‘And I’ve stopped bothering to count the number I’m responsible for,’ said Kemp.
Fuck their problems, thought Blair; all he cared about was his own. ‘You’re the experts,’ he said, holding his irritation, if I can’t get answers then I’m looking for advice.’
‘You live abroad?’ said Erickson.
‘Moscow.’ said Blair.
‘Have you had a chance to talk to Paul?’
Blair nodded, ‘I tried, last night.’
‘ Tried? ’ picked up Kemp.
‘I couldn’t get through to him,’ said Blair. ‘Maybe I did, towards the end, but I’m not sure. But he wouldn’t talk to me… say anything. I asked him why he did it and he just sat there, like a dummy!’
‘That’s usually the way,’ said Kemp.
Blair decided the man was definitely annoying him. ‘So you’re the experts,’ he repeated. ‘So you tell me. Why do they do it?’
‘I wish I knew that, too,’ said Kemp. ‘There’s never one single reason. Or a way of assembling all the factors into any understandable answer. There’s peer pressure, being shamed into it by someone they admire, a bigger guy. There’s experimentation, the way most kids have: should have. There’s boredom. There’s the availability of the stuff, all sorts of stuff: it’s easier to buy dope on a street corner than it is to buy bread. Supermarkets close: dealers are always there.’
‘So why aren’t they cleared off the damned streets!’
‘They are,’ said Erickson. ‘And the moment – literally the moment – they go there’s two more to take their places.’
Blair felt the frustration building up inside him. ‘Let’s talk specifics,’ he tried again. ‘Let’s talk about Paul and let’s talk about me and let’s try to find something we can do. I’ll take your word about it being a modern American problem and I’ll take your word about all the reasons it can happen but I want to find a way – will find a way – to stop Paul fucking himself up.’ Blair hadn’t intended to swear but didn’t really give a damn whether they were offended or not. There wasn’t any reason why they should be.
‘How did you talk to him, last night?’ asked Erickson.
‘ How? ’
‘Calmly, trying to understand? Or did you lose your temper?’
Blair conceded it was justified, after his outburst. ‘Calmly, as far as I was concerned,’ he said, i don’t think I shouted and I don’t think I lost my temper. But I let him know how I felt. I let him know I thought what he had done was stupid and weak and that I thought he’d let everyone down and that I wasn’t accepting the fact that my wife and I are divorced to be any excuse. That there wasn’t an excuse…’ Blair paused. Then he said, ‘And I am trying to understand. I keep asking questions but no one seems able to provide any answers.’
Blair saw the two men exchange looks and realised they considered he’d handled it wrongly. Erickson said, ‘You were aggressive?’
‘No,’ refused Blair. ‘I was direct and straight, like I felt a father should be.’ Except, perhaps, that a father should be at home and not a polite visitor.
‘A factor I didn’t mention was that sometimes drug-taking is a rebellion against authority,’ said Kemp, in his lecturing voice.
‘Rebellions against authority get crushed: that’s what law and order means,’ said Blair, impatient at the meaningless cliche. ‘Growing up, becoming an adult…’ He stopped, unsure which way his argument was leading him. ‘… OK,’ he resumed. ‘Making the mistakes that growing up means, that’s all right. That happens… it happens. That I can understand. Accept even. If he got drunk I’d understand it
…’
‘Why?’ demanded Erickson, slightly ahead of the other counsellor.
Blair blinked at the concerted demand. ‘Kids get drunk: it happens,’ he said, badly.
‘Do you know what the worst drug in existence is, Mr Blair?’ said Kemp, who appeared to regard himself as the spokesman. ‘Alcohol is the worst drug. It kills more people and causes more lost work days and more lost school days and more accidents than marijuana and cocaine and heroin and pills put together.’
‘Whose side are you on?’ said Blair, letting the exasperation show.
‘Paul’s side,’ said Kemp. ‘I’m not on your side and I’m not on your wife’s side and I’m not on anybody else’s side. Just Paul’s.’
‘At last!’ said Blair. ‘At last someone’s said something positive.’
‘We always try to be positive, Mr Blair,’ said Erickson. ‘I’ve sat through a hundred meetings like the one I’m having with you now and let me tell you that your reaction is the reaction of practically everyone. You think we’re inconclusive and you think we’re weak and you get impatient but try not to show it, because you love your kid and think you might in some way affect how we’ll try to help him, if you loudmouth us. We’re not interested in making our own points, Mr Blair: in expressing our opinions and our attitudes because our opinions and attitudes are middle-aged and already formed and at the end of every frustrating day we go home to a home where there’s a six-pack in the fridge and if it’s been a bad, particularly frustrating day we might even blow the whole six pack and get drunk and when we’re drunk we might believe that things aren’t really as bad as they are. Which is what taking drugs is all about, Mr Blair. Not wanting to know how things are – not dramatic, major, world-shattering things – but the really important things, things that directly affect you and worry you and wake you up in the middle of the night… those things. Not wanting to face up to how bad – or how easily solved – those things are.’
Blair felt the words dump over him, like a wave at the very moment of hitting the shore, when it’s like a punch and stronger than any resistance and knocks you over and sends you sprawling on the sand, looking a fool. They’d had their shots and he’d had his and they were still at either end of a hugely wide bridge. He said, ‘You’ve seen Paul, both of you? Talked to him?’
‘Yes,’ said Kemp.
‘So what’s his problem? What wakes him up in the middle of the night and seems insoluble?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Erickson. ‘Because he doesn’t know. That’s the problem, because it’s the problem with so many of the kids, not just Paul. Why he sat like a dummy with you last night and when you asked him why he did it said something stupid, like he didn’t know. Is that what he said, that he didn’t know?’
‘About that,’ agreed Blair. Wanting to air the doubt, he said, ‘ Could the divorce, the fact that I’m thousands of miles away and his mother’s got to cope by herself, could that be it?’
‘Maybe,’ said Kemp unhelpfully. ‘Or maybe his problem is not being able to hack his school work or pimples or how much or how little pubic hair he has or how a girl he’d like to show that pubic hair to is more interested in someone else’s.’
‘I didn’t smoke dope or snort coke and hold up stores to do either because I couldn’t hack my school work or had pimples or was worried about getting laid!’ said Blair.
‘Because that was thirty years ago,’ said Erickson. ‘Didn’t you drink a beer, occasionally?’
Yes, thought Blair, giddy on the carousel. Determined to achieve something, he started, ‘My problem…’ and at once stopped. ‘Paul’s problem,’ he began again, ‘is that he lives in Washington and I live in Moscow. I’m here now – will be here now – to see him through whatever needs to be done but then I’ll have to go back and I won’t be around to follow up what the court decides and whatever you guys try to do. I know I should be but I can’t be.’
‘What about visiting?’ asked Kemp. ‘Not just for Pauclass="underline" I know there’s John, as well. What are the visitation arrangements?’
‘Whatever, whenever,’ said Blair. ‘My wife and I remain extremely friendly. But I’ve been in Moscow for two years and it isn’t easy, bringing kids there…’ He hesitated. ‘And if there’s one thing I’m certain about, about my kids, it’s their resentment against my second wife.’
‘You haven’t seen the kids for two years!’ said Erickson.
Blair took the rebuke, knowing now – no, not now, knowing as he had for too long – that it was justified. ‘Eighteen months,’ he said, in desperate qualification, ‘I came back eighteen months ago to sort some things out.’ For two days and didn’t stay at the house, he remembered.