Authors: Joyce Maynard
Fourteen years old, he’s back at juvenile detention for holding a knife up to a teacher. Out a few weeks, they have him back for breaking and entering. Then he had what you might call a quiet stretch. That’s when Charlene, my cousin’s girl, announces she’s expecting, and Russell done it. Who knows? The baby come out good anyways, but hasn’t been no baby since that Crystal that my boy wanted to hold on to. He’s got a look in his eyes now, that boy, like nothing would scare him. I said that to him one time. “Why should I lose sleep over nothing?” he says to me. “What’s the worst a person could do to me? Kill me, and alls you do is save me the trouble.” Life sucks, and then you die. That’s his what you call philosophy, he told me one time.
You ask me, how could he do it? Answer’s simple. She was going to have someone kill her old man anyways, it was just a matter of who. If Russell didn’t hold the guy down, somebody else would, and then it would of been them got the cash. So if it’s going to happen anyways, why not take advantage?
You want to know if I’m wailing in my bed over this here Suzanne Maretto business, the answer is I cried my last tears a long time ago. Maybe he done it, maybe he didn’t. If he didn’t do this, it’s only on account of he was doing something else. I knew a long time ago I wasn’t likely to see that boy grow old. Or if I did, the only reason would be they had him locked up someplace out of trouble. So now maybe I’ll get to see him grow old after all.
O
N THE NEWS THEY’RE
calling my son an animal. “Teenage thrill killer,” the District Attorney called him. But the thing that really got me was when they had some psychologist on, saying what can you expect. The kind of homes these kids came from. And how they weren’t raised with any values or morals. “I mean, these boys aren’t exactly Vanderbilts,” he says. “The kind of homes they come from, they didn’t even have indoor plumbing.” Like there’s some connection between having a flush on your toilet and getting into Heaven.
I did the best I could with my son Jimmy. Just because a person doesn’t have some big bank roll don’t mean she doesn’t love her kid.
He was always a good boy too. Never complained if I couldn’t buy him a toy. Never cried. Never asked for much. Give him a pile of dirt and a spoon to dig and he was happy, just making mud. Just tell him not to expect much and he’ll never be disappointed, I figured. If you start building up their hopes to get some good job or go to trade school or something, all that happens is they’re mad when it doesn’t come true.
So my way was, never pretend something great is coming. Just because you blow out all the candles on your cake doesn’t mean your wish comes true. Jimmy grew up knowing those toys they advertised on TV weren’t for him, and neither were those beautiful girls they show in the magazines. A person has to be realistic. You try for too much, you just have further to fall.
It’s not like now’s the first time I heard people talking about what kind of home my kid comes from. All his life people have been telling him, one way or another, he got born with the wrong setup for anything good to ever happen in his life. It’s a free country? The sky’s the limit? Don’t make me laugh. This was a boy that you could’ve told his life story by the time he was six years old. Like that psychologist said, the kind of home he comes from, he was bound to get into trouble. And the ones that make it come true are the ones who keep saying that.
Basically, the only surprise ever came along in my boy’s life was this Suzanne Maretto woman taking an interest in him. To my boy it was like she was some fairy princess that comes sparkling down from the sky and touches his head with a fucking magic wand. Out of all the dumb kids in the entire world, she picked my boy Jimmy to screw with. You better believe he fell all over himself to please her. She was the first person he ever met that told him he might amount to something. Only trouble was, she was just handing him a line. She wasn’t just getting his dick up. It was his hopes.
Which only proves my point. Tell a boy like Jimmy that he’s got a shot at something good—I don’t care if it’s a goddam college education or a pretty blonde between the sheets—and you’re setting him up to get his heart broken. Which is what happened all right. It was like she took him into this candy store, showed him all the treats, let him taste a few, then locked him out, with his face pressed against the glass. He never knew what he was missing until he got it. Then it drove him crazy.
So now he’s locked away for life. He doesn’t even get a chance to have a skinny kid of his own, to mess up that kid’s life like I supposedly messed up his. But let me tell you this. Just because I don’t live in a big house, just because I don’t pull up to the state prison in a limousine. You think my heart aches any less?
U
P UNTIL NOW
I never wanted to mention this, because I wanted to spare Larry’s parents the pain. That, and of course you want to preserve a loved one’s memory. You want to see them remembered in a positive light. And not do anything to interfere with that.
But now that they’re coming up with these allegations suggesting I was involved in some way, I just don’t see that I have a choice anymore. I have to defend myself.
My husband had a drug problem. We’re talking cocaine. There—I’ve finally said it. I mean, he never would have been a wife beater if his head hadn’t been so messed up. But I don’t want to talk about that part. I want people to remember Larry the way he was before drugs messed him up.
He was already starting to get mixed up with drugs when I met him, only I was too innocent and naive to recognize the signs. Can you imagine me, the one who led our campus Just Say No crusade, hooking up with a coke addict? Well, it happened. Which just goes to show you how pervasive this drug problem is. How insidious a disease we have here, that an honest, upright, Eagle Scout kind of person like my husband could succumb to the temptation. I mean, if Larry could give in to cocaine, that tells me nobody’s out of danger. Not you. Not me. Not Tom Brokaw himself.
The way I’ve finally figured it out, Larry must’ve got involved with Jimmy and Russell while I was producing my documentary. Maybe he lost his original supplier. Maybe they were just able to get him a better deal than he was finding in the city. Whatever.
They started getting all chummy. Sure it’s true Russell’s car was parked outside my condo that night. And you know why? He was dealing drugs to my husband. Naturally Jimmy knows his way around our place, but not because of his crazy story about the two of us having an affair. The only illicit activity going on in my home was my husband, snorting powder up his nose.
I began to suspect something last fall. His lack of motivation, etcetera. The way he was letting himself go, and letting go of his goals to really make something of himself. That’s why I tried to befriend the boys—build up their trust, make them see they had to leave Larry alone. I was even foolish enough to appeal to their sense of kindness and decency. Told them I wouldn’t turn them in, if they would just stop supplying my husband. Finally I even managed to get Larry to admit what was going on.
It was a beautiful, beautiful moment between us. I told him I loved him more than ever, and I’d help him kick this thing. He told me how sorry he was that he let me down. He begged me to forgive him for the times he’d hit me, and of course I said I would. We were never closer than we were that night. He promised he’d go into a rehab program, right after our anniversary. I can still see him, crying in my arms like a baby. And Walter, our puppy, licking the tears from his face. Right then and there I vowed that I’d spend the rest of my life as a journalist doing everything in my power to inform and educate the American public about the terrible epidemic of drug abuse. Just as soon as I got my husband through this hell.
And you know, we would have made it too. Our love was that strong. Only Larry owed Jimmy and Russell a lot of money. We told them we’d do whatever it took to pay the money back—sell our car, refinance the condo, I’d take a second job, anything. But they were impatient. Plus of course, James had this fixation on me, and that just made him hate Larry more.
I think now they must have been threatening Larry for some time before, you know, that night. He just didn’t want me to worry, so he never let on. He felt guilty enough already. He figured he’d take care of it himself. Only they got to him first.
I hate to go public with all of this. Now, when Joe and Angela have already been through so much. They’ll deny it of course. Who wants to believe their son was a wife beater and a cocaine addict? But the time has come for the truth to be known. And if our story keeps just one young couple like us, with everything to live for, from making the same mistakes that Larry did, then maybe he won’t have died in vain.
So now maybe you’ll understand what I was talking about in those remarks I made to Lydia on that crazy tape the DA plans to use to build a case against me. Maybe I said some things that sounded pretty strange, but I was just trying to protect my husband’s name. Only now that they’re dragging mine through the mud, I have no choice but to let my story be heard.
S
O NOW THE CUNT
wants to make like Jimmy and me’s some big-time coke dealers. Don’t make me laugh.
I mean, let’s get this straight. You’re not talking to no Nancy Reagan here. Jimmy and me we lit up plenty of weed in our time. If some guy come up to me, said, “Hey, you want a snort?” would I say no? Can’t say I would.
But let me tell you, it don’t happen to guys like Jimmy and me. We’re strictly bargain basement users. A little grass. A lot of beer. Who had the bucks for coke?
Wait’ll my ma hears this about me being a big-time drug dealer. A businessman, like. Man she’ll be proud—her that never thought I’d amount to nothing, with a son that goes around selling cocaine to the white-collar crowd, wad of cash in my pocket, little briefcase maybe, to carry the stuff. Yeah, right. It’ll slay her.
Listen, I done a lot of stuff and I didn’t never say different. Sure I balled my cousin. Stole a rubber dispenser down at the Sunoco. And I helped off Larry Maretto, too. I never said I didn’t. But I wasn’t dealing no cocaine to the poor sucker. If you ask me, the only dangerous substance that guy was hooked on was Suzanne Maretto’s pussy.
A
LL YOUR LIFE YOU
try and protect your kids from pain, make everything perfect. They fall down, you kiss where they got hurt. Some kid at school has a birthday party and they don’t get invited, you take them out for an ice cream instead. Maybe they won’t win first prize in the twirling contest, you buy them a new Barbie doll. Or the whole goddam Barbie Dream House for that matter. That’s your job, to make it right again.
Always before, if a problem came up, I could fix it. Like the time they cut the budget for school buses to away games, and the cheerleaders were going to have to stay home. Suzanne never knew this, but I donated the five hundred bucks so she and the other girls could go cheer. If you could’ve seen their faces. I mean, how was I going to let her miss out on that, after all the work she put in on those splits?
I’m not saying she couldn’t get ahead on her own steam, mind you. Our Susie had the talent and the drive, you knew she’d make it no matter what. But it never hurts to have someone in your corner, helping things along. That was me. The way I look at it, a person should have everything they can going for them. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.
Take her nose, back when she was little. I’m not saying this was a Barbra Streisand-type situation. Only you knew, looking at her, that she was going to be a pretty girl. Who could be even prettier once a plastic surgeon got his hands on her. And knowing her aspirations in the television field, it only made sense to pursue that avenue, right? You did what you could. My wife and I were fortunate that we were in a position to make certain opportunities available to our kids. The work on her nose was one such instance.
God knows there were others. We kept a refrigerator in the rec room, filled with Cokes, snacks, and so on. They never had to ask, we just did it. Bought the kids a stereo, Ping-Pong table, the works. Just so we knew where they were. So we knew the kind of youngsters they were spending time with.
Suzanne wanted horseback riding lessons. No problem. Tap dance, gymnastics, modeling, same deal. Faye had her dermatologist, fifty bucks a shot, no questions asked. We got the kids their own TV set, their own phone. Took them to the Grand Canyon and our nation’s capital. You buy them braces, give them your charge card, keys to the car, the wedding a girl always dreams about. That’s what family life is all about, right? Making sure your kids get everything you missed.
With Faye you had to accept from pretty early on that she wasn’t going anyplace big. You had to take her the way she was and love her the best you could. But Suzanne was going places. You knew Suzanne was going to make you proud.
And now this. Listen, I’m not an idiot. I heard that tape. They may not allow the tape as evidence, but I heard it and I know what those words mean, although I never expected to hear them out of my daughter’s mouth, that’s for sure. And no matter what you think, it’s got to make you wonder.
You never mean to do it, but you find yourself thinking, Is it possible she did it? The same little girl that used to ride on the back of your golf cart and tell you when she grew up she was going to marry you?
And once you open the door to that doubt, I tell you, there’s no going back. You’re thinking about it constantly, thinking about how much you believed in this child, and now maybe it turns out she’s not the person you thought she was, or anything close.
Let me tell you. Once you get to the point of believing your precious daughter could have been involved in something like this, it’s hard to believe in much of anything anymore. Maybe the sky isn’t really blue. Maybe Japanese cars really are better than American. Maybe those people were right that said man never really walked on the moon, and the whole thing was just staged in some TV studio. If my little girl could say the words I heard on that tape the DA played, I guess I don’t believe in much of anything anymore. Nothing seems real, except the humiliation.