I mean, we’ve all faced hardships and disappointments. I was no genius, but I always did well in school. I could whip a mean underhanded crank shot that got me a ride to Cornell; I married the girl of my dreams. We raised kids who seemed to be equally achieving, who were polite and self-assured and didn’t seem to mind being around us.
I’d worked my butt off to get where I was: I’d put in the eighty-hour weeks and still remained on call twice a week. We had friends; we went on bike trips to Spain and Italy. For my fortieth birthday I got myself flying lessons and now had my own Cessna. Two years ago, when it came time for the hospital to name a new head for our department, the chief of staff didn’t hesitate and turned to me.
Still, I felt like I’d barely broken a sweat in life. The world always seemed to open up just enough for me to slip through. But for Charlie, the world always seemed to close at every chance and shut him down.
I don’t know if I was a good brother. I don’t know if I ever lived up to that vow I made regarding Evan. I knew I’d always done just enough to keep them from sinking.
Enough, but no more.
Maybe it was too late to put myself on the line for Evan.
But I could damn well start doing it for Charlie and Gabby now.
I checked myself into the Cliffside Suites, the nicest of the motels perched along a high bluff overlooking the Pacific. My room was at the end of a long outside corridor above the parking lot. Inside, it was clean and large and I stepped out through the sliding glass doors to the terrace with a panoramic view of the ocean and the steep cliffs below.
I threw myself on the bed and thought about Evan and his last visit to our house. How everyone thought he was so weird, no matter how much I tried to defend him: He was smart. The odds were stacked against him. He was my brother’s son.
“He doesn’t even know how to order food, Dad,” Sophie had said. “He always seems a bit stoned out.”
“He does spend a lot of time off in space,” Kathy said. “You have to admit he’s a bit weird.”
I told them, “He’s on medication, guys. Cut the kid some slack.”
“I’m sorry, but he gives me the creeps,” said Maxie. “How much longer is he going to stay?”
I spent the next couple of hours watching a baseball game and picking at a burger from room service. Around four my phone rang. I was happy to see it was Kathy.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey…” I exhaled wearily.
“You sound exhausted. How are they doing? I called a little while ago, but neither really wanted to talk.”
“Devastated. How else could they be? You’re not going to believe how it happened, Kathy.”
I told her everything I’d learned. How Evan had been looking to buy a gun. How he was taken in and put in isolation after trying to beat up Gabby, and then released after only a couple of days. To the care of a halfway house that let him walk out the door.
“That’s just so awful, Jay.”
“Someone has to get to the bottom of this for them. They’re not capable. It’s tearing them apart.”
She hesitated just a bit. “Get to the bottom of what, Jay?”
We hadn’t always seen eye to eye about things with my brother and Evan. Usually, it was how we were always coming to their rescue. First, for a nicer place for them to live. Then tutoring for Evan. Then when he smashed up the car. And finally bailing them out from under all that credit card debt. “When do they try, just a little?” Kathy would say. “Gabby can work. Our kids get summer jobs; why not Evan?”
But mostly, it was that incident with Max.
It was on Evan’s last trip east. He and Maxie were playing a little one-on-one in the driveway. Something set them off. Things always seemed to cross the line with Evan.
I was in the den, flipping through some medical magazines. Suddenly I heard screams. Sophie’s. From outside. “Get off, Evan. Get off! Mom! Dad! ”
I bolted up.
Somehow Kathy, who was in the kitchen, got there ahead of me. She jumped on Evan’s back, Evan’s arm wrapped around Maxie’s neck; Maxie was turning blue.
“Evan, let him go! Let him go! ” Kathy screamed, but at six feet, close to two hundred pounds, Evan was too big for her. “You’re going to kill him, Evan!”
“First he has to take it back…” Evan squeezed tighter. “ Right, Max? ”
Max couldn’t take anything back. He was gagging.
Kathy screamed, unable to pry him away. “ Jay! ”
I got there a second later and ripped Evan off by the collar, hurling him across the lawn.
My nephew just sat there, eyes red, panting. “He called me a frigging freak!”
Max had had bronchial issues from the time he was three. He needed a respirator back then, twice a day. His face was blue and his neck was all red and twice its normal size. He was in a spasm, wheezing convulsively.
I knew immediately he had to get to the hospital. I threw him in the car and told Kathy to get in. I called ahead to the medical center. In eight minutes we were there. They immediately placed him on oxygen and epinephrine. His airway had closed. Acute respiratory distress. Five minutes more and he might have been dead.
When we got back home, Evan tried to say he was sorry.
But it didn’t matter. Kathy never quite forgave him. She wanted him out of the house.
The next day I drove him to the airport and he was gone.
“I need to get to the bottom of why he was let back on the street, Kathy,” I answered.
She didn’t respond right away. “Look, I know I haven’t always been the most supportive when it comes to this… You’re right, they need you, Jay. Do what you can. Just promise me one thing.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Just promise me, this time, you won’t let yourself get drawn in. You know how you always get when it comes to your brother.”
Drawn in… Meaning it always ended up costing us something. I didn’t want to debate it, and the truth was, she was probably right.
“Deal, ” I said.
Chapter Eight
T he next morning, I called the county coroner’s office and set up a meeting with Don Sherwood, the detective handling the case-the only person, Charlie and Gabby said, they could get any straight answers from.
He was the one who had knocked on their door two days earlier and asked if Evan was their son-he had ultimately been identified through fingerprints from his police record-and after asking them to sit, showed them the photos of Evan in the county morgue.
Sherwood said he’d be nearby in the early afternoon and we could meet at the station in Pismo Beach around one P.M. I told him we’d be there.
My next call was to the psych ward at the Central Coast Medical Center. I asked for Dr. Derosa.
The nurse who answered asked who I was, and I gave her my name and told her that I was a doctor from back in New York and Evan Erlich’s uncle. She kept me on hold awhile and finally she came back on saying how very sorry they all were, but that the doctor would be out all day on an outside consult and would have to get back to me.
I left my number and said that I’d be around only a few days. I figured I’d hear back in a couple of hours.
A few minutes before one, I went with Charlie and Gabby to the one-story police station on Grand Street and met Detective Sherwood in a small interrogation room there.
