Change at Jamaica Station

Chapter 22

Chapter Twenty-Two

Run Jared Run                                           2019, Valley Stream, NY

I find a spare key to the apartment under the locker in the parking garage. Leon the super says hello to me in the hallway on my way upstairs and adds, "Nice to see your back, Mr. Jared. You're looking well. Car got fixed about an hour ago. I let them in for you, well for your mother."

"Thanks." I mumble.

Leon seems to be waiting for a tip or some acknowledgement, but I don't have time or cash. At least I know the car is fixed. Sure enough, Mom left the keys to the car and the apartment in the usual hiding places. She is so predictable. It's no wonder it was so easy for them to manipulate her.

Up in the apartment, I see most of our things are gone. I had been thinking about Mom's plan, the apartment in Babylon, and though I love Mom for trying, I know it would be a death sentence for me. I will not spend another day in that waste of a rehab. After six months of draining Mom's life savings, I have remained sober enough to realize that rehab is just shuffling people around; no one is getting better. They get paid mostly from insurance carriers for blood tests, so everybody gets two to three blood tests a day. Once they realized I was not covered by a premium insurer who would pay for that, they began testing me less and less. Last month I was only tested a few times, and I was able to go out a side door and score. I liked it and hated it at the same time. The following week I told the therapist that I felt sure either the system of rehabilitation would ruin my life for lack of funds and lack of thoroughness, or the drugs would ruin my life. What I had not yet told the therapist was the third truth, the one that matters most.

That truth that haunts me, that steals away my sleep and urges me to do or take anything to escape it, starts with the fights Dad and I had before he disappeared. Fights that contributed to me agreeing to work with John and then to get higher than high in the first place, even when I knew better. Those were the fights that mattered. Here in the apartment, I realize that was the last time I was clear about what was going on and what I was doing. But I'm clear again. Clean and clear. Now I really know better.

"I do know better," I tell myself. It just took time to see that. I never 'did' Fentanyl. Never. I just smoked pot. It was as much as a surprise to me as to Mom to find out I almost O.D. on it the night Dad's car was found. It took a while for me to realize, or to admit to myself, what had really happened to me. To us.

As I enter the kitchen, I see Mom still has my second-grade drawings and soccer and football team photos on the refrigerator, which is empty except for sauerkraut and ketchup from last year when Mom made a "summer barbecue." She tried to make it seem fun, cooking up hotdogs and two hamburgers in the ambience of the pea green colored kitchen, complete with outdated, broken-down cabinets. I knew that was the best meal she could afford at the time. I had plenty of money and ate well when I wasn't at home, but how could I tell her that selling pot and making deliveries for John was keeping me flush and well fed? How could I tell her John didn't teach me anything about cars?

The whole place smells of depression and I know we both have to get out, together or apart. I sit on the bed and consider writing her a letter and splitting. I have enough money to make it to Florida, know enough 'graduates' of the program that I could crash, sell and make my own way. I also know that would just about kill Mom.

Maybe she would just come looking for me, and then I would have it together enough I could tell her the whole thing and get her away from John. Once I got clean, I realized she had been recruited as a carrier, just like Dad, and just like me after Dad. What I didn't know was how to explain how dangerous they were. People haven't believed me much lately.