Crystal Lies - Melody Carlson [70]
Near the end of the dimly lit hallway, I reached an office with the right name on the door. The door was open, so I went in and sat down in a straight-backed chair. The office closed in around me with shabby, beige-colored carpeting and a cheap metal desk. Other than the artwork plastered on every available wall, the space would’ve been quite dismal. Given the amateurish quality of the art, I suspected that these pieces had been created by patients at Hope’s Wings. And the more I examined the collages and paintings, the more intrigued I became. One piece was particularly fascinating. It consisted of dozens of cut-out heads of beautiful women, obviously extracted from a fashion magazine. But across each mouth, except for one, was a piece of black tape. And the one head without a taped mouth, tucked down in the left corner, had a handmade blindfold pasted over the eyes. It seemed that, especially in this case, a picture really was worth a thousand words.
“Good morning,” said a dark-haired man, extending his hand toward me. “I’m Marcus Palmer.” He had on a navy V-neck sweater with worn elbows. But what caught my attention was the tie-dyed T-shirt he wore beneath it.
“I’m Glennis Harmon,” I told him. “Jacob’s mother.”
“Ah, Jacob’s mother,” he repeated as he leaned against his cluttered desk, folding his arms in front of him. “Is that your official tide?”
I wasn’t sure if he was making fun of me, but I was definitely feeling more self-conscious by the minute. “Is this how the counseling sessions for mothers usually begin?”
He laughed as he went around to the other side of his desk. I could see now that his dark hair was pulled back into a neat tail, and I guessed he was one of those baby boomers who hadn’t quite given up on the sixties yet. Then he pulled out what looked like a fairly decent leather chair, slightly out of place in his otherwise lackluster office.
“Now that you mention it,” he said as he sat down,“I suppose there are some similarities in my mother sessions.” He pushed a pile of papers off to one side of his desk. “The first thing I usually try to get across to family members and spouses of addicts, mothers in particular, is that this is not your fault.”
“Not my fault?” I echoed.
“That’s right.” He waited for my reaction.
I wanted to cooperate and hopefully get some answers for Jacob. So I figured I needed to be honest. “Okay, my mind can accept that it’s not my fault, but my heart feels differently.”
He nodded with a solemn expression as he folded his hands neatly on his desk. It seemed he was waiting for me to say something more. And because I dislike lapses in conversations, I accommodated him.
“I mean I’ve read a few things…books about addiction, articles on the Internet, and I know that I’m not really responsible for my son’s behavior. But then I’m a mother.” I held up my hands hopelessly. “It feels like everything and anything that goes wrong with my children must be my fault. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes, and I wonder if I’d breast-fed him, maybe he wouldn’t have turned out this way. Or maybe if I hadn’t pushed him to potty train by two. Or maybe I took away his binkie too soon.”
“Binkie?”
“You know, a pacifier.”
“Oh.”
“Silly things like that. Of course, that’s only on nights when I know he’s in his bed, hopefully sleeping. But that seems to be less and less anymore. On the nights when I don’t know where he is, I find myself wide awake as I imagine a hundred and one ways he has been killed or injured or arrested. I’ve even reached the place where the image of his being arrested seems the most favorable.”
“You want him to get arrested?” His expression was completely blank now.
“No, of course not. I’m his mother. Why would I want to see my son in jail?”
“Because maybe you think he’d be safer there?”
I nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Although I’ve heard that horrible things can happen in jail,