A few weeks after his piece appeared, an editor from a New York publishing house contacted our father and asked if AJ could expand his piece into a memoir. A few years earlier, a young woman had enjoyed success with such a book, published when she was only nineteen, and AJ was younger still. A book-length treatment of the same issues could be a sensation.
Our father brought the offer to AJ, advising him: “I don’t think you should.”
“Why not?” AJ asked. “I might make a lot of money.”
“We don’t have to worry about money.”
“Everyone has to worry about money,” AJ said. “Almost all the scholarships are needs-based now. You make just enough that I can’t get one, no matter what my grades or SAT scores are.”
“You would have to give up your privacy. Can you put a price on that? And”-a significant pause here, the kind he used in closing arguments-“you would have to tell the truth.”
We were at the dinner table. It was not a serious conversation. When our father was intent on serious conversations, he took us into his room and closed the door. Yet there was something about his tone that sounded grave to me, as if he were suggesting that AJ did not always tell the truth.
“Of course I would be honest,” AJ said.
“Then it’s your decision.”
For a week, AJ came home and attacked our father’s manual typewriter with great focus. But he was in the fall play, Zoo Story, and rehearsals began to run later and later. And he was trying to study for the PSATs, while still playing soccer. The memoir was discarded. AJ was a magpie in his youth, saving everything in a file cabinet. But when I went to look for those pages recently, there was no trace of them. I wish he had saved his nascent memoir. I would have loved to read his version of his life, then and now. My brother was achingly sincere. That’s the thing that no one understands. I’m not sure even AJ grasped that part of his nature, and what a burden it was to carry into adulthood. People say it’s hard to be good. It’s harder still to be famous for being good, to find that balance between sincerity and sanctimony. But I believe AJ managed to do it.
JANUARY 14
Lu makes her way carefully up the walk of the shabby house on Rain Dream Hill. There is a fine layer of sleet on the sidewalks this morning, and although some of the homeowners have treated their sidewalks with chemical melts, the walkway in front of the Drysdale house is untouched. Besides, she’s always sore the day after a “lunch” with Bash. She may have a gymnast’s build, but she doesn’t have the elasticity. Lu is that rare modern woman who doesn’t exercise, not in any organized way. She doesn’t have to. She walks in the morning, sometimes before the sun comes up, but that’s more for her mind than her body. There’s no compelling reason for her to work out-her weight is steady, all the markers of good health are where they should be. Blood pressure, cholesterol. But the day after an afternoon with Bash, her body reproaches her for not taking better care of herself. A little yoga at the very least, it begs her. But when would she have time?
Both Drysdales meet her at the door, grim and unhappy wraiths, American Gothic without the pitchfork. They are one of those couples who look like brother and sister-small, with fine bones and surprisingly dark hair, only a dusting of white at the temples. Well into their seventies, they look even older. Their faces are deeply lined and yellow, with a rubbery sheen. Smokers. Lu knows that before she comes across the threshold. The smell is thick on them, hangs in the house like a haze.
“Mr. Hollister says we don’t have to talk to you,” Mr. Drysdale says, even as he opens the door wider to let her in.
“You don’t,” she says. “But I’ll remind you, you’re not his clients. Rudy is. You’re just footing the bill. Fred will do what’s best for Rudy. That’s his job. Eventually, you will have to talk to me-and a grand jury. I thought it a kindness to meet in private-without Rudy’s attorney charging you an hourly rate.”
There is a formal living room to the right of the front door, but they lead her to the family room at the back of the house, nothing more than an alcove off the kitchen. This throwback to the ’70s could never be described as a “great room.” The kitchen appears to have been untouched since the house was built. The appliances are what was once called Harvest Gold, and the adjacent sitting area is tiny by the standards of today’s McMansions. A sliding glass door leads to a small square of deck; Lu knows there will be another glass door below, leading to the walk-out basement, a feature in almost all Columbia homes of the ’70s. But the home’s dominant feature are piles. Piles of books, piles of magazines, piles of newspapers. A pile of shirts on hangers, draped across an easy chair. When Lu perches on the plaid sofa, it emits dust and a smell she can’t identify, although it seems vaguely animal. Not animal waste, but-something musky, furry, as if a dog once slept here.
“You’ve lived here how long?” she asked.
“Since 1977. We moved here from the city. Rudy wasn’t happy at Southern High School. We thought Wilde Lake High School, being different, might be good for him.”
“That wasn’t so unusual then. My brother’s best friend came here for similar reasons. He had been asked to leave Sidwell Friends in D.C.”
She is trying to be polite and friendly, offering this anecdote in the spirit of commiseration, but they seem mystified by her comment, unsure of what to say. They are socially awkward people. Given their own limitations, perhaps they never recognized their son’s problems. Oddness used to be more acceptable. Some people were just weird. Now anyone who seems the least bit off has to have a label, a diagnosis, be “on the spectrum.”
“How old was Rudy when he was diagnosed?” She intentionally doesn’t name a diagnosis and is curious to see if they provide one.
“Nineteen.” Mr. Drysdale is the spokesman. Mrs. Drysdale keeps her eyes on his face. Their connection is wordless, almost telepathic. “He was a really good student, but college was hard for him.”
“Where did he go?”
“Bennington.” Almost thirty-five years after the fact, this still seems to give the parents a little lift. It was probably the highlight of their lives, seeing their son admitted to Bennington. How had they afforded that? “He wasn’t prepared for the darkness.”
“Depression?”
“No, how dark the days were, by the end of that first semester. The sun goes down early in New England. He cared about light. He was a photographer, a good one. He couldn’t deal with the dark. Even when he was a teenager, he needed to be outside a lot. He walked everywhere. There was one doctor-this was recent-who thinks he had a vitamin D deficiency. Or maybe SAD, that seasonal thing. Anyway, the doctor says Rudy is self-medicating when he walks. That’s why we’re worried about him not getting bail.”
Cause and effect. Everyone wants there to be a reason, any reason, for the inexplicable things that happen in our world, especially the things our children do. He’s tired. She’s hungry. We haven’t adhered to the schedule. And sometimes those reasons apply. But sometimes-how often?-the wheel spins and you get a damaged kid.
“Was he ever violent?”