John stayed in bed after I got up; I was certain he hadn’t slept any better than I had. He owned his own custom cabinetry business that had taken some hard knocks when the economy collapsed, which was why I worked sixty hours a week when I could. We usually did our morning routine together, but this morning was not like every other morning, and I wanted to let him sleep. I liked to go running before I woke Landon up, but with the night we’d had, that was out of the question.
I put on my bathrobe and peeked in on a sleeping Keisha before letting myself into Landon’s room across the hall. It was a mess, and I had to pick my way through basketball gear, dirty clothes, and who knew what else to get to his bed. I knew I should take an afternoon and help him clean it, but honestly, I just didn’t care that much. There were more important things than clean bedrooms.
“Hey, buddy,” I said, grabbing his foot and giving it a shake. He grunted and shifted beneath the comforter.
“What do you want for breakfast?”
“Pancakes,” he said from the head of the bed as he blinked his chocolate-brown eyes—the same color as John’s and Keisha’s eyes—at me. As a baby, he’d had the most beautiful, bright blond curls. I let them grow long until people kept mistaking him for a girl, despite his tractor T-shirts and camouflage pants. Now I wanted his hair short and he wanted it long, which I thought looked horrible. Funny how times changed.
“Okay, get in the shower and I’ll make pancakes.” I picked my way to the door, then turned back to give a second wake-up call before I left the room. “Landon.”
“I know,” he said, finally sitting up.
I flipped on his light to keep him from falling back into bed, then headed to the kitchen, where I took a minute to call into work. I felt horrible about missing work—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d given the office such short notice about my schedule—but I had to keep an eye on Keisha today. The woman in the staffing office was professional about my call and said she’d find someone to fill in. Then I grabbed the pancake mix and turned on the griddle.
Over breakfast I told Landon about Keisha. He ate without looking up from his plate, making it impossible to read his reaction.
“So, what do you think?” I finally asked.
He glanced up and finished the bite he was chewing. “I don’t know,” he said with a shrug.
“Are you okay with this?”
“I guess.”
I let out a breath and took a drink of milk before going back to my own pancakes. Keisha had doted on Landon when he was little, but in recent years, he’d become sensitive to the drama Keisha always brought with her. He also struggled with having to share the attention, but I thought that was good for him. My biggest fear about having only one child was that he’d be spoiled and expect to be in the spotlight all the time.
I considered what John had said about how Keisha’s staying here would be bad for Landon. But they were both our children. They both needed us. Could we really be expected to choose one over the other?
John went to work at ten, and he called twice to see how Keisha was doing. She slept the whole day—literally. I woke her up every two hours and made her drink a glass of water, knowing dehydration would make the detox process worse, but then she’d lay back down and fall asleep again each time. I knew there were medications that could help with the detox process, but when I offered anything, she said she was okay.
At almost ten o’clock that night, just after putting Landon to bed, John and I woke her up enough for her to eat some red beans and rice I’d cooked for dinner. As soon as she finished, though, she went right back to bed, which I assured John was okay. I’d spent the day trolling the Internet and making sure I knew what to look for and what was considered normal for someone coming off a binge. If I knew what she’d been taking, I could have done more specific research, but she hadn’t been awake enough for me to ask, and so I assumed she’d been doing what she’d done in the past—oxycodone, mostly, which she snorted for a quicker high than she’d get from taking it orally.
The information I found about oxycodone withdrawal said the worst symptoms could include panic attacks, depression, and nausea. While Keisha had experienced some of those in the past, she didn’t seem to be experiencing them now. But it was the last item on the list—insomnia—that made me think that she had probably stopped using the really hard drugs. I glanced down the hall to the guest room where Keisha—clearly not suffering from insomnia—was sleeping off what must just be exhaustion and tension from the stress of the last two weeks.
I couldn’t miss work two days in a row, so on Friday I worked my usual ten-hour shift, calling the house every two hours. I’d put the phone by Keisha’s bed so she’d be sure to answer it. She answered each time I called, and she got up after I came home. She was back in bed by ten, but she looked better and said she felt better too. The next morning, she got up around nine o’clock, showered, and asked me to make stuffed french toast for breakfast. I couldn’t make it fast enough, and the four of us had a nice Saturday morning brunch together.
Landon had a basketball game at noon so we loaded up and headed toward the rec center. I’d planned to go in and watch the game—John and I were big believers in parental presence—but Keisha and I stayed in the car and talked for over an hour instead. She told me about how great rehab had been, but that when she’d returned to her mother’s house, it was just too hard. Dani had had episodes of drinking problems throughout her life, and I knew her current live-in boyfriend sometimes smoked pot in the garage. Keisha told me she’d tried to stay strong, but after a few weeks the tension of trying to establish a new life got the best of her. She started drinking here and there—though no one noticed—then she found an old stash of crushed narcotics in her room. It was all downhill from there.
“They said over and over in rehab that negative energy was the enemy of wellness. Do you know how bad the energy is in that apartment? Stifling. Mom’s as big a mess as she’s ever been. She’s so done with parenthood.”
“Didn’t you have follow-up care after getting out of rehab?” I asked, knowing full well that she’d been set up with outpatient therapy.
She looked at her tiny hands in her lap. “It was all the way in Irvine, and I only made it to one appointment.”
“And your antidepressants?”
“I was taking them for a while, but . . . they just didn’t seem to help as much as the other stuff.”
The two weeks she’d spent on her own were a blur, and I didn’t push for details that I felt sure would hurt my heart to hear. She apologized profusely for having used again, and when I took her into my arms, assuring her she was loved and safe with us, she cried on my shoulder.
“I’m done for good now,” she said when she pulled back, her eyes red and puffy. “I swear, Shannon, I’ll never use again.”
I wrapped myself up in that promise and believed it completely.
After Landon’s game, John, Keisha, and I sat down and wrote up a contract. It was John’s idea, and I wasn’t completely comfortable with it—it seemed too formal for a family situation—but he was insistent that we spell out the expectations of this arrangement. Keisha agreed to get a job and enroll in some kind of school or certification program. She would communicate to us where she was going at all times. She’d make dinner Monday and Thursday nights. She’d go to therapy, take her meds, and attend Narcotics Anonymous twice a week. John would get her a cell phone on our account, but she would pay the bill as soon as she got a job. She would not drink—John had locked up our liquor cabinet years ago—and she would not use, and if she did, she would tell us immediately. If we found out she’d used and not told us, she was out.
“We can tolerate relapse if we know you’re being honest with us,” John said.
Keisha looked like a bobblehead doll as she nodded in agreement to every item on John’s list. He kept looking at her as though he expected her to argue, but she didn’t. I couldn’t have been more proud of her. I knew it would be hard for her to make so many drastic changes—very hard—but I could feel her determination and knew she was serious about the change. I was also proud of my husband for finding a way to support a plan that, to me, was obvious. The contract wasn’t my first choice, but it showed that he was reaching out for a compromise, and I appreciated that very much.
After that, the whole family went out for ice cream. Keisha talked to Landon at length, getting caught up on her stepbrother’s life—which consisted mostly of video games and sports. He was hesitant to open up at first, but Keisha was both energetic and invested, and by the end of the meal there was a definite decrease in the tension between all of us. I reached under the table and gave John’s knee a squeeze. When he looked at me, I smiled. He smiled back, though it didn’t reach his eyes. He was trying, but he still wasn’t sold on this idea.
Once we were alone in our room that night I gave him a big hug. “See, it’s working out,” I said, lifting my shoulders to my ears, excited about all the positive things we’d seen so far. “She seems excited about the plans we made, doesn’t she?”
He put his arms around me and nodded. “She does seem excited.”
“And she agreed to every point of the contract.”
He nodded again, and I smiled even wider and went on my tiptoes to give him a quick kiss. “We’re doing the right thing.”
“I hope so,” he said, then reached up and unwrapped my arms from around his neck before heading into the bathroom.
There would be no convincing him of anything with my words and, in truth, what could I convince him of? For all my optimism, I still didn’t know what was going to happen. He didn’t see the same potential I saw, and with only Keisha’s past as a comparative study, it was hard to argue with John about his fearful expectations. Time would have to tell.
“She’s going to prove you wrong,” I said with a teasing tone to my voice. “Just you wait and see.”