Wake-Up Call. Joaquin De Torres
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treatment facility. I decided to hold back on the mental health questions and talk about his social standing.
“How long had you known he was homeless?” I asked.
“Well, before we had him committed, he’d just leave the house and not come back for weeks. He did this for years.” The answers came from both parents, Blaine and his wife Faye. Faye intrigued me to the point of disgust. She seemed more interested in looking for imperfections in her manicured fingernails than in talking about her son. My visit was cramping her style, and she showed her displeasure by staying aloof or belching out answers that defined her ignorance.
“A couple of times we’ve had to pick him up from the police department because he’d been in a raucous doing God-knows-what with those boys wearing hoods and the Black kids.”
Lying again. I had already run a Bay Area police check on Doogie for any kind of record or incident report on him. Nothing. He never once came up on their computers, and never once been “picked up.” They lied to me twice already, so now I really wanted to find out what they knew about his physical and mental state.
“What do you know of your son’s illness?” Faye was first to speak after looking somewhat alarmingly to her husband.
“Well, he’s got some mental disease that keeps him from speaking clearly. It makes him do stupid things and wander off. What is it? Slack jaw? He can’t speak because his mouth is all contorted.”
“No, Mom! He was beaten and his jaw was permanently broken,” their gorgeous daughter volunteered after exiting the pool. She stood tall, dripping wet in a canary yellow bikini that made her deep tan almost glow. She was shaking out her long blonde hair as she approached the patio table. “Remember when he was a teenager, he got jumped after his special ed class? He’s a victim. Crimes against the homeless are insidious!”
“Hideous,” I corrected quickly. “Two different words, but they sound the same. It’s a common mistake.” The girl smiled coyly, taken in by the attention.
“So, what’s the difference?”
“Hideous means terrible or horrible. Insidious means something looks good or inviting, but has an unseen danger or threat within.” She smiled again, but this time her eyes were playful, mischievous.
“Can a person be insidious?” She looked quickly to her parents, and seeing that they weren’t paying attention at the moment, she approached with an alluring swagger. I took a breath and tried to keep my eyes from mapping her utterly magnificent body.
“Yes,” I stumbled. “Very much so.”
“I’ll have to remember that word,” she uttered sultrily.
“But isn’t he bipolar, too?” asked Blaine suddenly. “I mean sometimes he was up all happy, and sometimes he was throwing tantrums and breaking things.”
“That’s right,” added Faye. “I mean, we had to send him away. He would stomp up and down the stairs, babbling and drooling all over the floors. He threw the furniture around, ate out of the garbage. He smashed almost all my crystal glass collection, and my fine chinaware. Totally embarrassing in front of our friends and other family!”
I looked at them indifferently, trying to disguise my disgust. I realized that none of them knew a thing about his condition, and from their expressions, they didn’t much care except for the damage he’d done. I almost threw-up in my mouth when Brittany, the Tuckman’s 22-year-old, Sac State Pre-Law daughter, whose nearly naked body stood inches from me, proclaimed:
“Once I’m barred and associated, I’m going to thrust all my efforts in defending the rights of the Bay Area homeless, like poor Doug.”
Yeah, right, I silently barked. The only thing you’ll be thrusting will be your hips and throat when you need case tutoring by your mentors.
“So, how is Doug doing these days? Is he getting along with the other inmates?” asked the vacuous Faye as she cleaned her black, insect-looking Christian Dior sunglasses.
Inmates!? How fucking stupid is this woman? They’re patients, bitch! You know? Real people with real problems? If that wasn’t enough, the tone of her voice was so non-committal, and her lack of eye-contact only magnified her indifference. It was one of those give-a-shit questions. You know, when someone asks you something that is genuinely important to you but you know it’s not important to them?
“How’s that novel going?”; or “How’s your father’s health?”; or “How’s living overseas?” What they’re really saying is: I really don’t give a shit, I’m just being polite. But if you really want to test their sincerity, give an answer that should be of concern to them; if they don’t show surprise, or jump to another question before you answer the first-then you know-they don’t give a shit. That’s what Faye’s question was. So, I administered the test.
“He’s been missing for two weeks.”
“Oh, don’t worry. He’ll turn up.” That was her answer.
Her question was answered for me back when I retrieved his file from the institution. The steward who gave me this address had told me that the Tuckmans hadn’t visited Doogie during the five years he was a patient. He was actually admitted to the institution, not by the Tuckmans, but by a previous doctor who had found him on the street. One of my predecessors, Dr. T.J. Lang, who was now deceased. That was their third lie.
Not once did they visit him after they signed the papers releasing him to the state. Nor did they call or send him any packages or mail. Six years. Doogie was 20 then. It was obvious that the Tuckmans just wanted to dump him and get on with their lives without the stigma of his condition stinking up their social circles or becoming a topic at their dinner engagements.
Doogie’s father, Blaine, I felt, was the most pathetic. He smiled all the time, and delivered an annoying fake laugh or chuckle no matter the subject matter. Obviously, he was the darling at the country club and everyone must have adored his company.
“So, you’re looking for Doug? Well, he wouldn’t be in this area; he hates our kind!” Then the laugh, a politician’s laugh, fake and non-contagious.
I hate your kind, too, asshole. I wanted to reach over and slap that grin off his face. He didn’t ask if Doogie was in trouble? He didn’t ask for the circumstances behind his son’s disappearance. In fact, neither parent used the word “son” when referring to him.
“Have you checked the Occupy Movement areas?” he asked. “He could be camped out there?”
“Yeah, that’s where the homeless hang out,” spat Faye.
“You’re wrong, Mom,” objected her daughter. “They are not homeless; they’re protestors.” I nodded in agreement.
“That’s right, Brittany.” She smiled, proud of herself.
“Well, whatever they are, they have no right standing in front of Bank of America or any of the other banks we use.”
“That’s because Bank of America is ripping the people off, Mom. They’re the most corrupt bank in the country concerning practices with minorities and the lower class.” She looked at me and raised her shoulders apologetically. “Case studies.” I gave her a thumbs up. I noticed her smile had a somewhat different look to it.
“To answer your question, Mrs. Tuckman, no, I haven’t checked the Occupy Movements because people in your son’s mental condition are loners and avoid large crowds.”
“Well, he wouldn’t even know how to get out here,” Blaine added. Then that laugh.
“Dad, that’s just mean! Brittany objected, now sitting next to me sipping on a frosty margarita her father just brought over from the cabana-style pool bar. She didn’t bother to wrap a towel around herself, and I found my eyes roving from her firm athletic body dripping and beading with pool water. She caught me twice-my eyes visually inspecting her-but on both occasions, she simply smiled demurely and batted her eyes. She