I wanted to scream and yell and cry and beg and grovel. But to whom? And for what?
Chapter 31
It took all my energy to put on a happy face when Landon got up Friday morning. John had to leave early, and I had the day off. Landon asked me what was wrong as though he didn’t know what was going on in his own home. Still, I appreciated him not jumping right into the topic of his sister. “I’m not feeling well,” I said, which wasn’t necessarily a lie. I got a box of cereal out of the cupboard.
“What feels sick?” he asked. It was the question I always asked him when he was sick, an attempt to identify whether he was dealing with something bacterial, which could be treated, or viral, which had to be waited out. I feared my problems were the viral kind—I had no control.
“Everything feels sick,” I said, sitting across from him and sipping my morning tea. He looked concerned, and I reached over to ruffle his hair. He needed a haircut. “But I’ll be okay. I just need to rest.”
“So you can’t come to my game tonight?”
It took me a moment to remember that today was April 15—his first lacrosse game of the season. I was totally out of the loop on his schedule. I smiled even though I didn’t really want to go. “I’m hoping that if I rest all day I’ll be able to make it.” I’d missed every practice of the season so far in order to attend NA meetings with Keisha, or because the meetings had been the night before and I had other things to catch up on. Sure, there were plenty of parents who didn’t attend practice, but until now I hadn’t been one of them. Until Keisha had moved in, Landon and his activities were at the top of my list. Where were they now?
After getting Landon off to school, I tried to go for a run for the first time in several weeks, but my legs felt like logs, and I turned around after a mile and walked back. I wondered how ugly things were going to get between John and me. What could I have done differently? What couldn’t I have done differently was a better question. I texted Keisha twice. No response.
I did get some sleep in the afternoon, but my head and heart were still heavy when I woke up just before Landon came home. I had an idea in my head that we’d make cookies, or watch a movie together, but he had already planned to go to Kenny’s house to practice before the game.
John didn’t come home until an hour before it was time to leave. He took a shower, got dressed, ate some of the enchiladas I’d made, and thanked me as though I were the waitress at a Mexican restaurant. He didn’t make eye contact with me. We didn’t talk. But we all loaded up in the car together and headed for the game.
As soon as we got there, John was on the field, calling out practice runs, checking equipment. I set up a camp chair and watched. Last year, I’d helped John manage the team lists, call parents, and check out equipment. I’d been his unofficial assistant, and yet this year I hadn’t done a thing other than help with the parents’ dinner a couple weeks ago.
The second half of the game had just started when I got a text message. I hoped it was Keisha, then instantly caught my breath when it was. I guess John hadn’t cancelled her phone yet.
Keisha: I’m sorry.
The simple words made my throat tighten. I quickly replied.
Shannon: Are you okay?
Keisha: I’m really scared.
Knowing she was scared, scared me too.
Shannon: Where are you?
Keisha: Long Beach. Can u come get me?
I groaned low in my throat and glanced up to see John waving one of his players toward the goal. The kid got sticked in the chest, but not before he passed the ball. Landon caught it, swinging his stick back and forth to keep the ball cradled in the pocket while he dodged the opposing team on his way to the goal. I looked from Landon to John and back to the phone. I knew what John would want me to say to Keisha.
Shannon: I can’t. I’m sorry.
Keisha: Please?
It ripped at my gut to hear her voice in my head begging me. She was sick, but she’d had the clarity to ask for help. How could I deny that?
Shannon: I’m at Landon’s game. I can’t leave.
It was a poor excuse, since it put the blame on timing rather than on my decision not to play along the way I had in the past. I didn’t realize how poor a choice it was until she responded, however.
Keisha: What time can you be here?
I needed to tell her I wouldn’t be there, but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. She’d been gone for five days; she could be in the middle of any number of horrible situations. Could I really tell her to figure it out on her own? And yet she’d stolen from me and from Aunt Ruby, and though we hadn’t found pawn receipts for John’s things from the garage, they hadn’t turned up either. She’d lied about so many things. But leaving her on the streets wasn’t the answer. Maybe I could convince her to go back to rehab. I couldn’t have any influence if I pushed her away.
Shannon: I don’t know when I can come.
Keisha: Please come soon. I’m so scared. Here’s the address.
And just like that, I was calculating how long it would take me to get to Long Beach. Landon’s team made a goal, and all the parents around me jumped to their feet. I was a beat behind them but clapped as though I knew what was going on while looking over the field to try to figure out which player had scored.
“Did you see me, Mom?”
I blinked as my son appeared in front of me—almost eye level with me these days. He was grinning from ear to ear behind the facemask of his helmet, his eyes bright and his sweaty hair stuck to his forehead. “Did you see?”
“Of course I saw,” I said with a big smile, squeezing his shoulder. “Your first goal of the season!”
His eyebrows pulled together. “I didn’t make the goal,” he said, sounding confused. “But I threw it to Coby.”
“Right, that’s what I meant. I mean, the goal is kind of half yours, right?”
He looked disappointed, but then John called him back into the game. I looked across the field at my husband. He was at least looking at me, making eye contact, but he didn’t smile, or hold up three fingers—our signal for “I love you”—or come across the field to bask in the glory of our son.
After another second, the connection broke, and I sat back down while John called out commands to the players taking the field. Everything I’d done was filleted between us, raw and bleeding. I couldn’t see how it would be put back together. I didn’t know where to start. But I didn’t agree with him cutting Keisha out of our lives so completely either. Had he considered where she would go if she had no one reliable to turn to? And wasn’t the house half mine? He’d made the decision to change the locks and bar Keisha from our life, but didn’t I get some say? I realized that maybe my behavior had taken away my vote, but I hadn’t even had the chance to explain my side of things, not really.
Keisha needed me. I couldn’t say no.
“I won’t lie anymore,” I said under my breath, letting the words penetrate every part of me. It didn’t mean I was going to do things John’s way, but I wouldn’t lie to him anymore. Which meant the ugly between us was only going to get worse. But it also meant I would be helping Keisha the best I could. I couldn’t turn my back on her when she was reaching out for me. I just couldn’t.
Another goal was scored, but I didn’t even bother getting to my feet this time. I was on my phone looking for a hotel I could check Keisha into. Maybe she would see how far I was willing to go to help her and that would drive her toward sobriety. She hadn’t been using for very long, and she wasn’t beyond saving. I cross-checked the hotels with locations for Narcotics Anonymous meetings within walking distance. She’d reached out to me for help, and I could not say no. Not when there was still hope left to hold on to.
Chapter 32
Keisha looked horrible, not much different than the night John had picked her up in Compton two months ago. She was pale, fidgety, and seemed to be having a difficult time focusing her eyes on anything for very long. She jumped into the car when I pulled up
and didn’t say a word until I pulled away from the curb and asked her if she was okay.
“I am now,” she said, turning to look at the house we’d just left—an ordinary looking home in an ordinary looking neighborhood. “Bunch of druggie freaks,” she said under her breath before turning away from the house. She rubbed her upper arms with her hands as though she were cold.
I was glad she was safe, and yet disgusted at the same time. I turned up the heat in the car. I’d told John what I was doing before I left the house. He hadn’t taken it well, and we both ended up saying more than we should have. I called him cold, and he called me stupid. I feared we were both right.
“I got you a hotel room,” I said before turning onto the street with the Super 8 sign rising from the pavement. “I paid for two nights.”
She looked at me in surprise. “I can’t come home?”
“I’m sorry.”
She started to cry, and part of me wished I could videotape this and show it to John. Would that help him realize how broken his little girl was?
“What about all my stuff?” she asked a minute later, wiping at her nose with the back of her hand.
“Maybe you can talk to your dad in a few days,” I said. “Maybe he’ll let you come back if you explain all of this to him.” I wanted an explanation too, but I didn’t need one the way John did. He was so blind to what was happening.
Keisha shook her head and said nothing. I parked the car and got her checked into a hotel room. The cheap carpet didn’t match the bedspread, which didn’t match the curtains over the window. It was depressing. All she had was her purse—no extra clothes, no makeup. Nothing.
“I work in Long Beach tomorrow until three o’clock,” I said. “I’ll try to bring you your things and find a meeting we can go to, okay?”
She sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her arms without answering me.
I went to the heating unit fixed on the wall beneath the window and turned on the warm air, then came and sat down next to her on the bed. I put an arm around her shoulders, and she leaned into me like the little girl she used to be, that she still seemed to be sometimes. She smelled awful. Like body odor and tobacco and who knew what else.
“I’m really sorry, Shannon,” she said softly. “I’m such a mess.”
“You’re going to be okay, Keisha,” I whispered, aching with the need for her to feel my love for her. “You were meant for better things than this. We’re going to make this work. I’m going to start looking into some rehab facilities, okay?”
“Rehab doesn’t work for me,” she said, wiping at her eyes.
“It can work,” I assured her. “We just need to find the right one. And we can get you back in to see Dr. Livingston in the meantime. Maybe we can adjust your meds and find a better level for you.”
She promised not to tell any of her friends where she was staying, and I chose to believe she meant it. It was as I was leaving that she checked her phone and we discovered that John had disconnected it. She cried all over again, and I promised to help her get a new phone tomorrow.
It was nearly midnight when I got home. The house was dark as I headed to the fridge to get a glass of milk that I hoped would help me sleep. I was tired, but I felt so much better knowing where Keisha was. When I was little and too wound-up at bedtime, my mom would heat up a glass of milk and add a little honey. She’d said it would help me sleep. I’d thought it was an old wives’ tale until I learned that the tryptophan in both the milk and the honey really did have an effect on serotonin levels, inducing drowsiness. Combine that with the psychological component of mother’s milk associations and you had a homeopathic sleep-aid. It wasn’t Ambien, but it could help someone relax at the end of a hard day, and I had already taken too many sleeping pills this week.
While the milk was heating up, I noticed a business card on the counter and picked it up. Detective Samuel Pierce, Laguna Hills Police Department. My breath caught in my throat as I realized what this meant. John had contacted the police. I didn’t think he’d do it.
I slid into bed a few minutes later but stayed close to my side of the mattress. John wasn’t asleep; I’d listened to his soft snores for fifteen years, and he certainly wasn’t sleeping now, but why should he be sleeping? He’d called the police on his own daughter—a daughter I’d just left sick and shaking in a hotel room with no means of communication. I kept my back to him, and he didn’t initiate a conversation. I stared at the wall for a very long time.
In the morning—early, since I had to be to Long Beach by seven o’clock—I asked John about the detective’s card. It was Saturday morning; John must have a job today or he’d have slept in.
John didn’t even look up from his bowl of oatmeal. “She brought drugs into our house, and she stole from Ruby. That’s illegal.”
“She needs help. You should have seen her last night, John, she was fidgety and scared. I want to look into rehab.”
“She just got out of rehab.”
“It was the wrong one. Besides, it was only ninety days. We need something better. If you could have seen how sorry she was—”
“I talked to Ruby.”
Heat washed over me, and my breath caught in my throat. John watched me as he continued. “She’s agreed to press charges, and I’m pressing charges for Keisha having possessed drugs on our property. There will be an official warrant issued for Keisha’s arrest this morning.”
I fell back a step and stared at him. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
His voice was softer when he spoke, but for whatever reason that made me angrier. “She can get help there, Shan. She’ll be forced to be clean, and maybe she’ll see what kind of life she’s moving toward if she can’t get her act together. Nothing else has worked.”
He didn’t understand. I turned away; I needed some alone time with my thoughts, but he called my name, causing me to stop and look back across the room.
“Are you willing to lose everything we have in order to enable her addiction?”
“Are you willing to lose everything we have to punish her for it?”
“I want her safe, and I think jail might be the last safe place she has. We’ve paid for rehab. We’ve loved her and helped her over and over again. She’s lived in our home, we helped her find a job and get enrolled in school, and she’s thrown it all back in our faces.”
“That’s not what she did,” I said, crossing my arms, turning to face him directly. “It’s not about us at all. It’s about her being in a really dark place and needing our help. If we can break through this addiction, and convince her that—”
“I’ve done everything for her that I can feel good about doing, and she has made her choices over and over again. When there are no bad consequences for the bad choices she makes, she doesn’t learn from them. You’re protecting her from the chance she has to learn a better way of doing things. You’re making this worse.”
Rage shot down my spine as I glared at him. “I am loving her—a girl who has not had enough love in her life. How dare you be critical of me for doing what should be your job, John. You should be the one embracing her, but instead you’re the first one to throw stones. She wasn’t ready for all the responsibility we put on her when she came here. She’s fragile and uncertain, and she needs our help.”
He grunted and shook his head, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. “And when does it stop, Shannon? She brought drugs into our home. She stole from your aunt. She stole from us. She lied to us over and over and over again. At what point do you draw the line?”
“I don’t have to draw a line,” I said, lifting my chin. “You’ve drawn enough for both of us. She’s not here, is she? I followed your rule and made sure she didn’t come back, but you should have seen her face, John, when I told her she wasn’t coming home. It was heartbreaking. She is so lost and so sick, and now she has to figure it out on her own. You not letting her be here—the only safe haven she has—puts her at risk.”
> “Her being here puts all of us at risk,” John shot back, anger in his tone again. He pointed down the hallway toward Landon’s bedroom. “We have a son to raise, Shannon.”
“And Keisha loves him,” I said, balling my hands into fists. He was so obtuse. Why wouldn’t he even try to see this from a perspective other than his own? “Landon wasn’t hurt by having her here.”
“Except that she stole from him too, and then you covered it up. What if he’d found her drugs? What then?”
“That didn’t happen.”
John let out a breath and shook his head, looking away from me, toward the window. The words we’d thrown back and forth settled into a wall between us. After a few seconds, he turned back to me. I held his eyes, poised and ready to pounce on whatever he said next.
“Let me be very clear,” he said in a calm and even voice. “She will not come here again. She will not see Landon until and unless she is clean and sober for at least ninety days, and even then it won’t be here. I hate the childhood Keisha had, and I wish more than anything that I’d done something more to get her out of that environment. I have blamed myself for so many things, but I won’t put Landon in the crosshairs of my mistakes. Keisha is a grown woman now. She can work toward overcoming the hard things that have happened to her, or she can marinate in them. I will not help her be unhealthy, and I will not let my other child be anywhere near the same things that hurt her so very much when she was little. And if you’re going to be as sick as she is, I will protect my son from you too.”
My mouth fell open, and all I could do was stare at him. “I can’t believe you just said that,” I replied once I could speak again. Anger and hurt and sorrow and fear twisted around me like vines, but he stared at me, stoic, seemingly unmoved by the words he’d just said. When I spoke again, I kept my voice quiet but strong, wanting to wound him as badly as he’d wounded me. “How easy it is for you to turn on the people you love, John. How poorly I have judged your character.”
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