The Longest Trip Home: A Memoir Page 13

  “Yep, the dicotyledons.” I was pretty sure I had satisfied his curiosity, and was feeling pleased at the swift-footed agility with which I had done so.

  “Dicotyledons,” he said one more time.

  “Dicotyledons,” I repeated.

  He hesitated a second, took two steps toward the door, then said, “Well, get rid of them, or we can meet with your science teacher and ask all about them.”

  Busted. Dad apparently knew more than I had given him

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  credit for. As with so many things involving his children, I could tell he knew but didn’t want to know. I imagine it was like the cigarettes he had caught us with in the tent years earlier. He just wanted them to go away so he could return to a state of plausible denial.

  I did get rid of the plants, all but one of them. The stockiest one I could not bear to kill. I hid it among the weeds in the vacant lot across the street, protected from the chill air beneath a cloche made from a plastic milk carton whose bottom I had sliced off.

  And when the weather warmed suitably to plant my garden, I nestled it among the tomato plants, where I was again convinced it would go unnoticed. My sturdy little pot plant prospered there among the Big Boys and Brandywines and indeed went unnoticed for several weeks, through my post–Dodge Park grounding, until its growth began to outpace that of the plants around it.

  Soon it protruded a foot above the surrounding camouflage. Why I did not realize the folly of this situation, I cannot say, other than to attribute it to the unique qualities of the fifteen-year-old mind.

  A bushy marijuana plant towering above the tomatoes right in front of the living-room window? Why would anyone notice that?

  Then one Saturday, not long after Dad had been out cutting grass, I checked my garden and the plant was gone. A hole stood in the soil where it had been extracted, roots and all. Nearby, on the compost pile, I found its wilted remains. Just to make sure Grogan’s Home Grown never found its way back into the earth, Dad had snipped the roots from the stem.

  What he didn’t consider was that his son just might pick the corpse off the pile and dry the leaves to smoke. When I was done, I had enough dried leaves to roll several joints. One day Rock and I were walking to the shopping plaza, and I lit one up. We both coughed and wheezed. It was the harshest thing I had ever tried inhaling, worse even than Father Joe’s old, stubbed-out Lucky Strikes. And as far as any mind-altering effects, we might as well have been smoking pencil shavings. All Grogan’s Home

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  Grown gave either of us was a headache. Despite that, I continued to carry a couple of joints with me whenever I went out. Like any farmer, I was proud of my harvest. I knew it wasn’t worth smoking, but having my own private stash in my pocket somehow made me feel more street-worthy—and less of a mooch when Tommy broke out his own supply. I could say things like “Or we could smoke one of mine,” knowing that no one would ever take me up on the offer.

  The last day of summer vacation arrived and with it a bittersweet edge. Every kid in the neighborhood was at the beach, soaking up every possible ray of sunshine, knowing it was our last hoorah before jumping into the new school year. I breathed in the beach’s unique fragrance of Coppertone, algae, and cigarette smoke, and captured mental photographs of the girls with their oiled stomachs and legs, fixing them in my mind for another season.

  That night, Tommy and Sack showed up at the door. Rock had passed; he was the most academically inclined of us, and his parents didn’t want him out the night before the first day of school. “I’m going out for a walk,” I called to Dad and headed out the door.

  “Don’t stay out too late,” he called after me. “School tomorrow.”

  All three of us were in high spirits. The next morning I would be tasting public education for the first time, and Tommy and Sack were talking up the experience, telling me how great it would be.

  They made West Bloomfield sound a lot like an indoor version of Dodge Park, filled with slinky girls, wild boys, and barely disguised drug abuse. As they portrayed it, no one actually attended classes. Everyone just hung out all day in the parking lot and designated smoking areas, chatting, flirting, and smoking. Our laughter filled the night as we walked down Erie Drive toward The Outlot, steering playfully into each other like bumper cars.

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  We were right in front of Old Man Pemberton’s place when from behind us, out of nowhere, appeared a car that had crept up, lights off. First I heard the squawk of a radio transmission, then the low rumble of an idling engine. I was just turning to see the words TO SERVE AND PROTECT on the door when a spotlight blinded us. Tommy instinctively veered off and began walking across the Pembertons’ lawn, his back to the light.

  “Right there!” one officer shouted. “The blond kid just dropped something.” They were out of the car, rushing toward him, yelling for him to stop, which he did. “Don’t move!” they yelled back at Sack and me.

  As they descended on Tommy, I reached into my shirt pocket, pulled out the two joints of Grogan’s Home Grown, and let them fall in the grass. Then I sauntered toward them.

  “All right, up against the car, Cullen.” The cops knew Tommy by name. One searched him, finding rolling papers and a small pipe, as the other retrieved the plastic bag Tommy had dropped.

  They placed him in the backseat and closed the door, then turned to Sack and me. I recognized the older cop as Sergeant Glover, a fixture around town, and the younger one as Officer Reisler, who had lived next door to us when he was a teenager.

  “Do you two have anything on you?” Glover asked. “Don’t lie to me. What are you carrying?”

  “Nothing,” we insisted in chorus.

  “We were just out for a walk,” I said.

  The cops stared at us. They looked almost ready to buy it.

  Tommy was the one who had been on their radar for months.

  “Honest, we don’t have anything,” Sack said, those giant brown eyes of his growing as big and liquid as puddles.

  To help make the case, I added: “You can search us if you want.” The words were not even out of my mouth before I knew I had made a horrible mistake. I could see it on Sack’s face, which went instantly gray.

  “Let’s just do that,” Sergeant Glover said, and they pushed

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  both of us up against the squad car and began patting us down.

  Sack looked over at me the way I imagine Jesus looked at Judas at the moment of betrayal. “Nothing, huh?” Sergeant Glover said as he pulled a brass hash pipe from Sack’s front pants pocket. I had forgotten about his pipe. “You just earned yourself a free ride to the station,” he said and put Sack in the backseat with Tommy.

  I came up clean, as I knew I would, and they never spotted the two joints in the grass. Officer Reisler led me around to the back of the car and got close to my face.

  “Do you remember me? Do you remember me from next door when you were a little kid?” I told him I did. “Do you know what this would do to your father? Do you have any idea how this would crush him?” I shrugged. “Your father is a great man. Do you realize that? Do you know how outstanding your father is? He doesn’t deserve this. This would kill him. You want to put your father in the grave?”

  I thought he was being a little dramatic, but I just nodded and looked at my feet.

  “All right, what else are you into?” he asked. “Acid? Speed?

  Downers? Don’t bullshit me. What else?” I swore I hadn’t tried any of those things, and I hadn’t. “Just pot once in a while,” I said, and he seemed to take me at my word.

  “You want me to take you down to the station with your pals and have your dad come pick you up? Is that what you want? You want your dad to see you in the lockup?” I said I didn’t. Then he started back in on what it would do to my great father, the sudden death by broken heart. “If it wasn’t for how much
I respect your father, I’d haul your ass in. I don’t give a shit about you. But your father I care about.” I nodded that I understood.

  “This is what I’m going to do,” Officer Reisler said. “I’m going to let you turn around and walk home. You’re going to go straight home, and you’re going to keep your nose clean, understand? I’m going to be watching you. I am going to be watching every step you take. Got it?”

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  “Yes, sir,” I said. He walked around the car and got in front with Sergeant Glover. The car pulled away, and as it did, Tommy and Sack both turned and looked out the rear window at me.

  They didn’t look angry, not even betrayed. Just scared. Scared and small and fragile. Part of me wanted to be in there with them.

  I waited until the car disappeared around the curve, then I turned and ran. Ran as fast as I could. But I didn’t run straight home as Officer Reisler had ordered. I cut through a neighbor’s side yard and jumped a fence, then another and another, weaving through the backyards until I was at Rock’s door. He answered and instantly knew something was wrong.

  “What happened?” he whispered.

  “Just get out here,” I said.

  He pulled the door shut and followed me into the dark and behind a row of shrubs where we could lie in the grass unseen.

  I was convinced the squad car was going to make another pass at any second to make sure I had not disobeyed. My breath came out in jagged gasps, and I could feel my hands shaking. Rock listened intently as I recounted the entire event. When I was done, he thought for a moment and I waited for him to say something reassuring. “You mean you told them to search you?” he asked. It was, I would learn, the main takeaway point of the whole tangled story. I had not simply stood by and allowed the police to pat down my best friend. I had invited them to. Offered it up like a party favor. You can search us if you want.

  Rock and I lay out in the wet grass, watching the Cullen and Sacorelli houses from behind the bushes. Fifteen minutes passed before we saw Mr. Cullen start his pickup truck and drive off, his headlights sweeping briefly over us as he pulled out of his driveway. A few minutes later, Mr. Sacorelli followed. We waited out there until both vehicles returned and both fathers marched their sons silently inside.

  Two of my three best friends had been arrested, and I had not. The third was trying to understand why I would have sug-

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  gested a police search. In the morning, I would land for the first time in that unknown, intimidating world known as public high school. I had a bad feeling about the welcome I would receive. A very bad feeling.

  After the lights went off in the Cullen and Sacorelli homes, I said good-bye to Rock and cut through the backyards to my house, where I found Dad in his chair, reading and eating peanuts with chopsticks.

  “No snack tonight?” he asked.

  “Not very hungry,” I said. “I’m just going to bed.” We shook hands, and I headed upstairs.

  In the weeks and months that followed, Officer Reisler stayed true to his word, pulling his squad car to the curb in front of our house whenever he passed by. If I was outside, he would stare at me through his windshield. Sometimes he would sit there for an hour, doing his paperwork. If Dad was in the yard with me, cutting grass or raking leaves, Reisler would look me in the eyes, then look across the yard at my oblivious father trotting along behind the Gravely. He’d look back at me, and I could almost hear his words: Do you have any idea what this would do to him?

  For the life of him, Dad couldn’t figure out why the police kept pulling up directly in front of our house to idle their cars and fill out their reports. He didn’t notice it was always the same officer.

  “There they are again,” he would say, marveling as if he were witnessing a great mystery of nature. “That’s the darnedest thing.

  They have the entire town to patrol, and every doggone Saturday they pull up here and just sit. It’s almost like clockwork.”

  “No idea, Dad,” I would say.

  “Huh. Me, either.” And he’d scratch his head and return to his work.

  I lived in dread that one day his curiosity would get the better of him and he’d walk up to the squad car, knock on the glass, and

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  inquire. But he never did, and Officer Reisler never divulged my secret.

  It was Tommy’s dad who nearly exposed me. A couple of weeks after retrieving their son from the police station, Mr. and Mrs. Cullen were passing by on their evening walk. I watched helplessly from the next room as Mom spotted them and opened the front door. “Hello there, Bevan! Hi, Claire!” she called out.

  No, Mom, don’t do this. Mr. Cullen was the last person I wanted to face. Please, Mom. Please don’t . . . “How about a nice cup of tea?” Oh, Mom. They turned up the driveway, and I raced to the top of the stairs, just out of sight. Mr. Cullen ran hot in the best of circumstances and was never one to mince words. Once, when a teenage driver flipped Mr. Cullen the middle finger over some traffic dispute, Mr. Cullen chased him for miles in the family van with his wife and all six children aboard, finally catching the kid at a traffic light, jumping out, and pounding on his windshield.

  My chest tightened and I felt my stomach twist.

  At first the conversation was filled with pleasant small talk.

  Mom poured tea for Mrs. Cullen and herself; Dad brought out two beers. That’s when the conversation turned to children.

  “Don’t get me started about the children in this neighborhood,” Mr. Cullen said. “They’re all angels, aren’t they? All perfect, bloody little angels. All of them except my sons.”

  I heard my mother clear her throat nervously.

  “If there’s marijuana, it’s gotta be the Cullen boys. If there’s drinkin’ goin’ on, well, certainly it must be the Cullen boys. If anything happens in the neighborhood, haul in the Cullen boys.

  They’re never alone when it happens, but they always are when the blame comes down.” Then he changed his voice to mimic a spoiled schoolboy. “ ‘Oh, it wasn’t me, Mum; it wasn’t me, Pop. It was all the Cullen boys. I told ’em not to, Mum. I ran the other way, Pop.’ It’s always the Cullen boys, and let me tell you”—and he paused for emphasis—“I’m bloody goddamn sick of it.” I knew how he looked when he got worked up, the way the veins popped

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  out on his temples and his forehead went crimson. I knew that’s how he looked right now. “What the bloody hell, mon? I’m not making excuses for my boys. I know they’re not perfect. Boys are gonna do what boys will do. I did it, too. But the parents around here need to get their bloody heads out of the sand and open their eyes.”

  From my parents’ polite, awkward responses I could tell they were trying to figure out exactly what he was telling them—and at the same time not wanting to know. It was a comfortable pattern in our family: the less known and the less said, the better.

  Mom and Dad never asked Mr. Cullen to elaborate, and they never asked me to, either. For that, I was grateful.

  Chapter 14

  o

  If life at Brother Rice had been isolated and hollow, at West Bloomfield High it was something altogether lonelier. At least at Brother Rice I was physically removed from those I cared about and could pretend they still cared about me. At the new school my old friends swirled around me, already comfortably ensconced in their social circles, and I hung awkwardly on the edge like a man clinging to a cliff, waiting in vain for a hand up.

  The bad feeling in my gut the night of Tommy’s and Sack’s arrest turned out to be well founded. I was the Catholic schoolkid no one wanted to be seen with, the one who had gotten his best friend busted. Some of my old Refuge pals openly shunned me. Doggie, so concerned about currying favor with the cool crowd, would walk right past me in the hallway without so much as a nod.

  Tommy and Sack were more gracious. They both managed
>
  to forgive me for that night and held no grudges, but they had their own friends now. Tommy was surrounded by stoners and dopers who went through each day in a mind-altered stupor. Sack was constantly trailed by a harem of boy-crazy girls in hip-hug-

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  ger bell-bottoms about whom he was too shy to do anything but blush. Rock had found his own niche, too, in the music and drama cliques. Then there was me, a clique of one.

  Now that I was free from the dress and grooming codes of Brother Rice, my uniform became bell-bottoms and flannel shirts, and I began to grow my hair out. But unlike Sack’s hair, a satiny black mane that fell straight to his shoulders, mine was as ornery as a Brillo pad. For every inch it grew in length, it expanded two inches sideways. By the time it reached my shoulders, my exploding jungle of kinky curls gave me the look of an active volcano.

  Adding to my look were my new glasses, which were an oversize aviator design in tortoiseshell frames. What might have looked hip on Peter Fonda in Easy Rider, on me, with my thick, soda-bottle prescription, had quite a different effect. The first time she saw me in them, Mom cried out, “What were you thinking? You look like a raccoon!” She later apologized, but moms are usually right, and this time so was mine.

  Mom was right about something else, too. That fall I began dropping weight at a rapid clip without trying, and I was convinced there was only one possible explanation: I had cancer. What else could it be? I was dying, it was obvious, and what a tragedy it was, given my tender years. After weeks of working myself into a panic, I went to Mom and confided my all-but-certain terminal illness. Mom didn’t miss a beat. She threw her head back and had a good laugh. “Cancer? Honey, you don’t have cancer,” she said, wiping a tear from her eye. “You’re just losing your baby fat.”

  Tommy and Sack and Rock tried to include me in their social groups, and we all sat together at lunch, but somehow something had changed. I stumbled through that first year at West Bloomfield in a fog, putting one foot in front of the other, marching dutifully from class to class, but not feeling fully there. My grades reflected it.