George Pelecanos: The Way Home

Chris was charged with possession of marijuana. The arresting officer did not show up for court, and the charge was dropped. Chris got in a fight at school and was suspended. He strong-armed a fellow student for his Walkman on school property and was arrested and expelled for the remainder of the year. He received community service time. Chris and his friend Jason were caught on camera looting the lockers of their high school basketball team while the players were at practice, and were arrested and charged. An adjudicatory hearing was scheduled. Chris was videotaped vandalizing and stealing from cars in the back lot of a Mexican restaurant. His father paid off the owners of the restaurant and the owners of the vehicles, thereby avoiding the involvement of police. And then there were the final charges and the conviction that led to his incarceration: assault, possession with intent to distribute, leaving the scene of an accident, reckless driving, driving on the sidewalk, fleeing and eluding police. With each succeeding “incident,” with each visit to the Second District station on Idaho Avenue to pick up his son, Flynn grew more angry and distant.

Kate would be eighteen now. We’d be looking at colleges. We’d be taking photos of her, dressed up for the senior prom. Instead of visiting that little shit with his prison uniform and his pride in knowing “how to jail.”

Christopher Flynn was the only surviving offspring of Thomas and Amanda Flynn. Their first child, Kate, died two days after she was born. The death certificate listed the cause as “respiratory distress syndrome,” which meant that she had suffocated. She was a preemie, and her lungs had not fully developed.

At the time of Kate’s birth, Thomas Flynn was a young uniformed police officer in D.C.’s Fourth District. He had signed up impulsively, successfully passed through the academy, and upon his graduation he almost immediately realized he had made a mistake. He was dispassionate about the job and did not want to lock up kids, making him unsuited to be a soldier in the drug war. Flynn resigned and took a position as an account representative for a carpet-and-flooring wholesaler whose sales manager, not coincidentally, was his former high school basketball coach. Flynn’s intention was to learn the business, establish contacts, and eventually go out on his own.

Soon after Kate died, Amanda became pregnant but lost the baby in the first trimester. Despite assurances from her obstetrician that she was healthy, Amanda, who along with Flynn had dabbled in cocaine in her youth, blamed her past drug use for Kate’s premature birth and death. She believed that she had permanently damaged her “insides” and could no longer carry a child to term. “My eggs are dirty,” she told Flynn, who only nodded, preferring not to argue with her, in the way that one does not try to reason with a loved one who has begun to mentally slip away. Amanda had by then welcomed Jesus into their lives, and Flynn found it increasingly difficult for the three of them to coexist.

Kate’s death did not ruin their marriage, but it killed a piece of it. Flynn barely recognized in the humorless, saved Amanda the funny, spirited woman he had married. Despite the emotional gulf between them, they continued to have sex frequently. Amanda still secretly hoped to have a healthy child, and, born again or not, she had a body on her, and Thomas Flynn liked to have it. Chris was born in 1982.

As the problems with Chris progressed, Flynn found himself thinking more and more of Kate. She was with them for only two days and had no discernible personality, but he was haunted by her and obsessed with what she might have become had she lived. Chris was real, a stained reminder of Flynn’s failings as a father. The Kate he imagined was a charmer, lovely, well mannered, and successful. Kate would surely have looked upon Flynn with loving eyes. He fantasized about the daughter he would never have, and it made him feel optimistic and right. Knowing all the while, from the evidence of his business and his everyday life, that reality was usually far less intriguing than the dream.

“Tommy?” said Amanda, now seated beside him in the SUV, Thomas Flynn in the driver’s bucket and fitting his key to the ignition.

“What.”

“We should schedule a meeting with our attorney. I want him to keep in contact with the warden.”

“You want to help him, huh?” Flynn glared at his wife. “I saw you slip Chris that money.”

“He might need it.”

“I told you not to do that, didn’t I?”

“Yes, but-”

“ Didn’t I.”

“Yes.”

“He’s going to buy marijuana with it. They get it from the guards.”

“I can’t just leave him in there with no resources. He’s our son.”

Flynn held his tongue.

The first time Chris took a charge, for loitering and possession of marijuana, he was all nerves, standing in this room they had at the 2D station, waiting for his father to come and take him home. He was expecting his pops to spaz on him, put a finger up in his face, give him the lecture about responsibility and choices, maybe make some threats. But his father entered that room and, first thing, hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. It surprised Chris and, because there was a police officer in the room, embarrassed him. If his father was soft like that, someone might get the idea that Chris was soft, too.

“I told you not to touch him, sir,” said the police officer, but Thomas Flynn did not apologize.

Chris should have expected his father to support him. If he had thought about it, he would have realized that his father had always taken his side against teachers and school administrators in the past, including those times when Chris had been in the wrong. Thomas Flynn had even physically challenged a security guy at Chris’s middle school back when Chris started getting in trouble. The security guard had said, “Your boy needs to see a psychiatrist, somethin. He’s not right.” And his father said, “If I want your opinion, young man, I’ll kick it out your ass.” His father had a temper, and he was also in denial about who Chris was. But Chris knew who he was, even then.

It came to him one morning, lying in bed, after his mother had woken him up to go to school. He was in the seventh grade, thirteen years old. It occurred to him that he didn’t have to get up and go to school if he didn’t want to. That his parents couldn’t force him to go. They couldn’t, in fact, force him to do anything. Most kids would do what their parents said because they were the parents and that was how it worked, but Chris did not feel the way those other kids felt, not anymore. It was like something in his brain got switched off at the same time that something else, something more exciting, had been ignited. He still thought of his mom and dad as his parents, but he was no longer interested in pleasing them or doing what they thought was right. He didn’t care.

His father’s attitude changed after Chris began to get in trouble time and time again. It was partly the repetition of the incidents that wore his father down, but it was also the nature of them.

Chris liked to fight. He wasn’t an honors or AP kid, and being good at fighting was a way of showing that he was someone, too. If it was a fair fight, meaning he wasn’t picking on a retard or a weakling, then it was on, and someone was about to get hurt.

He rationalized robbery, too. If someone was stupid enough to leave cash in a locker, or have designer shades or a cell phone visible inside a parked car, then he was going to break into that locker or car and help his self.

He had bad luck, though, and he got caught. His old man would come to pick him up from the school office or the police station, and each time, his father’s face was more disappointed and less forgiving. Chris wasn’t trying to hurt his parents, exactly. But in his mind it was written like this: They have unreasonable expectations for me. They don’t realize who I am. I am hard and I like to get high. I don’t want to be their good boy and I don’t want the things they want for me. If they can’t face that, it’s their problem, not mine.