Andrew Gross: Eyes Wide Open

To me, it was probably just the shipping manager throwing in the kitchen sink. My father probably didn’t even know about it.

But to Charlie it was like he had personally handpicked them to ensure he would fail.

A fight ensued, and weeks later, my dad stopped shipping to him for good. There was a huge battle over payment. My dad called Charlie “an ungrateful sonovabitch.” Charlie threatened to come up north and kill him.

They never spoke again.

He took Gabriella and Evan and moved out to the coast. Ten years later, when my father-drunk and down on his luck-drove his Mercedes into the waters of Shinnecock Bay, he wouldn’t even come to the funeral.

I got off the freeway at Pacific Crest Drive. Pismo Beach was a quaint, sleepy beach town tucked under rolling hills of dazzling gold and green, leading down to rocky bluffs overlooking the Pacific.

Grover Beach, where my brother lived, was its seedier next-door neighbor.

I’d been out there only once before, five years ago, when I brought the family while we were vacationing in San Francisco, four hours to the north. Up to then, my kids hadn’t even met my older brother. They’d only met Evan, their cousin, the couple of times we had brought him east.

Their place was a tiny two-bedroom apartment provided by the state with a single bathroom and pictures covering up cracks in the plaster in a downtrodden two-story building across from abandoned railroad tracks.

That visit, we sat around for most of a day, listening to Charlie and Evan banging on their guitars, belting out barely recognizable rock tunes in hoarse off-pitch voices, amid my brother’s rants about how his father had ruined his life and how by the time he was Sophie’s age, fifteen, he was already whacked out on LSD.

It was scary.

We watched them apportioning their cache of colorful medications on the kitchen counter. Gabby said how she was once a beauty queen back home and had never bargained for this kind of life, and how she might just go back to Colombia, where her family would gladly welcome her.

My kids were a little freaked out. We took them out to lunch, to a cafe on the main street overlooking the beach, lined with surf shops, tattoo parlors, and oyster bars. Charlie said it was the first time they’d been to a restaurant other than Denny’s in years.

We left the next day.

I drove down the long hill toward the ocean and turned on Division Street. I found Charlie’s building a half block down, the familiar blue Taurus I had bought for him parked beneath the carport out front. I pulled into the next space and sat for what seemed like a full five minutes.

What could I do for them here?

My mind went back to something.

The day Evan was born. Back in Miami. Kathy and I happened to be in Boca, so we went to see them at the hospital. Charlie was so different from how I’d ever seen him before. Cradling his little Evan in his arms, in his blue blanket, looking like any doting new dad, but with his wild, Jerry Garcia hair and bushy beard. He let Kathy hold the baby for a while, and he and I went down to the cafeteria.

“This is the start of something new for me,” Charlie said. “I can feel it.”

But as he picked up the coffee cup, something changed. “I need you to promise me something, Jay…”

“Sure.” I was twenty-eight then, still in med school. Kathy and I weren’t even married yet.

“I need you to promise me you’ll take care of him. Whatever happens to me, okay? I need to know Evan’ll be safe.”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you, Charlie. Of course he’ll be safe…”

“No.” There was something dark and brooding in his eyes, a storm massing. “I need you to promise me, Jay, that whatever happens, you’ll be there for him.”

I said, “Of course I’ll be there, Charlie.” I met his worried eyes. “You have my word.”

He smiled, relieved. “I knew I could count on you, buddy. I just hope-”

Someone moved behind us on the line and he never finished. But now, all these years later, I thought I knew what he was about to say.

I only hope he doesn’t have what I have.

My son. The demons in his brain.

I only pray his path is easier.

He’d asked me, not Dad. And sitting under his carport, I couldn’t help but wonder: If it had all somehow worked out, back in that stupid salon…

If they had lived in a place without cracks in the walls… If their boy could have grown up proud, instead of filled with shame and anger…

Would his fate have been different or the same?

Even if the demons had found him, would my nephew still be alive?

I went around the side through a brown, patchy courtyard, past a broken plastic kiddie car on its side. I stopped outside apartment two, wincing at what smelled like dog urine. Lurid, brightly colored graffiti spread all over the asphalt wall.

I knocked on the door.

After a short while I saw the curtains part, and the door opened. Gabriella appeared in a blue terry robe. She was normally a pretty woman with short blond hair, a nice shape, and a deep, throaty laugh, but now her cheeks were sunken and pale, her eyes raw from tears, her hair matted and unkempt. As she let me in she kind of turned away, almost unable to face me. “I’m sorry that you have to see me this way, Jay…”

“It’s okay, Gabby, it’s okay,” I said. We hugged, and I felt her latch on to me. It always made me feel a bit awkward, her gratitude for me for how we helped them get by. “I’m so sorry, Gabriella.”

“Oh, you don’t know what it’s like.” She moaned, anguish etched into the lines around her eyes. “I never thought I would ever feel something as difficult as this. Never to see my son again. My heart breaks, Jay…”

“I know.” I kept hugging her. “I know.”

“Your brother is not so good.” She pulled away, brushing the hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know how he’s going to make it, Jay. You’ll see for yourself. He’s old now, and Evan was all we had. I’m glad you’re here.”

She led me inside. The place was small. Still, it was neat and tastefully decorated, with floral pillows and pictures of her family in Colombia and even some watercolors done by Charlie’s mother.

I heard a familiar voice on the stairs utter quietly, “Hi, Jay.”

My brother came down. He looked grayer, older, hunched a little in the shoulders, a shadow of what I last recalled. His beard was flecked with gray now, his hair straggly and wild. Charlie always had a twinkle in his eyes and an irresistible, wiry grin. It was what always captivated the girls. But nothing seemed to be there now. He wore a pair of ragged sweatpants and a brown flannel shirt. He forced a smile. “I’m glad you came, little brother…”

“Of course I came, Charlie.”

“C’mere…” He got to the bottom of the stairs and we hugged. I was surprised how natural it felt. Hugs weren’t exactly the norm in our relationship. He placed his face on my shoulder and started to weep. “We’re sunk, Jay. It’s gone for us. I can’t believe Evan is dead.”

“I know. I know…,” I said, squeezing him back and patting his shoulder.

“We failed him, Jay. He was a good kid, in spite of everything. We didn’t do right by him.”

“You did your best, Charlie. He wasn’t an easy kid.”

We all sat down at the small table in the kitchen. Gabriella poured some coffee. She laid out the long line of medications he was taking: trazodone, Caduet, felodipine, Quapro, Klonopin. Sedatives, blood pressure controllers, mood stabilizers. I didn’t really know much about what had happened. Only that Evan had jumped off a rock, but not how he had gotten there or why.

“Can you talk?” I asked him.