The prosecutor was young and determined, but this case was thin on facts, based on circumstantial evidence.
George S. Fitzgerald had signed for room 209 and charged it to his card, and the police had found him in this bed stoned out of his mind. A drug dealer admitted to selling him drugs, but said drug dealer was a very sketchy witness. And, even if he had been a font of truth, that G.S.F. had shared his H with my mother didn’t make her death a homicide.
The case against G.S.F. came down to his statement to me the day before my mother died. He had been sitting on the stoop outside our house when I came home with take-out pizza.
“Your mother,” he had said, “is a waste of oxygen. I wish to hell she was dead. I think I’m going to kill her.”
I’d testified to that, but it was my word against his, and his attorney tore me into small pieces on the stand. Even if the jurors believed me, the proof against G.S.F. never rose above the level of reasonable doubt.
As soon as the case was dismissed, I fled to Baltimore, got my MD, and kept running.
Until now.
My driver was honking his horn, and there was nothing more for me to see. I slammed the door and left room 209 behind me. I had a moment of fright when I couldn’t find my cab in the parking lot, but then I saw it parked on the street.
Giant Teen was trotting toward me.
I shouted, “I changed my mind!” and tossed him the key.
I got into the cab.
My driver said, “I was about to go. Where to now?”
“Portman House,” I said. It was a small and decent boutique hotel about five miles from this spot and near the MIT campus. Parents of college kids stayed there.
“Good choice,” said my driver. He turned the cab around, and as we headed back into the better parts of Cambridge, I wondered what I was going to do, where I was going to live, what my life was going to be like now and from this point forward.
I wondered if God was going to let me in on any plan He might have for me. Or if it was all up to me.
I knew the answer. Up to me.
Chapter 70
THE FRESH images of my mother’s death, combined with the excruciating losses of Karl and Tre, washed over me like a tsunami, overwhelming me and leaving me gasping for meaning that just wasn’t there.
I asked the driver to stop at the closest liquor store and wait for me. He gave me a look that told me he deeply regretted letting me into his cab, but he pulled up to Liquor World on White Street and kept the motor running.
I said, “Anything I can get you while I’m shopping?”
“Just hurry up.”
I did that, and fifteen minutes later, I checked into Portman House. My room was clean. It faced the rear. It suited me perfectly.
I wanted to drink myself into oblivion, and I had a right to do it. I hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the doorknob and closed the curtains. I drank. I slept, and I wrote letters to Karl and to Tre in my digital journal. I spoke out loud to Karl as I wrote, and, of course, he didn’t answer back.
After I’d saved my new pages, I unloaded my anger at my parents and held nothing back. There was a lot to unpack, spanning the first twenty years of my life, and the writing was exhausting. I drank and slept some more.
Three days after checking into Portman House, when I had nothing left to say or drink, I made arrangements for an evening out.
My new girlfriend and I agreed to meet on the corner of Lansdowne and Brookline Avenue in Boston, not far from Fenway Park.
“Let me reimburse you for my ticket,” said Katharine Dunlop, the shrink I had met on the plane.
“No way,” I said. “My treat. I’m so glad you could come.”
It was a great night to go to a ballgame.
The sky was cloud-free. The stands were almost full, and the hotel’s concierge had gotten me two of the best seats in the State Street Pavilion Club, behind home plate, near the press boxes, and with a great view of the game and the ballpark.
I’d never had such good seats in my life.
Katharine and I passed on the fine dining in the clubhouse and each put down two fully loaded hot dogs. I managed to get down a third. Heaven on a bun.
The game itself was a laugher. Despite playing barely .500 ball for most of the season, the Red Sox crushed the second-place Orioles 16–2. Third baseman Francisco Burgos and rookie shortstop Ted Lightwell both homered, while lefty Aaron Jenkins pitched a six-hit complete game, striking out nine. As I’d done at games as a kid, I kept score, which allowed me to stay focused on the action while I chatted with Katharine.
Night games always feel otherworldly, and tonight it was all that and more. The lights blazing down on Fenway Park encapsulated the game, separating it from the blackness of night and everything that had happened before the first ball was thrown.
The game was a great escape, a magnificent emotional release.
When I got back to my room that night, I emptied a bottle and a half of scotch down the sink and started a new journal entry about my mother.