Except when he was high, you said. Or so you figured. Sometimes, when he came home from school in the late afternoon, he didn’t look hungry at all. He still went to the kitchen and made short work of any food available, but his whole aspect was different. He never asked what there was to eat: he lazed through the shelves like he was the only person in the house and had all the time in the world. Checked out, you said. Like somebody else was driving.
You suspected that the driver in question was Gene Cupp. Gene was repeating junior year again; he and Jesse had a couple of classes together. Jesse was good at math, but Gene, still trying to get his algebra requirement out of the way, didn’t seem to care at all about sitting in a classroom full of underclassmen. He cheated off Jesse’s homework, you said; you knew this because sometimes they would go over it in the late afternoon, if Michael wasn’t home.
Michael didn’t like Gene any more than he liked any other visitors, but he seemed oddly intimidated by him. Gene looked like he was in his early twenties: long, curly hair, a mustache more whiskers than wisp, gas station sunglasses he usually forgot to remove when he was indoors. That his father rode with the local motorcycle crew was something Michael knew ahead of time, because Michael’s work was right next door to the motorcycle shop. Local bikers congregated there at all hours, and, if you were smart, you got a feeling for which of them might mean trouble. Gene’s father was one of them.
“What’s up, Mrs. J?” Gene said when he and Jesse came in through the door one day. You didn’t like an older boy leading the conversation the way he did; you hated seeing how passive Jesse was in his presence.
Still, any company was better than none, and you were between efforts at making friends whose presence in the apartment might be acceptable to Michael. “Jana,” you said, for what must have been the tenth time.
“Jana!” Gene said, his eyebrows rising above the rims of his sunglasses. “OK, then!” You smelled the stale cigarette smoke on him as he passed you; you remembered when Michael’s old car had smelled like that, and how it felt forbidden and dangerous to you, a long time ago.
Jesse retrieved a quart of orange juice from the refrigerator, grabbed two plastic cups from the cupboard, and hurried down the hall to his room, Gene behind him, bouncing as he walked. “Hi, Mom,” Jesse said as the door of his bedroom shut behind him, possibly with a small laugh underneath his voice, though you hoped not.
What were you supposed to do? you asked me. Stand between Jesse and his friend, when Jesse had already had such a hard time with friends: if Michael took a dislike to one of them, he’d yell about it at dinnertime until they were out of the picture; even the ones he found acceptable were likely to hear him growing agitated about something before long. If he ever got comfortable enough with a regular guest to show his true colors, then the days of that guest’s presence on the scene were numbered. The reliability of Michael’s equations formed a mathematical language that was easy to understand, and hard to bear. It had broken your heart at least three times during Jesse’s childhood: he loved his friends fiercely, spending as much time with them as he possibly could, and, one by one, they all eventually moved on to other friends. Friends with normal families, friends whose houses felt safe. His little friend Jason, and that other one, Neal. Gone from his life, when friends were what he needed. To see your son grow into a lonely teenager when he’s really a nice kid with so much to give, you wrote. Think about what that’s like.
So you tried to overlook the way your instincts bristled whenever Gene addressed you by name: the way your urge to protect your son, still keen despite years of getting overruled by Michael’s rage, roared into overdrive in his presence. Jesse deserved a friend, somebody who would stick by him. Maybe Gene was that friend. A lot of kids smoked pot now. Things had changed, you said. As long as Gene was gone before Michael got home, you didn’t see the harm.
Both Jesse and Gene seemed to understand, like you, that their alliance would be strained if Jesse’s father came to view it as a threat. They conducted their afternoons in your house like planned raids: arrive, convene, disperse. Some days Jesse went to Gene’s house instead, and sometimes he didn’t get home until after dinner.
Michael made a big deal about it a couple of times and then seemed to decide that he didn’t really care.
Jesse was adrift like a leaf in the wind, you said.
Did I even understand what it takes to know that about your very own son? you said in your letter, whose remaining pages formed a stack which diminished a little every time I turned one of them over, and whose cumulative effect within me was registering with unignorable force.