Crystal Lies - Melody Carlson [8]
I know I should’ve felt relieved when Jacob managed to graduate in June. But it hurt that he chose not to march with his class. He laughed off the cap-and-gown routine as “moronic stupidity” and refused to participate in any of the traditional senior activities.
“Don’t you want to celebrate this with your friends?” I asked.
“They’re not my friends now.”
“But you’ve known them for years,” I tried.
He would have nothing to do with my rationale, and I made a valiant attempt to conceal my feelings. But I felt cheated by his choice. After all, I had spent years being his room mother, PTA president, fund-raising chairman, booster club member. You name it, and I’d done it. I’d attended most of his sporting events despite the weather—all those cold mornings on the soccer field, all those stiff bleachers and weekend away-games—and now I was being denied the opportunity to watch my son march across the gym and receive his diploma.
Geoffrey was understandably angry, but he was also busy with a big lawsuit, and, as usual, we didn’t discuss our feelings of disappointment, and I continued to keep my grief to myself. Why dribble gasoline on our already smoldering fire? As a consolation, I decided to throw a small, family dinner party to commemorate Jacob’s graduation. Just Sarah—home from college—my sister and her family, and my mother, who happened to be visiting for the weekend. Unfortunately, the festivities fell slightly flat when the guest of honor never showed up. It turned out he’d been doing some celebrating of his own. Why should I have been surprised?
After he graduated, we hardly saw Jacob anymore. He became an expert at coming and going without being seen or heard. One time when I caught him slipping into the house at four in the morning, I suggested he might have a fixture in foreign espionage, although I wasn’t sure such things existed anymore. I’m sure I was still trying to make myself believe that everything was going to be all right in the end. Besides, I told myself, Jacob was somehow managing to hold down a job washing dishes at a restaurant, and he’d assured me that he was preregistered for fall classes at SSCC, good old South Seattle Community College. Maybe it wasn’t the impressive university that Geoffrey would’ve picked, but it was better than nothing. Or so I thought.
Fortunately or not, depending on how you look at it, Geoffrey was becoming more and more obsessed with a major lawsuit going on at city hall. It had to do with a multimillion-dollar contract for new sewer lines that hadn’t been properly fulfilled, and if Geoffrey could win this case, he would become an instant hero in Stafford.
As a result, Jacob’s somewhat errant behavior went fairly unnoticed by his father during most of the summer. That is, until Jacob was picked up by the police for underage drinking and being in possession of “less than an ounce” of marijuana. Then his father sat up and paid attention. Well, sort of.
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