John Houston found me after I’d been living on the street for nine months, after I sabotaged my marriage to a woman named Melanie, after my two daughters told me they would never speak to me again unless I stopped shooting up.
I didn’t stop.
John Houston found me three months after a lawyer followed me under a bridge to deliver divorce papers.
“This all started,” John said, “because your student made up those lies and ruined your life, right?”
“How do you—“
“She just confessed,” John told me. “Born-again Christian. Said she was angry because you failed her.”
“Great,” I said. “Only took her two years. My friends under the bridge will be delighted to hear it.”
John smiled. “It’s time,” he said, “to return to the living.”
“Sure,” I said. “And who the hell are you?”
“I’m John Houston,” he said. “I’m married to Melanie. Your Melanie,” he added, and for the first time in months, I felt something.
John was a cardiothoracic surgeon. Fifty years old when he married my ex-wife, he had kind eyes, a toothy smile, a slight limp and a mild case of asthma. He tried to persuade me to check into a clinic, and when that didn’t work, John Houston offered me a coffee.
John Houston roofied my coffee.
I woke up strapped to a bed in the Montville Rehab Center.
Still, it worked. I cleaned up, returned to Penn for a PhD in education, thanks to John pulling some strings. Now I teach at Penn. I see or talk to my daughters almost every day, and Melanie’s hatred has regressed to the pity she felt for me before the heroin.
Last week John came down with pneumonia. I thought a visit would be the least I could do.
It was just the two of us in his bedroom, no one else home.
I thanked him again for putting in a good word at Penn. I looked around the room, visualized where everything used to be.
John nodded politely, coughed and wheezed. He sounded like a rusted screen door caught in the wind. He grabbed his inhaler from the nightstand, fumbled it into his mouth.
“Empty,” he wheezed, and motioned frantically with his red, watering eyes toward the dresser.
I stepped across the hardwood floor—used to be carpet--searched, but no inhaler.
“Kitchen,” he whispered. “Kitchen!”
Downstairs I rummaged through the new cupboards and shelves, new plates and bowls.
Finally I saw the inhaler in a drawer full of old photo magnets, Melanie and the girls smiling at me across five years of unimaginable circumstances.
Staring at those magnet faces, I shook the inhaler, gripped it like a child holding on to his favorite blanky.
“Paul!”
I breathed deep and approached the stairs.
“Paul.”
When I reached the bedroom door I saw he was still pumping his empty inhaler, head down. I stepped to the side, out of view, my back to the wall.
He said, “Paul. Where the hell are you, Paul?”
And then he stopped saying anything.
Eyes closed, I listened to the inhaler clatter across the hardwood.
Listened to his breaths grow shorter, faster, like a dog panting.
Nine months on the street, I’d seen what pneumonia could do to asthmatics. I knew how this would end.
After a few seconds, I walked down the hall, down the stairs, opened the front door, and looked into the eyes of my ex-wife carrying a bag of groceries.
