CHARLIE CARILLO
raising jake
To my one and only Kim—
A believer
My thanks to:
Tony Carillo, Cissy Carillo, Mary Carillo, Gina Carillo, Rafael
Richardson-Carillo, Frank O’Mahony,
Betty O’Mahony, Catherine Bohrsmann, James Bohrsmann, Felicity Rubinstein,
Carol Pink, Malcolm Pink, Charles Lachman, Bill Hoffmann,
Gary Goldstein, Kate Duffy, Audrey LaFehr, Anne Edelstein,
Amy Schiffman, Krista Ingebretson, Peg Ashdown, Ivy Tillyer,
Denise Lister-Fell and Simon Fell (aka “Dr. Fellenstein”)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER ONE
It’s the first phone call from my son’s school that I’ve ever gotten at work, and of course I immediately think the worst. I’m a divorced father who catches glimpses of his seventeen-year-old son on weekends, snapshots of his life ever since I split from his mother, and suddenly my guts go into free fall with the knowledge that anything, absolutely anything could have happened to him. Failing grades. A drug habit. A fatal overdose. Whatever it is it’s my fault, entirely my fault for not being around.
These jolly possibilities shoot through my brain in less time than it takes to sneeze. If they ever have a Guilt Olympics, I’ll carry the torch at the opening ceremonies.
The caller identifies himself as the headmaster, and I can feel sweat breaking out along my hairline. This is the guy who writes letters to me and the rest of the parents, asking for contributions to fill in the “gaps” not covered by tuition payments. Those payments come to about twenty-four thousand dollars a year, two grand per month, including February, which has just twenty-eight days. I’ve always been proud of myself for never writing a contribution check, not once, not ever. I probably wouldn’t have written the tuition checks, either, except that those payments are part of my divorce agreement, and if I miss one I’m in court, and as much as I hate writing a tuition check, it beats the hell out of writing a check to a lawyer.
That’s not quite true. The truth is that unless my kid goes to private school, he’ll wind up in a school where he has to pass through a metal detector every day, and who wants that for their child? Like so many parents trapped on the island of Manhattan, I do what I have to do, and tell myself that it’s well worth the nightmares triggered by ever-deepening debt.
My mouth has gone dry. I have to lick my lips before daring to ask, “Is my son hurt?”
“Oh no! Nothing like that!” The guy chuckles apologetically. “Forgive me for frightening you, Mr. Sullivan.”
Actually, this is just the jolt I need to burn the fuzz off a hangover I’ve been nursing all morning. Now, at least, I’m clear in the head. Nothing like a death scare to blow the pipes clean.
“Why are you calling?” I ask, nearly adding the word “Headmaster” to the sentence. It’s a funny word, that one, the kind of word you’d sooner associate with leafy English boarding schools than you would a soot-stained brick building on the Upper West Side.
The headmaster clears his throat. “It’s a matter I’d prefer to discuss in person. Could you come to my office at one p.m.?”
An hour from now. “That’s not a great time for me, Headmaster.”
“I thought maybe you could extend your lunch hour.”
“I don’t get a lunch hour. Look, his mother will be back in town on Monday. She’s really the one who handles educational matters.”
My son is obviously not in a life-and-death situation. It seems fair to pass this mysterious mess off to the ex, the one who selected and insisted upon this school in the first place.
“I’m afraid it can’t wait,” the headmaster says. “I feel I really must see one of Jacob’s guardians today.”
Guardians. He actually says guardians. That’s a bad news word, if ever there was one. I start to sweat all over again. “What the hell did he do?”
“One p.m., then?”
“Yeah, all right, I’ll be there.”
He couldn’t have picked a worse time for a meeting. The newspaper goes to press at 2:00 p.m., and the story I’m working on this particular day is a bit complicated, and so far I’m not getting anywhere with it.
The story is this: was that bottle of liquid Britney Spears was photographed swigging from during a stroll with her elaborately tattooed boyfriend a bottle of whiskey, as the editors of the New York Star would like to believe, or a bottle of ginseng, as Britney’s publicist vows it was? Believe it or not, this is our third day covering this matter, and the bosses are eager to stretch it to a fourth. It’s just an excuse to publish the photos over and over, but by now our excuses are starting to seem a little lame.
It’s also a tightrope walk, legally speaking. The words have to be just right, all your “allegedlys” and “reportedlys” tucked in place, which is probably why the story goes to a crusty old rewrite man like me. I’m good at this shit, it both shames and thrills me to say. I can imply things without actually saying them. I can titillate without showing tits.
And now, suddenly, I’ve got to dump this hornet’s nest into somebody else’s lap so I can go and see the headmaster at a school I haven’t set foot in for more than five years.
The day city editor is a prematurely balding Australian named Derek Slaughterchild, and I’m not looking forward to telling him I have to bolt with a deadline coming up. Slaughterchild is one of those guys who learned young that the way to move ahead in the tabloid news game is to go through the day with a pained, miserable look on your face, hang around long past your shift, and always be anxious. He believes that work done in a state of panic is better than anything achieved in a state of relaxation.
And that’s pretty funny, because his father, a lovable alcoholic named Malcolm Slaughterchild, was his polar opposite. Malcolm was the day city editor back when I was a copyboy, nearly thirty years ago, and no matter what was happening I don’t think his pulse rate ever changed. Moments after Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan, everyone in the newsroom was running around screaming,