Crystal Lies Read online

  I was the one who answered the phone that night. Always the light sleeper, and constantly consumed with worry over Jacob, I had a tendency to nearly jump out of my skin whenever the phone rang late at night. I must’ve caught it before the second ring, my heart pounding in my eardrums. I felt certain it was the emergency room informing me that my son had just died of an overdose or been run over by a truck.

  “Mom?” His voice sounded like he’d been crying.

  “Jacob, what’s wrong?” “I’ve been arrested.”

  “Oh no.” I took the cordless phone into the bathroom and sat down on the tiled edge of the whirlpool tub. “What happened?”

  “I’m really sorry, Mom.” He was sobbing now. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. My life is so screwed up. I know I’m a mess. I want help. I really do. This makes me see that I need it.”

  “Okay, okay.” I tried to sound soothing. “Just tell me what happened.”

  “I was getting into my car, and I… I got stopped. I’d had a couple of beers with some guys from work,” he told me. “And, well, I had a joint in my pocket. I didn’t even know it was there, Mom. I mean I hadn’t worn that shirt since last summer. I think someone else might’ve even put it there.”

  “So you’re in jail?” I tried to imagine this, but all I could conjure up were Images of iron bars and guys in zebra-striped suits, like in some cartoon from my childhood.

  “I’m not in jail yet,” he said. “I’ve been processed, and they’ll put me in jail if someone doesn’t come down and post a bond.”

  “Post a bond?”

  “Pay for bail,” he translated.

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Do you mind, Mom? I’ll pay you back. I mean it might take a while, but I will. Besides, the lady told me that you’ll get your money back after my court date.”

  “Court?” I peeked out the bathroom door to see if Geoffrey was hearing any of this, but it seemed he was still asleep.

  “Yeah, there’s a lot of stuff I can tell you about later. But can you come now, Mom? Otherwise they’re going to lock me up. And there’s this guy in there who looks like a Satanist or something. I’m scared, Mom.”

  “How much is your bail?”

  “Five hundred bucks.” He sighed loudly. “And it has to be cash or a money order.”

  “But it’s two in the morning, Jacob. I don’t have cash like that—”

  The bathroom door suddenly came open, and there stood Geoffrey rubbing his eyes. “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “Who is it?”

  “Mom,” said Jacob. “I gotta go; my time is up. Please come and get me. I can’t stand it here.” And then the line went dead.

  “It’s Jacob,” I told Geoffrey.

  “What happened now?”

  “He’s in jail.”

  Geoffrey said a foul word. I blinked in surprise but didn’t say anything. “He needs us to bail him out,” I said as I headed for my closet. “Why?”

  “So he doesn’t have to stay in jail.” I turned and looked at my husband of twenty-five years and wondered if this really was the man I had married and borne two children with.

  “A night in jail might do him good,” he said.

  “How will it do him good?” I demanded as I pulled on my sweats.

  “Teach him there are consequences for his choices.”

  “But you should’ve heard him, Geoffrey,” I pleaded. “He was crying. He was sorry. He said he knew he’d messed up and he wanted to change. He wants help.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “But he’s never been this low before, Geoffrey. He needs us. He needs to know that we love him, that we forgive him. Isn’t it what Jesus would do?”

  Geoffrey rolled his eyes at me, then headed back to bed. “Aren’t you coming?” I asked as I shoved my foot into a clog. “Nope.”

  “Geoffrey!” I went over to the bed now. “He’s your only son. You’re going to just let him rot in jail?”

  “One night in jail won’t kill him.”

  “How do you know?” I demanded. “I’ve heard stories about abuse… Or what about kids who get so depressed they kill themselves in jail?” “They won’t let him do that.” “How do you know?” “Just go back to bed, Glennis.”

  But there was no way I could go back to bed with Images of Jacob’s lifeless body hanging by a sheet suspended from a light fixture in some creepy jail cell. And so I got my purse and climbed into the Range Rover and drove downtown to where our bank has an ATM. I had no idea how much money I could get from this machine, but I decided I would give it my best shot and take whatever I got over to city hall and beg them to release my son. Perhaps I could offer them my engagement ring as collateral.

  After all, I assured myself as I drove down Main Street, his father is the city attorney. Surely that should carry some weight at city hall. But to my surprise I was able, after only two tries, to get four hundred and forty dollars, and I had enough cash in my purse to make up the difference. With a thick wad of twenties in my hand, I glanced nervously over my shoulder at the dark and deserted town as I quickly got back into my car and locked the door. I realized this probably wasn’t the smartest thing I’d done, but then mothers will do almost anything when they feel their children are in danger.

  I felt conspicuous beneath the glaring fluorescent lights in the receiving area of the city jail, I could hear strange sounds from down a hallway, but the only other person around was a young woman dressed in what appeared to be an “evening” outfit. She told me that the receptionist would be back shortly and that they were going to release her boyfriend.

  As I stood there waiting my turn, it occurred to me that Geoffrey hadn’t even inquired why Jacob was in jail. Did he even care?

  I paid them my money, got my bond receipt, signed some legal papers, and then sat down to wait for my son. It was nearly four in the morning when he finally came out, looking blurry eyed and sleepy.

  Naturally, I thought that Jacob would be glad to see me and be appreciative of my brave efforts to come down there alone, but instead he seemed moody and depressed. “I figured Dad wouldn’t come,” he said as we got into the car.

  “He has an early morning,” I said, which may or may not have been true.

  “Don’t lie for him, Mom.” Jacob leaned back in the seat and exhaled loudly. “I’m not stupid, you know.”

  Well, I wasn’t so sure about that, but I was unwilling to pick that fight just then. And so we drove home in silence.

  But that night, I’d have to say, was the beginning of the end for my marriage. Geoffrey was furious with me the next morning when I admitted what I’d done.

  “You went down there? After I told you not to?” he demanded as I handed him a cup of coffee. “I explicitly told you that it could wait until today.”

  “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You know you’re a part of the problem, Glennis. You’re a real enabler when it comes to Jacob.”

  “Nice way to throw around the addiction lingo, Geoffrey. Enabler? Please. I’m his mother. What am I supposed to do?”

  “You’re supposed to respect your husband.”

  “I was bailing out your son, Geoffrey, so you wouldn’t have to—”

  “With absolutely no regard to how I feel.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like you’ve taken his side, Glennis.”

  “His side?” I envisioned our family, divided and lined up against each other, stones in our hands ready to be thrown at the opposition. “But he’s our son, Geoffrey. I thought we were all on the same side.”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Jacob needs help, Geoffrey,” I continued, making my best plea. “He needs his family. He needs you.”

  “He needs to quit screwing up.” His voice sent an actual shiver down my spine.

  Then he set down his coffee mug with a thud and marched upstairs. I could tell by the sound of his footsteps that he was heading for Jacob’s room. I followed him, certain this woul
d not go well. But before I could say anything—not that I could’ve stopped him—he had burst into Jacob’s room.

  “Get up!” he yelled.

  “Huh?” Jacob rolled over and looked up with sleepy eyes. “Get out of bed!”

  Jacob just groaned and crumpled into the fetal position. “I said get up!” yelled Geoffrey. Then he reached over and jerked Jacob out of his bed. “Geoffrey!” I cried.

  “This is my house,” said Geoffrey. “And if I say it’s time to get up, you’d better get up.”

  Jacob cussed at his dad, and it quickly went from ugly to frightening as both of them began yelling and swinging fists. I ran for the phone and came back holding it like a weapon.

  “Stop it!” I screamed. “Or I’m calling 911.”

  That managed to bring Geoffrey back to reality, and he released Jacob with a shove that threw him back onto his bed with a loud crash.

  Jacob’s nose was bleeding, but he didn’t seem to notice as he let loose with a few more foul words, then finally said,“You’re such a hypocrite, Dad. No wonder I’m such a freakin’ mess. I hate your guts!”

  “And you are no longer welcome in this house!” yelled Geoffrey. “Be out of here by the time I get home from work.”

  “Fine!” yelled Jacob. “This place makes me crazy anyway. I should’ve left a long time ago.”

  Geoffrey straightened his jacket and stormed out the door.

  By noon, Jacob had heaped some of his belongings into his old Subaru wagon. I had tried to talk him out of leaving, but he insisted it was the only way.

  “It’s just going to get worse, Mom,” he told me as we stood outside in the driveway.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This family,” he said. “It’s like we’re all going down any minute.”

  “What are you saying?” I felt more confused than ever.

  “There’s stuff going on,” he said. “Everyone’s going to get hurt.”

  “Jacob.” I looked into his eyes. “What exactly are you saying? Is this some kind of threat? Are you going to hurt us?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Not me, Mom. It’s Dad. Watch out.”

  I frowned. “He’s just upset, Jacob. He’ll be fine.”

  He just shrugged. “Dad hates me, you know.”

  “He doesn’t hate you, honey. He’s frustrated by all this.”

  “No, Mom, he hates me. Can’t you see I’m an embarrassment to him? Just like Grandma was. I gotta go.” He hugged me so tight that it reminded me of his first day of school when I thought he’d never let go.

  “Where will you stay?” I asked.

  “I’ll be okay, Mom. I’ll call you once I get settled.” And he got in his car and drove away.

  As I followed the faded blue blur of the Subaru down our street and disappearing over the crest of the hill, I thought about what Jacob had said—“just like Grandma…”

  Although she’d been gone a few years, I knew he meant Jeannette, Geoffrey’s mother. She’d had what Geoffrey had loosely termed “mental problems.” But never properly diagnosed, the poor woman had been shifted from one treatment center to the next until she’d finally ended up in a nursing home where she was sedated around the clock in the years before her death. Jeannette had never taken the role of a real mother in Geoffrey’s life. It was her parents, the Madisons, who had raised Geoffrey after his father, whom they claimed was an alcoholic, had abandoned his crazy wife and infant son. Naturally, Geoffrey had nothing but praise for his maternal grandparents. Wealthy and educated, they’d made certain that Geoffrey had only the best of the best. Meanwhile, his poor mother was either locked up in her bedroom or in whatever institution they felt was most suitable at the time.

  We’d only spoken of Jeannette a few times. But both of our children knew that their grandmother had never been “well.” I think Sarah had been the first to mention the possible connection between her brother and grandmother.

  She’d come home from college during last Christmas break. And, as usual, Jacob and Geoffrey had gotten into it when Jacob announced he was going to go “hang with friends” one evening.

  “Maybe Jacob’s like Dad’s mom,” she had teased as Jacob was pulling on his coat and Geoffrey was fuming. “What was wrong with her anyway, Dad?”

  “She was unbalanced,” Geoffrey had stated as if that explained everything.

  “Yeah, maybe I am like her,” Jacob had said flippantly. “Maybe I’m crazy too.” Then he had stomped out the door.

  But Sarah’s less-than-thoughtful comment had started me thinking, and after the holidays, I questioned Geoffrey a bit more about his mother. Naturally, he was reluctant to talk.

  “I don’t know what was wrong with her,” he finally said in irritation. “She was moody, okay? And she did bizarre things. And she’d take off in the middle of the night without telling anyone.”

  “But she was never diagnosed?”

  “No. My grandmother always just said she was eccentric.” “Another word for crazy?”

  “Maybe. I don’t really know, Glennis. I was just a kid. And then she was institutionalized. That’s all I remember. End of story.”

  Well, I wished it was the end of the story, but unfortunately the story just kept on going. And Jacob seemed destined to become the next chapter.

  It felt as if a giant pair of hands reached down and tore my life in half on the day that Jacob left home. It’s not that I blame God exactly. Maybe it was my own undoing or just something inevitable. And I’m sure I was somewhat sleep deprived at the time—a little fuzzy from my previous evening of extracting bail money from the ATM and then waiting for Jacob to be released “into my custody” in the wee hours of the morning—but as I walked through my large, quiet home the following day, I began to wonder what my life was all about. I began to doubt everything about myself and to question everything about life in general. Even God.

  In something of a daze, I went from perfect room to perfect room as if searching for clues. Something that would put it all back into perspective and cause my life to make sense again. I looked at the selection of family photos in their shining silver frames, gracefully arranged across the grand piano that Sarah used to play so beautifully. I picked up Sarah’s graduation photo and studied the self-satisfied smile that played across her sweetly curved lips—as if she knew she had it all together. Her hair had still been long back then, gently floating around her shoulders as if she hadn’t spent hours trying to get that tight natural curl to relax a bit. But there was a look in her eyes that didn’t quite fit with the rest of the picture, or maybe it was my imagination, but she looked worried. Maybe she had still been fretting about her grades when the photo was taken. For a short time she’d been concerned that Amanda Frazier would beat her out for top honors at graduation. But that hadn’t happened. Or maybe she’d been worried about something else. Something I had missed because I’d been focused on Jacob. A small stab of guilt punctured my mothers heart, and I set the photo down and reminded myself that Sarah’s life was on track. She was excelling in college, making new friends, and seemed to be in complete charge of everything.

  Not that I didn’t regret how her visits quickly diminished as Jacob’s troubles began to increase. But sometimes I thought that Jacob’s problems were simply Sarah’s excuses for doing something else—something that would further reinforce her independence.

  “You seem to have your hands full with your son,” she’d told me shortly before her last spring break. “I think I’ll just go down to Grandma’s or maybe hang with my friends.” Naturally, I’d expressed my disappointment, but I didn’t encourage her to change her mind since it seemed our family life only grew more stressful when she did come home. Sarah wasn’t unlike her father, with her lectures about how Jacob needed to shape up and how I was a hopeless enabler. And her platitudes only seemed to make matters worse. As much as I loved my daughter, I knew she could be a royal pain at times. As it turned out, more and more Sarah had opted to visit her grandmother in
Arizona during holidays.

  My mother had moved down there less than a year after Sarah had started college and Jacob had started to become a handful. It was a double whammy for me—losing the support of the two females I’d been closest to—and I felt it contributed to Jacob’s problems as well. I felt he missed the attention of his only living grandparent, but then my mother had never been much of an expert at timing. Like when she’d divorced my dad shortly before he died. Of course, we all knew he’d been having an affair, but we didn’t know he was about to have a fatal heart attack. The ink on the divorce papers was barely dry before he keeled over in the arms of the “other woman.” Fortunately for my mother and us, their life insurance policies hadn’t been changed yet. That was a bit of luck that we all still shake our heads over. Even so, we kids were devastated to lose our dad. But it was maddening, too, because even in our grief we were all still angry at him for cheating on Mom. As a result, it was a very strange funeral, and I sometimes wonder if I’ve ever really completed the grieving process for him.

  I peered at the old-fashioned black-and-white picture of my parents, taken on their wedding day just after World War II had ended. My dad had on his army uniform, and my mom wore a white satin gown she had sewn herself. They looked so incredibly young and naive and happy, with absolutely no idea their lives would take such a sad twist in the end. Who ever knows how things will end up?

  Then I picked up the silver-framed photo of our family. We’d had it taken shortly before Sarah graduated from high school, when Jacob was just a sophomore and doing okay. Oh, life had been relatively easy and full of promise back then. I’m just not sure we ever knew or quite appreciated it. It’s like they say: you don’t miss something until it’s gone. Back then, Geoffrey constantly pressured the kids to do and be their best. Not that I didn’t agree with this, mind you. Everyone should be the best he can be. I’d just never been sure that anyone could determine exactly what that meant for someone else.

  I studied Jacob’s chocolate brown eyes, his straight nose, sweet smile, and sandy-blond curls. I looked and I looked at his face, trying to determine if something had been hidden in there that I’d missed. Storm clouds gathering that I’d never noticed. But all I could see was a happy family.