Trailer Trashed: My Dubious Efforts Toward Upward Mobility (23 page)

But at least that tale lives on as part of our family history. My
brother just retold it this past Thanksgiving, and we all laughed so
hard I thought I was going to cough up all the crayons I ate in kindergarten. "It's worth it just to have the memory," he said.

"No, you're missing it," Kim insisted. "It's cheaper to just pay."
And she's right. Once you factor in the time it takes to finagle, the
stress of worrying it won't work out, and the credit card charges you
rack up once it inevitably doesn't, it's probably always cheaper to just
pay. Cheryl, for one, is forever missing that part. She would likely be more mindful of missing it, I think, if she weren't so busy hopping the
globe with the wind whipping through her hair as she cruises down
the highway in a surprise convertible Mustang.

I sometimes wonder if we-Daniel, Grant, Lary, Keiger, and me-came
together simply because we found each other after we'd been excluded by
everyone else. Whatever the case, I bonded to each of them like welded
metal. These stories exemplify this bond, even when it looks more like complete exasperation than love. Whatever it may be, we made it our mission
to rescue each other, even if, as was often the case, rescue was the last thing
we thought we needed.

I WAS DEFINITELY WEARING THE WRONG CLOTHES for a kidnapping,
which is funny, because as a matter of course I'm usually outfitted
pretty well for felonious behavior. In middle school, when I broke
into ninth-grade heartthrob Tyler Freelander's house, I did not even
need to go home to get my gardening gloves. I already had them hanging out of my back pocket when my sister suggested the idea, and off
we went. Had the police dusted the place afterward, they'd have found
my sister's prints peppered all over the place, while mine would have
been nowhere to be found. In the end, the Freelanders never even
knew we burgled their home, as our booty consisted solely of one belt
buckle and one deck of pornographic playing cards. Had we done it
because of greed, we'd have amassed a much bigger haul, I'm sure, but
we didn't do it because of that. We did it because of love.

And it was because of love that Grant, Daniel, and I were at
Thumbs Up planning a kidnapping. Lary should have been there,
definitely, because out of the four of us, he is the only one with actual
experience. "Get yet ass over here," Grant bellowed into Lary's voicemail. "You rig shit for a living, we need something rigged. A person. And she probably won't like it. In fact, it'll probably be against
her will." Lary must have been indisposed, because he couldn't have
resisted otherwise.

"If I'm going to kidnap someone, I'm going to need to change my
clothes," I insisted. I was wearing one of my better thrift-store dresses,
a satin shift actually, and satin is pretty slippery. It would have been perfect to wear if I were the one getting gripped, but not if I was the
one expected to do the gripping. So it was agreed we'd all go home to
change before we pounced, and then we'd stop at the hardware store
and buy a bunch of plastic tie-downs (which I know make great makeshift handcuffs because that's what we flight attendants once used on
the plane to restrain a female passenger who took off all her clothes
and wouldn't stop masturbating right in front of the movie screen).
But before the three of us could go further we surmised we had to go
and get our other friend, Boots. We definitely needed a fourth person,
one for each flailing limb, we figured, and Grant had a big quilt he
wanted to go home and get in order to use, too, though I still don't
know why. He kept talking about a "technique."

"We each hold a corner and kind of come at her," he was explaining, though it still seemed confusing. "Seriously," he continued,
insisting that this quilt factored into an official restraint process he'd
learned back when he worked at a mental institution for emotionally
damaged children. I pointed out that our friend, the one we were
kidnapping, the one we love, had also worked at that institution for
sixteen years, so she was doubtlessly familiar with the technique and
could probably thwart it. He was about to argue with me when he
slammed on the brakes instead.

"That's her car!" he shrieked. "There she is!"

I had not seen her in a year. Hardly any of her old friends had.
Daniel thought he'd said something to drive her away. Boots kept
waiting for her to return her calls. Grant had heard rumors; we all
did, snippets here and there. But we were busy balancing the big wads of petty crap that comprised our own lives to do anything about it.
Besides, you don't want to impose, right? And surely she knew she is
loved, right? Surely she knew all she had to do is call, or cry, or just
show up, knock on the door, come in and collapse in our arms. Surely
she knew that.

I'd heard there'd been an arrest, but amazingly I didn't chalk it
up to a bad sign, just bad fortune. I'm exasperatingly nonjudgmental
that way. Whoa, what crappy luck, I remember thinking, to happen to
be at your friend's place, who happens to be a meth dealer, right when the
police happen to stage a raid. Then I heard she was doing the drug, too.
Dabbling, I figured. She'll snap out of it. Right.

You have to understand, we are not talking about a typical addict.
(Are we?) She was a good mother, with a good job and a lovely home,
and a husband who was her college sweetheart, and a daughter-oh
my God, a beautiful daughter, a lovely, honey-haired little daughter
she rocked in her arms when she was a baby, who lay breathing on her
breast like a bundle of warm dough, whose closed lids she kissed with
the pure and powerful love of a new mother.

Then a year goes by.

A typical year is nothing, if you think about it, an eye blink in
the normal course of events. But crystal meth will take a typical year
and put a rocket on it, leaving your life charred and destroyed in its
wake. Everything you love, everything you cherish, depleted. Fuel for
the rocket. In one year this friend lost her job, husband, house, and
daughter. She was spending her nights digging through Dumpsters.
When Daniel heard it, he cried like a child, and then galvanized us into some kind of action. We did not have a plan, except that we
planned to make a time to meet to make a plan. Then we happened
upon her. Just like that. And all of us wearing the wrong clothes for a
kidnapping.

"There she is!" Grant shrieked again. "What should we do?"

I swear, when it comes to kidnapping people, Grant cannot possibly be a bigger pussy. I even found myself wishing Lary were there,
and I thought my days of longing for Lary's company were behind
me, believe me. But Lary was not there, and we could not even reach
him by cell phone for more advice. It was just me and Grant and
Daniel. We were quite unprepared, really, to come upon our subject
so suddenly. There she was, not seeing or expecting us, outside and
everything, a perfect opportunity, and all Grant could do is shout,
"What should we do? What should we do?" He even passed her by.

"Turn the fuck around!" I hollered. Amazingly, Grant did as I
said and turned around, but as we approached her, he still kept shrieking, "What should we do?"

"We're gonna go get her, goddammit," I said with pure conviction. I rarely have pure conviction. Offhand, I'd say the last time I
had it was when I snuck into a sold-out Tina Turner concert after my
friends kept saying, "You're never gonna get in," and I simply said,
"Like hell I'm not." And I crawled over Dumpsters stuffed with trash,
and not just any trash, but bad, grubby, disgusting trash full of fish
bones and rancid meat and rotting kitten carcasses and stuff like that.
But I didn't care because I saw that light, see? I just knew it led where
I wanted to go. I had pure conviction.

The window led to the men's toilet backstage, and I hollered to
my friends that the coast was clear, begging them from the other side
to follow me, but they wouldn't. So I went on alone and ended up in
the front row.

"What should we do?" Grant was saying as we watched our friend
all out in the open, practically begging to be abducted. "We're not
ready." He was right; we weren't ready. But when are you ever ready
for this? We weren't exactly ready for the news that our friend had
become a meth addict and lost everything dear to her, either. She lost
everything, but if you saw her on the street, she'd smile sweetly like
she always used to and tell you everything was fine ... a little fucked
up but otherwise fine. And you'd walk away wanting to believe her. I
tell you, though, if there is ever one truth to be taken from any of this,
it's that addicts lie.

This time we weren't walking away. She was outside the house
that is no longer her house, taking furniture from it that might or
might not be hers. We don't know. We were told not to believe a word
she says. "It's not her talking," we were informed. But it sure was good
to hear her voice even if it wasn't her talking. "Everything's fine," she
kept saying. She had a drug buddy waiting for her in a car with the
engine running, but Grant had (very reluctantly) blocked their exit
with his brand-new Honda Element. ("What if my car gets rammed?"
he bitched. "Even better," I bitched back.)

The three of us got out and circled around her like a small herd
of protective ponies, insisting she come with us. And this is where
I'm glad Grant was there and not Lary, as Lary would have simply clouted her over the head with a socket wrench and thrown her in the
backseat like a sack of sand. Instead Grant took her by the hand and
simply implored her to follow us. "We love you," he kept repeating
gently. "Come with us, right now." He spoke with pure conviction, so
she got in our car willingly, smiling gamely like a mom being led to a
breakfast made by her kids.

When she realized where we were taking her, she dropped the act,
though, or perhaps she simply changed characters. We don't know yet.
All we know is that she cried a lot, and we did, too. She told us she
missed us, and we told her the same. She laughed some, as well, and
she told us a little about her drug. "You would love it," she told Grant,
and her voice held such a note of longing right then that I became
immensely sad. She was longing for company, I thought. She was long-
ingfor a friend to follow her.

We took her to a treatment center, where they were expecting
her, and that is where it ended that day. Though where it will end
altogether is still unknown.

That is just the way it is. You crawl through garbage to get to
a toilet, but you gotta keep going, because past that there is a light.
Some friends will follow you and some won't, even if you're already
there to tell them the coast is clear. All you can do is call to them, begging from the other side.