4:30 AM. Entryway light is still on, which means my son hasn't come in yet. Or has he? A noise may be him bumping around in his room, sometimes he forgets to turn out the light when he comes in. I listen, silence. Not home then.
I lie in bed, wondering where he is. I debate for a while on getting up, not wanting to wake my wife.
4:45 AM. I get up, taking the cellphone with me. My wife wakes, wants to know what's wrong. "Nothng", I say. I go into the kitchen to call him. She follows, asking why I'm up, realizing he's not home.
I call his cell, no answer. I repeat this ritual for another 30 minutes, call, get voice mail, hang up. No answer. "Where was he going?" she asks. He was going out to play pool with friends, I begin to have dark visions in the corners of the mind that I suppress for now. I call a few more times. No answer.
"You have to go look for him", she says. I say I don't know where I would start, but get dressed. I drive to the pool hall, closed. I drive by his friend's, his girlfriend's, no car. It's getting on to 6 AM and no idea where he is. I start imagining what may have happened. There's a place on the other side of the city he went to once and liked, did he go there? It's fine during the day but has a reputation of a rough crowd later. I start seeing his car on the side of the freeway, wrecked out. I imagine him lying in the back of a poolhall parking lot, bleeding. Where is he?
I go home. His mother meets me at the door, frankly worried. "He's never done this before", she says. I know, I say.
I am becoming convinced that the reason he doesn't answer is because he can't answer. I wonder how our lives are going to change in the next ten minutes, ten hours, ten days.
I call again. He answers, sounding sleepy. Where the hell are you, I ask. At a friend's house nearby. He fell asleep on their sofa.
He's angry that we were so worried about him. I tell him he has to be in before 11 the rest of this week. "You treat me like a child", he says. You are my child. An adult doesn't stay out all night without letting his family know he's all right. Someday you'll know what we've been through. Pray it turns out okay, like tonight.
Don't ever do this to us again.
Good night.
Posted on August 14, 2006 07:42 AM