Lost

Count All This — Chapter 17: victim or perpetrator?

Just when Jo Kasten’s son encounters schizophrenia, she discovers she has breast cancer. Meanwhile, her marriage faces a test. Count All This is a story about love and loyalty, addiction and madness. This is the seventeenth chapter. Find the first chapter here.

The phone rang around 1:00 in the morning, ripping me out of a horrific dream. I was walking alone on Highway 1, next to the Pacific ocean. It was already dark when I came to a cave. I stepped inside to see an enormous, fleshy sphinx. “When is a mother not a mother?” she riddled me. I stood mute. Her eyes glittered maliciously as she moved aside a great wing to show Eddy’s lifeless body, then took a bite from his neck. His blood pulsed out in time to a distant ringing…

When I finally woke, I jumped out of bed to answer the phone. “Jo. You have to help me!” Larry’s voice was frantic.

“What’s happened?! What’s wrong?!” My heart was in my throat. Was God punishing me already for my impure thoughts about Jason? Karen sat up on the couch and clicked on the light.

“Eddy’s LOST somewhere and I’m trying to pick him up, but I can’t find him because he doesn’t know where he is!”

“Eddy’s lost?” I looked over at Karen in confusion, relieved it wasn’t something more serious. How could an 18-year-old get lost in Berkeley? “What happened?”

“I guess he fell asleep on BART and they kicked him off somewhere in Concord when they closed down the system. But he doesn’t know where he is, and I don’t either. Plus my cell is running out of batteries. Can you look up the Concord BART station and get me an address? Tell me how to get there from 880 North in Hayward. Tell me what turnoff to take.”

“Okay. Don’t worry. We can do that. Hold on.” Larry didn’t have a modern cell phone. No one did. It was 2004.

“I can’t hold on. The batteries are going! Call me right back.”

“Okay.”

“What’s the problem?” Karen asked, on high alert and ready to solve it. “Let’s go out into my car and get on the GPS system. That will tell us exactly where Larry needs to go.”

“He sounded so scared. I wonder what more has happened. I wonder how Eddy sounded when he called.”

The two of us hurried out to the car with adrenaline pumping. We huddled together over the little black machine mounted on her dashboard while Karen punched in the information it needed to look up both the Concord BART station and Larry’s location on the freeway, then map the quickest route between them. We were about to call him back when my cell phone rang, startling us both with its piercing jangle in the black, quiet night.

“Hello?”

“Mom?” Eddy sounded lethargic, unhappy.

“Yeah, honey?” I used my most soothing voice. “Are you okay? Dad says you’re lost.”

“I am. He said he was coming to pick me up, but he’s not here. It’s really dark and I’m so tired, Mom. I don’t know what to do.”

“He’s on his way now. Don’t worry.” I looked at Karen with alarm. Why did he sound that way? What was wrong with him? “I need to call him back now to tell him how to get to you, though, so I can’t stay on the phone.”

“How can you tell him how to find me when I don’t know where I am?”

“You’re at the BART station, right? At the BART station in Concord?”

“No, I’m not. They wouldn’t let me stay there. They chased me away. And I’m so tired, Mom.” Fear rose in my chest. “Now I’m on the corner of, wait a minute, let me look at the street sign. Now I’m on the corner of Oakland Ave. and Atlantic.”

“Okay. Good. The corner of Oakland Ave. and Atlantic. We can look that up,” I looked at Karen, who immediately began manipulating her magic map machine. “Listen, Eddy. Don’t walk around any more. Stay where you are. Dad won’t be able to find you if you keep moving. What’s on the corner there? Do you see any buildings around you? Is there a place you can sit down and rest?”

“Yeah. There’s some kind of church here, with some steps.”

“Okay, good. Perfect. Why don’t you sit down on the steps in front of the church? You can go ahead and fall asleep there, if you need to. I’ll tell Dad where you are. He’s not far away. He’ll be there soon to get you.”

“Okay, Mom,” he sounded relieved and on the verge of sleep. “Thank you.” He hung up.

“They chased him away from the BART station!” I turned to Karen. “I have no idea what kind of neighborhood he’s in. And I don’t like the way he’s talking. He sounds disoriented.”

“Okay. Calm down. I put those street names into the system. Here are the directions you need to give to Larry.” I called him quickly.

“Hello?”

“We’ve got the information.”

“That’s okay. I think I’ve found it. I’m in front of the BART station now. But I don’t see him.”

“He just called. He’s not there anymore. He’s a few blocks south. At the corner of Oakland Ave. and Atlantic.

“Okay. Wait a minute. I see Oakland Ave. I’m turning now.”

“He’s sitting on the steps in front of a church. He might be sleeping. Do you see him there? Do you see a church?”

“All right. I see a church. SHIT! Here comes a policeman. He’s flashing his lights at me! I have to go.” Larry hung up and Karen and I were left in the dark, sitting silently for a few moments before we walked back into the house. We waited for several minutes on one couch together, but no one called back.

“I wonder what the police were doing there? I hope Eddy didn’t do anything wrong. I hope he’s not getting arrested!”

“Well, let’s hope not.”

After 45 minutes passed, I made another phone call. I didn’t want to interrupt Larry in conversation with a policeman, but I couldn’t wait any longer to hear news. Larry answered on the first ring.

“What’s going on?” I shouted frantically.

“We’re on our way home.”

“Thank God,” I relaxed and nodded at Karen. “How’s Eddy? What happened with the policeman?”

“Oh, nothing. He was just wondering if I needed help.”

“Why didn’t you call me back to tell me?! I’ve been sittinghere and worrying about you both all this time!”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think of it.”

“You didn’t think of it?! Jesus Christ! You get me out of bed in the middle of the night for a big emergency, and after Karen and I run around like madwomen to give you everything you ask for, you don’t even bother to call me back and tell me you’re okay!”

“I’m sorry!” he shouted back. “I didn’t think of it! Look, my cell phone is dying. I have to go.”

“Fine. That’s just great. I’ll call you at home in the morning.”

“Okay.”

Once the crisis was over, there was nothing left to do but go back to bed, after taking a few minutes to disparage the general inconsideration of men. Karen had been sleeping on the couch in the living room. I was on the double bed in the bedroom, with the door open between the two rooms. “Are you sure you don’t want to sleep in the bed with me? It’s probably more comfortable.” I asked.

“No. I’m fine. Let’s get some rest.” Karen turned out the light.

In the morning, Larry reported that Eddy was on the train to Santa Cruz.

“Well that’s good. He’s only a day late. So what happened last night? How did he manage to fall asleep on the BART train?”

“I’m not sure. He called me at around five o’clock yesterday and asked me to drop everything and come pick him up at the co-op in Berkeley. He said he was getting kicked out and had to leave right then.”

“Kicked out? Why?”

“He didn’t tell me. But he said he had to leave right away, and he had a lot of stuff to carry, so I had to come and get him in the car. I told him hell no. I wasn’t coming that second. It was five o’clock and the commute traffic would have been terrible. I told him to store his stuff and come home on BART with just what he could carry, that I’d be willing to go pick up the rest of the stuff with him this weekend.”

“That sounds reasonable.”

“Yeah. I thought so, too. And he said okay, but he never showed up. The next thing I knew, it was midnight and he was calling me on the phone, waking me up out of a sound sleep, crying, telling me he’d gotten kicked off of BART and had no idea where he was.”

“That doesn’t sound good. Now I’m more worried. What’s wrong with him? I wonder why he got kicked out of the co-op? That’s also a drag, because Rose’s planning to move there in the fall. I hope he didn’t alienate everyone in the house. How is he sounding?”

“I don’t know. All right, I guess. He just slept in the car last night, and then this morning when I was getting ready for work he told me he was going to Santa Cruz. We didn’t talk much.”

“You didn’t ask him why he got kicked out of the co-op?”

“I asked, but he gave me some kind of bullshit answer. I don’t remember exactly.” Larry sounded exhausted.

“Okay. I’ll let you go. Do you have any idea when he was going to get on the train to Santa Cruz? When he might be showing up here?”

“Not really. He told me he was going. But when I left for work, he was sitting at the kitchen table having a bowl of cereal. Then he asked for the train fare.”

“Okay. I’ll let you get back to work. Maybe I’ll call you later if I need to, after he shows up and I talk to him.”

“Okay.”

“Or maybe I’ll just wait until I see you tomorrow. You are still coming down tomorrow…right?”

“I don’t know. I’m not really looking forward to it.”

“You have to come! You promised. Remember? I’ve got only two more weekends before the operation. You said you’d come to the beach this one time, just to please me.”

“Yeah, I know. Okay. I’ll be there in the afternoon, I guess. I’m thinking of bringing my new bike on the train.”

“You don’t want to drive the car?”

“No.”

“You don’t want to come in the morning?”

“Not really.”

“Okay. I’ll see you when you get here.”

After the phone call with Larry, Karen and I kept ourselves occupied until close to dinner time, when Eddy finally walked through the back door. He entered quietly, without animation, his face deep beneath the hood of his sweatshirt.

“Hi Eddy,” I said brightly, hoping to draw him out. I rose briskly from the table and approached him in the long, narrow aisle that comprised the kitchen, effectively trapping him in front of the stove.

“Hi, Mom,” he said flatly, giving me a desultory hug.

“You’re finally here!” I held his shoulders and tried to look into his face. “We’re glad. We’ve been waiting a long time! Boy, what a night you must have had last night. Are you tired?”

“No. Not really. But I don’t want to talk right now.” He looked at me dully. I smelled a whiff of pot. He maneuvered around me and began to walk away.

“You don’t want to talk now?” I asked. “Well that’s really a bummer, Edward, because I have a lot of things I want to talk to you about. For one thing, I’ve been waiting here for you to show up for two days now, so I’m a little curious about what happened with that. Why didn’t you come earlier or answer my phone calls?” My voice rose in irritation in spite of my efforts to control it. “Then last night, we all had to get up in the middle of the night to deal with your BART crisis, so I’m thinking you owe me a little something there too — a little bit of explanation.”

Eddy didn’t answer, but continued walking through the living room and into the bedroom, where he sat down on the double bed and stared straight ahead with glassy eyes. I stood in the doorway and tried vainly to get his attention. Karen sat silently on the big couch in the living room, out of the line of fire.

“Dad said you got kicked out of the co-op yesterday. What was that all about? What happened there?”

“I don’t know,” he said, gazing past me at the wall. “What do you think happened?”

“What do I think happened? How the hell would I know? Listen Eddy, I’m asking you a simple question. Just give me a straight answer. What did you do at the co-op that made them kick you out?”

“Oh, not much,” he turned his half-lidded eyes towards me sullenly. “The guy I was rooming with didn’t like the way I was talking.”

I couldn’t help snorting sarcastically. “Gee. I think I can understand his point of view. Was it anything like the way you’re talking to me now?”

“I don’t know. How am I talking to you now?”

“Uh…by not saying anything. By walking away from me when I’m talking to you. By not answering my questions. By deflecting every question I ask you with a question of your own!”

Eddy said nothing, and I realized my rant was having no effect. I made a conscious effort to calm down. “But seriously, Eddy, did he really kick you out just because of the way you were talking?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just made him feel uncomfortable or something.”

“How so?” I tried to picture the scene at the co-op. Had Eddy been babbling incoherently? Had he been following his roommate around and haranguing him?

“I think he thought I was trying to convert him or something.”

“Convert him to what?”

“Oh, you know,” he began to smile inanely.

“No, I don’t know, Edward,” I felt my fear and anxiety rising again. “What are you talking about?”

“What do you think I’m talking about?”

“Edward, stop FUCKING with me! I’m just asking you what happened! Why can’t you give me a straight answer? You aren’t the only one that matters, you know. Rose is supposed to move into John Muir for the fall semester. Did you do anything that they will hold against her?”

“Yeah,” he considered the question, smiling to himself. “Maybe some of the people there will be a little wary of meeting my sister.” He nodded and grinned at me again.

“Why are you SMILING?! Does that make you HAPPY?! So it’s not enough that you have to fuck up your own life. It’s not enough that you have to run your father and me all over town in the middle of the night, making us crazy with worry about what’s going on, now you have to go and fuck things up for your sister, too?!?!”

“That’s good Mom,” he answered softly, smiling and looking directly at me for the first time. The crazier I was becoming, the happier he seemed. “You’re saying something real now. I couldn’t talk to you before because it was just bullshit.”

“Bullshit? Bullshit?! Who the hell are you to decide if what I’m saying is real?!” I shouted. “Don’t patronize me!”

“I like it when you’re real, Mom. Keep going,” he smiled more broadly and made a circular, beckoning gesture with his hand. “Keep going…”

“FUCK YOU Edward!” I shrieked, tears leaping from my eyes. “Why does my getting upset make you happy? Is that your goal in life? Is that your deepest desire — to upset me?”

“There’s nothing wrong with crying. It’s good for you.”

“I don’t WANT to cry! Jesus Christ — you’re manipulating me! You come here and haven’t got a thing to say to me until I start crying, then all of a sudden you’re cheerful and ready to talk. Well, fuck you, Edward. I’m not playing this game anymore. I’m finished.” I whirled out of the room and tried to pull the flimsy door closed behind me, but it got stuck on the over thick carpet.

Karen got up from the couch and went in to talk to Eddy.

“That’s fine,” I thought to myself. “Let her try to get some sense out of him.”

As the minutes passed, and the two of them murmured quietly together behind the closed door, I felt excluded, and a bit idiotic, but there was no way I was going to re-enter that room. Instead, I lay alone on the couch in the living room and tried to understand what was making me so upset.

I thought back to the summer my father had flipped out in Santa Cruz, just a few blocks from here, and was put in the local hospital where they diagnosed him as paranoid schizophrenic manic-depressive. (Who knew you could be all four at once?) Dad never forgave my mother for calling the police that day. But she had to. He had locked himself in the pantry and refused to come out; placed random items on the table in the kitchen in precise positions from which they couldn’t be moved; forced Francine and her girlfriend to sit in specific spots on the floor for over an hour — not even letting them get up to go to the bathroom, since their positions were holding together the fabric of the universe.

Was the same thing happening now? Did Eddy imagine that he was somehow in control of the universe? Was he having a psychotic break?

I was worried about Eddy, deeply worried. But beneath my fear was anger. Because it seemed to me that he was in control of his experience — that he was playing, experimenting, taking unnecessary risks. I thought of the marijuana I’d smelled when he arrived. Eddy didn’t seem so much the victim of the mental illness that was occupying his brain, but its perpetrator.

Just as he had done for most of his life, Eddy was upsetting people, triggering a reaction, and it seemed to me that he was doing it for his own amusement. But I didn’t want to be a pawn in his game.

That was the seventeenth chapter of my novel, Count All This. To continue, follow the free chapter links below or buy a digital copy of the whole book on Amazon, where leaving a rating or review will help others find my story.

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