When he received no answer to his knocking on the bedroom door, he’d pushed it open.
Jeremy was on the bed, eyes closed, a plastic tube wrapped around his arm, just above the crook of his elbow. A needle stuck out of his arm. On the nightstand next to him, a spoon with burnt tinfoil, and the stench of something like cat urine in the air.
He opened his eyes at Don’s gut-punch exhalation.
It’s not what it looks like.
It’s not a big deal.
Everyone does it.
I’m not an addict.
I can stop anytime I want.
It makes me feel better.
It clears my head.
Jesus fuckingChrist, why are you always on my ass?
I can do whatever the fuck I want.
This ismyroom.
“This ismyhouse,” Don replied in a shaky voice.
Without warning, Jeremy shot up from the bed. Skinny, but taller than Don. Jeremy put his hands around Don’s throat and shoved him against the wall again and again and again, head hitting plaster hard enough to crack. Dazed, Don slumped to the floor as Jeremy let go.
“Fuck you,” he heard Jeremy say in a low voice. And then he was gone.
Rodney found Don sitting in the same place when he came home a few hours later. When he saw the hands-and-finger-shaped bruises around Don’s neck, he bellowed in rage, tearing through the house to see if Jeremy was still somewhere inside. He wasn’t. By the time he came back to Don, Rodney was already on the phone, calling for emergency services.
Don didn’t want to go to the hospital, but Rodney wouldn’t hear of it. Luckily, Jeremy hadn’t done much damage, aside from the bruising. Don would have a sore throat for a good while, and the bruising would take time to fade. The nurse in the ER asked him if he was being abused.
When they got home late in the evening, Rodney said, “Never again.”
“He’s our son.”
“He is,” Rodney agreed. “And I love him. You know that. But never again, Don. I won’t put us in this position again.”
They changed the locks on the house. Got a security package: cameras, door sensors, the whole works. They hated themselves for it, more than Don thought possible. This was theirson, the boy they’d adopted, the boy they loved with everything they had and had given a home to. How could it have come to this? They didn’t have an answer to that, at least not one that held any merit. Blaming themselves seemed easiest, and they did that in spades. Maybe if they’d gotten him in to different, better doctors. Or maybe if they’d been stricter when he was younger. Different teachers. A different school.Something.
Maybe, maybe, maybe: all the roads not traveled, the ones where Jeremy was happy, carefree, making something of himself. The ones where he didn’t feel like his brain was on fire. The ones where he grew up and graduated and found his place in the world. Maybe a wife or a husband. Children, one day, children that Don and Rodney could dote on in their later years.
But no, no, that wasn’t what happened.
Instead, Jeremy died shortly before his thirty-fourth birthday. The last time he’d called—a few weeks before—he’d said he was in Washington state. “You remember that fire watchtower? We stayed there when I was a kid. I think that’s when I was happiest. I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since. Think I’m going to head back up there. See if I can stay, get a job or something.”
“We miss you,” Don said quietly into the phone.
“Yeah, hey, me too. Can you send money?”
He didn’t. He didn’t send Jeremy money. Not because he didn’t want to. He just didn’t know what Jeremy would use it for.
A few weeks later, the phone rang. In the evening, near ten o’clock. Rodney answered. He didn’t speak much after that, the blood draining from his face.
And Don knew. Somehow, he knew. Maybe because he’d been expecting this call for years. Every time the phone rang, he wondered,Is this going to be the call? Is it going to be the one where we realize we didn’t do enough?