of the side of his mouth, my lawyer whispered, “Shut up.” I could hear the urgency in his voice.
The judge stared down at me over her glasses. My lawyer kept his eyes straight ahead.
“No ma’am,” I said.
She rapped her gavel and put the matter to rest. Outside the courtroom, I asked my lawyer again how I was going to pay for the child support. He laughed at me with what seemed like genuine amusement. “You’ll think of something,” he said.
During the humid summer that followed, I liked to hang out with Aaron, especially on weekends. Each week at Rockford, there was a Sunday celebration: families brought home-cooked meals, girlfriends appeared in tight jeans and teased hair, and sons mended family ties.
Aaron and I never participated.
He had a girlfriend in Manhattan, but she was ignoring him while he was in treatment. I occasionally wrote my mother carefully composed letters that never asked for anything, or even posed any questions she might feel compelled to answer. I didn’t want to pressure her. In prior treatment experiences, I had pushed for the organized reconciliation, the weekend visits. I couldn’t imagine going through all that again.
As the summer wore on, counselors began to disappear, with little explanation for their absence. Juan was gone. Rick was gone. A few others were gone. Aaron pointed out that they had actually relapsed and then had to be let go. When I suggested they might have gotten better jobs, Aaron laughed. He was shrewd.
“They’re junkies,” he said. “You can tell they’re in trouble, if their caseload suddenly gets cut.” This appeared to be true.
Miguel, who had pale yellow where the whites of his eyes should have been, had his caseload cut to a third of what it once had been. A few days later, he took his remaining charges into the courtyard, and then nodded off in his folding chair during group. One-by-one his clients stood, folded their chairs and then wandered off, until only Miguel was left in the courtyard, his chin upon his chest. News of the counselors’ relapses terrified me. It was exactly the kind of thing I could see myself doing.
One Sunday evening in the cafeteria, Aaron mentioned his girlfriend had been to visit him. “Here?” I asked, surprised. I was eagerly forking my way through a pile of rice and beans. Last I had heard about Aaron’s girlfriend, she had folded up his diploma from NYU and sent it to him in a No. 10 envelope. I asked him about the creased diploma.
“Bitch,” he said, grinning. “But it looks like we’re back together.”
“Back together?” I asked.
I laid my fork down.
“I’m going to split after dinner,” he said. I nodded, my disappointment quickly consuming me. I toyed with my fork. Aaron kept eating. Trying to rally, I encouraged him to stay, to finish his treatment, to address his addiction.
He lowered his fork and grinned at me. “Here?” he laughed. He gave me his new address and phone number, and then he was gone.
Trains shrieked through Grand Concourse station at 149th Street. Mike and a few others stood in a small group on the platform, waiting for the train. We were on our way to sign up for a job training program in the South Bronx.
I leaned against one of the platform stanchions, lost in thought. As summer came to a close, we had to get jobs, find apartments, and make concrete plans to move out of the facility. This was my chief dilemma.
I was determined to move back to Pennsylvania, even though the mere thought of doing so gave me a knot in my stomach. I wanted to go home. To get out of New York City. But to make that kind of transition, I’d need support. I’d need somewhere to live while I looked for a job. And I’d need food and shelter as I saved up for an apartment. And that’s not even considering the intangibles of recovery, like depression, coping with the lack of companionship, and the requirement for constant encouragement that only the truly needy can hope to understand. Most guys would turn to their family for this kind of support. Only problem was, I’d burned those bridges, rebuilt them, then burned them all down again. More than once. My family would be crazy to take a big risk with me. I snorted bitterly at my own intractable predicament. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, I just wanted to go home. But more and more, home was looking like a mirage, an unreachable dream.
“Timmy,” Mike shouted. He was right in my face, but I hadn’t noticed until he raised his voice. “What’s wrong with you?”
“S’up?” I asked.
“You can’t stand on the platform like that,” Mike said.
“Like what,” I asked, confused. I looked down at myself: zipper up, sneakers tied. I seemed okay.
“All lost,” Mike said. The others circled around me, nodding their heads. “Someone see you standing like that,” Mike said. “You going to get robbed. Or punched.”
I laughed. “I got stuff on my mind, man.”
“Look, you always got to be scanning, scanning.” Mike looked to the left, then to the right. Taking his time, he folded his arms across his chest. “You got to be on guard.” He looked completely at ease, the lord of all he surveyed. “You try,” he said.
“What are we looking for,” I asked.
Everyone chuckled. Mike shook his head in mock disgust. “You looking for trouble, girls, anything.” Mike laughed.
I looked to the left, then to the right. I felt awkward, uncomfortable.
“Good, good. That’s it,” Mike said. “Now check the package.”
“The package?” I asked.
More chuckling.
“The package,” Mike said. He took a step back and scanned the platform to his left. As he turned his head to the right, he reached down and briefly touched his groin. “Check the package.”
I laughed. I had seen others do that gesture a thousand times but had never done it myself. “Why you doing that?” I asked.
“Why?” Mike rolled his eyes. “You got to make sure the package intact,” Mike said. “Everything solid.”
Trying to duplicate the gesture, I made everyone groan with disappointment. “No, no, no,” Mike said. “You adjusting yourself. If you need an adjustment, go to the bathroom.”
I laughed, embarrassed.
“Just a quick check,” Mike said. He narrowed his eyes and touched his groin. I laughed at how easily he slipped in and out of his hard veneer.
Mike insisted I try a dozen more times. Everyone critiqued my stance, offered suggestions, and little signature moves of their own. I started getting into it. We were all getting into it, styling on the platform: sniffing, looking hard, and touching our groins. When the crowded train pulled up, we filed into the car in a good mood, dispersing to the few vacant spots.
The train doors slid closed
