This Is Not Over Part 4

f.u.c.k Miranda. Referencing my Mendocino review was just low. I didn't blame the owners for the bad weather, but Miranda made it sound like I had, and what are the odds anyone will do any cross-referencing?

"So now that the fun stuff is out of the way," Dr. Kroy says with a smile, "what else did you want to talk to me about?" She gestures toward the form I filled out upon check-in, where I indicated I had questions and/or concerns. Then she perches on the pink rolling stool, which signals we're in for a heart-to-heart.

"Rob and I might want to start trying soon," I say. It seems unnecessary to add "for a baby" but it also seems weird not to add it. I mean, why is it a given that "trying" means "baby"? There's a lot in life worth trying for.

Dr. Kroy's smile broadens. I guess the only trying anyone ever talks to her about is of the procreative variety.

If you try, you can fail. That's the risk. Everyone will know it's me. Isn't it always the woman's fault? It would be too fitting, me being barren.

Even if I succeed at getting pregnant, I could miscarry. That would be failing to carry the baby to term. Or I could fail at parenthood. It happens. Just look at all the wreckage out there.

"Are there any tests we should run first?" I ask. "To make sure I'm ready physically?" From my hopeful tone, you'd think I want my OB to put the kibosh on my fertility plans.

She shakes her head. "Nope. We'd just take your Mirena out and you're good to go."

"What about the herpes?"

"Herpes wouldn't stop you from conceiving or increase the odds of miscarriage. Once you are pregnant, we'd put you on acyclovir a few weeks before you're due to make sure there are no lesions when the baby's exiting the birth ca.n.a.l. But herpes doesn't put you at higher risk for any complications. Odds are you'd have an entirely normal pregnancy and an entirely healthy baby."

"Odds are," I echo weakly. I wish I could smile as easily as she's doing. I wish she'd been my mother. If I'd received this kind of rea.s.surance throughout my life, I'd know how to metabolize it now. "I won't have a mom in the delivery room with me."

Don't know where that came from.

Her expression turns sympathetic. "Did your mom pa.s.s away?"

I shake my head, but I don't elaborate.

"It can activate old wounds," she says. "When you're thinking about having a baby, you start thinking about being a baby. What it's like to be a parent, what it's like to be a child. It's scary stuff."

"But you think I can do it?"

"You're in good health. You're thin. You don't smoke."

That wasn't what I meant, but okay.

"Are there infertility issues in your family?"

"Not that I know of."

"Any history of miscarriages?"

"I don't know."

"How old was your mother when she had you?"

I've been trying to fake the middle cla.s.s for so long, but it's the little things that out me. "Fifteen." My mother is forty-five now. She might even be younger than Dr. Kroy. "How long do you think it would take for me to conceive?"

"That's hard to say. Some people get pregnant the same month they take the IUD out; for others, their cycle has to regulate."

"On average, how long would it take for someone with my health history?"

She c.o.c.ks her head. "Are you asking because you want it to be sooner, or later?"

"Rob wants sooner."

"So you need to figure out what you want." She's still wearing that sympathetic expression, which is a little annoying, because this is a happy conversation. This is about what I want, and what I can have, because I'm thin and I don't smoke and I have a husband who loves me. It's not like when I got diagnosed with herpes and I had to go back into the past. Who did I sleep with, who did I infect, who infected me. This is about the future. My happy future. "It's a ten-minute appointment to get the IUD out. Why don't you keep it in for now, and just call me when you're ready?"

I stare down at my hands for a long minute, thinking of Rob and the disappointment he'll feel, how to tell him that I just can't give him what he wants, not yet, and then, slowly, I nod.

10.

Miranda

How dare you? You don't know me. How dare you say that some people need to find fault, some people need to hate, some people can't be pleased. Look in the mirror, you self-righteous c.u.n.t. Volunteer work is for people who don't have a job because they mooch off their doctor husbands. It's for people with time on their hands, and no purpose, and a need to think they're better than other people. I bet you call them "the less fortunate."

Maybe you're fortunate in some ways, but not really, because you're still you. You're full of yourself, and sure of yourself, and that's a very dangerous combination.

You think the best thing you can be is "reasonable"? Then I feel sorry for you.

The only other person who's ever spewed such hatred in my direction is Thad, and he was on something when he did it, I know that. He didn't mean what he said. He couldn't have.

Maybe Dawn's an addict, too. These sound like the ravings of someone who's chemically uninhibited, who's abandoned all self-control.

If it is substance-induced, though, it's not really about self-control. Addiction is a disease. It's a medical condition, and one of its characteristics is that people revert to their basest selves. They do unimaginable things because they're drunk or high, or because they're coming down, or because they're in agony chasing their next fix.

Desperate people are capable of ugly things. This, I've learned.

She lives in Oakland. That's one of the most dangerous cities in America. It's also, paradoxically, red-hot according to the L.A. Times real estate section. Apparently, the home prices in some neighborhoods rival San Francisco, across the bay. I don't know what neighborhood she's in. It could be one that's riddled by crack and meth and whatever hybrid has come down the pike. She could be riddled.

Oakland's only six or seven hours away from here. She knows my full name. She could probably find our address without too much difficulty, the Internet being what it is.

I look over at Larry, sleeping soundly beside me. He doesn't know anything about Dawn, and if I told him, he'd tell me to go back to sleep, the house alarm is set. He's always believed himself inviolate, untouchable. He'd say, "She wrote a review on a website and you're terrified of her?" But it's not the review. It's her tenacity. This should have ended already, yet she just keeps coming at me.

I put my hand to my breast. I can't remember the last time my heart pounded like this, and that must be what she wants.

I don't know anything about her, not really. I don't know about any of my guests. There are no background checks. They send inquiries, and if they can provide the 50 percent deposit up front, I book them. In my house. In my dead father's house. It's never once occurred to me how unsafe that is. I suppose I've felt somewhat inviolate myself, except where Thad is concerned. There, I'm nothing but vulnerable.

I think of the people who are at the house right now, a young couple with a child. For a second, I feel relief, as if a child is somehow prophylactic, or proof of decency. But no, plenty of lousy people are parents. Plenty of lousy people are children.

This isn't me. I don't think things like this. I don't think the worst of people. Dawn's wrong; I don't teach poor kids how to read or feed the hungry in order to feel superior. I don't do it because I'm rudderless.

No, she didn't say rudderless. She said purposeless.

The h.e.l.l with her.

I don't think things like that either. That's gutter talk.

It's three A.M., and I'm wide-awake. This is not my normal state of mind; these are not my true thoughts. I'm not myself.

I sit up, and while it's too dark to really see, what with the blackout curtains, I take in the room and everything in it perfectly. It must be memory, not sight. I did pick out everything in here: all of it heavy wood, hand-carved, the iron accents also forged by hand. Not very imaginative, I recognize now. A Spanish villa, with Spanish hacienda furniture, and drapes and bedding in the colors of a flamenco dancer, all red and black.

It's not like the bedroom displays lack of taste, or lack of expense. Just lack of imagination. Besides, I was grieving. Thad was seventeen, and I had to face the boy he was. The man he might be. The man I hoped he wouldn't be, and now he is.

No, he's still a work in progress. He's like unfinished furniture. He needs to be sanded down and lacquered properly. The problem is, who'll finish him now? It's too late for me. Parents have their chance, and if they leave work undone, then it's for the world to complete.

This bed is the one thing Larry chose. I insisted that it match the style of the other furniture, and he was fine with that. Size was all that mattered to him. He wanted a California king.

I objected at the time. I said it was like being marooned on separate sides of an island, it felt that large to me. I was trying to get across in imagery what I couldn't bring myself to say: You'll be too far away; we'll barely be able to reach each other. But he'd just laughed and said, "Doesn't everyone want a private island?" He was teasing and said we should name it. Laranda. Mirly. I pretended to laugh, but I felt like crying. It felt like the end of something to me, but there was no explaining that.

I still grope for him sometimes, like I used to, but the distance seems too big to traverse. I can't help thinking he doesn't want me to traverse it, why else get this bed? It's not like we were always on top of each other in our old king; we had plenty of s.p.a.ce. Why did he need more? There aren't many things that feel worth waking him up for when he's on the other side of an island. I can't help feeling that he wants me to bear my burdens alone.

We still have s.e.x every Sunday morning, regular as yoga, and it provides the same sense of release. I'm more limber afterward, and if I've had an o.r.g.a.s.m, then there's that. I like that he still seems to want me, that there've been no performance issues despite his age, and that he often still gives me a bracing slap on the b.u.t.t as he gets up to shower. It feels personal.

No, there's no sense in waking him up when I can't tell him about Dawn. He'll say that if it's stressing me out so much, this rental business, then we should just get rid of the Santa Monica house. Oakland isn't the only place real estate is on an upswing. Larry would tell me we could make a good profit and take some more vacations. "Buy our own island, for real," he'd joke. The thing about Larry is that he likes parity. He likes to give, and then get. We could afford more vacations now; we could afford a third home. But he likes to frame things as inducements: You do this, we can have this. You sell the house, we'll have more time together. Why not just have everything now, because we have only this one life, because we have only one son and we don't even see him, by Larry's edict?

I can't give up the Santa Monica house, not when Thad depends on it.

The cash infusions aren't only for him. They're for the good of society. He's a tick, and I voluntarily offer myself, I let him suck my blood, so that he won't have to do what so many other addicts do. So he won't break into houses or deal drugs or sell himself, so he won't spread the misery around. I'll be his host, and others will be spared.

His host. Funny, I'd never thought of it in those terms.

It all started when Thad was fourteen. That's when I was first aware something was wrong, so his use probably began months, possibly years, before. It was a blow to me on many levels, just one of which was that I'd always considered myself a tuned-in mom. Some would say hypervigilant; Thad used the term "suffocating." I'd say devoted. He was my primary job, and I'm a hard worker.

I've gone over and over this in my mind, with much guilt and self-recrimination and fervent wishes for a time machine, and I've reached the conclusion that I missed the signs and symptoms because they weren't actually much of a departure from Thad's normal behavior. He'd been displaying mood swings his entire childhood. Anger and aggression? Check. He was never violent toward people, thank G.o.d, but when he was mad, he'd yell without regard for who was around. Sometimes he almost seemed to take delight in humiliating me in public with my failure to control him. There were times when he smashed whatever object was within reach, remorselessly.

Let me amend that: He did have some regard for who was around. He never acted that way in front of his father. I still don't really understand why Larry had this impact-it wasn't like he ever laid a hand on Thad-but there was a respect, a reverence even, that was entirely absent from Thad's att.i.tude toward me.

I like to think that while I took the brunt in bad times, I also had more good times with Thad than Larry did. Life is not a contest, I realize, and perhaps it's uncharitable of me to tabulate. But I feel like there has to be some additional benefit for my troubles. I remember sharing laughter with Thad, and, occasionally, confidences. That is, sometimes Thad would reveal his true heart-the boy who loved his friends, wanted to create art, cared what happened to his family, and was bewildered by the outbursts that seized him with such regularity.

So it wasn't until he lost his appet.i.te and about fifteen pounds in less than a month that I suspected something was truly wrong. I took him to the pediatrician, who did a physical and ran a bunch of tests but couldn't find any cause.

Now I realize that it was practically malpractice for a pediatrician to know so little about such obvious signs of methamphetamine abuse. The addiction was progressing on its dangerous course through my little boy, and I was depending on Dr. Paolini to arrest that course. Instead, he sent us on our way with a recommendation that I make Thad protein shakes and bring him back if the weight loss continued. Larry trusted Dr. Paolini (they'd played golf together) so I felt like I had to also. I overruled my parental instincts, the first in a series of mistakes.

The eye twitching appeared next. Dr. Paolini said that tics were a sign of stress. I was to put less pressure on Thad academically and "give him a little more breathing room." The good doctor had formed an impression that I was what's now called a helicopter parent. Thad seconded this new recommendation, enthusiastically.

Dr. Paolini gave Thad's addiction s.p.a.ce in which to flourish. More time with friends, less time doing homework, reduced supervision-it's a teenage addict's dream. Thad's pediatrician was his first enabler.

I remember knocking on Thad's door (he now spent more time with his door closed, invoking Dr. Paolini as justification) and hearing his frenzied "Wait a minute, wait a minute!" When he yanked the door open, he was beaming. He ushered me into his room and showed me what he'd been building. It was an art installation made out of items from his childhood. A sort of Tower of Babel had been constructed from Tinkertoys, Legos, and action figures. Most of them had been affixed haphazardly, with glue in long dried rivulets. "I call it Toy Chest," he said, with a pride that I thought misplaced.

"It's good," I told him weakly.

"You're such a phony." His gaze and tone were equally savage. "That's what this piece is about."

"About phony parents?"

"About loss of innocence. About corruption. About the ways people chip away at kids-you chip away-one Lego at a time."

I said, "I'm glad to see you're enjoying yourself," and withdrew from his room, closing the door behind me. I leaned against it, breathing heavily. For years, he'd viewed me with increasing scorn, and I couldn't pinpoint why. There was one clear theme: I was wrong, all the time. I was a bad mother who didn't give him what he needed. What did he need? I couldn't figure it out. He couldn't-or didn't want to-tell me. We were caught in a vicious cycle. I believe he must have wanted to escape it as much as I did, but neither of us could find a way out. We didn't have the words.

It was awful, feeling so inept, so nervous, around your own son. But I didn't realize that the worst was still to come. Meth addiction manages to be both insidious and rapid. The protein shakes actually worked enough that the weight loss stabilized, but what I would later recognize as repet.i.tious behavior (a key symptom) continued. Thad kept building onto his art project until it took up half his room. And it was a large room. It was like a monster living alongside him, the monster of my failure. Now I know that the frequent trips from his old playroom to his bedroom were meth-induced hyperactivity. He had to keep moving.

I'm ashamed to say that I never saw his dilated pupils. He didn't even wear sungla.s.ses; we just didn't look into each other's eyes. I never noticed any body odor, though I've since learned that he probably had a smell akin to cat urine, the same one meth labs have. He was most likely emitting a stench through his sweat, through his pores, but I was keeping my distance.

Ultimately, there was no hiding the tooth decay. I took him to the dentist twice a year-no matter what enmity existed between us, I was always on top of necessary appointments-and the dentist was shocked by the degradation. Unlike Dr. Paolini, he was aware immediately of the cause. He called me into his office for a private talk, something that had never happened before, and told me, bluntly, that Thad had "meth mouth. Early stages, but it'll move fast." He asked what kind of help I'd already tried to give Thad.

I was mortified. If I admitted I hadn't realized what was happening, he would have thought I was a negligent parent. "He won't see any of the therapists I've found for him," I said. It wasn't a complete lie. We had tried therapy in the past, and he was either silent or spun webs of lies about his father and me. I couldn't imagine we'd have a different outcome even if I'd known about the meth.

My G.o.d, meth. That wasn't even in my lexicon. Speed. My son was doing speed. I didn't even know how that was administered. Did he shoot it up? If I looked at his arms, would I find scabby track marks? I hadn't even thought to look. I was a negligent mother, the last thing I would have ever expected to be.

I was suddenly furious. Larry's a doctor. He should have detected this. If he ever paid any attention to his son, he would have. I wasn't going to let him get away with this workaholic/absentee father bit anymore. Things were going to change. They had to.

"A therapist isn't enough," the dentist said. "He needs a program. Inpatient is probably your best bet. Something immersive. He's a tough kid."

I was suffused with grat.i.tude. Even the dentist could see that I was up against a lot. My failures were understandable, predictable even, as Thad was no ordinary child.

"The good thing is," he continued, "you've got control now. You can force him into a program whether he wants to go or not. Once they turn eighteen, you lose your edge." I had the sudden feeling he was speaking from personal experience. "So do all you can, now. Get him in ASAP."

The urgency in his exhortation brought tears to my eyes. I did something completely unlike myself: I reached across the desk and grabbed his hand in mine. "Thank you," I said. "Thank you so much."

He nodded and looked away, uncomfortable with my touch but too kind to draw back. "Before he goes, bring him back for a fluoride treatment."

Thad knew something was up during the car ride. I wondered if he was high right then. I was so nave. I thought it was just a high and a low. I wasn't yet cognizant of the stages of meth intoxication: the rush, the high, the binge, the tweaking, and the crash, each with its own distinctive characteristics that I would come to know well, through painful experience. Once I knew to look, it was all I could see. It was unmissable. His rapid speech and interruptions meant he was high, while his hyperactivity was indicative of a binge. Oversleeping meant he was crashing.

I knew that our family had to change, profoundly, and family was my domain. So this was my problem, more than anyone else's, and I hadn't a clue how to begin to solve it.

I still don't. The phrase "knowledge is power" doesn't apply to the parent of a substance abuser.

Strange that I can even feel afraid of someone like Dawn when the worst-case scenario has been happening for thirteen years now. No, not quite the worst. Thad might be using, but he's still alive.

And I still have a sense of self-preservation. That vitriolic e-mail from Dawn was a none-too-veiled threat. She's warning me that I'll get mine. She's not stupid enough to say it directly, but people can read between the lines. Getaway.com must have a department that protects the safety of its customers. I can send them the e-mail, file some sort of report, and then Dawn can be thrown off the site, out of the community, and all her reviews will be deleted. That could solve all my problems.

Unless Dawn is truly nuts. She seems to care about her partic.i.p.ation in the community, and if I take it away from her, there's no telling what she'd do. I could be unleashing something awful.

These are three A.M. thoughts. No one cares that much about being on some website. No one would drive six hours to take vengeance on a stranger.

But better safe than sorry. I'll deal with Getaway.com, and not with Dawn herself. Better not to respond, to let her feel she's had the last word. Yes, that's the safest thing.