Eyes Wide Open Part 2

"I'll go Monday. I'll only stay a couple of days."

Kathy shook her head. "You can't wait until Monday, Jay. These people need you. You're all they have." She took my hand in hers. "You have to go tomorrow, Jay."

My gaze drifted to the meal spread out on the blanket, now cold. The gla.s.ses of champagne. Our little celebration. It all seemed pointless now.

I realized I hadn't seen my brother in more than five years.

"I'll go with you, you know," Kathy said, moving next to me. "I will."

"Thanks." I smiled and drew her next to me. "But this is something I ought to do alone."

"You're a good brother, Jay."

She handed me my gla.s.s. Then she took hers and we touched them lightly together. "Here's to Evan," Kathy said.

"To Evan."

We took a sip and sat, knees up, watching the waves against the sh.o.r.e. Then she leaned over and re-pressed the play b.u.t.ton on the iPod.

"Like the man says . . ." She put down her drink. "We've still got tonight."

Chapter Four.

The three-hour drive up the California coast on 101 to Charlie's the following day gave my mind time to wander to some old things.

It went to my brother as a long-haired eighteen-year-old who had just dropped out of college, his conversation rocketing back and forth between complex string theory, Timothy Leary, and how the Beatles' Abbey Road was the new gospel, in what I knew now, but not back then, was one of his uncontrolled, manic rants.

It went to how he had once visited me at Cornell-after he was released from the psychiatric home in Hartford-and how we took a weekend trip to Montreal. I recalled how we had trolled for girls along Sherbrooke Street, near McGill, and how Charlie had ended up s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g our waitress back in the hotel room after he'd convinced her he had taught Eric Clapton all he knew, and air-played her the opening riff from Cream's "Suns.h.i.+ne of Your Love," while I pounded the pillow over my head in the other bed, alone.

My brother could charm the birds out of the trees.

It's easy, Charlie always said, with that sly, mischievous grin. If you ask every chick you run into if they wanna screw, now and then one of them says yes! Even when you look like me!

Eventually, winding through the wooded canyons around Lompoc, my thoughts roamed here: To the last time he had any kind of relations.h.i.+p with our dad.

It was maybe twenty years ago, Charlie's last chance at a real life before he permanently gave up.

Somehow he had persuaded my father to dispose of his old design samples by sending them down to Miami, where Charlie had set up a rack in a women's hair salon near his mother's dance studio, selling them as one-of-a-kind creations.

It was only a wobbly metal rack in the rear of this cheesy salon, crammed with colorful velour and cotton cashmere sets-my dad's particular genius. But to Charlie, it might as well have been the epicenter of the apparel world. He held court, shuttling back and forth between hair stations, his own hair bound neatly into a ponytail and dressed as cleanly as I'd ever seen him, the blue-haired women eating out of his hand. He'd mesmerize them with stories about his famous father in the rag trade, the glamorous women he screwed while in L.A., celebrity rockers he did c.o.ke with, lurid tales of his years on the road, all the while pus.h.i.+ng oil stocks on the Canadian stock exchange.

He was turning dozens of sample sets each week at fifty to sixty bucks a pop. Real money in his pocket for the first time in his life. Living in a decent place on Biscayne Bay with Gabby and his infant son. He had an exuberance I'd never seen before-a twinkling in his eyes.

For the first time he was making it-in the real world.

And with his father, who had let him down a hundred times.

Later, he took me back to the storage room where he kept his stock. Charlie's mood s.h.i.+fted. He started ripping open s.h.i.+pping cartons, his voice accusatory and familiar. "Look at the s.h.i.+t he's trying to p.a.w.n off on me," he said, tearing out newly received merchandise still in plastic bags. I could see rips, flaws, mismatched color panels mixed in with legitimate samples. "You see the kind of business I've got going here. These people don't want c.r.a.p. I'm selling 'one of a kinds,' not this garbage. And look-" He ripped an invoice out of the box. "He's f.u.c.king billing me for them! He's not even giving me terms."

Everything always came back to this: Charlie trusting himself in our father's hands, and Lenny pulling the rug out from under him again. "I can't sell these, can I?" He looked at me for confirmation. And, yes, there were a few seconds, the prior season's returns that had probably been in someone's stockroom forever, design prototypes with busted zippers and mismatched panels.

"It would be hard," I said, agreeing.

"He's trying to screw me again, isn't he?" Anger rushed into my brother's face. "You know what he did? He had his accountant call me up and demand payment. His accountant! I'm his son, for Christ's sake. He just can't stand to see me successful . . . We're selling dozens a week of these, and he doesn't want me to take his l.u.s.ter away from him so he's trying to shut me down."

To me, it was probably just the s.h.i.+pping 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 s.h.i.+pping to him for good. There was a huge battle over payment. My dad called Charlie "an ungrateful sonovab.i.t.c.h." 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 s.h.i.+nnec.o.c.k Bay, he wouldn't even come to the funeral.

I got off the freeway at Pacific Crest Drive. Pis...o...b..ach 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.sing. "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?

Chapter Five.

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 grat.i.tude 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, brus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+rt. 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 relations.h.i.+p. 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.

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."

Chapter Six.

"We 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 s.p.a.ce.

"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."