And then he disconnected.
“He’ll call back,” Don said, more to himself than Rodney. “He’ll call back.”
He didn’t. For four months, they didn’t know where he was. They checked hospitals, jails, John Does that had been found on the sides of roads. They filed a missing person report at month three, but they only knew where he’d been, not where he was going. And besides, the officer told them, he’s legally an adult. He can do what he wants. No one can force him to go anywhere. A smirk on the cop’s face: “Maybe he didn’t want two dads for parents?”
At the beginning of the fifth month, they came home to find Jeremy leaving the house. Two other people were with him. A man, a woman, both looking unwashed and faded. Jeremy was carrying their television out the front door. The one from the living room.
He smiled at them nervously, eyes darting to the strangers and then back to Rodney and Don. “Hey.”
“What are you doing?” Rodney asked.
“These the queers?” the woman asked. She laughed, an obnoxious, grating little sound. The man slipped an arm around her waist, holding her close.
“Where are you taking the television?” Don asked, gobsmacked.Greedily, he drank Jeremy in. He looked skinnier, bags under his eyes like bruises. His hair was stringy, oily. It didn’t seem like he’d eaten a good meal in a long while. The skin under his right eye was twitching involuntarily. It looked like a tic.
It was then Rodney noticed the other car. A piece-of-shit beater. No paint, only primer. And the back hatch was open, filled with stuff from the house. Not stuff from Jeremy’s room, no, but Don and Rodney’s things. A record player. The Macintosh computer. Tools. An expensive painting that had hung on the wall of their house since before Jeremy. Cuff links, leather dress shoes.
Rodney turned to his son, wearing a haunted expression. Jeremy still held the television, though barely. “Are you stealing from us?” Rodney asked in a flat voice.
“Jeremy, no,” Don said.
A myriad of emotions crossed their son’s face: guilt, fury, embarrassment. He said, “It’s not what it looks like.”
“Then tell me what it is,” Rodney said. “Because I’ll tell you what it looks like. And if it looks like what I think it is, then… I don’t know what else to do but call the cops.”
“Ooh,” the woman said as the man snickered. His pupils were dilated, the irises of his eyes thin slivers.
“Fine,” Jeremy grunted, and let go of the television. It dropped to the porch, screen cracking as it tumbled down the steps. “Now no one can use it.”
“Let’s go,” the man said. “I don’t fuck with cops.”
Don almost laughed. Something they had in common.
The woman blew a kiss at them before going to the car.
Jeremy followed them. Rodney grabbed him by the wrist. “Please,” he said.
Please.
Jeremy looked down at his hand, lips pulling back over histeeth. And then he shoved Rodney with his free hand. Rodney stumbled, fell onto his rear.
They didn’t see him again for close to a year, during a week of heavy rain that didn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon. A knock at the door, and Jeremy was there, soaked to the bone, his eye blackened, lip split. “Hey,” he said, looking down at his feet. “Can I crash here?”
They let him in.
He wanted to get better, he told them the next morning. He didn’t want to be like this anymore. He wept, his head down his arms. “Why is it so hard being alive?” he sobbed. “Why is it so hard being human?”
They had him admitted. Voluntarily, but they hoped this was the fabled rock-bottom. That he could sink no lower and now would be the time to rise. And for a while, it looked like it could be that way. Ninety days in the facility. A diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. New and plentiful medications to try and regulate it. Some good, some so terrible it was like Jeremy was a drooling zombie.
He checked himself out on day forty-nine.
He disappeared and reappeared at random. Sometimes only days would go by. Other times weeks. The longest was fourteen months. They’d worry, they’d fret, they’d hope, but they couldn’t do much beyond that. It was one thing telling a child that they needed help, it was another thing entirely when it came to an adult. He’d show up sometimes on his meds, and tell them stories of his travels, all the things he’d seen, the people he’d met. He’d be bright and happy, his hair longer and pulled up into a messy bun.
And then there were the times when he’d be manic, lost, speaking to people who weren’t there, jumping at every sound as if it were something coming to attack him. He’d sleep for days on endand then disappear again. Sometimes things would be missing from the house after these visits.
It came to a head the day that Jeremy had gone after Don.
He was twenty-six, and though no one knew it then, only had eight years left alive. He’d been at the house for two days, mostly holed up in his room. Don had come home from work to have lunch, and to maybe see if Jeremy wanted to go out for dinner.