Chapter Thirty-Five: The Mediation
When Ari had said that she wanted to go “home,” I had assumed that meant to the glorious land of beaches and sun, known as California. As far as I knew, that was where her current residence was listed, and where her dad owned a condo. Unfortunately for me, when it came to Ari Remon it was best not to assume. Evidently, Ari did not mean California when referring to “home.” She meant Pennsylvania.
So, after quickly packing everything that we needed (I made sure to bring clothes this time), I said goodbye to the house in which I had grown up, and then we went out to my car. Like Houston and his truck, my car was my baby. It had been with me through a lot, and it was one of the things that I had missed most when I left for California. Sure, it was just an oversized SUV that guzzled more gas than a small plane and was probably responsible for at least some percentage of global warning, but I still loved it. It was also the same vehicle that I had obtained for my sixteenth birthday—the one that I couldn’t for the life of me remember.
I began to pull up a map of Pennsylvania on my phone, but then Ari stopped me because she was Ari, and we couldn’t even do something as simple as drive to the next state over without some sort of delay. She told me that she didn’t want to go straight to Pennsylvania. I asked her where she wanted to go. Uncertainly, she answered with a casual, “Wherever your parents are.” I told her that that would be putting us in the exact opposite direction as we needed to go. She told me that she didn’t care.
Thus, I began my journey to the last place I wanted to go right now: my aunt’s house for Christmas day. I had absolutely nothing against my aunt, but more a lack of a desire to travel all the way to her house and be confronted with the grueling task of facing family. My family was about as American as a family could get without going tribal, which was why seeing them again since last Christmas would be a bit problematic. Last Christmas, they didn’t know that I was a drug addict. No one did. Now, though, I just couldn’t even think about how they would react. Eric, I heard you quit football? How was rehab? You don’t still do drugs, do you? You’re not still using at Stanford, are you? My son would never use drugs! Eric, you used to be such a nice boy—what happened? What happened, indeed?
During the drive deeper into the not-at-all-scenic depths of New York, Ari and I were both silent. It wasn’t a good silence. Back at the house, something had snapped in Ari when she met the people from my past. I wasn’t sure what or who did it, but she had transformed in a millisecond from this strong girl who could tackle a lion with a mere glance of apathy into a pool of fragility. All I could do was watch, listen, and allow her to trace my fingers as I tried not to get us killed with only a single hand on the steering wheel.
Eventually, we arrived at my aunt’s house. I didn’t dare to leave my vehicle before it was explained to me why exactly we were here. So, I waited until Ari had at least somewhat collected herself and then asked a hesitant, “Ari, what are we doing here?”
“We’re not doing anything,” she said, basing her answer strictly off of my word choice. It always bugged me when she did that, but it was Ari, so even the littlest things like nitpicking my sentence structure could be overlooked for a girl like her. Sure, her constant attention to preciseness in linguistics bothered me to no end, but it was just one of those quirky idiosyncrasies that I would have to deal with if I wanted to be with Ari Remon—which I did, obviously.
“Okay,” I sighed, mentally figuring out how I could rearrange my phrasing, “then what am I doing here?”
“Talking to your parents,” she stated as if she had it all figured out. And knowing Ari to a certain extent, I had a hunch that she did, indeed, have it all figured out.
“About what?” I cringed at even the thought of chatting with my parents. Christmas was supposed to be a day that was all about family and rekindling some bullshitty sense of joy or whatever, but after my interaction with the two adults who had raised me, speaking to them once again didn’t exactly seem all that appealing. Even my mom who I had spent the past few months missing, I didn’t really want to talk to anymore. I liked the aspect of having limited contact with my parents, and as of returning to their presences, I remembered why. Missing them was a whole lot better than living with them.
“Your recent experimentation with pills,” Ari said sharply, and I winced. That was one particular topic that was probably on the very top of the list of things I most certainly did not want to discuss with my parents. My dad was still trying to get over how I had quit football, become a drug addict, and most recently, declined an invite to a fraternity. Telling him—on Christmas—that I had relapsed didn’t exactly sound like a field of daisies. My mom wouldn’t be happy, either, but she would accept it. She wouldn’t understand why I had relapsed (even I had trouble understanding why I had done it), but she would accept it, which was more than my dad was going to do.
“Yeah, I don’t really want to do that,” I determined as resolutely as I knew how.
Unfortunately, my resoluteness simply wasn’t resolute enough, for Ari then uttered a mere, “I know, but you’re going to do it anyways,” and I knew she was right.
Regardless, I still elected to challenge her on the matter and prolong the confrontation for as long as I could: “No, I’m not. I don’t want to.”
“Eric,” she exhaled, “go talk to your parents. Try to be civil. It’s Christmas, after all.”
“‘Christmas’?” I mocked. “Ari, that doesn’t mean anything to you.”
“I know, but it means something to you.” And like in most instances, she was right. I turned off the car, unbuckled my seatbelt. Then, I reached over and unbuckled Ari’s seatbelt, too. “Eric, what are you doing?”
“At the airport, you told Alex that you were majoring in psychology,” I recounted an event that had happened just a few hours prior, though it felt like a lifetime ago. Ari nodded, neither denying the fact nor questioning me about why I had diverged so greatly from what she had asked. “The thing is, Ari, I can vividly recall you once telling me that you hated therapy. Care to explain why you’re entering a field that you supposedly hate?”
“No,” she shook her head, and for a moment I thought that she was going to evade an answer, “I said that I hated therapists.”
“Okay, fine. How can you become something that you hate?”
“Like I told you before, my mom was a therapist,” she said, and in that moment, I knew that I had entered dangerous waters. The crying was bound to reappear if the subject stayed the same. I didn’t want to see Ari cry again. Or ever. “After she died, I was traumatized and depressed. Still am, actually. I needed the therapy, but I resented the people who were going to help me because they reminded me of my mom. I’m still not fully over my aversion of therapists, but that’s why I’m going to become a psychologist, instead.”
“What’s the difference?” I inquired lamely, pretty sure that with my extensive record of being locked in a room with “therapists” and “psychologists” I should’ve known the answer.
“One is a title, one a doctor,” she said fluently.
“You’re, um, depressed?” I gulped, replaying the term that had stuck out in my mind.
“And traumatized,” she added like it was no big deal. She noticed my shift in mien, and continued to speak: “We all have issues, Eric.” I remained a listener, and she filled the reticence with sound in the best way she knew how: “Not to be nosy, but why bring up psychology now, Eric?”
I took a deep breath, and pocketed the information of how emotionally damaged my girlfriend actually was. Then, I replied, “Because, Ari Remon, you are going to mediate.”
“How does mediating have anything to do with me majoring in psychology?”
“Don’t couples’ therapists mediate through divorces or whatever?”
She let out a small laugh at my lack of knowledge in the realms that she would be studying for the next undetermined period of time in her life. “Last time I checked,” she began, “you were about to tell your parents about relapsing; not file for emancipation.”
“Whatever,” I dismissed the notion, “I still want you there.”
“Okay. Let’s go.” And that was exactly what we did.
With more than a gallon of hesitancy on my part, I opened my door, and got out. Ari did the same, and I waited for her to be at my side, before beginning the short trek up the cobblestone path that led to my aunt’s big yellow house with the white shudders and black mailbox. When we reached the door, there was a large part of me that just wanted to sprint away, get back into my car, and drive off—no one would ever know that I had even been there. The more rational side of me, however, was what forced me to ring the doorbell, and endure the torture of waiting.
The door swung open after about a minute, and I was then bombarded with affection as I entered the house. “Eric! Sweetheart! We didn’t think you were coming!” said a cheery voice as I was squished to death by the hostess’ embrace.
“I couldn’t go a Christmas without seeing you, I guess,” I joked, trying to keep my tone hushed. It was awful, but as long as my aunt and parents were the only ones who knew I was here, then I knew I would be able to escape, unscathed by the ridicule of my judgmental family.
“Well, I’m so glad that you made it!” exclaimed the woman who was related to me through being my dad’s sister. Though they had grown up in the same household when they were younger, my aunt had some adopted a more, well, friendly demeanor than my father could ever even wish for. She was the type of affable person who found contentment in the simplest things from baking the perfect apple pie to seeing the happiness on her nephew’s face as he opened up his birthday present that she got for him. We weren’t particularly close, but we weren’t unclose, either.
“So am, I,” I told her, only bending the truth a marginal amount. “Unfortunately, I can’t stay for long.”
“That’s my Eric! Always a busy bee!” she laughed in delight, and then her eyes traveled over to the girl I had brought with me. “Oh! And who do we have here?”
“Ari,” said the girl, “I’m Eric’s girlfriend.”
“Well, it’s lovely to meet you, Ari,” the woman smiled. “I’m Eric’s aunt.”
Ari shot the lady the best grin she could muster, but I knew that it was forced and fake. I didn’t really want to be here at all right now, and judging my Ari’s frigidness, I had a hunch that she was starting to jump ships to my boat, and reconsider bringing me here. “Um, do you know where my parents are?”
“Last time I saw them, they were in the kitchen, sweetie.”
“Okay, thanks,” I breathed, mentally reviewing how I was going to do this without causing a big scene. I let out a stream of air, and then noticed that Ari was no longer standing beside me. Her absence only added to my anxieties, as I listened to my aunt blather on about a gingerbread house gone wrong. All I really wanted to do was just leave, but I would settle for briefly talking to my parents, and getting the disappointment over with.
Then, like a flare of gloomy light on a snowy day in December, Ari Remon reappeared. This time, however, she was not alone. Trailing behind her in a buzz of confusion were two people who I really didn’t want to face right now. Like the last time I had seen them just a few hours ago, they were dressed in their Christmas best. My mom was wearing her favorite green cardigan with a black dress, and my dad and his suit looked ready to take down any big corporation that stood in their way. Momentarily ceasing their verbal perplexities, they both stared at me and waited.
“Uh, would you mind giving us a few minutes alone?” I asked my aunt meekly. She nodded eagerly, wished us all a merry Christmas, and then left to go check the turkey in the oven. Then, it was just the four of us: my mom, my dad, my girlfriend, and me.
“Eric, I’m glad that you’re here, but, uh, why?” my mother fumbled over her words.
“I, uh, I’m leaving after this—maybe I’ll come back here or go straight to California, I don’t know,” I stalled, feeling myself drowning under the pressure. It was like I was telling them that I was an addict all over again. That had been a tough day. My mom cried, and my dad cursed. No parent wanted to hear that his or her child had spent the entirety of his high school career smoking pot. Mine were no different. “Before I left, I just wanted to tell you two something.”
“Son, what is it?” my father prompted, his eyes moving over to Ari and then widening. “You didn’t get her pregnant, did you?”
“If I did, how mad would you be?” I tested, hoping that in his eyes relapsing was a lesser offense than getting a girl—getting Ari pregnant.
At the look of pure horror that then graced my dad’s face, Ari decided to intervene before any falsehood could really settle firmly in his mind. “I’m not pregnant,” she swore.
“Eric, what is it?” sighed my mom, worry staining her face. She was anticipating the worst, but I knew that even she couldn’t predict what I was about to tell her.
My mom never understood the mentality of an addict. I didn’t fully understand it either, but she really didn’t get it. She couldn’t comprehend why I hadn’t just stopped on my own and made the problem go away without rehab. In her world, she had control of every little thing. She thought that an addiction could also be controlled. Unfortunately, it didn’t work that way. To her, after rehab I was bound to be cured. I wasn’t supposed to stumble upon a yearning for drugs and numbness. The “problem” was just supposed to dissipate, like all problems did in her life. But this wasn’t a normal problem that could just be ignored and overlooked—this was an addiction.
“Two days ago,” I started, inhaling a gulp of oxygen that could possibly be my last if things went poorly, “I relapsed.”
My dad closed his eyes and shook his head. My mom burst into tears. My girlfriend came over to me and traced my hand. I looked at the three other people, and felt bad. Bad that my actions had caused this. Bad that I had done what I did. Bad that I hadn’t just said no. Bad that I started using in the first place. Bad that I had gone to Grant. Bad that instead of celebrating Christmas like a normal person and allowing others to do the same, I was ruining everything.
“I’m scared to ask, but who did you get the drugs from, what type of drugs were they, where were you, and why did you do it, Eric?” questioned my dad after a pause that was too tense and too long.
“I got them from a guy at the frat—”
“Name?”
“Dad!”
“Eric?”
“Grant.”
“Last name?”
“Sterling. Grant Sterling.”
“Grant Sterling. We’ll take care of him.”
“Dad!”
“What type?”
“Pills.”
“Eric!”
“I know, I know!”
“Where were you?”
“At the frat.”
“Why did you do it, son?”
I cringed at his elected pronoun, and knew that I couldn’t answer truthfully without my mom wanting to hunt Ari down and not being able to settle for anything less than blood. This was not how I wanted to spend my Christmas. Finally, after allowing myself what I thought to be an adequate amount of time to formulate a response, I answered him: “I don’t know.”
My dad was silent after that, and let my mom take over the reprimanding for a moment. “Pills, Eric?” was all she could say.
“Something triggered me, and I wanted that feeling again,” I explained in the best way I knew how, “I didn’t care how.”
“Pills?” my mother whispered once more.
“Do we need to talk about you going back to rehab?” was how my dad chose to further the discussion. Like my mom, he had the similar difficulty of not being able to grasp that “rehab” wasn’t the solution to everything. I had already been once, and while it had helped a considerable amount, I had still relapsed, so it couldn’t have possibly helped as much as they wanted to think that it did.
“We can talk about, but I don’t want to go back,” I voiced. “I’d rather just get back into therapy or something.”
“Or maybe you should come home,” my mom began to spout delusional ideas.
“He’s at Stanford,” my dad scoffed, “he’s not leaving.”
“Look, I’m really sorry, and I know that I need to get help again, and that I shouldn’t have stopped in the first place,” I said, the front door in the distance practically pulling me towards it. “I’ll think about going to rehab again, but no promises.”
“That’s all we can ask,” my mom said, wiping a stray droplet of water away as she approached me. Ari’s fingers detached from mine, and I awaited my mother’s actions. She swept me up into a hug more prone to bone-crushing than my aunt’s had been, and didn’t let go until my dad finally coughed, signifying that it was time to let go. “Eric, you know we love you, right?”
“I know that you love me, Mom,” I mumbled, borrowing Ari’s linguistic technique for a brief moment.
“And so I,” added my dad. “Eric, I’m worried about you because I love you.”
“Oh, so you’re not just ‘worried’ that I won’t be able to become the ‘perfect’ son that you’ve always wanted?” I spat. This was probably one of those times when I should’ve used one of Ari’s core philosophies and kept my mouth shut. Alas, I suffered from the mild inability to think before speaking, and often reversed the two.
“You have a problem, son, and all I want to do is help you overcome it,” he said, not meeting my eyes. Rarely could my dad ever take dramatics like this seriously. He hated confrontation, and would do whatever was in his immediate power to elude it. Unfortunately for him, I was his son, and I was standing about a foot away from him. He couldn’t avoid me.
“I don’t have a ‘problem’, dad,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I have an addiction.”
My dad heard my words, and nodded, taking a moment to calculate his next verbal step. He could either retaliate by circumventing the matter—as he often did—or by surprising me entirely and doing something else. Though I couldn’t figure out why, he chose the latter. “Eric, I know you have an addiction, and just like we did a few months ago, we’re going to get through this again, and beat it,” he said, sounding like he was a leading a walk against cancer. “I love you, son, and I know that we don’t have the perfect father-son relationship, but I don’t care. I just want you to be happy and to be better. I don’t tell you nearly as much as I should, but I’m proud of you, and I’m really proud of the man that you’re becoming, Eric Wilson.”
Maybe it was the fact that it was Christmas, or maybe it was his heartfelt words that didn’t sound like they were pumped full of bullshit. Whichever the reason, I was then compelled to approach my father, and give him a hug. “I love you, too, Dad,” I muttered with the embrace. Then, I pulled back and turned to my girlfriend.
She nodded her head in approval, signifying that the mediation had gone well. Then, she mouthed the single word of “home,” and I knew that our visit was coming to a close. Ari managed to somehow slip away from the house after that, evading a goodbye as she often did, but I stayed behind. I thanked the two people who I really did love, and told them that I loved them. Then, I left to go bring the girl with the rainy voice home.