Someone should have saved him from that hell, but everyone turned their backs on the trailer trash Rebecca and her doomed child—including his father, who left one day to go to the liquor store and never returned, leaving a helpless child in the hands of a junkie.
Alex rarely spoke about those years with his mother, but sometimes in the night when he couldn’t sleep, he would recall a memory that refused to be forgotten. He would share bits and pieces of the tragedy that was his childhood controlled by a woman who surrendered her soul to drugs and sentenced her only child to a similar fate.
During one sleepless night when Alex was fourteen, he told Leah the story of the first time he tried heroin. He had only been three years old. His mother had been his dealer.
My mother would drag me with her to see her dealers. She would sometimes leave me alone outside on the stoop while she disappeared for hours. This one day, I decided I would entertain myself. I would climb a tree near the apartment building where my mom would often go to meet her pimp. It was much too high for me and I knew she would be angry, but it didn’t matter. Her anger was better than her indifference.
I wasn’t supervised and even if I was, she didn’t care about what I did. I really wanted her to care, but she and her friends were all too busy sharing needles and snorting an array of powders. I didn’t understand what they were doing, but I knew whenever my mother used that needle, she was different. She would go from loving and caring to cold and distant. One minute she would protect me fiercely and the next she didn’t care if anything happened to me. I wanted her attention and I thought maybe if I did something silly like climb the tree, she would care about me again.
Alone and restless, I lofted my small body up that tree, but on the way down, I lost my balance and fell hard, shattering my elbow. I screamed. The pain was intense. I waited and yelled—as usual, no one was there to hear my call. I pulled myself up, holding my broken left arm against my side, and I slowly walked inside the apartment.
I searched for my mommy, but I couldn’t see past the cloud of smoke that engulfed the room. I couldn’t breathe. The pain was overwhelming and my lungs were burning. I cried out for her, but I still couldn’t see. There were sounds and smells and that smoke, but I couldn’t find my mom. I just kept crying for her. I fell to the ground and I just kept calling her name. “Mommy, mommy, mommy.” I yelled over and over again until my throat was so raw that I could no longer hear my own screams.
I just closed my eyes and hoped this would end. It did end. She finally found me and held me, and for a moment I felt loved and safe. For one second, I forgot the pain and just felt secure in my mother’s arms. That’s where I always wanted to be. I looked up in her eyes and I felt that glimmer of hope that I had my mother. I had her love, but I didn’t.
So quickly that moment ended. One of her friends tied a band on my arm and she held me still as he stuck a needle in my right arm. I screamed, but my mother put her hand over my mouth and told me it would be okay. The pain would go away. It did go away, and so did my chance at a normal life. That was my first taste and for all my life I would crave more.
Alex nearly died that night. His fragile body was unable to handle the power of that drug. He overdosed and his mother had enough lucidity to get him to the hospital. That was the last day he ever spent with Rebecca Armstrong. She was arrested for child endangerment and, during her imprisonment, they found out she was involved in several robberies with her drug-using friends. One of those robberies had resulted in the death of convenience store owner. Rebecca did not pull the trigger, but she was guilty of felony murder regardless and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. She was barely twenty years old but her life was already over and Alex’s was forever damaged.
Alex was given a second chance at life, or rather a third. He had escaped the heroin death clutch again, but how many chances would he have before it finally caught up with him?
He had survived so many years without drugs. Despite the pain he endured at his various foster homes, he had stayed clean and then one day it all fell apart thanks to a small green pill: oxycontin.
Always the adventurer, Alex was hanging out with some friends he had met in a group home several years prior. Leah had hated those guys, but he felt comforted by them as they grew up in similar dysfunctional circumstances. They could relate to him in way she could not. Although she tried to be supportive, she knew those guys were dangerous and would lure Alex into trouble. They knew how to feed on Alex’s reckless side and they would encourage him to take stupid risks. Alex would gladly oblige. They gave him acceptance, and he craved it.
They enticed him to do some tricks on their bikes as if they were supercross champions. Unfortunately Alex, riding without a helmet, landed hard on his back. He shattered his collarbone and damaged several discs in his back. Leah could never forget that day, seeing him in the hospital all bandaged and bruised. She thought he would die. So many times he had tempted death and escaped—but this time would be the last, she had feared. Her prayers were answered, though, and he survived yet again, but not without considerable pain and rehabilitation.
The doctors were unaware of his history with heroin and prescribed him oxycontin. One taste of that drug awoke Alex’s addictive tendencies. Just like that, the years of fighting the cravings had come to an abrupt end. Oxycontin was his welcome back into the world of narcotics and he embraced it, and until this moment hadn’t looked back.
When his oxy ran out, he found heroin again and the two had been inseparable for the last six years. He tried to hide it from her, and for a while it worked. Leah noticed the subtle changes in his personality, but she made excuses for his behavior, not wanting to accept the truth. It was the pain he would always battle thanks to the biking accident, or it was the stress of his childhood. It was anything but drugs. Anything but addiction. She couldn’t accept that the drugs had won after all those years of fighting.
But denial could not erase the track marks on his arms or the stash of needles she found in his bedroom. She sat on the floor holding those needles and crying as the truth sank in and her denial faded. Alex found her there. He at first tried to deny it, but then he acknowledged the awful truth. He tried to convince her he had it under control, but she knew then he was the one under heroin’s control, and there was nothing she could do to change it and there still wasn’t anything she could do.
She just had to hope he learned something from those two weeks in rehab. Maybe this could be the start of his healing.
Is that my hope talking or just my old friend denial?
“Where do we go from here?” she asked.
“It’s time for me to get my life back. That starts with getting a job. I need to help pay some of the bills around here. I can’t stand you working two jobs while I sit here. I’m going to take some of this burden off of you, babe. You’ve been dealing with too much on your own for too long. I gotta step up and be the man you deserve.”
She could see the determination in his eyes and she knew he meant the words he said. She wanted to trust him, trust in him, but her mind was telling her to ignore her heart and embrace the facts. Two weeks was not enough time.
She dismissed those negative thoughts. “Just take care of yourself Alex, please. Go to meetings or whatever you need to do to stay clean. Don’t overwhelm yourself trying to do too much too soon.”
She read enough books to know that the success rate of rehab was not high the first time around, especially with heroin addiction. Alex was more likely to fall off the wagon than to succeed, but if she supported him and believed in him maybe that could give him the push he needed to stay sober.
“I’m not going to fail, Leah. I’m tired of failing. All that failure has led to empty dreams and broken promises. The good thing is that I am young enough to fix it. It’s not too late for me. I can’t let it be too late for me. I can’t let her win. I can’t let her know that she destroyed me.”
Rebecca. For all his life, Alex had fought to prove that he was not his mother’s son and in trying to escape her, he ended up following her lead.
Leah wished she could get him to see that this was not about Rebecca. She didn’t control him or his life, but she did control a part of his mind. He was obsessed with her and, until he dealt with her one way or the other, she would always be this constant negative presence dragging him down. Why couldn’t he just let her go? Because she was his mother and as much as he hated her, he still loved her.
“You need to forget about her, Alex. You’ve survived her. She’s the one rotting away in prison.” Leah caressed his face, focusing his attention on her and not the memories that would forever haunt him. “She can’t hurt you anymore. She can’t hurt us unless you let her. You’re free of her.” Despite her words, she could see in his eyes he was as imprisoned by his memories of her as the bars that kept her locked away from society. Alex had also been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole—a life of haunting memories of the mother who scarred him to his soul.
They spent several more hours talking and making plans. Alex had more energy than he had shown in years. Leah couldn’t help but feel his excitement, his enthusiasm, but unlike him she was completely exhausted. Her bed was beckoning her, and her body gave her no choice but to heed its call. Alex was too wired to sleep, so she went to bed alone but he joined her a few hours later awakening her from her glorious slumber.
There were worse ways to wake up than to be kissed all over until her heated body overflowed with desire for the only man who could ever ignite the sexual flame inside her. Just like that, her exhaustion was replaced with passion as she tried to rip off Alex’s shirt. Frustrated with her own weakness, she nearly cried from disappointment as she was unable to free him of his clothes.
“For now on, you only wear button-down shirts, or rather you should just stop wearing shirts.”
Alex chuckled as he sat up and slowly removed his shirt. “What about pants? Should I throw them all away?” He stood on the bed and slowly slid his jeans and briefs off.
“We could give them to charity. Not everyone is equipped to walk around naked,” she suggested as she licked her lips and stared at his body bathed in the moonlight.
“You don’t mind other women seeing me naked?”
“They can look, but they can’t touch. I kind of like the idea of every woman ogling you and being jealous because you’re mine, all mine. Always.”
“I am yours always Leah, as long as you will have me.”
He looked so serious suddenly, and she just wanted to erase the worry in his eyes. As much as they had been through, he should feel more secure—she would never leave—but there was so much doubt in his face. Her words were not enough. Maybe she could show him. Allow her love for him to demonstrate her commitment to him.
“Sounds like we have a date with eternity, then.” She reached for him and he collapsed on top of her. She pushed him on his back and straddled him. He let her take control, completely surrendering himself to her.
She rode him until they both exploded from the passion that had built up from the weeks apart. She crumbled into his arms, sprawled out on his chest like a blanket. He held her tight as she buried herself in the safety of his warmth.
“Forgive me,” he whispered as he kissed the top of her head.
“There’s nothing to forgive.” He sighed and Leah lifted her head up and tilted his chin so that his eyes were forced to meet hers. “There’s nothing to forgive, Alex” she repeated. “It’s time we bury the pain of the past and only remember the good times that brought us together and that have kept us together since we were babies. It’s time we move on and I want nothing more than to move on with you.”
She kissed him tenderly, pouring all her love for him into that kiss. Finally he surrendered and kissed her back. She broke the kiss and rested her head on his chest. The steady beat of it lulling her to sleep. Before she faded, she heard Alex’s gentle, soft voice say, “I’m sorry, Leah.”
II
The next few weeks went by so fast that Leah could hardly remember what day it was or even what month. She was running on fumes, churning out article after article to Marcus’ delight. Her boss may have pleased with her enthusiasm for her work, but Alex was another story. At times he seemed to resent the hours she spent at work and away from him. She hated the time apart as well, but her passion for writing was stronger than ever and she thirsted for the opportunity to challenge her mind and create something new, something memorable.
So often she tried to explain her love of words to Alex. In many ways, he did understand. He used to love art as much as she loved to write. She hoped one day when she wrote a children’s book, he would illustrate it and bring her characters to life. This would be something special they could create together. Another gift to bond them closer, yet that dream seemed so remote now. Alex hadn’t painted or drawn anything in years. His love of art took a backseat to his need for heroin. The few beautiful paintings he completed he sold for drugs. Eventually he sold all his equipment as well. Nothing mattered to him but his white powdered friend.
Leah sighed as she slammed her breakfast dishes in the sink, shattering a mug. She was trying so hard to escape the memories of the havoc of Alex’s addiction, but it still haunted her. She wanted to move on, but part of her was waiting, even expecting, Alex’s inescapable friend to lull him back into a world of drugs and ruin their lives once more.
She wanted to believe he could beat this, but this nagging part of her kept waiting for him to fail. She hated herself for feeling this way. For doubting him when he needed her faith in him, but fourteen days could not be enough. He should have stayed the whole time.
She watched him closely for weeks, looking for any sign of a relapse, but so far he was either maintaining his sobriety or hiding his failure well. She hoped for the former, but feared for the latter.