Checking in
She’s been living in the car so long I’ve forgotten that she actually lives in our house. Or not.
“Can I come by and take a shower?” she texts from her 2001 Mitsiubishi this freezing winter day.
She comes home, takes a shower, and starts to leave the house with a wet head (it’s 5 degrees outside). Her boyfriend is waiting in the car outside.
Vince asks if she’s okay and she says yes, but asks, “Can we have some food?” He gives her the barbecued chicken he had made for dinner and a box of Triscuits out of the pantry. He cuts up some cheese and pulls out some water bottles and some cans of Pepsi. They’ll be fed tonight at least.
All the money they panhandled today can go for gas to drive to Paterson to pay for their heroin.
Dinner with my friends
Meanwhile, I go to dinner with my three best friends from college, Debbie, Marcie and Mary. We double dated, went on vacations together, were in each other’s weddings, had dinner parties on our wedding China, had our babies together.
The three youngest–Cassie, Bethanie and Doug–are born months apart. I can’t count all the pictures taken of the three of them.
Now all our babies are grown up; a couple of the older girls have already started having babies of their own.
The new age restaurant makes us feel cool just by being there.
As each of us enters the restaurant, we screech as if we just ran into each other in another country. We giggle and kiss and sit down, and pass around around cellphone photos of beautiful smiling grandbabies. We chat about the traffic tonight, the horrible weather, this pretty restaurant, the charming town.
We talk about work and spouses and the matchmaker that Mary has in mind for Marcie. They can’t believe I was let go from my job and why aren’t you panicking? Because I am numb.
Then we get down to business: the kid report.
One by one, we report on how our kids are doing. The new parents, the new homeowners, when do you think Karen and Joe will be getting engaged?
I listen intently at the trials of their daughters, now working moms, who has lost all her baby weight, who might have lost too much weight? Who wishes she was still nursing (at age 58) and losing weight.
Bethanie’s new boyfriend from West Point. Her job title, at 23: “Manager.” She’d graduated a top university a semester early, got a job right out of school and was quickly transferred to Washington DC and loves every minute of it.
Doug has apprentices in his management training program at a world famous hotel chain in New York, where he was recruited right out of college. He dates a different girl a night, lives in the city, and is having the time of his life.
Rick, my older son, is making good progress in his job search. It’s nice to be recruited almost every day and have your pick of jobs. He has been on his own since he graduated college. He lives in a great apartment a block away from Madison Square Garden.
Matt works at a TV sports network and his girlfriend is working her dream job at her alma mater four hours away. They’re in love and managing this long distance relationship in a way that amazes me.
They save Cassie for last.
Cassie’s story
She started this current run on Christmas night.
in late January, she asked me to drive her to the ER at BRMC because she felt like a danger to herself. We check in at BRMC and she says good-bye. Oh and by the way, Mom, there is a note on my bed for you and dad.
Three years ago, I’d be a puddle watching her go, but now I don’t even sniffle–or look back. Truth is, I’m thinking: tonight I know where she is and I know she’s safe. And I don’t have to lock up my wallet or hide my good tweezers and razor.
This is my new normal.
The note says that she stole my credit card and she was really sorry. She says her plan was to kill herself before the bill arrived, but instead she saw the light and that’s why she is checking herself into the hospital for suicide. I skim it once, put it down and go to bed.
The only true words are that she stole the credit card.
She is kept not in the suicide unit, but in detox. When I visit her at the hospital, we discuss her release plans, but out of the blue she tells me that the hospital’s inpatient MICA (dual diagnosis: depression and addiction) unit is too restrictive. They don’t tell you that until you’re there, she says with a raised agitated, voice in the dayroom as other patients and families stop talking and look up at us. She’s decided instead to go directly to an outside rehab, Turning Point.
A brief pause…and then, there it is: She just needs to come home and get a few things first.
Her release date is two days later. Before I leave for work, I ask Vic not to let her take her car under any circumstances, but that’s easier said than done. Solutions that seem so logical in suggestion are often impossible in action.
Vic picks her up while I’m at work and they come home so she can gather her things. Hold on, Dad, I’m just dying to drive my car for a minute. I’m going to just run out for cigarettes and I promise, yes I SWEAR of course! to come right back.
Four hours later we have still not heard from her. Finally she texts. She is with a boy she met in detox and they are going to stay in the car. You’d really like him, mom. I’m in love.
A couple of days pass, her phone goes right to voicemail. She tells me it no longer holds a charge. We should sue the hospital; they were holding the phone and when she got it back, it didn’t work any more.
I know this scenario. She’s sold it for heroin. She calls me on a different number: his. Call me on this number, she says.
A week later, that number stops working and she starts calling me once a day at random times from random hospital lobbies to tell me she’s alive.
Then the calls stop. Two days and no Cassie. The last two times she went off he grid, her plan was a passive suicide….I’ll just lay here and die. For the first time (this instance), I panic.
i file a missing persons report that morning and come into work late. At lunchtime, I drive around Paterson looking for her car.
My boss calls me in at 4 for something, but sees my condition and asks me what’s wrong. After we chat a while , he goes on to the subject at hand: “This is awkward. but I’m letting you go.” I tell him I can only handle one catastrophe at a time; he’ll have to fire me another day (he does: the next day).
Meanwhile, while I’m in with my boss, the police call my husband: she’s been arrested for stealing baby formula from a local supermarket (evidently, formula gets sold to bodegas in drug neighborhoods at 50% value).
She’s back at the hospital. The next morning, the $85 I didn’t spend on beautiful leather boots the day before because it was too much of an indulgence is applied to the $189 it takes to get her car out of impound.
Their plan is to go to a rehab that treats all their conditions: depression, addiction, PTSD, anger and BPD, but there are no openings at the moment. I’m wondering how they are communicating if they have no phones. Postcard?
Vince discovers her car has practically no heat and the temperatures have plummeted. We let them stay at the house at night but we run it like a homeless shelter: they must leave by 8am and can return at 9pm. For two blessed nights, I sleep like a baby, knowing she is safe and warm right next door.
The third night, the weather goes down to 2 degrees. Vince and I are watching TV and as the wind storms outside, I thank him for letting Cassie and her friend stay in the house.
Matt comes home at 11 from a weekend away. He goes up to his room to lock up his wallet and get changed. His safe has been broken into and his grandfather’s wedding ring is missing.
Chaos. Clothes are quickly swooped up, backpacks and duffle bags are stuffed and grabbed. The late night news is on in the background, giving the signs of hypothermia: you shiver uncontrollably, then you lose the ability to shiver altogether. I’m going to go out of my mind thinking of that. As they leave, I’m telling her, find a covered parking lot somewhere, or go to a hospital or a police station. The two of them are outtathere.
I usually am able to sleep: my secret? I don’t allow myself to worry or even think about anything that worries me. Unless you have a solution, what good is worrying? No solutions are found in the horizontal position. You solve things in the morning in the shower or in the car.
Instead, I think of 10 things to be grateful for from the day, and that almost never fails.
Except that night. At 3am, I was driving around trying to find the 2001 black Mitsubishi with the spoiler. I returned unsuccessfully at 4am
I lie in bed and put it in God’s hands. The police are not going to go around tomorrow morning picking up dead bodies all over the place of all the people who didn’t survive the night. Some people–most people*–will certainly survive.
The two of them are in a car, covered in blankets, with each other’s body heat. If one was in danger surely the other would save them. Surely.
*as it turns out, all people survive
The Damage Done 