I rent a car It is supposed to be a nonsmoking car but it smells like cigarettes Driving on a wide highway, I turn on the radio, and the first thing I hear is the opening riff of "Gimme Shelter." I drive for an hour and find my motel and check in I try to sleep I would be more at ease if I were here for a convention of dental students practicing their first root canals on me Swimming might calm me down I leave the room and drive around until I find a mall where I buy a bathing suit Then I return to the motel and find the pool closed, yellow tape surrounding it as if it were a crime scene In my room I pick up the The New Yorker and read the fiction and Hertzberg and Anthony Lane I wonder if there are copies of The New Yorker at Nic's rehab? Finally I fall asleep for a while, wake up at eight, and get ready I have not seen Nic since June, right after the ICU I hardly remember his visit, only the ensuing barrage The slurred voice, telephone calls, lies, terror, his mother's visit to his apartment, the email from—ostensibly from Joshua Tree, but, as I learned, from Oakland Why am I here? A weekend cannot undo these years of hell, and a weekend cannot turn Nic's life around Nothing I've done made a difference Why am I here? The therapists in his program counseled him to ask his mother and me to come If we're trying this one last time, trying one last time to give him another chance, I will do what they tell me I know that nothing will help, probably nothing will help, but I will do my part Frankly, and to be completely honest—don't tell anyone, don't tell him—I am also here to see him I have been afraid, but a cautious and well-guarded place inside me misses him like crazy, misses my son The morning blue sky is marred only by a smoke line from a jet I drive through the town, following the directions that arrived in the mail from the treatment center I turn down a dirt road lined with sagebrush and scrawny pines It's like a scene in an old western The place looks as if it once was a ranch There are bunk-houses and a chow hall and a ramshackle main house and outbuildings sided with split logs A line of log cabins on a ridge that looks onto the high desert The place is rustic and modest, unlike Count Ohlhoff's old Victorian mansion or the austere modern hospital in the wine country or the stately brownstone on Stuyvesant Square in Manhattan or Jace's LA Melrose Place I fill out forms in a small office and then wait outside for Nic It is cold, but I have a thick coat There Nic Deep breath Standing under a sagging awning on a low porch of a rundown cabin, Nic Nic in an army jacket and a purple paisley scarf Nic in a faded T-shirt and cords with tiny leather patches and black leather sneakers His gold and brown hair is curly and long He pushes it out of his eyes Nic walks down the rickety steps toward me His face: thin and angular His eyes flash at me with—? "Hey, Dad." If I admit how good it is to see him, I may be accused of forgetting the fury and terror, but it is good to see him I am scared to death He walks over Reaches out his arms I smell his smokiness and embrace him While we wait for Vicki, we make small talk Then Nic looks shyly up at me and says, "Thanks for coming I didn't know if you would." I walk with him up to an outside smoking area under a wood roof with a few weathered chairs and a fire pit I'm afraid and I don't want to want to see him and I don't want to be happy to see him We meet some of his friends There's a girl with pierced ears and inch-short bleached hair and a boy with no hair and a boy with curly black hair A man who looks as if he spent his life in the sun comes over and shakes my hand His skin is rough, brown wrinkled leather He shakes my hand and tells me what a great son I have Nic smokes We sit near the fire pit and he says that things are changing "I know you've heard it before, but this is different." "The problem is that I have heard that before, too." "I know." We go inside to meet with his chief therapist and wait there for his mother, who soon joins us Vicki's wearing a beige jacket, her hair long and straight I glance over at her It is difficult to look her in the eyes even after all these years I feel guilty I was a child—exactly twenty-two, a year younger than Nic is now—when we met I can try to forgive myself, whether or not she forgives me, because I was a child, but some things you just live with because you cannot go backward I have been nervous to see Nic, but I was also nervous about seeing Vicki We may have become closer over these past few years, we have, but though we talk on the phone and console each other and support each other and debate interventions and worry about the lack of good insurance (she is working now to get him back on her policy), we have not been in the same room for more than a few minutes since our divorce twenty years ago Come to think of it, last week was our wedding anniversary, or would have been The last time we were together for more than five minutes was Nic's high school graduation, when Vicki and I sat next to each other and Jasper sat on my other side Afterward, Jas whispered, "Vicki seems nice." The therapist says that in her view Nic is doing well, is where he should be considering everything, asks us to notice how things compare and contrast with his previous times in rehab She asks us all to think about what we would like to get out of this weekend She wishes us luck Nic, Vicki, and I have lunch There's a spread of food Tamales, salad, fruit Nic eats a bowl of cereal After lunch he leads us to another building, into a room with two wood-paneled walls and two white walls covered in patients' artwork The floor tiles are off-white, some of them buckling It smells of coffee that has been sitting all morning on a burner A circle of chairs waits for us I look over at Vicki She has been a journalist for more than twenty years, but when we met she was working in a dental office in San Francisco The office was below the northern California headquarters of the newly founded New West, where I was an assistant editor, my first job after college It was an office devoted to New Age dentistry designed for pleasure, not pain, an airy place with a vaulted ceiling supported by exposed rough-hewn wood beams Italian lights dangled from crisscrossing wires; there was a jungle of hanging potted ferns Music—Vivaldi, Windham Hill—was piped in through patients' headphones, nitrous oxide through their masks Vicki wore a white smock over a Laura Ashley print dress She had dawn-blue eyes and Breck-girl hair She was a recent arrival from Memphis, where she had an uncle who was a dentist, which somehow qualified her for her job as a dental assistant It took her four tries before she got my xrays right, but I thought, Blast away, because, on nitrous with her levitating before my eyes, I was content We married the following year I was twenty-three—exactly Nic's age now The check to the pastor of the pretty white church bounced No one but two friends were there in Half Moon Bay We have not seen those friends since I was twenty-three, and three weeks ago I turned fifty My hair is no longer gray, it is white It's getting like my father's cotton-white hair The chairs are filled I look around the circle The patients and their parents and one's brother Here we go again Two therapists lead us One has dark hair, one is light blond, both wear scarves, and both have eyes that are kind and intense They take turns speaking They set forth ground rules and expectations ... There's a girl with pierced ears and inch-short bleached hair and a boy with no hair and a boy with curly black hair A man who looks as if he spent his life in the sun comes over and shakes my hand... would." I walk with him up to an outside smoking area under a wood roof with a few weathered chairs and a fire pit I'm afraid and I don't want to want to see him and I don't want to be happy to see him... I fill out forms in a small office and then wait outside for Nic It is cold, but I have a thick coat There Nic Deep breath Standing under a sagging awning on a low porch of a rundown cabin, Nic Nic in an army jacket and a purple paisley scarf