Cocaine's Son: A Memoir by Dave Itzkoff

Author:Dave Itzkoff
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Psychopathology, Children of drug addicts, Psychology, Drug addicts - Family relationships - United States, Itzkoff, Parenting, Dave, Cocaine abuse - United States, Family relationships, Children of drug addicts - United States, Substance Abuse & Addictions, Cocaine abuse, United States, Family & Relationships, Personal Memoirs, Self-Help, Addiction, Drug addicts, Fathers and sons - United States, General, Fatherhood, Biography & Autobiography, Biography
ISBN: 9781400065721
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-01-18T05:37:05+00:00

IV. The Card

There are only two practical driving routes from Monticello to Manhattan, with the only major difference between them being the choice of the Tappan Zee Bridge or the George Washington Bridge. At most hours of the day, on most days of the week, either option should deliver a traveler to his destination in a consistently reproduceable amount of time; a Monticello resident with a regularly scheduled Saturday-morning appointment in Manhattan should, with minimal practice, have no trouble arriving for this engagement as punctually as Mussolini’s celebrated trains. Still, the trip presented my father with the occasional challenge.

One morning I was sitting in the lobby of our therapist’s office, working systematically through a bagel and a crossword puzzle. I allowed myself one bite of the bagel for every five crossword clues solved as I waited for my father, and I tried to guess the identities of the other families I occasionally saw enter and exit. Which parent had the substance-abuse problem? The mother? The father? Both of them? What was the substance—or were there substances plural? How much did their child or children understand about what they were going through? Were they closer to reconciling than my father and I seemed to be? It was satisfying to imagine that they were much, much further away.

It was ten minutes before the start of our session, then it was starting time, and then it was ten minutes after, and then twenty. Finally, my father ambled through the institute’s front door with a look on his face that seemed to ask: Have I seen this place before? After giving me a perfunctory, jittery hug, he walked up to the young black man who manned the security desk and laid out an array of quarters.

“Let me ask you a favor,” my father said to him. “I’m parked outside at a meter that’s going to expire in another couple of minutes, while I’m upstairs with the therapist. At about half past, could you go outside and put some money in it for me? It’s the red Taurus just outside.”

It was as if my father had walked into a bank and asked a teller to do his laundry. I did not like that he was asking the man to do a job that fell well outside his clearly designated responsibilities; the fact that he was an old white man asking a young black man didn’t make it any more comfortable. All I had to do to register my discontent was let out an exasperated sigh.

My father heard it. “What?” he snapped at me.

“This isn’t his job,” I said. “It’s not his responsibility to put quarters in your meter.”

“Hey,” my father said, “let him answer for himself.”

The receptionist gave no response, yes or no. He just stared blankly at the quarters my father had presented to him.

“I’m saying he shouldn’t have to do this, and you shouldn’t put him in this position,” I said, and so saying, I swept the quarters off the countertop and into my pocket.

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