Usually when it was just the two of them in the car, they playfully argued over whether to turn the radio dial to his rock station or her easy listening one. It was one of the many jokes they shared that confirmed his status not only as her baby but her favorite. Now, the radio was off. On the backseat was a suitcase and his varsity letter jacket. She drove down Main Street, past the two- and three-story nineteenth-century buildings that housed everything from the Elks Club and the Woolworth’s to the head shop where he had bought the Jim Morrison poster. She turned left on Cedar where the trees thinned, the sidewalks got grittier and the only businesses were bars and pawn shops. She pulled up in front of the bus station and parked.

“Mom. I’m sorry.”

She turned sharply to face him and said, “Everyone knows, Bill. We’ll never live this down.”

The hot tears rolled down his face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

In a softer voice, she said, “I know. I don’t know what else to do, Billy. I can’t bring you home. Your father would…”

“Kill me? I wish he had.”

“Oh, Bill,” she said, with a sad shake of her head that could have meant yes or no. She dug into her purse and pulled out an envelope. “Take this.”

There was money inside. “Mom,” he said brokenly.

She was crying now too. “Go on, Bill,” she said softly.

After that, there was nothing to do but climb out of the car, grab his jacket and the suitcase and head into the station.

2.

2.

San Francisco, November 1984

I sprinted up a dirt path covered with pine needles and brown leaves to one of the paved roads crisscrossing Buena Vista Park. Edging one side of the road was a stone, retaining wall. In the gutter between wall and road were chunks of marble and granite, some bearing part of a date or a name. These were shards of grave stones salvaged from the cemeteries emptied at the end of the last century when the city had claimed their space for its growing population. I veered off the road onto another dirt path and galloped up wooden steps that led to the summit. On wobbly legs, I walked around a circle of grass where two couples—male and female and male and male—glanced at me for a moment before returning their attention to the view.

Veteran’s Day, 1984. Ronald Reagan, just reelected president, said it was morning in America, but in San Francisco where I shared the sidewalks with men who looked like the unburied dead, the mourning was altogether different. As for me, still shaky three months out of rehab after nearly drinking myself to death, I often couldn’t tell which moment my life had struck, morning or midnight.