Part 26 (2/2)

She set herself some new goals. To learn Spanish. To put in some serious time working for the pro-choice movement. To gain three or four pounds so that her face wouldn't look so drawn but so the weight wouldn't go to her thighs.

Cathy had a summer job as a c.o.c.ktail waitress at a seafood restaurant on the Quay. Alan was working at a garage on St. Armands Key. He went camping one weekend down on the Caloosahatchee River with some friends. When he got back he told Toba that they'd never been able to set up the tent properly and, when a heavy rain began to fall, he and another kid found a station wagon with the back gate open. They went to sleep in it. Two cops woke them at 6:00 A.M. and took them in handcuffs to the Lee County courthouse in Fort Myers, where they were arrested for trespa.s.sing.

”Like criminals? That's absurd!” Toba cried.

He would handle it himself, Alan said. Toba told me about it that evening. ”If he pleads guilty, what sort of fine will they give him?”

”Couple of hundred bucks, maybe. Don't worry-the court will let him do community service. Picking up garbage in parks, scrubbing graffiti off school walls.”

In order to make it easier for Alan to pay the fine for trespa.s.sing, Toba decided to pay his bill with Dorothy Buford. She called to make the arrangements.

The therapist said, ”Alan's not been my patient for the last three weeks.”

”Oh? May I ask why you let him go?”

”He left. It was his decision that he didn't need more therapy.”

Toba sat on this knowledge for a full week. One evening, staring at the September sunset with a vodka tonic in her hand, she took an uncertain step in the wrong direction and fell into the pool. She came up for air, gasping, with the highball gla.s.s and the wedge of lime and the ice cubes floating on the surface of the water. She went upstairs and changed out of her wet clothes into dry sweats.

Then she called Dorothy Buford. ”Do you have an opening? May I sort of take my son's place? I have some problems, but I can't put my finger on them. I've been drinking too much. This evening I fell into our swimming pool, fully dressed.”

When I came home from the office, she told me what had happened. I began to pace the room, cracking my knuckles.

”You're not making this up?” I said.

”Why are you so upset? I didn't get hurt.”

”Years ago, do you remember I told you about a woman, a witness in a case up in Jacksonville, who fell into her pool fully dressed?”

”Vaguely.”

”I pulled her out.”

”So?”

”It just seemed strange for it to happen again.”

”You didn't pull me out,” Toba said, puzzled. ”And I'm not a witness. I'm your wife. I was s.h.i.+tfaced. That's why I fell in.”

She told me then what she had learned about Alan.

I didn't want to ambush him. I left him a note: ”Kiddo, I'll be waking you before I go to the office. I want to talk to you about your leaving therapy.”

When I came downstairs at six-thirty in the morning, Alan was already pouring milk into his granola. He said sadly, ”Well, I f.u.c.ked up again.”

”That's a way of putting it.” I put a kettle of water on to boil. Tea promised to be more calming than coffee.

”This is what happened,” Alan said. He wasn't getting anywhere with Dorothy Buford, and so for the last three weeks he'd taken the money that I'd contributed toward the therapy fee and spent it on marijuana.

”And the story I told you about what happened down on the Caloosahatchee, that's bulls.h.i.+t. We were in a car parked by the river. The cops rousted us about one o'clock in the morning because they were suspicious. They got us on possession. Two ounces, minus what we'd already smoked.”

”How'd you like jail?”

”Not much.”

And one more thing, he said. He'd told us he'd pa.s.sed the courses in physics and American history, but that wasn't true. No diploma was coming in the mail.

”Dad, I was thinking of going to San Francisco. My friend Bobby Woolford is out there now. He's got his own apartment, and a job, and I can stay with him. Don't worry, he's off drugs. Frisco's a place I always wanted to go to.”

”If you go there,” I said, ”be sure you don't call it Frisco. San Franciscans will throw rocks at you.”

Into the teapot I measured out what I considered to be the proper mixture of Irish Breakfast and Earl Grey. I poured boiling water into the pot, and the fragrant heat of another continent rose to my nostrils. I wished I were there, sitting on a straw mat, absorbing enlightenment.

I gathered my family together that evening in the living room and told them that I had a proposition to make to Alan. I wanted their input as well as his.

I turned to him and said, ”I want to thank you for your honesty. I understand now why you're depressed, and even why you've contemplated suicide. You'd have to have b.a.l.l.s of iron and a heart of steel not to be depressed by your life. Because anyone who keeps making the same mistake over and over again has to know he's on a treadmill like a laboratory rat.”

Alan lowered his head.

”I made some calls today,” I said. ”I wound up talking to a woman lawyer in Jacksonville whose kid brother was a c.o.ke addict. He went into a state-sponsored residential drug program in upstate New York. I spoke to the head of the program, and he said he'd make an opening for you now. He'd want you to come to Manhattan within a week for an interview, and I'd have to go with you.”

”Dad, I told you I wanted to go to San Francisco.”

”Yes, you did, and so I also spoke to the a.s.sistant state attorney down in Fort Myers. They know about the other bust, on Siesta Beach-they could hit you with thirty days jail therapy now. If you go to San Francis...o...b..fore all that's settled, it makes you a fugitive. But if you go into the New York drug program, the State of Florida will drop the charge.”

We argued for more than an hour. Finally I called a halt. ”Alan, I need to know by the end of the week. And the last time we talked, I made something clear to you-I'm not backing down on it. You can't stay in this house any longer. Go into the program or get out of here.”

On Thursday morning, unshaven, Alan was waiting for me again at the breakfast table.

”All right,” he said quietly.

When you've won, when the other party's agreed to your terms, don't gloat or encourage more debate. Walk away. I made the necessary telephone calls.

On Friday we flew to New York.

We stayed in a hotel facing Central Park. Gla.s.s-and-steel office buildings soared into the sky, and homeless men sprawled in their shadows. On Fifth Avenue black men sold fake Rolex watches. Other men clutched at our arms and begged. Beautiful women, white and black, hurried by, heels clicking.

”You like New York, Dad?”

”Yes, but I doubt that I could explain why.”

”It's a scary city.”

The planet is scary, I wanted to tell him.

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