Andrew Gross: Eyes Wide Open

Charlie nodded, cupping a few of his pills in his hands and knocking them back. Dully, he looked up at me like, What is there to say?

I said, “Then tell me what happened.”

“W e always took care of our son.” He peeled an orange and put it on a small plate in front of him. “No matter what anyone can say, we tried to do our best. We always kept him safe.”

“I know that, Charlie,” I said, squeezing his arm.

Tears shone in his dark eyes. He shook his head. “I just don’t know how he could do that to us…”

Gabriella got up and wrapped her arm around him from behind. She picked up for him. “Ten days ago… You know for a long time, Jay, our son had been acting really crazy…”

Of course I knew. Sitting around in a silent state all day in the house, no job, no school. Usually off his medications.

“Well, he’d gotten worse. He was off his meds. We no longer knew how to handle him. He would just sit there-on that couch-for twenty-four hours straight. Not a single word-just staring. Into space.

“Just a few weeks back we heard noises in the middle of the night, and we came down. He was just sitting there, talking”-Gabby pointed to what looked like a wood-burning heater in the corner-“to the furnace, Jay. My son was talking to the furnace! He told me, ‘I hear voices in there, Mommy…’ I said to him, ‘Evan, you have to let us help you

…’ We didn’t know what to do.”

“He was always so angry at us,” Charlie said. “He wouldn’t take his pills. He would just hurl them at us. Then he’d just smile coyly. I couldn’t fight him anymore. It was like he was torturing us, trying to make us suffer along with him.”

“Two weeks ago”-Gabby took a breath to steady herself-“we found something…”

I took a sip of my coffee. “What?”

“This is so hard for me to tell you, Jay. It really is… I went through his things. Because I was scared. I was scared at some of the things he was saying to us. He called me a stupid, uneducated whore… a wetback scum. He called your brother a miserable kike who could never get a job. His own father… I wanted to see where he was learning this from. What was influencing his crazy mind? And we found something. An application…”

“For a job?”

Gabby laughed. “ For a job? If only for a job! It was an application to buy a gun! A twenty-gauge shotgun. From a gun store in the next town. And for what? To kill someone, Jay. Maybe kill us. You see these stories on the news, about what people like our son can do. We said, this kid can’t have a gun… He’s mentally unstable. He’s been diagnosed by the state. He has a record with the police. These people cannot sell him a gun…”

I screwed up my eyes in disbelief. “ How? ”

“He lied, Jay. He lied about everything on his application. That he wasn’t sick; that he had no record. Maybe they would have caught it, or maybe not-but we went there. To stop them. We told the man at the shop, ‘Are you out of your mind? You can’t sell my son a weapon! Do you know what he might do with it?’ We threw the application back in his face. We were scared…”

I said, “I don’t blame you for being scared.” I thought of my troubled nephew with a gun, with the image of Columbine or Virginia Tech vivid in my mind, with all the anger and sociopathic behavior he had shown. “You did the right thing, Gabby.”

“I know we did the right thing. But then we found something else

…” She looked at me, eyes downcast. “I can hardly even say it, Jay

…”

“We found a kind of diary Evan was keeping,” Charlie interjected. “These ramblings, crazy things…”

“I have to cross myself to even tell you these things,” Gabriella said. “Things like, ‘Better to suck the dick of the devil than to live here with these two dead people one more day…’ That’s us, Jay. Our son was talking about us-your brother and me!” She dabbed at her eyes, shame and grief etched deeply there. “But we didn’t know what to do… We knew he’s acting truly crazy now. Off the charts. We can no longer control him. It’s clear he hates us… That he wants to kill us. And then himself. And who knows, maybe take other people with him…”

“So what did you do?”

“We showed it to him.” Gabriella looked at me as if seeking dispensation. “Everything. You know what he did? He takes me by the hair, and twists me, like he wants to kill me right there, and throws me against the wall. Look! ” She opened the top of her robe and showed me purplish marks covering her shoulder and onto her neck. “He’s too big for us to fight now. Look at your brother. He’s weak, old. He is no longer able to protect me. We didn’t know what to do…”

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“What did we do? We called the police,” Gabriella said.

Truth was, I had always pushed them to do exactly that. To put their son in custody when he assaulted them. But they never would. They never once pressed charges. How could we? they would say. On our own son. And then the excuses would start. He’s just a boy. He’s ashamed of what he’s done. He promises to stay on his medication. I guess I understood. Who wanted to make that kind of choice? But by not getting Evan help, by always protecting him and shielding him from treatment, I saw the events build that could lead nowhere but to catastrophe.

“When the police came”-Gabby rubbed her forehead, shaking her head-“Evan went out of control. He looked at me. ‘You do this to me, Mommy? You called the cops-on your own son!’ I saw something in his eyes I had never seen before. Like an animal. I told him, ‘ You’re sick, my son. You need some help.’ He grabbed me by the hair again and tried to beat the shit out of me. Your brother, he tried to help. But Evan threw him against the wall. He almost broke a rib. The cops saw it all. They finally got Evan in a choke hold. They came and took him away. To the hospital, in San Luis Obispo. To the mental ward. That’s when I called you, Jay.”

“They placed him under a suicide watch,” Charlie said. “They took away his belt. And laces. Put him under twenty-four-hour observation. I’ve been there before. I know the drill. Apparently he told the doctor who first examined him that he wanted to kill himself. That the gun he was trying to buy was intended not for us, but for him.”

He shook his head. “We failed him, Jay. They said they were going to take care of him. Help him.” A mixture of grief and anger hung in his eyes. “We thought maybe we finally did the right thing. That maybe this was the best way. The social worker there told us they were going to keep him safe. That they’d watch him, for as long as they possibly could. Three weeks, they said. Then they’d find somewhere for him. I said, ‘Whatever you do, you can’t put this kid back on the street. You see how angry he is? He’ll blow people away…’ ”

“You know the name of the doctor?” I asked, something starting to tighten in me. They had trusted the authorities to take care of Evan, and they had let them down.

“Derosa. Mitchell Derosa. But we never even spoke to him. No one would speak to us. Only the social worker there. His name was Brian something. We have it written down. And a nurse. They said for us not to worry, they were going to have several doctors observe him, and they would get him into some kind of facility.”

Gabriella chortled cynically. “You know what we were thinking? We’re thinking, Maybe this is a good thing after all. That’s when I called you, Jay. You probably thought it was just for more money, but it was to tell you, maybe Evan is in a good place at last. We felt relieved.”

I nodded.

“But then they call and tell us they’re going to release him! This social worker. Brian. After around four days. He says Evan is stable now and they had found a place for him. Four days? They said three weeks! I’m telling you this kid was psycho, Jay. I said, ‘Are you sure, so soon…?’ But they said, ‘Your son is an adult, Ms. Erlich,’ and that they couldn’t hold him indefinitely against his will, now that he had calmed down and was no longer a threat to himself. What kind of a crazy thing is this? I said, ‘You can’t do that. Maybe he’s an adult, but I am his mental guardian. You see the shape he was in.’ But they say Evan agreed, and they’re gonna put him in a good place.”