He had been fine with this in the past. His aim was to instill values, work ethic, and character in his son, and to see him through to adulthood, when he would become a productive member of society and in turn pass this along to his own children. That was what he felt he was here for. That was how all of this “worked.” But when Chris jumped the tracks, Flynn’s belief in the system failed. There just didn’t seem to be a point to anything anymore. He knew that this attitude, this inability to find purpose in his daily routine, was a sign of depression, but knowing it did not restore any sense of meaning to his life.
It was true what some folks said: When your kid is a failure, your life has been a failure, too.
Still, he continued to go to work. He had bills and real estate taxes, and the responsibility of maintaining employment for Isaac and his crew, who had families they were supporting here and family members they took care of in Central America as well. “It” hadn’t worked out for Flynn, but that didn’t mean these men and their loved ones had to suffer, too.
And then there was Amanda. Flynn loved her deeply, though he often spoke to her dismissively and they were no longer the friends they had once been. They communicated, and occasionally they came together in bed, but for Flynn the dying of their friendship was the most awful result of the troubles with Chris.
“I got a call from the superintendent,” said Bob Moskowitz.
“Yeah?” said Flynn. “What’d he have to say?”
Flynn and Moskowitz were at the bar of the Chevy Chase Lounge on Connecticut Avenue, Flynn’s neighborhood local. Flynn was drinking a Budweiser. Moskowitz was kidding himself with a Bud Light.
“He said that Amanda has been calling him fairly frequently.”
“And what, he doesn’t like it?”
“Colvin’s a good guy. But he’s got, like, two hundred and seventy-five boys he’s responsible for in that facility.”
“He’s busy.”
“Yes. The thing is, Amanda’s not calling him with any significant problems or queries. After visitation, she calls Colvin and says stuff like ‘I saw Chris and he looked a little thin,’ or ‘Chris sounded congested.’ I mean, they’re feeding them out there, Tom. If those boys get sick, they care for them. Guarantee it.”
“You’re saying Amanda has to stop with the bullshit calls.”
“They’re not going to release Chris just to get his mom off their back. And it’s not helping his case.”
“Colvin and them aren’t used to parents who give a shit.”
“They aren’t used to parents who nitpick everything,” said Moskowitz. “I understand she’s scared for Chris. Outraged, too. But I think she needs to, you know, deal with this in a more internal way.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to her.” Flynn had a pull off his beer and placed the bottle back on the stick. “Did Colvin say how Chris is doing? Or did he just phone you to crap on my wife?”
“Colvin’s all right. And Chris is doing okay, too. Maybe too resigned to his incarceration, if you know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“He doesn’t seem to care one way or another about his situation, and that’s problematic, because he’s got a level meeting coming up. I’m going to advise him to, like, sit up straight in his chair. Tell the review board that he recognizes and regrets his mistakes and that he wants to better himself. That he will better himself and is looking forward to the day he’ll be released.”
“That’s good, Bob.”
“You could do the same when you see him next.”
“He doesn’t really speak to me much. Mostly he communicates with his mom.”
“I’m saying, you could speak to him.”
“Right,” said Flynn.
Speak to him. That’s what the shrink, Dr. Peterman, said in their weekly meeting. And Flynn would nod and say, “You’re right. I should try.”
Dr. Peterman’s office was in Tenleytown, on the corner of Brandywine and Wisconsin, over a beauty parlor, where Mitchell’s, the sporting-goods store where as a teenager Flynn had bought his Adidas Superstars, used to be. Flynn wondered if the high rent was added into his tab. Like many men, Flynn did not care to talk about himself or, God forbid, his feelings. He continued to go to their sessions because it made Amanda happy, but as a concession he made sure that he complained about the impending visit on the drive to the man’s office. Predictably, he called the shrink “Dr. Peterhead” when speaking of him around Amanda, and brought up more than once the fact that the doctor had a copy of I’m Okay, You’re Okay displayed on the bookshelf behind his desk. “What,” said Flynn, “is that the fountain of knowledge from which Dr. Peterhead drinks?” And Amanda would say, “Please don’t be sarcastic when we get there, Tommy.”
Flynn was polite in the man’s presence, and not unduly sarcastic. Dr. Peterman was a pleasant young guy with a prematurely receding hairline, seemed pretty normal for a head doctor, and not overly analytical or mommy obsessed. Flynn looked around the office, at the usual pedestrian watercolors hung on the wall, at the beanbag chairs for those who liked to get comfy on the floor, at the self-help books on the bookshelf, at that book, and he was silently amused.
One day Dr. Peterman set up an easel and on it was a poster showing an imaging photograph of a brain shot from several angles. The man liked his props. The doctor pointed at a section of the brain, seen from a bird’s-eye view, that was colored green.
“What are we looking at?” said Dr. Peterman.
“From that overhead angle?” said Flynn. “It looks like a set of nuts.”
“Thomas.”
Dr. Peterman smiled charitably. “You’re looking at a brain, of course. Specifically, the brain of a sixteen- year-old boy. This area in green is the limbic system, which regulates emotion. You can see that it is dominant in terms of geography. Now this blue area, representing the prefrontal cortex, is for reasoning. You can see that it’s much smaller. That’s because it develops more slowly than the limbic system.” Dr. Peterman removed the poster to reveal another poster beneath it with similar imaging photographs. “Now, here is the brain of the same boy, but the photos were taken several years later. The boy is now a man in his twenties. And you can see here that the blue and green areas are represented equitably, more or less. Reasoning has, in effect, caught up with emotion.”
“The kid matured,” said Flynn.
“In layman’s terms, yes. Teenage boys act with emotion more frequently than they do with reason. There’s a physiological reason for that.”
“But this thing with the brain must be true for all boys,” said Flynn.
“I know what you’re getting at. Why does someone like Chris find so much trouble and another boy find none at all?”
“Environment,” said Amanda.
“Right,” said Flynn. “But why Chris? You could understand some kid born into poverty, who comes from a broken home, who’s around thugs and drug dealers; I mean, that kid’s got problems coming out of the gate. You might not excuse it, but you can understand why a young man like that finds trouble. But a boy like Chris… why?”
“That’s one of the things we’re here to talk about. But I bring it up to show you that this is not a permanent state of mind for your son. It’s going to improve.”
Amanda reached over and squeezed Flynn’s hand. The doctor had made her feel better, and Flynn supposed that in this regard, the session had been worthwhile.
The holidays came and were difficult. Then New Year’s Eve, the turn of the century, which was supposed to be the biggest party of their lifetimes but which they did not celebrate, and then a return to routine. Low interest rates had encouraged folks to buy homes or take out second mortgages and remodel, which was good for Flynn’s business. He and Amanda were kept busy, and Flynn’s crew had steady work. The greater profit they experienced, however, was offset by the extreme increases in Flynn’s insurance rates. As Moskowitz had predicted, Flynn had been the target of civil suits. The settlements, in total, had been costly.
Amanda visited Chris weekly, sometimes with Flynn, sometimes alone. She thought Chris had grown more receptive to their visits, but Flynn found him sullen and unchanged. On joint visits, it was Amanda who generated conversation and kept things moving along. Chris and Flynn continued to keep each other at arm’s length.
Chris had advanced several levels since he had arrived at Pine Ridge. The monthly level meetings consisted of
