Jeannie Out of the Bottle - Barbara Eden [94]
I looked all over for him, then, in desperation, went to the administrator’s office and explained, “I have to find Matthew Ansara. He left his schoolbooks at home, and I have them for him, so please could you direct me to his classroom?”
The administrator shook her head. “I’m sorry, we don’t have a Matthew Ansara at this college,” she said.
Outraged at her inefficiency, I demanded that she check again. Same answer. Matthew was not registered at City College, nor had he ever been.
Despondent and afraid, I drove home and waited there for him, trembling from head to foot with a combination of fear and anger.
When Matthew arrived, I confronted him directly about not going to college, about baldly lying to me and pretending he was. Thereupon Matthew, generally a sweet and kind boy, flew into a vicious rage. There was no explanation, no excuse, no apology, not even a glimmer of contrition. Then he stomped off into the night.
I immediately jumped to the conclusion that he had gone to Michael’s house. But I didn’t hear a word from either Matthew or Michael. Distraught with worry, I finally called Michael, who, shocked beyond measure, told me that Matthew had not come home, nor had he heard from him for quite a few days.
We spent the next days searching for Matthew all over town, in bars, even under the freeway. For a hellish month we called friend after friend, to no avail. Neither of us had a clue where our son was living, whom he was with. Eventually we were able to discover that Matthew had been living partly on the streets and partly with a friend who’d taken him in out of pity.
Not long afterward, I received the call that helped rip the last vestiges of the veil of ignorance from my eyes. An off-duty officer called me to say that he had Matthew in custody and that he shouldn’t be driving a vehicle because he was dangerous both to himself and to other people.
My then-boyfriend, Stanley Frileck, and I jumped into our cars and drove up to Mulholland Drive, where we met the police officer, who still had Matthew with him.
Before we drove off, me in my car and Stanley driving Matthew in his, the officer wagged his finger at me and said, “You’d better find out what your son’s been taking!”
A further shock was ahead of me when Matthew had an almost fatal accident while driving a truck. He totaled the truck, broke his nose, and cracked a clavicle. At that point, Michael and I joined forces and confronted him.
Faced by both of us, and put under the greatest possible pressure we could muster, he would only admit, “All I do is a little pot and a pill or two. Everybody does exactly the same, Mom!”
“I don’t give a flying fig if everybody does it,” I said. “Drugs are unhealthy and taking them is against the law.”
Looking back, I can’t help seeing how naive I was. Did I really think that if I, his adoring mother, read him the riot act and gave him a civic lecture about the illegality of drugs and the ill effects of using them, my son would stop taking them altogether? Yes, and pigs would have flown to the moon.
In the end, Matthew agreed to go into rehab, and Michael and I thought the worst was over. After a few days, we were summoned to see the drug counselor, who, without making any bones about it, handed us a lengthy list of all the drugs Matthew had been taking on a regular basis.
Electrified, Matthew lunged for the list and screamed, “Don’t hurt my mom and dad! I don’t want them to know anything about what I’ve been doing.”
It was too late. We read the list. We didn’t want to believe it, but he had been using practically every hard drug in the world, and not in small quantities, either.
I started crying.
Matt promised to kick the habit, and I believed him. But the story had only just begun, although I didn’t know it at the time. (If I had, I think I’d have gone crazy.)
Over the next few years, Matthew fought against his drug habit, but with little success. Although Michael and I were divorced, we were united in our burning desire that Matthew be