“That’s great,” he told me. “And you’re lucky because I just had a cancellation this afternoon. Will four fifteen work for both of you?”
“That’s perfect,” I told him. “Jacob gets off work at three.”
I made a special point to stop by the Red Devil a little later that morning so I could tell Jacob the good news. I even wrote down the time and place on a card so he wouldn’t forget. “I’ll pick you up at three,” I told him.
“Thanks, Mom.” He shoved the card into his pocket and frowned. “You need any gas?”
“Sure. Go ahead and put twenty dollars worth in.” I stood and watched as he filled the Range Rover with the kind of gas that would probably make it rattle and ping, and I wondered what I could possibly say to encourage him. “The guy sounded really nice,” I said and handed him the twenty.
Jacob actually smiled, and I felt a rush of relief flow through me. “That’s cool, Mom.” He pulled his ski cap down over his ears. “Hey, do you think you could loan me a few bucks? My lunch break’s coming up, and I didn’t have much breakfast this morning.”
I looked back in my wallet to see a solitary bill, another twenty. “This is all I have,” I told him, holding up my twenty.
“Thanks, Mom.” He smiled as he took the bill. “I’ll pay you back on Friday. I promise.”
Not only did he not pay me back, but he was nowhere to be found when I went back to the Red Devil at three. I drove around town looking for him, but I finally had to call Marcus and cancel a little after four.
“I’m sorry to wait until the last minute,” I told him through my tears of frustration. “I really thought Jacob was going to cooperate this time.”
“Don’t feel bad,” he said. “Stuff like this happens all the time.”
“I know. But he seemed so willing. I gave him a card with the time and everything.”
“Do you think there’s a chance that he still might show?” asked Marcus.
“I seriously doubt it since he doesn’t even have a car right now,” I told him. “But I suppose he might have a friend drop him off. Although that seems pretty unlikely.”
“Well, hey, I’ve got that hour available anyway. Why don’t you come in, just in case? And if Jacob doesn’t show, we can at least discuss some ways for you to cope with your stress in the meantime.”
So I got back into my car and drove to the rehab center. It was located on the outskirts of town and was nothing like what I’d expected. I suppose my image of a rehab center came from a scene in an old movie. For some reason I assumed it would be a large sprawling campus with acres of green lawns and gracefully placed trees, perhaps gated with security guards and tall fences to keep the patients confined. Although I had assured Jacob I didn’t think that was the case.
But when I turned at the Hope’s Wings sign, I was somewhat disappointed to see several rather drab barracks-type buildings compounded next to a large blacktop area. Nothing was fenced or gated. I parked in front of the building that was marked Main Office and went inside to inquire about Marcus Palmer. As I walked past a building marked Rehab Center, I noticed a cluster of people of varying ages. They stood around a doorway smoking and talking. I later learned they were patients and that smoking and eating chocolate were the only vices allowed in this facility. But even the chocolate was rationed. However, the cigarettes were not. I didn’t bother to ask why.
“Marcus is just finishing a session,” said the girl at the reception desk. She looked to be about Jacob’s age and had a pierced lip and spiky hair that had been dyed a bright shade of purple. “But his office is right down that hall. You can wait for him in there if you like.”
Near the end of the dimly lit hallway, I reached an office with the right name on the door. The door was open, so I went in and sat down in a straight-backed chair. The office closed in around me with shabby, beige-colored carpeting and a cheap metal desk. Other than the artwork plastered on every available wall, the space would’ve been quite dismal. Given the amateurish quality of the art, I suspected that these pieces had been created by patients at Hope’s Wings. And the more I examined the collages and paintings, the more intrigued I became. One piece was particularly fascinating. It consisted of dozens of cut-out heads of beautiful women, obviously extracted from a fashion magazine. But across each mouth, except for one, was a piece of black tape. And the one head without a taped mouth, tucked down in the left corner, had a handmade blindfold pasted over the eyes. It seemed that, especially in this case, a picture really was worth a thousand words.
“Good morning,” said a dark-haired man, extending his hand toward me. “I’m Marcus Palmer.” He had on a navy V-neck sweater with worn elbows. But what caught my attention was the tie-dyed T-shirt he wore beneath it.
“I’m Glennis Harmon,” I told him. “Jacob’s mother.”
“Ah, Jacob’s mother,” he repeated as he leaned against his cluttered desk, folding his arms in front of him. “Is that your official tide?”
I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of me, but I was definitely feeling more self-conscious by the minute. “Is this how the counseling sessions for mothers usually begin?”
He laughed as he went around to the other side of his desk. I could see now that his dark hair was pulled back into a neat tail, and I guessed he was one of those baby boomers who hadn’t quite given up on the sixties yet. Then he pulled out what looked like a fairly decent leather chair, slightly out of place in his otherwise lackluster office.
“Now that you mention it,” he said as he sat down,“I suppose there are some similarities in my mother sessions.” He pushed a pile of papers off to one side of his desk. “The first thing I usually try to get across to family members and spouses of addicts, mothers in particular, is that this is not your fault.”
“Not my fault?” I echoed.
“That’s right.” He waited for my reaction.
I wanted to cooperate and hopefully get some answers for Jacob. So I figured I needed to be honest. “Okay, my mind can accept that it’s not my fault, but my heart feels differently.”
He nodded with a solemn expression as he folded his hands neatly on his desk. It seemed he was waiting for me to say something more. And because I dislike lapses in conversations, I accommodated him.
“I mean I’ve read a few things…books about addiction, articles on the Internet, and I know that I’m not really responsible for my son’s behavior. But then I’m a mother.” I held up my hands hopelessly. “It feels like everything and anything that goes wrong with my children must be my fault. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, and I wonder if I’d breast-fed him, maybe he wouldn’t have turned out this way. Or maybe if I hadn’t pushed him to potty train by two. Or maybe I took away his binkie too soon.”
“Binkie?”
“You know, a pacifier.”
“Oh.”
“Silly things like that. Of course, that’s only on nights when I know he’s in his bed, hopefully sleeping. But that seems to be less and less anymore. On the nights when I don’t know where he is, I find myself wide awake as I imagine a hundred and one ways he has been killed or injured or arrested. I’ve even reached the place where the image of his being arrested seems the most favorable.”
“You want him to get arrested?” His expression was completely blank now.
“No, of course not. I’m his mother. Why would I want to see my son in jail?”
“Because maybe you think he’d be safer there?”
I nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Although I’ve heard that horrible things can happen in jail, too, and that inmates are still able to get drugs and…” I sighed. “I just feel so completely hopeless sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Okay, all the time. I feel hopeless all the time—24/7.” He smiled now. Not a big smile, but sort of a knowing smile. “Well, you’re not alone, Glennis.”
“You feel hopeless too?”
He smiled again, slightly bigger this time. “Sometimes I
do. It isn’t easy to deal with addicts day after day, many who don’t really want to recover, some who want to but can’t. But mostly I’m okay. I was actually referring to other people who have an addict in their life.”
“Right.”
“Have you ever considered joining a support group like Al-Anon?”
“I went to a meeting.” Just one?
“Well.” I wanted to blame it all on Geoffrey now, to pour out all my grief and frustration and make it seem like his fault, but I knew that wouldn’t be completely true or even fair. “I guess I wasn’t sure if it was really worth it.”
“Worth it?”
“Oh, at the time I was still with my husband, and we didn’t agree on how to handle things, with Jacob I mean.” He nodded. “I’ve seen that happen a lot.”
“He thought Al-Anon was a total waste of time.”
“Did he go to a meeting too?”
I firmly shook my head. “I don’t think he would’ve liked being seen somewhere like that”
“Not good for his image?”
“Exactly.”
“But you went anyway.”
I shrugged. “I’ve long since quit caring about my image. I know I’m a bad mom, and I figure everyone else in Stafford knows it too.”
“Oh, come now, Glennis, I’m sure you’re not a bad mom. You’re here today, even though your son, who really should be here, has bailed on us.”
“The fact is, I would do anything to get Jacob away from drugs. Anything”
“I’m sure you would.” He studied me for a moment. “The problem is, there is nothing you can do.”
“Nothing?” I must’ve looked crushed. “Nothing at all?”
“I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. The only one who can help Jacob is Jacob.”
“That’s what my husband used to say.”
“Your husband was right.”
With those words came a jagged lump that lodged itself in my throat, making it, I felt sure, impossible to speak. And suddenly I wanted to get far, far away from this hopeless place and never come back. I had come here for answers, for help, and all I got was that.
“Are you all right?”
I nodded.
“Would you like a drink of water?”
I nodded again, looking down at my lap and fiddling with the strap of my purse as he went out, apparently in search of water. I suppressed the urge to dig for my keys and bolt from the stuffy room before he returned. No, I told myself. Knowing I would probably be charged for a full hour of counseling time, I was determined to get my money’s worth and, if nothing else, waste this discouraging man’s precious time.
He returned and handed me a paper cup of water. I took a slow sip and attempted to gather my wits. “So, if there’s nothing I can do, then why am I here? Why am I wasting my time?”
“There’s nothing you can do to rescue Jacob,” he continued. “But you can do something for yourself.”
I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t concerned about myself, that when your son is killing himself with drugs, you cease to care about your own life, you almost cease to exist at all. You are only consumed with ways you might be able to help him, things you could do to save him. But I simply sat there and said nothing.
“You need to take care of yourself, Glennis.”
I took in a shaky breath, afraid that I was about to completely lose it. “But how can I take care of myself when my son is out there ruining his life with drugs?”
“It’s a daily thing, Glennis, a moment-by-moment process. You can only take one step at a time, and sometimes they’re just baby steps. It’s really not so different from what we teach those who come here to recover. You have to work it out for yourself, one day at a time.” He continued to talk for a while, but I’m afraid that most of his words were lost on me. I was probably still stuck on the bit about my husband being right. How could it be that Geoffrey had been right? That must mean I had been wrong.
Finally I couldn’t take it anymore. “Excuse me,” I said, cutting him off in midsentence. “Do you really believe my husband was right?”
He looked as if I had momentarily lost him. “Oh, you mean about saying that only Jacob could help Jacob.”
“I guess so.” Actually I meant about everything. Had Geoffrey been right about everything?
“Well, I suppose I should be careful with my words. I certainly don’t want to devalue the important role that family members can play in a person’s recovery Statistics prove that a good support network of loving family and friends can really improve a person’s chances of making a complete recovery.”
I sighed. “But what about a parent who is cynical and removed? What about a parent who tells his son, ‘This is the bed you made; you sleep in it.’? Or what about a father who ignores his son for days while his son is actually doing pretty well, but then he explodes when he finds out that his son has blown it again?”
“That’s not the kind of parenting that encourages a user to recover.”
“No, I didn’t think so.” Yet this news brought me no relief. Only more grief and regret and sadness. It wasn’t worth being right if it didn’t fix anything.
“Are you suggesting it’s your husbands fault that Jacob became involved in drugs?”
“No, no, not exactly. I guess I think its the fault of both of us.” I shook my head now. “No, that’s not right, is it?”
“You tell me. Did you introduce your son to smoking grass or abusing alcohol?”
“Of course not.”
“Did you help him make connections with the neighborhood dope dealer?”
“No.”
“I know you’re not a perfect mom, Glennis, because no mother is perfect. But if you walk away from here with only one thing today, I hope you’ll remember that it’s not your fault”
“And there’s nothing! can do?”
“Well, there are a few things you can do that will help. But it’ll be up to Jacob to decide whether or not he wants to change.”
That’s when Marcus explained to me how their rehab program worked and how there was a waiting list I could put Jacob’s name on. “Just in case he wakes up one day and decides he’s had enough.”
“How long is the wait?”
“Right now it’s about four weeks.”
“Well, go ahead and put him down. Who knows where he’ll be in four weeks.” I controlled myself from saying he might be dead or locked up in jail, although I believed those both to be distinct possibilities.
“In the meantime, I encourage you to attend our codependent class.”
“Are you suggesting I’m codependent?” I’d read enough to know that is not a good thing.
“I’d be surprised if you weren’t codependent. Most mothers are, at least to a certain degree.”
“And fathers?”
“A few of them are codependent too.”
“But it’s mostly a mother problem?”
He smiled. “I’ll give you some forms to fill out. For insurance and billing and medical and family history. Basic stuff.”
I took the papers and stood, ready to make my exit.
He handed me another brochure. “This will tell you a little more about our codependent class. And you’re in luck. We’re starting a new session next week. It’s on Tuesday evenings.”
With no intention of signing up for the session, I nodded and put all the papers into my oversize bag and politely thanked Marcus for his time.
He reached out to shake my hand. “I know it’s not easy, Glennis. Being the parent of an addict is probably one of the hardest challenges life deals out. But, believe me, you can get through it.”
I’m sure I looked unconvinced. I may have even rolled my eyes at this point. Mostly I just wanted to get out of that place.
He cleared his throat. “I always encourage my clients and patients to call upon a Higher Power, something beyond themselves to help them through these difficult times.”
“A Higher Power?” I studied this man for a mom
ent. His encouragement seemed sincere, and yet with his tie-dyed T-shirt and ponytail, he didn’t strike me as a particularly religious man.
“Do you believe in God?” he asked me.
“Of course,” I assured him. “I’ve been a Christian most of my life.”
“And do you pray for Jacob?”
“Of course.” Now I was getting a bit irritated. Who was he to question me in the area of faith?
He nodded. “How about when you get those panic attacks in the middle of the night? Do you pray for your son then?”
“Of course.”
“But then you continue to worry? Even after you’ve prayed?”
I considered this. “Yes, I suppose I do.”
“Do you believe in the Bible?”
“Of course.” I wished I could think of some other response, but it was as if my mind was stuck.
“Well, there’s a Bible verse…” He pointed to a plaque hanging on the wall behind his desk. It was partially obscured by a collage with dozens of pictures of hands and feet. He took down the plaque and read,“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
I nodded. “Yes, I’m familiar with that verse.”
“I challenge you to become more familiar with it.” He bent over and wrote down Philippians 4:6-7 on a piece of paper from a prescription pad. “Here.”
I looked at the name printed across the top in fine print. Apparently this Marcus fellow was also a licensed psychiatrist, although I hadn’t heard anyone referring to him as Dr. Palmer. “Is this my prescription?”
He smiled now. “Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. I think you should memorize that verse as well as practice saying ‘It is not my fault that my son has a drug problem’ throughout the day.”
“And all my troubles will magically disappear?”
“Glennis, there are no magical cures for lives that have been blind-sided by addiction.”
“I figured as much.”
And so I left Hope’s Wings feeling utterly hopeless and dismayed. I told myself I didn’t ever have to go back, but I had a feeling that I would. Hopefully it would be with Jacob.
Crystal Lies Page 17
