instance was complete silence.
“Hello???”
“Hi—it’s me,” Amy said as she suddenly had the phone. “Can you come and get Savannah tomorrow morning?”
“Fuck that—I’m coming right now,” I said yet again.
“She’s been through a lot tonight and I think it’s better if she wakes up here. But I’ve got about a week to baby-proof the house or they’re threatening to remove Savannah, and I think it would be good for her to get away from here for a bit.”
“Yeah, not to mention spend some time with her father,” I said before hanging up on her.
The following morning I rose and drove across the state to pick-up my daughter—though I was concerned she might be terrified at the thought of leaving her mother behind. But that was hardly the case, and the moment Amy strapped Savannah in she began clapping her hands, laughing hysterically and dancing in her car seat as I was certain she was totally excited at the prospect of hanging out with her daddy. It was either that, or she was still a little wasted. Regardless, she talked her baby talk for most of the trip until she finally lost interest and consciousness by the time we got to Lehigh, which I suppose was appropriate enough.
I still had a week of vacation time remaining from the previous year at Whitman, and since I’d just started my second year at the company I was able to parlay two weeks off from work to spend a total of 16 consecutive days with Savannah. And each day, though initially Kristen was up bright and early to tend to ALL the kiddies, I decided to assume control of the domestic routine while my roommate was more than willing to sleep in. As a result, on most mornings I was up at 6 a.m. to feed the kids, bring the boys to school and spend the rest of the day exclusively with Savannah. And though I didn’t toke when I awoke—I took two at night to make it right.
Needle Too: Junkies in Paradise Page 13
