Halfway Read online

  Our mailbox was at the bottom of a steep hill, and I read the letter walking up it, though once the words began forming coherent sentences, I stopped and looked about. My mom’s car was gone. Abba was out of town. Was this real? I read the letter from beginning to end and then again. I turned it in my hands—was there more? A smiley face, perhaps, a “just joking,” an “April Fool’s,” something, fucking anything, other than this—

  I read it again. And again. But all it said was what his actions had been telling me all these years: he didn’t love me, he was tired of pretending, he didn’t want to hear from me again, and had asked his family not to contact me; in short, so long, goodbye, and fuck off.

  I walked back down the hill to our trash cans and threw the thing away.

  I’d never speak to him again.

  Then and Now

  POUR my mom a few chardonnays and she might tell you some stories. That year was unkind to both of us. I drank a lot. More than too much. Blackout-style always, no kidding. Once I drove her car halfway off a bridge. For a while she watched me fall apart. Then we stopped speaking, and I only saw her in passing, like around town, early in the morning, me scuffed and dampened, jeans torn, out all night drinking. But she was not sad anymore. She was tough. After a bender got me kicked off the basketball team, she sent me to boarding school. This way you won’t kill anyone driving, she said. Don’t you think?

  It’s funny—not the dreams I had, but my ways of reaching them. I planned to play college baseball. Didn’t have to be the Ivy Leagues anymore, just somewhere. But before I left, I stole a bunch of weed from some guy. Enough to make me popular, if I hadn’t smoked it all myself. Still, here I was—at boarding school, just like my pop. Not Andover, of course, but nearby. And at boarding school, I was good enough to start varsity as a sophomore. I batted third in the lineup, played center field, was a run producer and line-drive hitter, made all-league, honorable mention. And what else? I liked a girl, but she did not know my name. That’s fine, I thought, as I left campus that May. Next year, I’ll be a junior. Next year, I’ll make first team all-league, the colleges will start calling, and I’ll get to keep playing a few more seasons. Next year, I’ll bring even more weed.

  * * *

  THE FIRST I ENCOUNTERED any of this recovery business was that summer, when I worked for a moving and storage facility. The rest of the guys who worked there all had nine months clean, or once did, but were now fresh off benders that had seen their women gather their children and go. They lived in boardinghouses in condemned buildings in decaying neighborhoods or in snail-backs on a pasture’s edge far from town. They wore court-issued ankle bracelets. Their vehicles wouldn’t start if they couldn’t blow clean into a tube. They caught rides or hitchhiked or filled their radiators halfway to the docks. I thought they were cool, their coolness proof of my own; we shared a common vision for how life ought to be—existing on the peripherals, the margins, we were outliers who’d solved the riddle and so forth—there is no set way, no limit, life is full of options and freedom.

  A hard-dick named Rick D. ran the place, and he pulled me aside, issued a warning like Stay the fuck away from those guys, but I didn’t listen. After work, I followed them into the parking lot, where they sullenly smoked me out before pushing me away. Aren’t you listening? they’d explain. Haven’t you heard a word we’ve said? You don’t want this.

  But I did.

  I returned to campus carrying a few pounds, at least. Now that girl I liked knew exactly who I was, and when she saw me, she’d say things, little things, I admit, but things—Where are you going? What are you doing this weekend?

  I think she liked me.

  One night we went for a walk and, afterward, made plans to meet behind Cumbies that Friday night, but the dean of students moved me out of the dorms and into his house, and I hot-boxed his bathroom and vandalized his property, and Friday morning they sent me home. They weren’t kicking me out, they said, just giving me a breather, some time to think. We’ll let you know, they told my mom. In a few weeks. Kid’s got a chemical-dependency issue.

  For a while, I donked around my mom’s town, waiting for a decision. I knew whatever they decided would lead my mom to her own decisions, and I didn’t want to know what that looked like. You might think this meant I took it easy, but I’d become the worst kind of kid—fearless and empty—and there isn’t anything you can do about a boy like that but get out of the way.

  And what actions did I take to prove my contrition? And how did I go about getting in shape for baseball season? Well, I recall quite a few hazy evenings, fifth of off-brand vodka in one hand, packed bowl in the other, going into and coming out of one blackout or another in such varied locales as the water, the highway, and several notorious homeless encampments. I’d come to on a park bench or couch, sort of explaining the physics of hitting, the two planes that are a thrown baseball and swung bat, a sixty-forty weight split from front to back leg, and the mechanics of chopping a tree, the fishing hook, or an inside-out swing.

  Or I drove the winding, hallucinatory Pacific Coast Highway, looking for mushrooms or some hitchhiker, always too fucked up to notice anyone else on the road, and instead just focused on the yellow grass, the empty blue sky above dusty eucalyptus on whatever distant ridge. I’d pull over to roll a joint or throw up and hold myself to the reedy brush, puking until I cramped. One day I found myself wandering an apricot orchard in the San Joaquin. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, I was sitting on a couch in front of a TV next to an old man, a stranger. His pants were halfway down his thighs. He had a fully erect dick in his hand—his own—and was pointing it at me.

  God damn it, I told him.

  Just hold steady, my friend, he said, nodding like a foot-in-the-door salesman with only positive affirmations. Nice. You got it. You’re a natural. Don’t move.

  A porn played on the TV. A regular old fuck-film—just two people banging, nothing unusual. On a cutting board on the coffee table was a handle of rum, a pound of brick weed, and a butcher’s knife. I stood up.

  Where you going? he said. This ain’t weird.

  That’s cool, I said. But it’s not for me.

  I backed out of his apartment, not knowing where I was or where I’d left my car, though as I began walking, things grew clear. I’d come to the Mission to see the house I’d been born in. I must have gone on some drunken sentimental quest.

  I stole a few shorties of rum from a corner store and jittered up one road and down the next, looking over my shoulder and ahead until I found my car, got behind the wheel, downed the short dogs, browned out, came to in heavy traffic, stepped on the gas, and no!

  Red light. Rear-ended a Cadillac.

  Four dudes jumped out wearing black leather jackets, with slicked and crisp dark hair, Mediterranean features.

  I got out, too, but they surrounded me before I could run.

  Who the fuck are you? they asked.

  I don’t know. Nobody, I guess.

  Is that your bumper?

  It was my bumper. I picked it up and tossed it at the curb. One of them made a joke and the others laughed. They got back in their Caddy and sped away.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT the school called my mom. Apparently, they’d found out about some bikes I’d stolen. He’s done here, they said. Good luck.

  Fuck them, I said when she told me.

  Oh, really? One of her eyebrows arched. Were it me, I’d prosecute.

  Well, it ain’t you, I said.

  But she’s a funny woman. Even now, whenever she hears me claim I dropped out of high school, she’s the first to correct me. Kicked out, she says. Got kicked out of preschool, too. Like I said, she’s tough.

  Listen to me, she said. Listen very carefully. If you drink again in my house, you’re gone.

  I decided to go down to the docks, see about my old summer job. Old Rick D. didn’t even look up from his paperwork. I thought you were a junior, he scoffed.

  Was, I said proudly.
r />   Give you a piece of advice, he said. I knew you’d be back.

  He had a real intuition about things, mostly from dealing with the men who worked for him. Many mornings, we had no idea who’d actually show up. Rick D. monitored the scanners before assigning work detail or sent me to the water to look for bodies. The guys who did show smelled of beer, vomit, and BO. Around the coffeepot, they spoke in dated resentments—old what’s-her-face, alimony, child support, the beast that is dope, the motherfucker who is methamphetamine.

  Of course I thought all this made me tough and shit real. This was a new chapter, maybe a bleak one, but only a chapter, and soon things would turn again, but the truth is, I wasn’t tough and shit was not real. Not yet. Later, maybe. In 1994 I was simply a loser.

  Across the street from the warehouse, a liquor store sold dirt weed at sixty dollars an ounce, less than half of what I got for it in school. A few weeks’ work, I figured, and I’d buy a bushel of this schwag, bring it back east. Maybe, if I sold enough, I could link up with that girl, get her to drop some cotton on me. I was a virgin.

  So I bought a lot of weed. Then bragged on my plans to these old heroes. That’s fine, they said. Now just pass me that fucking joint.

  But, I said, listen.

  No, they said. I like you better when you don’t talk.

  But about this plan of mine—

  No, they said. Your voice. It ruins my high.

  * * *

  WELL, I RARELY REMEMBER my dreams these days, but every so often I have one where I’m playing high school baseball again. There’s always a blue sky, green grass, a fifteen-foot chain-link fence. It’s not the home run that clouds my dreams but the aftermath, out there in the field, punching my mitt, still feeling that fleeting freedom of rounding the bases at an easy pace.

  One day I got off work, hotter than balls, I remember, Indian summer, warehouseman polyesters clinging to my body, slight breeze on my nape, a pay phone, an empty sky, that girl’s voice. I told her exactly what would happen, how I’d get my shit in order and come east and they’d let me back in school, two, three weeks, tops, but later that day or maybe the next morning, I came out of a blackout doing 110 on a downhill, and then again on the PCH somewhere with my car pressed into a hillside, and once more at the airport, where Lee and his girlfriend were sitting on their luggage, cigarettes in their mouths and arms crossed, waiting for me. It’d been a while for him and me; his hair hung past his shoulders, piercings covered his girlfriend’s face. He didn’t even say hello, just circled the car, skeptical of its dented sidewalls and missing fender. Mom seen this? he asked, and I told him no, and his girlfriend laughed and asked was I okay, like to drive, but I was fine, I explained, just fine. Don’t worry, I said. I do this all the time. And I was fine, decent, anyway, maybe not sober yet, but only vaguely drunk, the blackouts gone, and good to drive. I steered with my knee while rolling a joint, lit and huffed it and offered them some, but they waved me off. Lee averted his eyes.

  Before you even say it, I told him, I have a plan. And then I told him my plan, same plan I’d told the girl. I just need a few weeks, two or three, tops.

  Lee turned in his seat and raised an eyebrow at his girl. A long way to go for a booty call, he said.

  They laughed. Then they started screaming. And I turned back to the road.

  I was in the wrong lane. Going the wrong way. Headed straight on for a Chevy Suburban. So I stepped on the brakes.

  Nothing happened.

  We kept moving. And moving.

  I couldn’t stop the car. No matter what I tried. It kept hurtling forward.

  Jesus, I thought. My mom was right. I was going to die. And Lee, too. And his girlfriend. And whoever was in the Suburban. We were all going to die.

  The hood crinkled. The entire front of my car jumped back at the windshield—the carburetor, all the plugs and hoses, the engine all rushed at me—

  And then everything stopped.

  I peeled my cheek off the windshield, touched my face and chest—no blood. I jumped from the car. The other driver hadn’t moved. Her hands frozen around the wheel, mouth agape, she’d been screaming but run out of voice.

  We got lucky. My car was half its original size.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT THE POLICE CAME, watched me pack a bag. I was sleeping in a room above a detached garage, and once I finished packing, the police escorted me down the steps and to the street. My mom came out to the porch but wouldn’t look at me. Abba emerged. He crossed the lawn to the police cruiser and handed me an envelope with a one-way plane ticket inside.

  You can take the bus to the airport, Abba said. From there you have two options—you can either go to this home we’ve arranged for you to live in and get help, or be on your own in the world. But you can’t live here anymore.

  I looked at my mom then, but she shook her head, her eyes wet, firm, angry. You could have killed four people today, she said, before turning to go in.

  In Salt Lake, on a three-hour layover, my head cleared. I didn’t care. That’s what I realized. I just wanted out of this somehow. I wanted to get away. In the smoking room, watching the runway, I sucked down a pack of cigarettes. I still had a brick of weed or two. Snow fell, snowdrifts piled at the edges of the tarmac, lights bounced in this falling snow. A digital screen displayed departures, many of them headed for Atlanta. I wondered how many were full, if Delta might change my flight. Then I thought about that girl—I wanted to see her again. Funny. I don’t even remember her name now.

  Boys’ Home

  THE rest of the boys were the usual ages except the oldest, who was twenty-four and cool. I guess he used to be some child actor but then wasn’t a child anymore and would linger in alleys off Santa Monica Boulevard, hustling dick to score. I’ll tell you what happens, he said, you stay down this road.

  Hold on, I told him. Let me find a pen. I’ma write this shit down.

  Go on, he said. If you don’t believe me! You’ll see. One day they’re hand-feeding you lobster while you bang someone in the mouth, and the next you’re on your knees, clawing sperm from your beard. What happens is—

  Shh, someone said. Enough.

  I counted seven other boys. A few of them mentioned being court-ordered, sent by the state. Others, like me, spoke of good situations. From their bunks, they watched me or didn’t care at all. Outside, wind whistled down from whatever mountain ranges surrounded us. Air passed around the single-pane glass. It was cold.

  You’re in a safe place, the child actor said. It works if you work it, God willing, one day at a time.

  Above me, our youngest shifted uneasily in his bunk. This boy probably grew up to become a world-class carpet muncher and finger fucker—he had a scientists’ curiosity about cause and effect—but he was thirteen and barely pubescent and used his intellectual curiosity in despicable ways. He’d squat outside the mess hall, a perfect leaf of iceberg lettuce in his hands, luring small rabbits, and then—once they got close—he’d jab a pitchfork into their spines. But I didn’t know him yet and just figured he was restless.

  I asked, How long—

  Hey, new guy, someone cut me off. Shut the fuck up.

  Guys laughed. This one dude, Visalia, talked about the Central Valley. It’s Disneyland, he explained, for your common tweaker. He was jocular, intense; he kept going on and on about the town—Visalia—he called home, boasting it claimed the purest crystal in all of California. After a while I began to understand that he was doing this to work our nerves.

  Above me, the young boy sighed faintly with discontent. He hopped off our bunk and slipped into the bathroom.

  I felt the wind even when I didn’t hear it; my belly ached; I couldn’t get warm. I thought about the ride from the airport, that one-lane from the regional airport I’d flown into, the ranches we’d passed, their long driveways and snowy lawns, smoke billowing from their chimneys. Some already had lights up, plastic reindeer on their roofs. What were my odds of finding something here? Not booze, weed,
or pills, but NyQuil, maybe.

  Wheezing, the young boy crept across the cabin, stopping at one of the bunks. What the shit, Visalia said, his nasal voice whiny and shrill. There was noise. A lot of it. Terrible stuff. Beds squeaked, rocked, guys jumped from their bunks. Someone got slapped. The lights popped on. Visalia, who was a big boy—much bigger than me—pulled the young boy by his rattail up onto a bunk, where he spanked at his ass and lectured on how things would be. This isn’t kid shit, he said. It’s not kid time. This’ll be every day.

  Shaving cream coated Visalia’s face, caked his forehead, and cuffed his ears. He wrist-wiped his eyes, wrapped his giant hands around the boy’s throat, and began the slow, arduous task of choking him to death.

  * * *

  LATER IN THE DARKNESS, as if nothing had happened, the child actor began again. Something, something, he whispered, Santa Monica. I thought he was talking in his sleep, but no. He listed a bit of his résumé, prominent TV shows, a few commercials—was he bragging, I wondered, should I hate him? He was good-looking, pretty, with a small nose, blue eyes, and pink cheeks. He wore a full beard, had thick blond hair. He owned rugged boots and fancy wool socks, things I coveted, but there wasn’t anything to hate. He was just enthusiastic, that’s all. He spoke of other places he’d been, all of them fancier than here, what with their girls and grapes and swimming pools, yet in each place he’d found only more of himself, and each place had brought him back to that well-choreographed dance—head bowed, hands cuffed, not so exuberant now. He spoke of cunning and patience, an omnipresent, ever-darkening thing. You can bet on me this time, he said, or I’ll be in the grave. What happens, he said, is shit gets worse and then worse again and even worse until finally worse still. But his clothes fit, his beard was manicured, he was represented by a top-tier talent agency, and his parents hadn’t given up on him.