The Way Home

FOUR

Thomas Flynn obtained a bond and made Chris’s bail, twenty-seven hours after he’d been booked. At the arraignment, in a courtroom down in the Indiana Avenue corridor of Judiciary Square, Chris was released to the custody of his parents until the date of his trial. He was represented by Bob Moskowitz, a boyhood friend of Thomas Flynn’s who was a private-practice attorney. The Washington Post court beat reporter, interested and aggressive because Chris was a white kid and his “night of crime” had made the TV news, tried to ask Chris questions, but Chris made no comment by order of Moskowitz and was hustled out of the building by his father, who held him roughly by the elbow.

Moskowitz followed them to their house, where he met with Thomas, Amanda, and Chris to discuss the status of the case and their general plan. They sat in the living room, where Thomas had built shelves to hold his collection of history and other nonfiction books. Amanda served coffee that neither Moskowitz nor Thomas Flynn touched.

“I’ve been contacted by Jason Berg’s father.” Moskowitz wore a caterpillar mustache and was forty pounds too heavy for his height. “After questioning Jason, the police and prosecutors are satisfied that Jason was not significantly involved in the night’s events to the degree that he should be charged.”

“You mean,” said Flynn, “his father’s wired down at the courthouse, and he got his son off.”

“There’s no doubt that Mr. Berg has some suction. But more likely the prosecutors feel they can’t make any charges on Jason stick. Jason never got out of the SUV, so there was no contact or conversation between him and the boys in that parking lot. And of course he wasn’t the driver. They’re going to focus on Chris.”

“What about the pound of marijuana?” said Flynn. “Jason had nothing to do with that, either?”

“He says it wasn’t his.”

“It was mine,” said Chris.

“Shut up,” said Flynn.

“Tommy,” said Amanda.

“So, what, they’re gonna let that idiot off in exchange for his testimony against Chris?”

“Country’s my boy,” said Chris. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“I told you to shut the fuck up,” said Flynn.

“Tommy.”

“I don’t think they’re going to compel Jason to testify,” said Moskowitz with deliberate calm. “His father told me that he had no such indication from his contacts down there. They feel as if they have enough evidence and witnesses to make their case without Jason’s testimony.”

“What’s going to happen to my son?” said Amanda.

“I’m going to give him the best representation possible,” said Moskowitz. “Chris?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll speak in more detail, obviously. But what I want to ask you now concerns your alleged assault on Alexander Fleming, the boy in the parking lot. It’s important, because this is the act that triggered everything that followed. If you had reason to hit him, if you felt threatened or were defending yourself-”

“He didn’t threaten me or nothin like that,” said Chris. “I can’t even say that I was defending myself.”

“Why did you hit him, then?” said Moskowitz.

“I was angry,” said Chris. “It wasn’t what he said so much as how he said it. Actin like he was smarter than me.”

“And what did he say to you?”

Chris shook his head. “I don’t remember.”

“God,” said his father.

“Unfortunately,” said Moskowitz, making a show of glancing at his watch, “I’ve got to get to an appointment. Will you walk me out, Tom?”

“Let’s go.”

“Amanda,” said Moskowitz, taking her hand and squeezing it as he rose off the couch. “Chris. You’re to stay here in the house unless otherwise directed. You understand that, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Don’t worry. We’ll get through this.”

Bob Moskowitz and Thomas Flynn walked to a Mercedes sedan parked on Livingston. Moskowitz stowed his briefcase in the trunk, shut the lid, and leaned against his car.

“Talk to me, Bobby,” said Flynn.

“Honestly?” said Moskowitz. “This is going to be a challenge, to say the least. Individually, a few of the charges are minor, but compounded they are significant. That, together with the fact that Chris has a history, will give the impression that the incident follows a pattern of violent, reckless behavior. There’s the robbery of the locker room, the fights at the school. He has that assault-and-strong-arm arrest and the possession charge on his record as well.”

“That was a while back.”

“It’s there. You have to remember, people were seriously injured because of his alleged aggression and negligence on the night in question. That woman’s back injuries alone appear to be the kind that will plague her for the rest of her life. The boy whose nose Chris broke? His father was a major donor to our own D.C. Council member. Unfortunately, the events made the news and now Chris will be tried, in effect, in the public eye.”

“What are you getting at?”

“We’ll aim to get some of the charges reduced or thrown out. But I’m almost certain that something’s going to stick. What I’m going to recommend to you… Well, hear me out. You’re going to need to keep an open mind.”

“Go ahead.”

“The US attorney is making a hard push on this one because of all the publicity. Chris is not going to walk. The best thing we can do for him is plead guilty on some of the charges. I mean, we can roll the dice and go to trial, but a conviction in court can result in a stay in an adult prison. Juvenile jail is not the worst that can happen to him.”

“My boy’s going to jail?”

“Possibly. If so, I’d say that it would be for a relatively short period of time.”

“You’re talking about that place for juvenile offenders the District’s got.”

“Pine Ridge,” said Moskowitz. “I’m telling you it’s possible. Of course, I’m going to try to prevent it.”

“That’s all black kids out there, isn’t it?”

“I’m guessing it’s about ninety-eight percent, yes. The rest are Hispanics.”

“They wouldn’t send a white kid from this neighborhood to that place, would they?”

“It’s rare. But it has happened. There’s only one facility that houses D.C. juveniles who habitually commit these kinds of crimes. He’s not exempt from serving time there because he’s comfortable and white.”

“I can’t…” said Thomas Flynn, his voice trailing off.

“There’s something else you need to prepare for,” said Moskowitz. “We’ve only discussed the criminal aspect of this. There will probably be some litigation in civil court as well.”

“Meaning?”

“You’re going to be sued, Tommy. Your insurance company, sure, but probably you as well. All those people who got hurt or whose cars were wrecked because of Chris’s actions? They’re going to claim negligence on your part for letting a boy with Chris’s history get behind the wheel of an SUV that you bought for him. It’s convoluted, but there it is.”

“Can they do that?”

“My brethren are probably lining up to feed at the trough as we speak. They’ll certainly try.”

Flynn opened his mouth to speak but said nothing. Instead he shook his head.

“I know this is rough,” said Moskowitz, putting a hand on his friend’s arm. “It all seems insurmountable right now. But look, I see this kind of trouble in families all the time. They get through it eventually. You will, too.”

“Let me ask you something, Bob. Your oldest son, how’s he doin?”

“He’s fine,” said Moskowitz.

“I’m asking you, where is he in life right now?”

Moskowitz looked away. “He graduated high school a couple of months ago. He’s headed to Haverford in the fall.”

“Don’t tell me to look on the bright side.”

“Tommy-”

“Everything’s fucked,” said Flynn.

Amanda Flynn made Chris a sandwich while her husband and Bob Moskowitz stood talking outside the house. She did it quickly, so as not to annoy Tommy. Tommy would say that Chris, who could take a vehicle his father had bought him and use it to lead police on a high-speed chase, who could punch out a kid in a parking lot for no reason, who could cause a woman to go to the hospital taped to a stretcher, who could carry around a pound of marijuana in his car, who could manage to get kicked out of public high school in the District, who could quit church and sports and everything else, could certainly manage to make a sandwich for himself.

Amanda did not see it that way. She looked at Chris, knowing all that he had done, and saw a young man who had been locked up for a day and night, who was confused and ashamed, who had to be hungry, who needed to be fed. Thomas looked at Chris and saw failure and an insurmountable problem. She saw her little boy. Amanda thinking, With everything he’s done, he’s still my son.

“Here, honey,” she said, putting a turkey and Swiss on white down in front of him, mayonnaise, lettuce, no tomatoes, his sandwich, how he liked it. A glass of apple juice, Chris’s preferred drink, set beside the plate.

“Thanks, Mom.”

As Chris ate, Amanda looked through the living-room window and watched Bob Moskowitz drive away. Thomas Flynn stood on the lawn momentarily, checking the beeper hung on his belt line, replacing it, rubbing at his face. Then wheeling around and walking heavily back toward the house, sullen, his eyes to the ground. Amanda saying a wordless prayer that he would not enter their home and immediately explode.

Flynn came through the door. He looked at Chris, eating a sandwich off a TV tray, and shook his head in disgust. He looked at Amanda and sharply pointed his chin toward the center hall stairway. She followed him up the stairs.

It came to Amanda, when she was trying to “understand” Tom in moments of tension and conflict such as these, that it must be odd for her husband to have to act like an adult and deal with adult problems in the home in which he had grown up. Walking behind him up the stairs, she imagined him as a little boy, taking the steps two at a time, going up to his room to play or to wrestle with his big brother, Sean, now a Boeing executive in Chicago with whom he had little communication. She wondered if Tom, alone at night with his private demons, talked to his parents, whose spirits surely were in this house, and in his desperation sought their help.

It wasn’t difficult to imagine him as a child. She had known him since their days at Blessed Sacrament, the Catholic school at Chevy Chase Circle that went from K through eighth. They were boyfriend and girlfriend through high school, and had married against her parents’ wishes when Thomas was twenty and she was nineteen. Her father was dismayed that she was making this decision at so young an age and openly discouraged her from marrying a young man who had no intention of going to college.

“He wants to work, Dad,” said Amanda. “He’s ready to make money now.”

“And what about you, Amanda? You’re going to throw away a chance to go to college, to have that experience?”

“I’m with Tommy,” she said.

Amanda had known he was the one as soon as she’d seen him, a black-haired, green-eyed Irish boy, walking cocky through the halls of BS. He was a tough kid, quick to fight, a basketball player who haunted the courts at Friendship, Lafayette, the Chevy Chase Library, and Candy Cane City, and later was point guard and the sole white player on his Interhigh team. He was not a good student, and, with the exception of American history, a subject that fascinated him, he had no interest in books. He liked to have fun, fucked off in class, drank Budweiser from cans, and smoked any kind of weed that was offered to him. His father, an Irish immigrant complete with brogue, worked for the Government Printing Office. His mother was of Irish stock, American born, and proud to be called a housewife. They bought the clapboard house on Livingston on the cheap, when nonprofessionals still lived in Friendship Heights and Chevy Chase, D.C., and upper Northwest neighborhoods were heavy with Irish Catholics. Thomas Flynn delivered the Washington Post all through high school, even during basketball season. On his route lived Red Auerbach, whose Celtic-green Mercury Cougar was usually parked in the driveway of his home, two blocks off Nebraska Avenue. Tommy Flynn always put Mr. Auerbach’s newspaper at the top of his stoop, just outside the door.

Amanda had grown up on 31st Place in Barnaby Woods, on the east side of Connecticut Avenue, in a brick colonial that looked like several others on her street. Her father worked for an unidentified government agency, traveled frequently, and never talked about his job. Friends and neighbors assumed correctly that he was CIA.

Flynn had his buddies but spent most of his time with Amanda, a full-figured girl with strawberry blonde hair and fair skin, physically mature and sexually precocious at the age of fifteen. The two of them enjoyed their marijuana, alcohol, mushrooms, and downs, and, when they were in the company of kids with money, finger-thick lines of cocaine. They were faithful to each other and made it everywhere, in the front and backseats of Flynn’s 442 Cutlass, on a blanket in the high-grass field at Glover and Military, and on the green of Rock Creek Golf Course on summer nights. Tommy couldn’t get enough of her lush figure, and Amanda liked the wheel.

After high school, they married and rented a row home in pregentrified Shaw, still dirt cheap at the time. Flynn took retail jobs, then entered the MPD Academy and briefly worked as a police officer. Kate was born and died. Flynn’s father dropped dead of a heart attack, and soon after that his mother, Tara, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was gone in six weeks. His parents had willed the house on Livingston to Thomas, leaving their pitifully meager savings to their elder son, Sean, causing a rift between the brothers that would never heal. Flynn quit the MPD and moved with his wife into the Friendship Heights house in which he’d been raised. Amanda found Jesus, had a failed pregnancy, then carried Chris successfully to term. All of this occurred in the space of two and one half years.

Thomas Flynn walked into their bedroom, waited for Amanda to join him, and closed the door behind her. He used his right hand to pop the knuckles of his left. When he started the mangling of his joints, Amanda knew he was attempting to control himself and also that he would fail.

A shock of black hair had fallen over his forehead. He didn’t look all that different than he had as a teenager. A little thicker and some lines around his eyes, but that was all right. She still found him handsome and often wanted him and his touch. Because of fatigue, and because their differences on the handling of Chris had put something impenetrable between them, they made love infrequently. Sometimes it was good, and occasionally it was eye-popping, but when it was over, Tommy’s black mood would always return.

“What is it?” said Amanda. “You’re not going to lecture me, are you?”

“I see you made Chris a sandwich.”

“And?”

“Did you serve it to him on his Star Wars plate?”

“I fixed him some lunch. You think I should let him starve?”

“Let the kid make his own lunch. He’s old enough to stick a knife in our hearts. He can build a sandwich by himself.”

“Okay, Tom. Okay.”

“You’re not helping him, Amanda. He doesn’t need an enabler or a personal chef. It’s pretty obvious that the gentle way doesn’t get results with him.”

“I’m keeping the lines of communication open.”

“I tried that and it doesn’t work.”

“You tell him to shut up. Then you tell him to shut the fuck up. That’s not communication.”

“It’s what he deserves.”

“He deserves our support. And I don’t want to lose him.”

“We’ve already lost him.”

“I don’t believe that. Look, I know you’re angry. But he needs to know that we still love him.”

“Fine.” Flynn’s beeper sounded. He checked the number on the display and took a deep breath. “My mailbox is so full it’s not taking any more messages. I can’t keep ignoring the business.”

“Go to work,” said Amanda. “You need to.”

“I will. But listen, don’t let Chris leave the house. He’s going to tell you he’s only going up to the store, or he’s only going out to see his girlfriend. It’s a violation of his terms of release. Don’t let him play you, do you understand?”

“I get it, Tommy.”

Flynn looked her in the eyes. He dropped his hands to his sides and softened his tone. “Amanda.”

“What?” Now he was going to apologize.

“I’m sorry. This stuff with Chris has knocked me down, obviously. I’m all messed up.”

“I know. Go to work. It’s all right.”

She wanted him to go. It was better here when he was not around.

Flynn left without touching her. He left the house without speaking to his son.

Thomas and Chris Flynn had little communication over the next few months. Chris continued to see the same psychiatrist that Thomas and Amanda saw as a couple, but Chris refused to meet as a family. At home, Amanda and Chris spoke regularly and cordially, and she cooked for him and did his laundry. Thomas and Chris spoke to each other only if necessary. Often they were in a room together and did not speak at all.

Thomas Flynn kept busy with his carpet-and-floor business and met Bob Moskowitz occasionally to discuss Chris’s upcoming hearing. Fall arrived, and as other students returned to their high schools, Chris remained home, sleeping late, watching television, and killing time. He spoke often with Taylor on the phone but had infrequent conversations with his friend Jason Berg, and finally had none at all.

When Chris’s case came up on the court’s docket, everything seemed to accelerate. Chris pled guilty, and Moskowitz made a well-reasoned and passionate plea for lenience. But the judge was well aware of the criticism he would receive if he were to show mercy to the white kid from upper Northwest who had made the print and broadcast news, especially in light of the boy’s history of theft, reckless acts, and violence. In accordance with D.C. juvenile justice procedure, he committed Chris Flynn to the custody of the District of Columbia. It was decided that society and the District would be best served if Chris were to be incarcerated with other young men until it was determined that he had achieved an acceptable degree of reform. And that was it. Chris kissed his mother, said nothing to his father, and was led away, shackled in handcuffs and leg irons, to a van that would transport him to the juvenile detention facility at Pine Ridge, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.

That night, Flynn and Amanda ate a meal at home and turned in early. Amanda slipped under the covers and turned her back to her husband. He listened to her sob quietly and when her breathing evened out he knew she had fallen asleep. But he couldn’t sleep or even close his eyes. He got off the bed and, in his boxers, went downstairs to the dining room, poured bourbon into a tumbler, and drank it down neat. He poured two more fingers from the bottle and took it out to the living room and stood by the mantel over the fireplace, where Amanda had set up framed photographs, the usual array of family and friends.

Thomas Flynn looked at an old photo, taken at the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade down on Constitution Avenue, when Chris was two years old. Thomas had put Chris up on his shoulders so he could see above the crowd, and Chris’s tiny hands were wrapped around his father’s thick index fingers. And then there were those days that Flynn would ride his old Nishiki ten-speed on the bike path of Rock Creek Park, Chris strapped into a seat mounted over the rear tire, a smile on his chubby face as the wind hit it and blew back his hair, Flynn reaching behind him and squeezing Chris’s hand. Flynn could feel the warmth of those hands, the way they clung to him, even now. He remembered how proud he had been the day of the parade, how proud he was to have people see him and his son together on that bike, how certain he was then of his role as provider, protector, and father.

It was no longer about Chris’s disturbing behavior, or his indifference to fitting into society, or his trouble with the law, or his marijuana use, or the embarrassment Flynn felt around the friends and acquaintances whose sons and daughters had stayed on track and were heading for college.

Chris was in prison. It felt final and irreversible, and Flynn did not know what to do.

He placed his empty tumbler on the mantel and listened to the tick of the clock mounted on the wall. It was very quiet in the house.

Chris Flynn had spent nearly every night of his life here on Livingston Street. Now it was as if he had never lived here at all. There would be no muffled sounds of the television behind his closed bedroom door, no floor-rumbling bass of his stereo, no low chuckle as he talked on the phone with his girl, no heavy, clumsy footsteps on the stairs. Chris was gone, and the silence he had left behind was a scream in his father’s ears.

It was 1999. Chris was seventeen the day he entered juvenile prison. Thomas Flynn was thirty-nine years old.