Given time, all the disembodied voices in every dream fade, and the cosmos of sharp edges and hard surfaces reemerges. The inevitable is realized, which in turn becomes a history of hard facts and bitter epilogue. Thus it is with Lucille and all those who inhabited her ethereal world.
Clyde is currently serving an eighteen-year term in state prison. Fairly early in his sentence, after having been denied access to his laboratory – and its products – for several contiguous months, he instructed his lawyer to contact my lawyer and tell her that he thinks of me as his brother. He never intended to hurt me.
I happened to be at my lawyer’s office when Clyde’s idiotic message came through. The television was tuned to a local newscast, and on the screen was a picture of a home in a Houston suburb with a pillar of flame rising through the roof. There, parked on the street in front of the house, was Lucille’s car. I interrupted my lawyer and asked her to turn up the volume. Just as I suspected, the story concerned a methamphetamine lab explosion. No deaths were reported, but there were several severe burn injuries. Two neighboring homes were also lost before the inferno could be put out.
So far, Lucille has avoided long-term incarceration, always keeping herself one step ahead of the law. This is ironic to me, as I know that she has had DUI convictions in both 2005 and 2006, a conviction for driving with a suspended license in 2006 (all misdemeanors), and a felony conviction for possession of a controlled substance by fraud in 2006. This is the second felony conviction for this offense; the first was in 1998, with the conviction having been deferred in March, 1999. I figure that if it was I who had been nailed so frequently, and for such serious offenses, I’d probably be doing the hot squats in Huntsville State Prison by now, but Lucille seems to lead a life that is simultaneously charmed and doomed. Her life must be a living hell, but frankly I am far beyond the point of caring. Her existence is still just one lie after another, and I have foolishly jumped to save her on too many occasions, only to learn that the problems she faced were inevitably the direct result of her own behavior. Apparently she is not aware that all of her various arrests and convictions are public records.
Although Lucille is required to keep her address current with the court, she doesn’t, so I don’t know exactly where she lives, though I know it is somewhere in the Houston area. She is also supposed to pay child support, but she doesn’t do that either, and I don’t think it’s worth the hassle to pursue the payment, since it would never be forthcoming, anyway.
From time to time, she would ask to see Carter alone, and I would try to be as reasonable as possible in accommodating her. When she would ask, I would dutifully set up the visitation through a supervised parental visitation program sponsored by the state. Sometimes Lucille would keep her appointments, but usually not. In the past two years Lucille has seen Carter less than a dozen times; often she goes months without seeing him or calling to request a visit. When she does call, she always claims to be suffering from some tragic illness. In the few phone conversations I’ve had with her, she has told me she had ovarian cancer, bone cancer, pneumonia, lung cancer, and unexplained seizures (she claims she lost her driver’s license due to these “seizures”). She has spent at least three weeks on life support due to some mystery illness. I haven’t seen her in person in over two years now, as the exchange for visitation is handled by Carter’s nanny. However, according to the nanny’s description, Lucille looks very old and pale, and has trouble speaking and generally communicating. The deeds of the men in her life – and her complicity in those deeds – are casting their final ruin.
One thing that I do notice is that she doesn’t have a clear recollection of the events of the last eight to ten years. One Christmas Eve, she called to talk to Carter, and in her sobbing tone asked me to buy her a car. On numerous occasions, she has discussed getting together for lunch to talk about Carter and his school work, but somehow, the meeting never occurs. Other times, she will call me and tell me that I have broken her heart, and that she cannot believe how horribly I have treated her. I am always tempted to remind her that it was she who stole my money, slept with my ranch hand, manufactured meth on our home property, attempted to kill me, and tried to have me arrested on made-up charges.
I could add that, adding insult to injury, I was the one who was, on some level, automatically assumed to be the “bad guy,” not only during the divorce but even today, as a single father. As I noted earlier, the family courts still reflect society’s assumption that the mother should be the custodial parent, certain notorious filicidal mothers-of-the-year notwithstanding. The bias still raises its head, sometimes in infuriating ways.
Recently my son wanted to have a sleepover with a couple of his school buddies, and we had it all planned. His friends had given their RSVPs, and Carter was excited. At the last minute, however, there was a change of venue; apparently the mother of one of the children had found out that Carter lived with his dad, with no female in residence. Instant nightmare visions of Michael Jackson must have ensued. (I am far from the only man faced with this prejudice; in another case, a little girl of my son’s acquaintance wanted to attend a slumber party at the home of one of her friends; some of the mothers refused to let their daughters go when they found out that the mother of the little hostess lived with a man. That the man happened to be the mother’s husband, and that they were in fact a happily married couple – admittedly a foreign concept to many folks today – didn’t faze the all-men-are-potential-pedophiles crowd. And here we have yet another topic worthy of a whole other book.)
The only thing that stills my tongue, when faced with Lucille’s accusations against me, is the realization that my words wouldn’t make a dent. I can’t see how it would help the situation to bring up these things to someone who is obviously so mentally ill that logic and reason have long since abandoned her. Besides, it’s water under the bridge, and hanging on to that past pain would serve no purpose beyond keeping the pain alive.
Colette, Clyde’s ex, found a man who didn’t attend church regularly, but neither did he have a criminal record. She said all she was looking for any more was someone good – not perfect, not evil – just good. The last time I spoke with her, she was happy with the return of romance in her life, but told me that from time to time, she gets a letter from Clyde. In them, he tells Colette that he still thinks of her as his wife, and that he never intended to hurt her. She, however, is even less likely to buy his lines than I was.
Damien now lives with extended family, as his grandmother passed away in the spring of 2003. Carter too is happy and healthy, despite the “disadvantage” of living in a single-parent household in which the father is the parent. He began talking at a precociously young age, and in the days before the sporadic visitations he often asked about his mother. Did he have one? Where was she? Who was she? My answers were always vague, and fell far short of satisfying his curiosity. Often he would ask me, “What happened to her?”
“Well…” Then my mind would always set to work. How much could he understand? How much should he have to understand?
Maybe, I thought, the story should finally be told – not just to help Carter and me make sense of our lives, but also, perhaps to help others in similar situations make sense of theirs. When the life that I had imagined to be so ideal first began unraveling, I often felt as if I were truly alone, and in many ways I suppose I was. In the years since, I’ve come to know that my story, in essence if not in details, is not unique. Notwithstanding the contrarian view (no doubt based partly on wishful thinking) that the methamphetamine problem has been greatly exaggerated, the population of Crazy Town is not shrinking. If providing education is the key to stemming this growth somewhat, then I like to think I am doing my small part. As for my personal story, which, like the broader history, is still unfolding, I feel I can finally speak of the nightmare without hatred in my voice or a tear in my eye. There have been too many tears already.