In the weeks after Michael’s release, he and I worked together, constantly, assembling the pieces of a possible life, as if doing a jigsaw puzzle. First we laid the job piece in. Then the piece with the school shape. If this new beginning was going to work, everything would have to nestle just so.
We both knew that. We both knew that the next necessary piece was a place to live. It was the chance for him to be an adult on his own, not to live with his mother. I also knew that it needed to be close to school or work. I was clear-eyed that the whole arrangement would take only if the three core pieces—home, work, school—joined perfectly, but the place needed to be cheap enough that Michael could manage it on his scant Sears wages. Each of us scoured the listings. Together, we drove by the addresses, made calls and appointments, and began to sort through our options.
And then we found the perfect place. On Ethel Avenue in Valley Glen, a few blocks north of the community college, someone was advertising a studio apartment in a converted garage behind a modest home. We phoned—I don’t remember which of us placed the call—and the studio was still available. They were prepared to show it to us. Michael practiced telling his story.
The home was impeccable, a modest white bungalow, typical of a certain vintage of Los Angeles, with a mid-torso-high white iron fence surrounding the house, broken up at each twenty feet by a whitewashed stucco column. White concrete had supplanted the front lawn so there was enough room to park two vehicles. Alongside the fence stood some small, neatly tended shrubs and rose bushes spraying white roses.
I went up to the house by myself. Two women met me at the door, a mother most likely in her sixties, and her daughter, in her thirties or forties. They were Latinas, or maybe Middle Eastern. For all of the outdoor brightness of the white house on its white concrete yard and pearly white roses, the inside was dark and cramped, though neat as a pin. Dressed in linen trousers with a black t-shirt and comfy sandals, I introduced myself.
I was a professor, I told them, and I was helping my cousin who had recently been released from prison. He had just enrolled at Los Angeles Valley College and gotten a job at Sears. I would be paying his deposit and guaranteeing his rent. He’d gone to prison as a young person and this was his second chance. He was ready for it. Were they willing to meet him and to let him tell his story?
They agreed, and this time I sat outside while Michael spoke to his prospective landlords. He could charm anyone with his bouncing gait and toothy, flashing grin. Finally, the three emerged, now with smiles on all their faces, and they took us around to the back to see the studio. It was whitewashed just as cleanly as the house. It had a hotplate, and an electric heater. Probably it wasn’t insulated. But it was clean and peaceful. Had it been for me, I could have imagined being comfortable there. And it was walking distance from the school.
Michael said, yes, he wanted it. We all shook hands in the gaze of the late afternoon sun. Since the day was nearly over, I agreed to bring a cashier’s check the following day. As we drove back to South Central, my mood was all melody. I imagined Michael felt the same. When those two women looked at us and said, yes, we could rent the studio, I experienced their act of trust and generosity as a gift beyond comprehension. I experience it equally so to this day.
So we had done it.
Little more than a month out and here was Michael, now with a driver’s license, a bank account, a library card, and a job. He was enrolled in college, with an affordable, convenient, clean, safe, and comfortable place to live. These were the concrete, material, nonillusory basics, a starter set for a life. We had established the realistic possibility of a future, even if Michael had had to move back to the asphalt jungle that is Los Angeles instead of going straight to a fire camp. We had begun a passage through the gates of horn, I was sure of it.
In my white BMW, I dropped him off in South Central and headed back to Hollywood, expecting to sleep soundly for the first time in a spell. But then Michael called. He wasn’t sure he should take the apartment. I felt a stone drop from a great height to the bottom of a well.
Why not, I asked?
He just wasn’t sure it felt right.
He couldn’t explain, he said. He just didn’t feel quite right about it.
I told him to sleep on it. We’d talk in the morning, I said.
Morning came, as it must, and I called Michael. He wanted the apartment, he said. Relieved, I headed off to do the necessary banking, and Michael headed off under yet another cloudless sky to his job at Sears. He called me at midday. Had I taken the check over yet, he wanted to know? I said I had not, because I had imagined picking him up after work so that we could do it together. He had, he said, changed his mind yet again.
He didn’t think he wanted the apartment after all.
“What?” I expostulated.
I was shocked. I peppered him with questions.
“What do you mean you don’t want the apartment? Michael, what on earth are you talking about?”
Michael responded that he wasn’t sure what it would be like if his associates came by.
From a remove, I recall that the word surprised me, but I didn’t ask him what he meant by “associates.” The purpose of the word, somehow, was to insist on his privacy, and it brought me up sharp. I didn’t understand all of that then. I just paused, sucked in my surprise, didn’t ask questions. I told him to go ahead and think about it some more. Disagreement was rare for us.
He called me a few hours later. He said he would take the apartment and that I should pick him up after work.
But then, just before we were to meet, he called again. “I’ve made up mind,” he said. “I don’t want the apartment.”
I was stunned. I could not imagine any possible grounds for walking away from a viable set of arrangements. And we had, I thought, developed all the details of the plan together, based on his desires and my advice. Michael had not given me any glimmer of a suggestion that he had hopes or fears that might derail the plans we were developing. Perhaps I wasn’t listening well enough, but I don’t think that’s it. I think he had finely honed his skills at seeming to be wholly present while also holding significant parts of himself out of view.
I’m sure we exchanged some sharp words. I must have asked some angry questions. But I don’t remember any of that last conversation other than his decisiveness.
What was his plan instead? I must have asked at least that much. His plan was to live with his mother and to ride the bus from there to Sears and from there to Los Angeles Valley Community College. This was a triangle of 8.6 x 9.8 x 21.9 miles. For someone who didn’t have a car. Through the worst of Los Angeles traffic.
It was clear, though, that there was nothing I could do. It was by now well into August. School would start soon. I would have incoming students to welcome, new faculty to orient, and budgets to plan. I bought him more khakis and button-down shirts, spent as much time with him as I could, and headed back to Chicago when I had to.
Over the course of that summer, though, I had decided to leave my job as dean. I would take up a less time-intensive research position in New Jersey. When I got back, the first task on my checklist was to tell the university’s provost and then the president.