The Way Home

SIX

Thomas Flynn’s business was called Flynn’s Floors. Despite the name, which he’d chosen because of its alliterative effect, the majority of his work was actually in carpet. He avoided wood flooring jobs, which were prone to costly error, and for the same reason he turned down work that involved ceramics. “I prefer not to deal with that,” he’d tell customers. “It’s outside my comfort level in terms of expertise.” To builders and subcontractors, he’d simply say, “I don’t fuck with tiles. You can fix a carpet mistake. With ceramics, you screw up, you’ve got to eat it.”

He catered primarily to the residential trade, with a smattering of commercial work in the mix. Much of his business came from referrals, so he spent a good portion of his day calling on potential clients in their homes, checking work that his installation crew had already done, and putting out any attendant fires. Amanda handled the paperwork end of the business-inventory, bills, receivables, payroll, insurance, and taxes-from the office they had set up in the basement of their house. Flynn was a good closer and could mother his crew and talk dissatisfied clients down, but he had no interest in the clerical aspect of the business, while Amanda was efficient in paperwork and the collection of moneys. Their talents were complementary and they knew their roles well. Take one of them out of the equation and Flynn’s Floors would not have been a success.

Flynn drove a white Ford Econoline van with a removable magnetic sign on its side, advertising the company name and phone number. His crew, headed by a hardworking El Salvadoran named Isaac, rode around in an identical van that Isaac drove home at night and parked on the grass of his Wheaton home off Veirs Mill Road. Chris, when he was still speaking to his father, called the vans the Flynn’s Floors fleet.

Like many salesmen, Flynn did not believe in showing up at a client’s house looking like he made more money than he needed. He felt that it was prudent to look humble and hungry. His work clothing was plain and square, Dockers from Hecht’s, polo shirts bearing the company patch when it was warm enough, long-sleeved cotton-poly blends in the winter and fall, Rocksports on his feet. For a while he had gone through the Vandyke phase, in the rebel yell manner of a white Major League baseball player, but he saw too many guys with double chins doing the same thing, and it screamed middle-age desperation when in fact he wasn’t there yet. Amanda said it made him look pleased with himself rather than honest or smart. He shaved it off.

Flynn looked in the mirror and saw what others saw, a guy who went to work every day, who took care of his family, who made what would always be a modest living, and who would pass on, eventually, without having made a significant mark.

He had been fine with this in the past. His aim was to instill values, work ethic, and character in his son, and to see him through to adulthood, when he would become a productive member of society and in turn pass this along to his own children. That was what he felt he was here for. That was how all of this “worked.” But when Chris jumped the tracks, Flynn’s belief in the system failed. There just didn’t seem to be a point to anything anymore. He knew that this attitude, this inability to find purpose in his daily routine, was a sign of depression, but knowing it did not restore any sense of meaning to his life.

It was true what some folks said: When your kid is a failure, your life has been a failure, too.

Still, he continued to go to work. He had bills and real estate taxes, and the responsibility of maintaining employment for Isaac and his crew, who had families they were supporting here and family members they took care of in Central America as well. “It” hadn’t worked out for Flynn, but that didn’t mean these men and their loved ones had to suffer, too.

And then there was Amanda. Flynn loved her deeply, though he often spoke to her dismissively and they were no longer the friends they had once been. They communicated, and occasionally they came together in bed, but for Flynn the dying of their friendship was the most awful result of the troubles with Chris.

“I got a call from the superintendent,” said Bob Moskowitz.

“Yeah?” said Flynn. “What’d he have to say?”

Flynn and Moskowitz were at the bar of the Chevy Chase Lounge on Connecticut Avenue, Flynn’s neighborhood local. Flynn was drinking a Budweiser. Moskowitz was kidding himself with a Bud Light.

“He said that Amanda has been calling him fairly frequently.”

“And what, he doesn’t like it?”

“Colvin’s a good guy. But he’s got, like, two hundred and seventy-five boys he’s responsible for in that facility.”

“He’s busy.”

“Yes. The thing is, Amanda’s not calling him with any significant problems or queries. After visitation, she calls Colvin and says stuff like ‘I saw Chris and he looked a little thin,’ or ‘Chris sounded congested.’ I mean, they’re feeding them out there, Tom. If those boys get sick, they care for them. Guarantee it.”

“You’re saying Amanda has to stop with the bullshit calls.”

“They’re not going to release Chris just to get his mom off their back. And it’s not helping his case.”

“Colvin and them aren’t used to parents who give a shit.”

“They aren’t used to parents who nitpick everything,” said Moskowitz. “I understand she’s scared for Chris. Outraged, too. But I think she needs to, you know, deal with this in a more internal way.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to her.” Flynn had a pull off his beer and placed the bottle back on the stick. “Did Colvin say how Chris is doing? Or did he just phone you to crap on my wife?”

“Colvin’s all right. And Chris is doing okay, too. Maybe too resigned to his incarceration, if you know what I mean.”

“I do.”

“He doesn’t seem to care one way or another about his situation, and that’s problematic, because he’s got a level meeting coming up. I’m going to advise him to, like, sit up straight in his chair. Tell the review board that he recognizes and regrets his mistakes and that he wants to better himself. That he will better himself and is looking forward to the day he’ll be released.”

“That’s good, Bob.”

“You could do the same when you see him next.”

“He doesn’t really speak to me much. Mostly he communicates with his mom.”

“I’m saying, you could speak to him.”

“Right,” said Flynn.

Speak to him. That’s what the shrink, Dr. Peterman, said in their weekly meeting. And Flynn would nod and say, “You’re right. I should try.”

Dr. Peterman’s office was in Tenleytown, on the corner of Brandywine and Wisconsin, over a beauty parlor, where Mitchell’s, the sporting-goods store where as a teenager Flynn had bought his Adidas Superstars, used to be. Flynn wondered if the high rent was added into his tab. Like many men, Flynn did not care to talk about himself or, God forbid, his feelings. He continued to go to their sessions because it made Amanda happy, but as a concession he made sure that he complained about the impending visit on the drive to the man’s office. Predictably, he called the shrink “Dr. Peterhead” when speaking of him around Amanda, and brought up more than once the fact that the doctor had a copy of I’m Okay, You’re Okay displayed on the bookshelf behind his desk. “What,” said Flynn, “is that the fountain of knowledge from which Dr. Peterhead drinks?” And Amanda would say, “Please don’t be sarcastic when we get there, Tommy.”

Flynn was polite in the man’s presence, and not unduly sarcastic. Dr. Peterman was a pleasant young guy with a prematurely receding hairline, seemed pretty normal for a head doctor, and not overly analytical or mommy obsessed. Flynn looked around the office, at the usual pedestrian watercolors hung on the wall, at the beanbag chairs for those who liked to get comfy on the floor, at the self-help books on the bookshelf, at that book, and he was silently amused.

One day Dr. Peterman set up an easel and on it was a poster showing an imaging photograph of a brain shot from several angles. The man liked his props. The doctor pointed at a section of the brain, seen from a bird’s-eye view, that was colored green.

“What are we looking at?” said Dr. Peterman.

“From that overhead angle?” said Flynn. “It looks like a set of nuts.”

“Thomas.”

Dr. Peterman smiled charitably. “You’re looking at a brain, of course. Specifically, the brain of a sixteen-year-old boy. This area in green is the limbic system, which regulates emotion. You can see that it is dominant in terms of geography. Now this blue area, representing the prefrontal cortex, is for reasoning. You can see that it’s much smaller. That’s because it develops more slowly than the limbic system.” Dr. Peterman removed the poster to reveal another poster beneath it with similar imaging photographs. “Now, here is the brain of the same boy, but the photos were taken several years later. The boy is now a man in his twenties. And you can see here that the blue and green areas are represented equitably, more or less. Reasoning has, in effect, caught up with emotion.”

“The kid matured,” said Flynn.

“In layman’s terms, yes. Teenage boys act with emotion more frequently than they do with reason. There’s a physiological reason for that.”

“But this thing with the brain must be true for all boys,” said Flynn.

“I know what you’re getting at. Why does someone like Chris find so much trouble and another boy find none at all?”

“Environment,” said Amanda.

“Right,” said Flynn. “But why Chris? You could understand some kid born into poverty, who comes from a broken home, who’s around thugs and drug dealers; I mean, that kid’s got problems coming out of the gate. You might not excuse it, but you can understand why a young man like that finds trouble. But a boy like Chris… why?”

“That’s one of the things we’re here to talk about. But I bring it up to show you that this is not a permanent state of mind for your son. It’s going to improve.”

Amanda reached over and squeezed Flynn’s hand. The doctor had made her feel better, and Flynn supposed that in this regard, the session had been worthwhile.

The holidays came and were difficult. Then New Year’s Eve, the turn of the century, which was supposed to be the biggest party of their lifetimes but which they did not celebrate, and then a return to routine. Low interest rates had encouraged folks to buy homes or take out second mortgages and remodel, which was good for Flynn’s business. He and Amanda were kept busy, and Flynn’s crew had steady work. The greater profit they experienced, however, was offset by the extreme increases in Flynn’s insurance rates. As Moskowitz had predicted, Flynn had been the target of civil suits. The settlements, in total, had been costly.

Amanda visited Chris weekly, sometimes with Flynn, sometimes alone. She thought Chris had grown more receptive to their visits, but Flynn found him sullen and unchanged. On joint visits, it was Amanda who generated conversation and kept things moving along. Chris and Flynn continued to keep each other at arm’s length.

Chris had advanced several levels since he had arrived at Pine Ridge. The monthly level meetings consisted of a kind of informal review where the opinions and testimony of administrators and guards came into play. An inmate was required to achieve Level 6 before he would be considered for release. Chris was now at Level 4. His progress was encouraging to Amanda, and the news of it seemed to brighten her outlook. To Flynn, she looked younger than she had in a long while.

Thomas and Amanda continued to see Dr. Peterman. One cool day in late March they made the familiar drive to his office, complete with Flynn’s running commentary on Dr. Peterhead, the watercolors, the books in his office, and his fees. Amanda did not mind. She was just happy that Flynn was cooperative and coming along.

As he did with every visit, the doctor returned to the issue of the gulf between father and son. For his part, Flynn contended that Amanda was too soft on Chris. Flynn said that while he disagreed with her, he understood Amanda’s approach and that someone, he supposed, had to continue to nurture their son, but he could not bring himself to do it. Eventually he admitted that he was too wounded by Chris’s attitude and actions to speak to him in a loving way. And then, perhaps because he was embarrassed by this admission, Flynn claimed that his hard-line stance was part of a larger strategy.

“Somebody’s got to show him the iron fist,” said Flynn. “Let him know that what he’s done has been unacceptable. Amanda can be the one to pour juice into his sippy cup and give him hugs.”

“Oh, please,” said Amanda.

“I’m saying, you’ve got your role, Amanda, and I’ve got mine.”

“Why don’t you switch roles?” said Dr. Peterman. “Amanda can adapt a bit of a tougher stance and you can do the nurturing.”

“What,” said Flynn, “you want me to wear a skirt?”

Dr. Peterman smirked nervously and blushed a little. “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”

Flynn looked at his watch. A quiet settled in the office and they all knew the session was done.

Flynn and Amanda walked over to the Dancing Crab and had lunch and a few beers. Amanda called Flynn a Neanderthal but laughed about his comments in Dr. Peterman’s office, and in her eyes he saw light and youth. That afternoon, they made love in the quiet of their bedroom. She fell asleep as the sun streamed in through the parted curtains. Flynn stepped over their Lab, Darby, who was sprawled out and napping on his cushion, and got dressed and left the house.

He drove down Bingham Drive into Rock Creek Park and stopped at a turnoff lot, where he cut the engine, his van facing the water. He and Amanda had come here one day as teenagers after they had eaten mushrooms from a plastic bag. Their spot was a beach of fine pebbles and sand, and they had lain down upon it. Tommy Flynn had taken Amanda’s shoes off and massaged the balls of her feet and her toes, and as the psilocybin kicked in, they laughed without reason and uncontrollably for what seemed like a long time. Flynn could barely imagine having so little responsibility again, so little weight on his shoulders. To look up and see no clouds blocking the sun.

I’m just disappointed, thought Flynn. That’s all it is. I’ve been a failure as a father, and there’s nothing ahead of me that looks promising or new.

In one of their sessions, Dr. Peterman had looked straight at him and said, “Why do you think Chris has gone down this road, Thomas?” And: “Is it possible that Chris was trying to please you or emulate you in some way? By your admission, you were a pretty tough kid. Did Chris feel he had to be that way, too, in order to garner your respect and your love?”

Flynn had taken no offense. Peterman was smart and he was onto something. The doctor knew.

Flynn tried to think on his early years with his son. How he had continually emphasized the physical over the intellectual with Chris. John Wayned him up with instructions to never show weakness and “step aside for no man.” He had taught his son how to fight but never shown him the value in walking away from one.

Pivot your hip, Chris. Aim for two feet behind your target and punch through till you get there. If you’re going to throw it, make sure it counts.

While other fathers were reading books to their sons and pointing out countries on the globe, Flynn was showing Chris how to shoot a gun in the woods and teaching him the police ten codes. It became a kind of shorthand between them. Chris would fall down and scrape his knee, and he would reassure his father that he was 10-4. Or Chris would call his father on the car phone, wondering where he was, and ask, “What’s your ten-twenty?” The code 10-7 meant out of service, but Chris learned from Flynn that to cops it also meant dead. So when Flynn buried Chris’s deceased hamster in the backyard, Chris said, “Mr. Louie is ten-seven.”

Flynn had taught his son that an off-the-ten code for an officer in serious trouble was a Signal 13. In elementary school, when Chris was just beginning to act up, he would come home and tell his father that he had been sent to the office, but that the offense was minor and nothing to worry about.

“It was no Signal Thirteen, Dad.”

“That’s good, Chris,” said Flynn with a smile.

The boy had spirit and fire, character traits that annoyed teachers but would serve Chris well as an adult. That’s what Flynn had always believed. But in this, and in everything else pertaining to the raising of his son, he now felt that he’d been wrong. Chris had been headed for serious trouble for a long time, and Flynn had missed the signals. It was as if he had been watching his kid drive a car, in slow motion, straight into a brick wall. Watching it, letting it happen, without so much as a shouted warning.

It’s not Amanda’s fault that Chris is what he is. It’s mine.

Speak to him.

I should try.