Another phone call at just after three. He answered on the third ring.
“Is this Mr. Ray—uh…” The sound of shuffling papers.
“Yes.”
The voice brightened perceptibly, strapped on a mask of friendliness. “My name is John Donovan. I’m an attorney representing the family of Donald Ackerman. I’m sorry to be calling so late.”
“It’s not late for me.”
A laugh, intended to sound nervous or flustered. To Ray, it only sounded false. “That’s right, of course. Only late for me. Do you mind if I tape record this conversation?”
Smooth segue, meant to catch him off guard, startle him into acceptance.
“Yes, I do mind. Can I help you?” You fucking bastard.
John Donovan paused on his end of the line. Ray imagined him reaching for a legal pad upon which to take notes (just as he was supposed to imagine), though, of course, the tape recorder was still running.
“Um, I was wondering if I could get some information?”
“Sir, federal law prohibits me from acknowledging either to confirm or deny the presence of the individual of whom you have spoken or his participation in our program.”
Ray grinned.
“Very well done,” the lawyer said. “I guess that sets the parameters.”
“I guess it does.”
“Were you working two nights ago.”
“Sir, I am bound by Center policy and state law from discussing with you the work schedule of our employees at this facility unless you are an officer of the law or bearing a subpoena, in which case, I am only authorized to refer you to my supervisor.”
Ray grinned again. He was enjoying this.
“What if I told you I have possession of a subpoena?”
“Have you spoken to our attorney?” Ray countered.
“In fact, son, yes I have. This afternoon.”
Ray grunted. Standard level of communication. “That’s good, because I haven’t. Which means, of course, that I’m not prepared to talk to you at all until advised on my statement by legal counsel.”
“Ray, there’s no reason for us to be adversarial. This is just fact finding.”
“I thought it was an adversarial system?”
Donovan was confused by that. “Well, yes.”
“They why not be adversaries? You’re taking me away from my job duties, Mr. Donovan. If you aren’t interested in seeking addictions services for yourself or a member of your immediate family, I’m afraid I’m going to have to terminate this contact.”
“Ray, hey—”
Hanging up on a lawyer felt very good.
*
Donovan called right back.
“I had hoped to avoid getting that subpoena we talked about, Ray. I’d hoped you would be cooperative. Don’t you have any compassion for this boy’s grieving mother?”
“Which boy and mother would that be, Mr. Donovan?”
“Fine. Can I speak to your supervisor?”
“I am my supervisor at the moment. You can call my boss if you want to get screamed at. I’m sure you have her home number.”
“Let me speak to someone else there, then.”
“I don’t think I can accommodate that request.”
Ray could feel Donovan smiling. “Because you’re the only one there.”
“No, actually, because I don’t like you. I don’t want to foist this burden off on anyone else. I have the highest threshold for aggravation of all the people I know. And I am not, for the record, the only person here.”
“You are the only staff person present.”
That narrowed things. Ray could see the walls of the canyon he had slipped into.
“I don’t think I have to answer that question. It could constitute a security risk to my clients. As a matter of fact, let me give you my fax number so you can send me a copy of your law degree and membership to the bar, just so I can be sure you’re really a lawyer and not just an asshole.”
Donovan was relentless. “What are your degrees, Ray? How about certifications and qualifications?”
“CPR, common sense and 98.6,” Ray said. “In no particular order. Ask our attorney to furnish a written job description.”
“A child is dead,” Donovan barked back. For once, Ray could not tell how much was an attempt at manipulation, a hard sell, and how much was legitimate outrage. “Nineteen years old and he jumped in front of a bus. Not before drug treatment—no one is arguing that he was an angel—but only after. It took your program two days to make him actively suicidal.
“It was not an instant death, Ray. Did you know that? A bus moving at thirty miles an hour doesn’t kill at once. It crushes, it drags, it shreds. It slammed him to the pavement then kept on going, Ray. He lived for almost half an hour. But his back was broken, his pelvis was shattered. He was drowning in his own blood all the way to the hospital. Don Ackerman suffered for thirty minutes in a way we all pray we will never suffer.
“Someone is responsible for that pain. Someone let him down when he needed help. Help he had grasped the courage to ask for. He deserved better than failure from you and your program, Ray. He deserved better than slipping through the cracks.
“And if your facility was negligent, it has a moral obligation to make reparations to that boy’s mother for the suffering it has caused her. Surely you can understand that, such a basic, primal justice.”
“I understand, Mr. Donovan, that justice is what everyone deserves, and maybe even that justice is your sole interest in this matter.” Ray frowned. Whatever he was, Donovan was not an idiot. “As soon as our attorney explains to me what our version of justice is, I’ll get back to you. But I imagine he’ll object to reparations as a legitimate form. That sounds more like extortion to me. It sounds more like you need a new BMW.
“Do you mind if I tape record this conversation, Mr. Donovan?”
This time, it was Donovan who hung up. Ray, strangely enough, found that just as satisfying.
*
For many years, the popular model for the treatment of addictions was the Disease Concept. At its core, the disease model is very simple: addiction is a product of genetic and environmental factors which interact in such a way as to predispose a given individual with the proper genetic background toward addictive behaviors. You inherit alcoholism from your parents. It is a condition over which you have no choice, any more than you can choose not to have sickle-cell anemia. The only way to effectively avoid the onslaught of the addiction disease is to never be exposed to the “alcohol pathogen”. It is not a very Martin Luther, Protestant Reformation, or even American fundamental free will way of thinking.
Increasingly, the disease concept was being replaced by the idea of behavior modification—teach addicts that their behavior was destructive, that it had unpleasant consequences for themselves and others, then offer tools for managing those behaviors. The assumption was that addicts did not get the behavior-consequence connection.
Despite this usurpation, the disease concept was still in some ways fundamental, even though the structure which had been built upon it had been essentially razed, at least in the clinical community. Therapists are much more progressive in understanding the landscape of their field, in making the necessary adjustments to new ideas, than the general public.
Addicts on the other hand, loathe change in general, and changes away from the disease concept specifically. They like having a disease, especially as opposed to having a behavior problem. It is liberating to have a disease like alcoholism or drug addiction. You cease to be responsible for your failures to transcend the addiction. You have a disease, suggesting an independent entity which has invaded your psychological and biological space. Like the Borg, resistance is futile. As a consequence, the addict accrues no blame for relapses any more than a cancer patient can accept blame. And like remission, they expect sobriety to occur spontaneously, largely as a result of the efforts of professionals on their behalf. They are passive participants in the recovery process.
The AA slogans: One Day at a Time. Stop Using, Pay Attention. These are active voice statements. The Big Book and its disciples say go to meetings, not be taken to a meeting. It is about taking responsibility. Working a program. Working, rather than experiencing. Activity implied. Effort. An immense amount of focus, concentration and daily, constant attention to battle a lifetime of urges. No one who has not experienced the massive, draining tedium of building recovery or working a program can appreciate the reality. It is a grinding, dehumanizing experience that paradoxically leads to the resurrection of a life that was lost. But it is constant in its demands. There are no vacations from the job of recovery, because there are no cessations in the body’s urges to use once those neural pathways have been burrowed, forged, activated.
The disease concept endorses passivity, a sense of entitlement to the best efforts of everyone else but the addict in finding a solution to that which ails. It is the Welfare system of the mental health structure, even though it has been largely rejected by everyone who knows anything about the treatment of addictions. The disease concept produced the one in thirty lifetime recovery figures.
Regardless of such glaring inadequacies, the disease concept lives on, at least in the popular psychology mythos, poisoning a culture with comfort, with irresponsibility, with always seducing addicts and their families with the temptation to make someone else responsible for their own failures.
This is only one of the many levels upon which the addicted community and the legal system tend to intersect.
*
The doorbell rang at four. Ray groaned inwardly and set aside the charts he had been reviewing. He saw that it had begun to rain. Middle of the night admissions—walkins—were not uncommon. Rain tended to exacerbate their arrival. In an average week, Ray could expect two walkins without any kind of referral agency behind them. People who just chose to show up without calling, without saying anything, and carrying only mute appeals for assistance with them. Half the time he had to turn them away because he lacked space. He had long ago ceased to pity them (even in December). In Ray’s way of thinking, part of the legitimate decision to get sober, to rejoin the real world, should be conforming to the standards of professional contact with strangers. That meant making appointments or being prepared to be disappointed in the absence of one.
Every time he turned a walk-in away, he saw it as handing them a recovery tool.
But at the same time, rain bothered him. A sodden week would raise his walk-in average from two a week to one or more a night. If he was ever tempted to regret turning anyone away, it was when it was raining. They always looked forlorn, hunched, broken. He did not like the way rain made his professionalism feel.
He looked out the window by the door once more, before he framed his denials and settled his weight against the bar. At least it wasn’t raining very hard yet. He would only manufacture a little guilt.
He pushed the door half open, a guarded invitation.
The woman was maybe forty, looked younger. She was pretty, he thought, in a worn and tired way. She had dark circles under her eyes and frown lines around her pale lips. She had no umbrella, no coat, but Ray could see now that she had a car in the parking lot. She wore a dark knee length skirt and white button up blouse. She appeared clean, kempt.
For a moment, Ray just looked at her. He wasn’t sure what to say.
Fat drops of rain had already begun to flatten her hair, stain her blouse.
“Can I help you?” he asked finally.
The woman only stared. He thought she seemed lost, maybe even a little scared. He realized with some embarrassment that he could see through her shirt where the raindrops had struck her. She had on a floral print bra. Little purple flowers.
“I’m sorry I can’t invite you in,” he said to fill the silence. “We have no beds, and I have to observe confidentiality. If you need directions somewhere, I can probably help you. Or I could let you use our phone.”
That about covered the list of possible things she could want.
“Federal law,” the woman said quietly.
Ray began to nod, started an involuntary smile, then let it freeze on his lips, midway between greeting and wariness.
“My name is Jennifer Ackerman.”
Of course it was.
“You spoke to me on the phone earlier. Your name is Ray.” She looked at him directly, more intently, her eyes searching his face. There was a nakedness in her supplication which disturbed him.
But his instincts kicked in there, his trained caution. He reminded himself of Donovan’s smarminess, and the fact that someone, probably this someone, was behind it. Trying to catch him in a mistake. He wasn’t immediately certain if he should even go so far as to confirm his name. Given the way she had screeched at him over the phone, he wasn’t sure he wanted to cop a plea to his identity. No, no, Ray left several hours ago… That, however, had nothing to do with lawsuits and everything to do with minimizing personal pains in the ass.
He braced himself for abuse, imagining for some bizarre reason that he would deserve it this time, or at least he would accept it. There was something in this woman, something in the rain, that made her seem small to him, beaten down, fragile. It was more than just the grief he knew he could expect from her. It was something beyond that, crushing, as if she had a right to re-evaluate her entire existence in his presence and expect him to commiserate.
But she said, “I’m sorry for the way I treated you. I was…overcome. It was wrong.”
She shivered and hugged her arms over her chest. Because of the lawyer and Sam’s warning, Ray resisted the urge to invite her inside anyway. It was a struggle all the same. He was sure that, had his mother seen him now, she would have whacked him over the head with something hard, something with the proper disciplinary weight. He stepped out into the rain as a form of penance and closed the door, put his back against it.
Obviously, this was not going to go the way he expected.
“Come stand under the eave,” he offered. Even that did not seem enough, so he extended what he considered the ultimate gesture. “Would you like a cigarette?”
“Very much.” She came and stood beside him. She colored a bit, embarrassed. “I quit almost ten years ago.”
He lit the pair and handed one to her. Their fingers touched and she shivered again.
“You’re younger than I expected. Not even thirty, I’ll bet. The phone makes you sound old.”
He recognized her comment as the extension of an olive branch, a temporary truce.
“I still can’t talk to you,” Ray said.
“I know that,” she snapped, then softened at once, apologized. “I understand. The lawyer explained it to me. I called him right after I talked to you. Confidentiality. You have to protect your interests.”
Interests. She said the word with a sneer, as though it was a curse.
She puffed on the cigarette and made a face. “This is terrible. Terrible in a good way. I don’t like enjoying it.”
“Why are you here, Mrs. Ackerman?”
“Miss, or just Jennifer, please.”
“All right, Jennifer. Why are you here?” As if it wasn’t completely obvious. He just needed to hear her say it to know how to feel about her, to know how to set his mind to deal with her.
She spread her arms. “I don’t know…to see, maybe. To connect to the last place he was. To look at the last faces he saw, see the same things. I thought maybe it would help. To understand. And partly, I guess, to meet you, to see what kind of man you were. I’d never met someone who could be so mean over the telephone in this kind of situation. I don’t mean to insult you.”
Because he couldn’t, Ray said nothing. He smoked. He tried to blow smoke rings, but the moisture in the air made them look like jellybeans. That she thought he was being cruel did not surprise him. In her position, he would have felt the same way. That fact as a given, however, did not suggest to him that he should apologize. He was just doing his job whether she understood that or not.
“It was stupid of me,” she continued, though the statement was defiant. “There’s nothing for me here. It was senseless. I don’t know what I had a right to expect. What do you think, Ray? Does someone when he dies leave any part of himself behind? Something you can sense if you want to badly enough?”
“I wouldn’t know. You’d need a parapsychologist, or a psychic.”
“Parapsychologist. Is that anything like a quasi-psychologist? Not good enough to be a real one?” If it was a joke, or intended to be one, it fell as flat as her hair.
“It’s someone who goes looking for dead people. Ghost hunters.” Not an entirely accurate assessment, but good enough for this conversation, he thought.
“That would be me then. And I thought I was an Accounts Manager.” She chuckled, dry and empty, then shook her head. “I’m not handling this very well.”
No shit, he did not say. It seemed obvious enough to go without comment.
“You don’t seem cruel in person. I want you to know that. Not cruel at all…just, I don’t know, restrained. You’re nicer than you led me to believe, even though I’m wasting your time.”
“You’re not wasting my time.” He said that for his mother’s sake, so she could hold her head up in whatever ladies meetings she attended, not because it in any way resembled the truth. “I’m here all night to listen to people who need to talk.”
“You know, I hadn’t spoken to Eric in almost three years. He ran away when he was sixteen, gone at first, then went to his dad’s house after.”
“Eric?”
“I’m sorry. You know him as Donald, Don—” She smiled at him, wry and a little sad. “Or not, I remember. That was his grandfather’s name. Everyone called him Eric.”
A tear or raindrop rolled down her cheek. She sucked on the cigarette. It was almost gone and Ray offered her another. She accepted.
“I’m already chain-smoking. God. Do you detox for nicotine?”
“No.”
“That’s funny. I read somewhere that these are harder to kick than cocaine.”
“I always thought so.”
She probably wasn’t even forty, Ray decided. Out of the cool rain, her color was beginning to return. She looked less drained, less pale. Her face was more full than his initial impression had revealed, and she had, in fact, quite a nice tan. Her clothing was both professional and youthful, designed Ray suspected, in such a way as to intentionally accent a figure which did nothing to betray its age.
He was close enough to realize she smelled like strawberries.
“Does this confidentiality thing always make it so difficult to communicate?” she asked.
“Frequently.”
“It’s making me feel awkward. It’s like I’m worried about stepping on broken glass in a dark room.” She laughed nervously.
Ray only nodded. It was a difficult conversation in which to find that line he couldn’t cross. His continued toleration of her at all had probably crossed it several times over. There was nothing he could do about it.
She turned toward him, then, flicked the cigarette away. She was tense, grim. She looked as though she had been abused. The sudden shift presaged an explosion. Ray could only steel himself and wait for the conflagration.
“You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?” she hissed. The abruptness of it all was stunning, should have been stunning. But Ray was familiar with mood swings, with schizophrenia, with a whole slew of mental illnesses that acted a lot like mind rattling grief. He still did not know if the performance was calculated or just there.
She continued because he would not interrupt her. She had a right to explode if she wanted, a right to hate him as a symbolic factor in her son’s death, as long as she didn’t expect him to act the part. Still, in her voice, he could hear the mother she had been, and that was worth the price of his indulgence.
“You’re not going to break down.” It was not a question.
“No, ma’am. I am not.”
“You’re inhuman.”
He inclined his head toward her. “Not at all. I just don’t care.”
“About my son?” Outrage.
“Or your grief. I don’t know you. I’m sorry for your loss, but it doesn’t touch me. It means nothing to me.”
She made a noise in her throat, like a stifled scream. Her eyes went wide, appeared wild. Her chest rose and fell rapidly, harshly. She had folded her small fingers into hard fists, and they shook under her restraint. Ray decided he was on the verge of being attacked.
But just as quickly, the woman wilted, shrank into herself. She let out a guttural, defeated sound and slid down the wall until she sat on the ground. She stared at her hands and sobbed. On the sidewalk, like that, grieved to the point to shattering, she reminded him of his ex-wife. She had looked just like that, just as empty and devastated.
“I am not some monster,” Ray told her, watching her rock back and forth, continuing to weep. “I just can’t help you. I can’t grieve with you or for you. Even if I could admit your son had been here, I didn’t know him. They all look the same; there is nothing to distinguish them in my mind. I cannot, could not help you, even if I wanted to.
“But I see that you are hurting, and that means something to me. I’m sorry this happened to you, even if your grief isn’t real to me. The only comfort I can offer you is to remind you it’s late, Ms. Ackerman. Go home. Go to bed.”
He bent to help her to her feet. Strangely, she accepted his arm, allowed him to pull her up. She stood for a moment, straightening her blouse, trying to brush the dirt from her skirt but only smearing it. Ray walked her to her car and opened the door.
Jennifer Ackerman started the engine, then rolled the window down, less than an inch. The interior was dark, shadowed. Ray could no longer see her face. He was glad for that. It would have been a mask of ruin.
“You don’t understand,” she said. Rigid, dead, controlled. “You don’t, and I can’t blame you. I didn’t know him myself, not in the last three years. My Eric was sixteen. Or he was eight, or two. My Eric had these bright, curious blue eyes and had lost his front teeth. He had chubby fingers, too chubby to tie his shoes for years. My Eric drew pictures of turtles.
“This other one, the drug addict. I didn’t know him at all. I never saw him. Even if I had, I would have denied his existence. That is not the boy I’m mourning. That was not my son.
“And the fact that I didn’t know him, despite what he may have done or may have been, is what I cannot forgive myself for. I have no access to him now, and the fact that someone like you had that opportunity and chose not to take it kills me inside. I would like to think that if mine had been the last face he saw, I would at least have been able to let him know that someone cared for him. That he mattered to me.”
In the glow of her dash lights, her eyes looked like glass. Shiny, empty, blind.
“Believing that makes me feel like a better mother than I really was. I don’t expect you to understand.”
The headlights came on. She turned the car around and drove away. Ray let himself back inside and went in search of a towel.
*
A stricken relative of an addict, Ray thought. How very odd.
*
“Why in the name of God are you still awake?” This is how he answered the phone.
“I did it,” she said cheerily, his reception notwithstanding. “I got him to leave.”
“Without police intervention?”
“They just left, too.”
He glanced at the clock. 4:37. “What happened?”
“I couldn’t do it, what you said. It’s raining.”
“But you could have him hauled away by the cops?”
She giggled, half-pleased, half-scared by the sound of it. He could hear her quivering. “That was his own fault, and Mrs. Batts, the old woman next door. He should have known better than to start yelling.”
Yelling. “Are you okay?”
“Of course, don’t be silly.”
“Certainly.”
She made a sound, like the opening of a soda can. Pfft. “Just yelling, Ray. He wouldn’t have put his hands on me.”
“You sound awfully calm.”
“I can be calm in retrospect. During, I was just cold.”
Ray could believe that. “Tell me.”
“I went into the bedroom, taking care to be loud. You know, to wake him. Then I started stripping. Not whore stripping, but that pragmatic stripping. Panties over the lampshade and all. Just getting ready for bed like he wasn’t there, but I knew he was watching.” She laughed again. “Sproing! That’s how I knew.”
Ray listened, watched, thought of the word pink. “Go on.”
“I got in bed, stayed on my side, of course, and just ignored him. He gets all touchy-feely, so I started snoring. I don’t get this guy thing about always expecting some kind of erotic response from a woman, even when we’re asleep. He seemed to think the only reason I had come to bed in my own damned apartment was to screw him. My apartment! He went from dirty whispers to dirty shouting in about three minutes. After that it was just shouting. I knocked over a lamp getting back up and the cops were banging on the door inside ten minutes.”
She giggled again. “Here’s a secret for you, Ray. A confidential woman secret: answer the door naked and a cop will do whatever you want. You don’t even have to cry. If you could get over that whole macho comparison thing long enough to give it a shot, it’d work for you guys, too.”
“Only for totally different reasons, my dear,” Ray said. “Most of us would do anything a naked guy wanted just to get him the hell away from us.”
“Results,” she responded, “are all that matter.”
“That was very cold. Borderline Personality Disorder cold.”
“No, no. It was effective. It was a means of achieving a desired end. Before you totally condemn me, please have the decency to remember that I said nothing to them. Mrs. Batts made the call. The cops came, looked, assumed. Any mistake they made was their own fault.”
“Jesus.”
“That first cop said the same thing.”
“You could have explained.”
“Why? Then they would have left him. This way, as the cop said, state law requires they take him away and hold him for a few hours. I have to call to press charges.”
“Which you won’t,” Ray said hopefully.
“Unless he becomes a nuisance.”
Ray grunted. His mouth tasted like stale tobacco. “I think he got any or all of the messages you were trying to send.”
“Maybe. I think it depends on whether he finds an outlet to satisfy his butt fixation while he’s in lock-up.” She sounded as though Ray had somehow insulted her. “There was a logic to it all, Ray. There always is. It’s not just being bitchy. Nobody who isn’t one of us—a member of the female gender—can understand it, granted, but we always have a logic.”
“The softer sex.”
“Right, soft like the palate of a Venus fly-trap.”
“They call that a palate?”
“How should I know?”
“I mean, it’s a plant, right? Animals have palates, not plants. That’s creepy, calling it that.”
She sighed. “Shut up, Ray.”
He complied, at least on the question of palates. “So, does this nude thing work on chicky cops?”
“Domestic abuse alone, or the suspicion of it, works on female police officers. And that entire male thing you’re doing, Ray, is part of the justification for our logic.”
“Right, we’re all sexual predators and glass ceiling builders just waiting to shed the bonds of human society. Want me to bang on my chest?”
“You have your stereotypes about women which allow you to oppress us; we have our stereotypes about men which allow us to get devious and devastating revenge. You know, I hope, as well as I do that those pigeon holes are not accurate because of their generality, but they can be used in day to day interactions effectively enough.”
Ray whistled, only partially in humor. “There’s a whole science to this naked gender manipulation thing, then. Textbooks and shit.”
“Uni_her_sity training.”
“Ah. More like a cult, I suppose.”
“Sorority.”
“Same difference. It’s still that whole feminist routine. ‘Look at me, I’m weak and helpless! Defend me large man!’ That is, until the danger’s gone, then it’s ‘Stop oppressing me, you bastard! I can take care of myself!’.”
“That’s an offensive generality of the feminist movement, Ray. All we’re doing is utilizing the existing system of male domination. Your impulse is to rescue us. We can use that.”
“Divide and conquer.”
“You catch on quickly.”
In Ray’s insensitive male brain, this seemed like a logical transition to the events of his own evening. “That Ackerman kid’s mother was here a few minutes ago.”
A pause, apparently for switching gears. “Jesus, Ray. What happened?”
“I called the cops.”
“Shit, really!”
He thought about it. “No, not really. She was very nice, actually. She cried, we smoked, she left. In between she tried to get me fired, fined and incarcerated, but she handles rejection well. All in all, it was one of the better family interactions I’ve had in this business.”
“Was she pathetic?”
“Not any more than you would expect a grieving mother to be. Not any less, either. I was surprised at the weirdness of it.”
“Did she cry because she was grieving or because you were an asshole?”
“That is an offensive generality of the masculinist movement. I was the image of professionalism.”
“Same difference.”
“She was pretty hot for an old lady. I mean it. The professionalism was more of a stretch than you’re giving me credit for here.”
“I’m sure it was. I’m going to bed now. Goodnight, Ray.”
She hung up, leaving him with the sense that he had disappointed her in some way other than the obvious.