If you asked me to say three things about my stepson I would say he’s a liar, a thief, and a drug addict. So I’d rather not answer the question. Six months ago I would have said he’s an arrogant little shit, a lazy motherfucker, and too smart for his own good – and I wouldn’t have said that any of it was bad. Those are things you can work with. He even won a scholarship. Of course, we dragged him kicking and screaming. Who do you think wrote his essay? When he got in, I felt like I won a scholarship - me and my wife. I didn’t know how smart was my wife until I saw her do trigonometry. But he did ace the SAT, which means we didn’t waste the enormous amount of money we paid for tutoring. The SAT you take alone.
I try to call him my son. It’s easier. But neither he nor his mother ever loses an opportunity to remind me otherwise. Sometimes, but not often, it’s a form of consolation. Usually, they’re out to hurt me. What’s worse, everything seems to be my fault. Where’s his real father? Who the fuck knows? His real father calls on his own birthday. He’s an artist. An artist from Naples, no less. He was very big in the 80’s, which is about the worst thing you can say about an artist. And like the rest of them, he disappeared.
I got my stepson when he was five, which I always considered a boy’s most sensitive age. He treated me like shit from the beginning, just when I thought I had boys all figured out. I carried him on my shoulders, read to him at night. I taught him how to ride a bike, throw a ball, what makes a good movie, and who writes a good book. And I gave him brothers, a pair of guys anybody would call a good deal, two of my own, that much older. Sure, they tortured him. But they tortured him like a brother.
Still, he hates my guts. I’m crazy. I know that. You make sandwiches all day and see what you get. Everybody knows: fuck with me at your peril. I never run from a fight. If I can’t break it up, something else gets broken. So don’t get me started. I’m just looking for a little respect. And I don’t ask for much. Start with flushing the toilet after you take a shit, behaving like a human being at the table, not telling your mother to go fuck herself. Because it’s not respect for me so much as society in general, starting with your mother.
When he was 15 he got busted for drinking in the subway. He told the arresting officer that it wasn’t his fault. He said that both his parents were alcoholics, his home life was tragic and that his parents were too drunk to care. The cop called us on one of those rare occasions when we were home alone contemplating sex, but stone sober as usual. My wife was horrified, exclaiming the indisputable fact that we were Italian, which meaning the officer seemed to apprehend. On the one hand, you don’t see many Italians with a drinking problem. And as far as my stepson was concerned, they’re bold-faced liars when you catch them up to no good.
My stepson likes to say I ruptured his eardrum. He’ll tell anybody. Whenever we send him to therapy, it’s the first thing out of his mouth. This is because I slapped him in the face. I was reading in my room when I heard his mother screaming in pain. You hurt me, she screams. And then she did something she never does, which was to shout for my help, and to my amazement, plead with me to beat him right back. I held off long enough to ask what was going on, which query my stepson answered by telling me to go fuck myself. One slap later I was marked for life. As for my stepsons hearing, it’s perfect. Like the doctor said, it happens all the time.
I’m not the only guy who ever slapped him. His grandfather’s sailor smacked him good after my stepson invited a boatload of goons onboard in the middle of the night with no adult supervision for a party, which erupted into a brawl in the world’s quietest marina. When the poor sailor appeared, my stepson told him that he was an employee and to mind his own business. You work for me, he said. My father-in-law’s boat is, in fact, the sailor’s business. So my stepson got a slap in the face before his friends were manhandled off the pier.
The last guy to slap him was some girl’s father. Not only did he slap him, but he knocked him down and gave him a couple of swift kicks. Then he grabbed him by his collar and hauled him up to say that if he ever saw him around his daughter again, he was a dead person. Now this is something I can’t abide, even though I’d like to do the same. But it’s hard to blame the guy, since my stepson has no interest in the daughter other than drugs. The girl may be plain, but she’s rich. And she’s always ready to spend money. Her poor father is a parent like any other. He thinks his daughter is an angel. I try and explain to my stepson that this guy doesn’t see a young man struggling with his identity, looking for his path. He sees a dangerous character – an arrogant, smart-mouthed punk who needs a kick in the ass, not to mention a slap in the face.
Lately, it’s my fault more than ever. This is a tactic that my stepson has latched onto which seems to be OK with his mother. They’re both looking for somebody to blame. I have a lot of experience with blame but this is something else. First of all, she spoiled the kid rotten and we all know it. And as far as he’s concerned, the more attention we pay to me, the less we pay to him.
One therapist, the first time I met him, which was after my stepson saw him alone, informed me right off that he was obliged to report me to the police if I ever touched the boy again, having ruptured his eardrum. I was speechless. It was all I could do not to slap the therapist. Now the kid is in another program, an out patient drug rehab clinic, which in this city is like a jaywalking workshop. I couldn’t go to the first meeting. I had the flu. But I did find out from my wife the root cause of his behavior: a dysfunctional family, which is a perfect redundancy. I’m not sure if this is spreading the blame between us, but one thing is certain. It isn’t the kid’s fault.
Everybody advises the same thing: send him back to his father. That would be like sending a letter to Santa Claus. The last time we tried that was for two weeks last summer. My wife relented when her son begged: I want to spend time with my real father. So we sent him to Italy alone. The real father doesn’t have a phone, just a mobile which never works but for the courtesy message which explains that it doesn’t take messages. My wife puts it on speed dial. The father picks up after a week and tells us that he hasn’t seen his son at all. I asked him out for a pizza, he tells her, but he didn’t show up. So my wife goes nuts.
She finally reaches her son who calmly explains that all is well. I met someone I know on the plane, he tells her, who is a really good boy. His name is Pietro. He goes to Friends. He knows Pietro from Maria, who was just accepted to Harvard as a sophomore. Where with Maria? At Giulio’s, who is a boy as good as Maria, a boy who was friends with my stepson when they were in grade school and whose friendship my wife remembers like the Golden Fleece - Giulio instead of Massimo, who is the other side of friendship, the cloak of darkness.
Massimo thinks he’s connected, which you can tell when he gets spruced up. But the only person he’s connected to is the guy who sells him pot. He’s also connected to my stepson - at the hip. My wife forbids him to hang out with Massimo, which is like taking out insurance – they win, you lose.
It turns out that this guy Pietro doesn’t really exist, which is amazing when you consider that my stepson introduced Pietro to my in-laws. He stayed on their boat and took their money, which my father-in-law doled out evenly in large amounts. They wrecked an outboard motor, which cost two thousand Euros, by turning over the boat’s tender, which is pretty hard to do without killing yourself. Pietro and my stepson claimed to have been mugged, a bonus lie which came with a big payday when my father-in-law covered their losses, which included all the money Pietro brought for his trip, an amount that made his parents seem very generous indeed. All in all, everyone in the family couldn’t help but notice Pietro, who turned out to be Massimo with an alias.
By the time we found out it was too late. Pietro was already gone, the deed well done. It was a lie so baroque that it inspired my stepson to seek my approval for its exquisite execution, much the same way he wanted congratulations for his quick thinking when he was arrested in the subway. And what could I do? By the time I got there, everybody was settled down. All I could do was talk, and there wasn’t much of that going around, other than my father-in-law counseling patience. I was wondering how patience fit in with Leopold and Loeb.
Besides, last summer was a vacation I mostly spent in the hospital and at the surgeon’s, tending to my wife’s finger, which got the tip chopped off when her son slammed a door on it. Chopping off his mother’s finger to end what must surely be his most memorable summer to date is something that he never mentions to the therapist. When it comes up, I point out that he asked me for money to go out with his friends while we were rushing her to the hospital. He defends himself by saying that he couldn’t think of anything else to talk about.
I’m trying to look on the bright side, which is hard since he just stole a few hundred dollars out of my wallet, something he denies, like I must be an idiot for not knowing that money disappears. He denies everything, all the time. His relationship to the truth is so perverted that he will lie when only the truth can save him. I explained to my wife that where I come from, stealing is a death sentence. The only hope is a full confession, followed by restitution, with interest. She answers me that she doesn’t come from the same place.
She tells me that I have to love him, to put my arms around him and tell him so, which is pretty hard to imagine. First of all, he’s not big on cleanliness. Getting him to bathe is as hard as it ever was. Secondly, I can’t imagine getting that close without putting my hands around his neck instead.
We all hope everything turns out. So far, it isn’t a tragedy. It doesn’t feel like we’re in danger of making the front page, but it’s sure no picnic. Speaking of which, let me give you a cold case of Pepsi, on the house. We aren’t getting many orders this big, lately, and you should know that I’m grateful.
