We went to the Tonga Room the other night, my son Bo, his girlfriend A., and I. B. was supposed to come too. His visit was the reason for the outing in the first place. The Tonga Room in San Francisco is a throwback tiki bar tucked in the basement of the St. Francis Hotel. Formerly the hotel’s swimming pool, it was turned into a tiki bar in 1945 (!), with the pool featuring as an inlet or lagoon, in which a band plays on a floating barge. Real ship’s masts, rigging, and sails, portholes along the sides, and a row of palapa huts cement the effect. What really distinguishes the place, however, is the thunderstorm that arrives every 20 minutes or so, sending rain pattering down into the lagoon and flashes of light to illuminate the scene at intervals. It’s corny and incredible, and my son and his young lady were duly impressed. We got two expensive (and strong) Mai Tais—they shared theirs—and took pictures.
After witnessing the storm, we began wending our way to Bo’s car, parked in North Beach, San Francisco’s classically Italian neighborhood. We followed narrow, undulating streets. On every corner was an iconic view. At one corner, we stopped and took in the Pyramid Building with the just-about-full moon suspended at her right. That alone was a pristine picture, and Bo was about to snap it, with A. in the foreground when he suddenly got excited and changed position and caught, just in time, a cable car coming up the hill with the TransAmerica (pyramid) Building behind, and the full moon poised like a beauty mark beside. An iconic shot.
A. and I exclaimed at how gorgeous and charming everything was. We laughed at how, when we’d met at the Powell St. BART station only a couple of hours earlier and begun our walk to the Nob Hill Cafe, where we met Bo for a pasta dinner, we bitched and moaned about the frigid wind. “The weather is terrible! I’d never want to live here! Oakland is twenty degrees warmer!” And, yet, here we were, gamboling over the hills, snapping pictures, and crying, We want to live in the city!
Just then, A. glanced at her phone and said, Wait… Nina is at the Tonga Room! Nina, my daughter. She had come! Two hours late, but she’d come to join us—a minor miracle.
I suspect the fact that A. was with us helped. A. brings a sweet, calming, and stabilizing presence to our gatherings, and Nina likes her. She is younger than Nina by a year. She’s an interesting young lady. She seems innocent and guileless, and she is in many respects. But that exterior hides a strong and accomplished young lady. The more I learn about her, the more I like her.
“Warmth and competence,” B. keeps saying. A. is the epitome of warmth and competence. B. recently read that social psychologists deem these two dimensions as key to how people judge others. It’s become one of his mantras or grooves where his mind goes. So, we hear the term a lot.
I thought we’d retrace our steps back to the Tonga Room, but we were already a 15-minute walk from there, and Bo wasn’t partial to the idea. He suggested we meet Nina at a bar in North Beach. A. found a place on her phone, Lillie Coit’s, and sent the coordinates to Nina. When we got there, though, I realized how close we were to Mario’s Bohemian Cigar Store Cafe, founded in 1971 and run by the original owner’s grandchildren. We secured a table in the window, Anya sent the new coordinates, and then, Nina appeared.
She looked insouciant and polished in a beanie and the gorgeous Cos coat I’d recently nabbed for her at the Cancer Society thrift store. Her dark hair fell in soft waves about her pale face. I tried not to fawn over her, but was demonstrably happy to have her in our midst. She’s still holding me at arm’s length. I gobble up every scrap I’m thrown. Bo cautions me. Be cool, Mama, he says. Be cool.
We got beers. Nina got a cider. A. engaged her in conversation. Bo was a little distant. He was tired, and no wonder. He’s working hard and has a lot on his plate. Still, I wanted him to be more engaged. I was nervous he would scare or turn Nina off with his distancing. He said, “We’re gonna go in twenty minutes.” I said something about it being a Thursday night, it wasn’t that late… He got annoyed. I apologized. Our server, a tiny thing, took pictures of us.
After Bo and A. left, Nina shocked me by inviting me to return to Lillie Coit’s with her. I was elated, and a bit nervous. We sat at the bar. Nina got a Dirty Shirley. I got a pilsner. We got crinkle-cut fries with aoli. And we talked about B. and the disastrous weekend in Santa Cruz that Nina had arranged. They’d left a mere week ago, on Saturday morning. Nina drove since B. is high just about 24/7 and, of course, he’s also manic, which bring its own host of issues vis a vis the car. B. accepted the dictate.
It was an important weekend. It was freighted. Maybe that’s why B. couldn’t help but torpedo it.
They were going down to see Lynne, Nina and Bo’s half-sister, daughter of Maria, who was B.’s girlfriend after we broke up many years ago. B.’s mental health became significantly worse while Lynne was a young girl, and the connection between them was extremely faint. She’d only seen him manic—once on a Russian River vacation I’d arranged and another time when he was found randomly clambering her family’s fence and was sent away by Maria.
Nina had high hopes for the visit because it was the first time Lynne, who’s now 17, had been open to meeting with B.
The weekend failed miserably. The sad thing is… where to begin. There are so many sad things. One of the sad things is that B. sent me pictures, and it looked like things were going well. I forwarded the pictures to B.’s sister in Venezuela. We were hopeful.
When B. returned, he gave no indication anything was or had been amiss. He said the weekend was great, other than the hospital visit.
Lynne caught sight of B.’s finger, which was in bad shape. I’d only noticed it the night before. B. had been covering it with a work glove. I’d been teasing he looked like Michael Jackson because he was wearing one glove on his hand all week long. Suddenly, I saw why. As Bo said—for he’d seen it—it looked like he had a baseball on the end of his finger. The finger itself below the first joint was also very swollen.
It was shocking. I felt sure we should visit the emergency room and was scanning frantically in my head if there was any chance B.’s health insurance was still active, after three years away. He immediately made it clear he wouldn’t go to any emergency room and hid his hand from me.
Lynne noticed it the next day in Santa Cruz, however, and called her mom over. Maria took one look and said, We’re not doing anything until that’s looked at. She texted me for B.’s health insurance. I began the search for that, while lying on my back in bed, where I was to remain for six days.
I had re-injured my back shortly after B. had left to pick up Nina and set off for Santa Cruz. I’d been trying to put two stacked bowls of the quinoa B. had made—enough for thirty people at least—in the refrigerator. I’d been on the mend for a week from the previous week’s back injury, sustained most likely from the stress of living with a floridly manic bipolar person, and this time, it was worse. A lot worse. My back spasmed for days.
With my laptop on my belly, I was able to ascertain by calling the hospital that B., gracias a dios, still had active insurance. In fact, he has two active insurances: Medicare Part A and B and Alameda Alliance for Health. Maria took him to emergency. She later told me the doctors said it was rare for them to see an injury like this. It had gone on for some time. He was at risk of losing the end of his finger. If the infection had gotten into the bone, that’s what would have happened. They cleaned out the wound, drained it, bandaged it, and sent B. home with two types of antibiotics, one of which he has to take four times a day.
When Maria called to give me the rundown on the weekend from her perspective, she said B. was hollering in the hospital, “I impregnated this woman!” She was, and remains, livid. Furious. She said B.’s behavior was ridiculous, over-the-top by any and all measures. Nina said the same thing. She is hurt and embarrassed, and she hasn’t talked to her dad since. This is what she told me at Lillie Coit’s.
According to both of them, B. was rude, loud, bizarre, and obnoxious. He swore constantly in front of Marie’s 13-year-old son, though he was asked several times to stop. He said, “Shut the fuck up” and “Fuck you” repeatedly to everyone. He thought he was being “funny,” evidently.
He came home to my house with Lynne’s boyfriend’s wetsuit. He said Marie gave it to him. That sounded odd to me. I texted Marie. Did you give B. Lynne’s boyfriend’s wetsuit? No, I absolutely did not, she responded. It was drying on the fence by the pool.
B. claims she put it in his box.
He also came home with a perforated tray, which turned out to be the top of Marie’s air fryer. B. went to UPS and sent them both back after I prepared post-its with instructions and told him where to go. He also stripped Marie’s orange and lemon trees of all fruit. Marie told him he could take one bucket. He took several bins from her yard and filled them all. We have hundreds of oranges and lemons in the kitchen. B. used every bowl I own to contain them on every counter.
This is part and parcel of his obsession with the free food pantries he’s discovered in the area. For the last few weeks, he’s been packing the house with free food. At first it was cool and welcome. Some good stuff—red onions, sweet potatoes, greens, a somewhat dubious frozen chicken, oatmeal, beans. But also plastic packets of mashed chicken-stuff, totally processed, which I threw away.
Food processing began to be a chore. I said, Stop, stop. We have enough food. But, he continued to bring food home several times a day in the basket of his bicycle.
Nina is upset about all of this. She is hurt and angry, ashamed and embarrassed, about her father’s behavior in Santa Cruz.
Maria said he’s not welcome back. She also said, I’m so happy for you getting away from his insanity. Don’t ever feel selfish for leaving. Spread your wings, and fly!
She means Tonga, for which I depart in three months.
He came to visit for six weeks, when we told him he was welcome for three. We laid down ground rules for his staying here. He broke them all immediately and repeatedly. Minutes after he promised our son, Bo, that he wouldn’t smoke pot, Bo caught him making a homemade pipe from a plastic bottle. Beside him was a vial of pot and a lighter. I also lifted a bunch of pot from him the other night. He smokes in the morning outside the back door. Bo caught him getting high at 5 a.m.
Bo said he’s high most of the time. I didn’t believe it. I actually believed B. when he said he wasn’t. We’d gone to see the film “I’m Still Here.” He could not sit still, could not stop emitting noises—sighs, burps, moans. He was annoying, disruptive, and rude.
It’s exhausting. Just a few days after he arrived, the senior center where he was supposed to be taking classes with his friend Toni called to tell me he was misrepresenting the center and lifting money from elders for a “fundraising” operation. They said he needed to return the money the next day and meet with the executive director. Bo sat in on the meeting and recorded it. It’s an amazing thing to listen to. The woman was incredulous, apoplectic, struggling for the right words.
We were lucky he wasn’t arrested.
Around the same time, he was biking around town wearing a blue-cord necklace on which had been threaded three new pairs of scissors—six blades, in other words—and a roll of duct tape. We’re lucky he wasn’t arrested or 5150’d that time too.
At this point, we’re just trying to keep him safe and under sufficient control to ensure he gets on his plane on the 26th.
Which isn’t at all a sure thing. He’s saying he doesn’t want to go. He says he’s not happy in Caracas. He keeps saying I’m his sponsor. I said I am not. He “jokes” he’s not leaving.
Bo has called him on it several times, including this morning. Papi, I want to hear you say you’re getting on the plane. Well, yeah, that’s the plan, allows his father. He says he’s meeting someone on Monday at the senior center to talk about a job. A job you can do for eleven days? I shoot back.
We made arepas this morning. When he’s like this, his cooking starts to go downhill. He forgot to put salt in the arepa dough, but the arepas were okay. Bo’s girlfriend A. made perfect scrambled eggs. I sliced tomatoes and cucumbers and dressed them in salt, pepper, and olive oil. I roasted a red bell pepper on the stove burner and dressed that as well. The platanos we made (plantains) were bad—not ripe enough. Overall, we had a nice breakfast.
B. talked non-stop, as per usual, loud and animated. Bo began interjecting, Papi, pause. B. laughed, but miraculously, he paused. He even seemed to feel better for it, which surprised me. Bo coached him to pause several more times during breakfast, and each time it provided essential room for all of us to breathe.
This is what Nina and I discussed over a beer and a Dirty Shirley at Lillie Coit’s in San Francisco’s North Beach two nights ago. She said she doesn’t want to see her father. She said he’s not trying, he doesn’t care. The pot use is especially galling for all of us. He knows, and we know, that cannabis is super contra-indicated for him. He’s much worse on it. The lying is exhausting. The gaslighting, infuriating.
At this point, I’m basically numb. I’m hunkered down. I work at my new job during the week while he’s at the senior center. They watch him like a hawk so he doesn’t steal anything else. Apparently, he took a mug off someone’s desk one day. He took $40 out of my wallet too. Then, he felt bad and “returned” it by dropping it on the floor and insisting I had dropped it.
And on and on it goes.
I’m scheduled to talk to my therapist on Monday. He’s going to be mad at me. He’s going to say, why is B. here when he’s broken every ground rule you gave him multiple times? He’s going to say, what happened to boundaries?
I can only sigh and feebly push back. It’s easy for others to say, kick him out. The problem is, to everyone else in the world, anyone who doesn’t know him, he’s just outrageous, beyond annoying, offensive, and even scary.
He’s just a problem.
He’s that for us too, of course. But he is so much more than that to us.
We love him. We don’t want him to be hospitalized or imprisoned. We’ve been there before. It’s worse. We will lose control of the situation. B. will be in a great deal more danger. This is a terrible country for mentally ill people, especially now, when people like Daniel Penny are acquitted for snuffing out agitated homeless people perceived as threatening.
And if he’s hospitalized or incarcerated, he won’t get on the plane.
Right now, the most important thing is that he get on that plane, and that’s where our focus is.
Thank you for sharing this 🧡