Something was very wrong. The grave tension in the atmosphere gave way to Harry Goldfarb's labored breathing. Minutes previous, he had turned the door knob, cold and greasy to the touch to his mother's Sarah's apartment building and now was standing in its threshold, and peering suspiciously at the empty, silent household, wondering where on Earth his ma could be. The state-of-the art television set he had purchased for her a couple months back during the long, hot scorching Brighton Beach summer was turned off, its black screen an indication of no recent activity. Multicolored pills, spilled over the table resting beside his ma's overstuffed arm chair, trickled onto the ground in a haphazard pile. Uppers, his worst fears were voiced.
He staggered forward, reaching out with his one good arm sifting his fingers through the mass of synthetic speed which had allowed his mother to drop the pounds in a matter of weeks, spiral into a deep depression and leave him clueless as to where she was now. His phantom limb, the arm that had been recently been removed from his body, sawed through with a hunk of steel was a mere stub, throbbing at its hilt.
If only he hadn't succumbed to be a bitter struggle regarding heroin and kept repeatedly injecting the same collapsing vein, leaving him vulnerable to infection, taken into state Custody, having his best friend Ty arrested in the heart of Florida for illegal possession of a dangerous substance. Him and Ty selling it, for Cripe's sake! He could recall crying for hours on end behind the eggshell white walled barrier of the local Miami hospital. An angelic nurse had asked him if he had anyone to call, to come visit him and transport him back home.
He had broken down, anguish crumpling his face in two upon her speculation. Because, no. He had no one. His own girlfriend, if he could even call her that anymore, was shacking up with big, black daddies and engaging in highly risky behavior, practically a prostitute; doing whatever it took to ensure that her supply would be restored again and again. And now where was she? Burnt and spent beyond recognition at her dreary, dimly lit apartment her parents' paid for, having no idea as to the new low their daughter had stooped to?
"Shit," Harry rasped aloud for the first time. He had been able to grab a ride from the hospital all the way to Brooklyn hitching rides from various people on their way to the city. The state had let him go, saying Ty was paying his due and besides, although he was partly responsible for the fact they'd gotten busted, showing up to the hospital and flashing his pus-filled, swollen black and purple arm at the doctor, leading up to an extensive investigation of the white van they'd driven up in and the seizing by state troopers of their supply, the Feds had no idea; it was his supply, all his doing. They'd only found it in the driver's side of Ty's seat, therefore all charges were dropped, Harry was let out with a warning and admitted into mandatory counseling, no chance of parole, was sent to Rehab after a week Detox in the hospital. The point being, he shouldn't have gotten out, but he did, and he was back. He was alone, the sockets of his eyes, darkened by fatigue, worn out from heavy drug use, his hands shook from the result of battered nerves, and memories, which played like a movie in his head, all flickering images, and cries of pain emanating from those he loved: Ty, Marion, Ma.
He hadn't even spoken to Marion, albeit for the short phone call in which his voice curdled with sobs, croaked and stopped, jerked back up again with a weak: "I'm sorry," and Marion wondering when he would return home. He had a rising feeling of dread, accompanied by the stale scent of sweat and nausea writhing in his gut. The doctor had recommended he eat a lot more, he was wasting away due to his heroin withdrawal. And he'd tried, for the umpteenth time this week, nothing had seemed to stay down.
And now he was here for what, the Emergency cash stashed in the Old Cookie jar beneath the sink, or to see his Ma, who he hadn't contacted in the longest time, whom he'd left to become fried from the onslaught of consuming so many uppers, of bathing languidly in her sea of loneliness, only to emerge dejected, shaken by hallucinations eating away at the soft core of her brain and having her, rush from the confines of her apartment, race to the Subway in a delusional state, arrive at the local TV broadcasting center, asking when she would be put on television in her ratty, red dress with her orange hair standing on end.
His stomach growled with hunger. Harry Goldfarb, shushed it, a silent command reeling in the constraints of his own fatigue riddled mind, his anxiety chasing away the hunger replacing it with endless questions and relentless guilt, mulling through his psyche. He paced the creaky, carpeted floor noisily. He flicked on the TV, it was on the same station sponsoring that Juice crap for overweight souls who sat like couch potatoes, day by day, and dreaded the prospect of exercise almost on an instantaneous basis.
He plopped himself down into one of the rickety chairs, beside the old, walnut wood hewn table and drummed his long, calloused fingers miserably on its surface. He buried his face in his hands. He knew where his mother was. That was what bugged him the most. The countless phone calls he'd made, her friends who had as a group told him the Uppers deteriorated the whole of Sarah's mind and reduced her to a shell of her former self. She was drifting under a fog of sedatives, beneath the watchful of a doctor who had inducted her into a series of electroshock therapy, in the Psych ward, at the local Brighton Beach hospital. Sarah's friends had suggested he visit her as soon as possible, providing the key to her apartment and giving him consent to paw through her things and see what was left to salvage. He was a homeless, vagrant, recovering junkie, he had nothing anymore. His own bright-eyed, kindhearted mom was nothing more than a glassy-eyed woman with hair shorn straight down to the scalp, shackled to a hospital bed, never to leave again. Harry knew she would never get better, he had told himself a thousand times before. In hindsight, he was just being realistic.