A Tap on the Window Read Online Free PDF

slip. He’d claim to have no homework, but then we’d get notices from the school that he wasn’t turning in assignments. Or that he’d skipped classes altogether. Values he once held dear—being straight with us, keeping his word, honoring his curfew—no longer seemed to matter.
    I never blamed drinking and pot for all of this. I didn’t have a
Reefer Madness
moment, convinced that marijuana had warped our son’s mind, turned him against us. Part of it was his age. Part of it was wanting to belong. Scott had bonded with the kids who made getting drunk and high part of his life, and when they went back to Ohio at the end of that summer, our boy’s new habits were well established.
    We prayed it was a phase. All kids experimented, right? Who didn’t have a few too many beers, smoke a few too many joints? Still, we had the talk—lots of them—about making
smart choices
. Jesus, what a load of bullshit. What the kid could have used was a swift kick in the ass, and to be locked in his room till he was twenty.
    Maybe, if we’d been smart enough to figure out that he would move on to something stronger, that’s what we would have done.
    Because it wasn’t beer and pot they found in his bloodstream when they did the autopsy.
    Donna and I talked—endlessly—about getting help for him. Counseling. Enrollment in a program. We sat up nights, searching for answers on the Internet, reading other parents’ stories, finding out we weren’t alone, but taking little comfort in that fact. We still didn’t know the best course to follow. We tried the usual things, to varying degrees, but with a consistent lack of success. Yelling. Grounding. Emotional blackmail. Rewards for improved behavior.
“Pass that math test and I’ll get you a new iPod.”
Instilling guilt. I told him what he was doing was killing his mother. Donna told him what he was doing was killing his father.
    But there must have been part of us that thought—I know this was true of myself—that while things were bad, they weren’t
that
bad. Millions of kids got into trouble in their teenage years and came out the other side. I wasn’t high much when I was in my teens, but getting shit-faced was a weekly ambition. Somehow I’d survived.
    We deluded ourselves.
    We were stupid.
    We should have done more, and we should have done it sooner. It ate at me every day, and I knew it ate at Donna, too. We blamed ourselves, and there were moments when we blamed each other.
    Why didn’t you do something?
    Me? Why didn’t you do something?
    In my heart, I believed I deserved more of the blame. He was a boy. I was his father. Shouldn’t I have been able to get through to him? Shouldn’t I have been able to connect in ways Donna could not? Shouldn’t I have been able to use some of the smarts I’d acquired in my former career to knock some sense into him?
    Reading the paper without really taking it in, staring at the TV without any idea of what I was watching, finishing my beer and going back into the kitchen for another, and repeating the whole process again, took up the better part of two hours. I figured by that time Donna really would be asleep and wouldn’t have to pretend.
    I was right.
    When I went upstairs the only light on was in the bathroom off our bedroom. If I’d come up earlier, Donna’s eyes still would have been closed, but she’d have been faking it. You don’t spend twenty years with someone and not know when they’re really sleeping, and when they’re trying to put one over on you. But never mind. It wasn’t like I’d ever call her on it. It was a game we played now.
I’ll pretend to be sleeping so you don’t have to feel weird not talking to me.
    I stripped down in the bathroom, brushed my teeth, killed the light, and quietly slipped under the covers next to her, my back to hers. I wondered how long this would go on, how it would end, what could help us move forward.
    I still loved her. As much now as the day we met.
    But we weren’t