334: Duty Calls

Ira Glass

From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life.

Ira Glass

Vincent Homenick and his boss, Norman Goodman, have to enlist 1,800 jurors a day for the state courts of New York City. And they have heard every possible excuse, real and fake, for avoiding jury duty. And they've saved some of them in this very thick folder.

Ira Glass

Actually, using a wheelchair, or blindness-- or deafness, for that matter-- will not get you out of jury duty in New York.

Ira Glass

This is Vincent's boss, Norman, who's been in this job since 1969.

Ira Glass

An unspecified medical condition is one they've seen a lot in their jobs as county clerk and chief clerk. They also encounter a certain amount of rudeness. "Dear County Jerk," one letter opens. "Are you brain-dead?" Many New York citizens send back things we cannot broadcast on their official jury forms.

Ira Glass

Serving his jury duty, that is. One man wrote in saying that he was simply too racist to be on a jury. But the single most common excuse? People can't afford the time. They're single moms with no childcare. They're people who will not be able to pay the bills if they take off work. They think they are simply too important for jury duty. None of this cut it with Norman and Vincent, by the way. Court clerks talk to these people, try to accommodate their schedule somehow. And part of the formula is the court clerks appeal to their idealism, their sense of duty.

Ira Glass

And-- not to put too fine a point on it-- they are threatened with fines and jail time if they don't show up. But most do show up. Only 9% of the people who are summoned here for jury duty fail to show. Another 15%, Norman and Vincent say, try to contest or postpone their eligibility.

And there is one curious thing that the court's own exit questionnaires show, and that is that people who actually get to sit on a case and hear evidence and get to a verdict say they liked the experience way more than the people who just show up and don't get a case and then actually get to go home earlier. Something kicks in for the people who actually get on to juries. Suddenly, it seems important to do the right thing.

Which brings us to today's program. Today we're going to devote our entire show to the story of somebody who gets called for a job that he does not want-- that nobody would want, really. The kind of family obligation all of us face at some point or another, in some form. Though, this guy faces a more extreme version of it than most of us do. And he goes. Because, corny as it sounds, sometimes duty calls. And sometimes it calls you to Florida. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

When Josh Bearman grew up in suburban Pasadena, his dad worked for NASA-- was a physicist. He had a stepmom, and he had a brother named Ethan.

That's not his whole family. When we first ran this next story in 2007, his mom was living in Florida along with his half-brother, David. Josh had gone for a while, not spending much time with them, but one day, he had no choice.

Josh Bearman

Here's how different the two halves of my family are. My brother Ethan, who grew up with me in California, left high school early for a conservatory, where he studied French horn. He has a house, a wife, a son, and fills in with the LA Philharmonic. But my brother David in Florida, well, here he is.

Josh Bearman

David's been arrested a bunch of times-- not for anything violent, just a DUI, a shoplifting charge or two. Then there's my father, the nuclear physicist. He sometimes launches at Caltech's Athenaem, surrounded by Nobel laureates. Here's my mom describing someone she might have lunch with.

Josh Bearman

The last time I lived with my mother, I was nine. After my parents' divorce, my half-brother David-- he was just an infant at the time-- stayed with my mother, and my father got custody over me and Ethan. That's when my mom started drinking seriously. As she got worse, we only caught glimpses of her. Occasional drunken phone calls late at night, a few sightings on family holidays.

For several years in there, I didn't even know where she was. Once, in an effort to connect with her, I arranged for me, my brother Ethan, and my girlfriend Ronnie to all fly across the country to meet my mother and David for a visit at my grandparents' house. My mother didn't show.

A few years ago, my grandparents staged a rescue. They brought my mom and David to Florida, where they all lived among the palm trees and strip malls. It was a strange world down there.

David got into rapping, freestyling at MC battles so he could leave his mark on the greater Palm Beach area hip-hop scene. He made friends with a producer, Jermaine, who was not exactly a producer, but a kid who met David at the Olive Garden and then moved in with him and my mom.

At first, I was skeptical of this arrangement, until I realized that Jermaine was the most responsible one of the bunch, with David mostly jobless, and my mom still devising elaborate cover stories for morning trips to the liquor store. These were transparent to me, but often fooled my grandparents, who devoted their final years to trying to manage all this-- posting bail, taking care of rent, paying for treatment plans, and David's $3,000 cell phone bills.

I'd visit a few times a year and always felt stunned at the way they lived. I'd have to remind myself sometimes that these people were my immediate family. I didn't understand them, and they played little role in my daily life. Then one day last year, they took over my life.

It started with a phone call from David. By this time, my grandparents had both died, and my mom and David lived in my grandfather's condo at Century Village, a retirement community in West Palm Beach. Now David was calling because he was about to start a 30-day jail sentence. Our mother, he said, had been so drunk she hadn't moved from the couch in weeks. He was sure she would die if he left her there.

I got a neighbor to go over. She took one look at my mother and called an ambulance. When the paramedics brought her to intensive care, the attending physician called me to ask what the hell happened to her. I said I didn't know. The next morning, I got on a plane for Florida.

When I arrived, my mom was in the hospital, unconscious, and attached to a tangle of intravenous drips. The DTs would set in over the next few days. It was shocking, but equally shocking was what I saw when I went to her condo. The place was so bad, it looked like a crime scene. The couch had a blackened depression where she'd been sitting for God knows how long. There were overflowing ashtrays, real and improvised, and trash everywhere. It smelled like urine and nicotine. There were burns in the couch, and a 4-foot patch of blackened carpet that looked like someone had spent several days rubbing bong water and soot into the floor on purpose.

It took a month for me to even begin sorting it all out. I arranged for David to complete his jail sentence in the condo under house arrest. When my mother stabilized, I got her transferred to a nursing facility-- the only one that would accept her with no insurance. But that was just the beginning. With my grandparents gone, it was clear that she and David literally had no idea how to survive by themselves.

Now she faced destitution from all the medical bills, and David was on the verge of serious jail time was one more screw up. It began to dawn on me that I couldn't go back home to California. Someone had to help get them back on their feet, and there was nobody left but me. And that's how I wound up spending four months in Florida as a reluctant social worker for my own family.

It's a typical Wednesday. My mom's still in the nursing home, but there are various documents I need to pick up from her condo. The problem is Century Village is a rather heavily fortified retirement community. It's set up like some kind of geriatric army base, with many thousands of octogenarians housed in blocks and protected from solicitors and terrorists alike by a big walled perimeter.

You can't get past the tightly-monitored gates without having someone add your name to a list or flashing a residence pass. David recently lost his own pass and began resorting to commando tactics-- sneaking in through gaps in the golf course fence, or scaling the wall behind the gas station. I can't get on the stupid list myself, since you can only add visitors' names by calling from within your house. So my mom can't call me in from the nursing home where she's living now. Instead, I have to rely on her neighbors, who are easily confused and don't like to rock the boat.

Josh Bearman

The neighbor does not call me in, which is nothing new. But after half an hour, I managed to convince one of the commanding officers of the gatehouse regime to let me through. Inside the wall, Century Village is like its own city. There are acres of condos amongst man-made lakes, and the whole thing is serviced by a pharmacy and general store. There are several club houses and a shuttle system that takes residents to nearby shopping centers.

In Century Village-- where the entire place knows when you've put your car in the wrong parking spot-- imagine the impression made by my mother, drunk on the shuttle at noon, or David in a wife-beater, arguing with his pill-popping girlfriend on the grass at midnight. Needless to say, they made for very conspicuous neighbors at 240 Bedford J.

It's been about a month since I was here the last time-- since my mom was rushed to the hospital-- and coming back is surprisingly emotional. I looked for this old photo that was in the bedroom on my last visit.

Josh Bearman

My mom and I are in the car. She's improved considerably since I checked her into the nursing home. At that time, she was still in a wheelchair and couldn't eat solid food. Now she's walking, back up to two packs a day, and complaining about her roommate.

From a purely medical perspective, my mother has made a dramatic recovery. Along the way, she's created a whole life for herself at the nursing home.

Josh Bearman

She takes me on a tour, waving at the staff she likes and pointing out all the friends she's made.

As far as I'm concerned, she's too comfortable here. This nursing home is fairly grim. Kind of a hellhole, actually.

Did you ever see that movie Jacob's Ladder? You know that scene where Tim Robbins hallucinates being admitted into a hospital run by monsters? It's kind of like that. The place is totally isolated, surrounded by swamp. There are catatonics parked in the halls, drooling. One woman roams around constantly weeping. Michael, a stroke victim, seems to be standing in every corner, staring at you with these sad, hollow eyes. And that's the good floor.

Upstairs are the real basket cases. That's where the howling dwarf lives. We're all afraid to go up there. My mother saw him only once, but you can hear him every night, his voice echoing out into the sawgrass. The only thing worse is the buzzing. God knows why, but the patients' call button in this place isn't a bell or a buzzer like in any normal hospital. It's this.

[HIGH-PITCHED RINGING]

This can go on for 10, 15 minutes straight. An hour, even.

[RINGING CONTINUES]

Sometimes my mother wakes up in the night to find the buzzer blaring and an orderly asleep in her room. I find it frustrating that she's not more frustrated.

Josh Bearman

This quality of hers-- this ability to adapt to anything-- is what got her here in the first place. My mom adapted to each new rung on the ladder, and then the next step down didn't seem so bad.

Take, for example, the hurricane that hit Florida a month before the paramedics came for my mom. As the category five storm was making landfall, David decided to go for a drive. He was pulled over by the cops, which wasn't that surprising since the car had no registration, no insurance, no working tail lights, and a cracked windshield. David, who had no license and maybe had taken some pills to boot, had been pulled over twice already for having that car on the road. He was thrown in jail for a week, and my mother was left all alone.

Josh Bearman

This is my brother, David, and we're doing what I do every day down here-- repetitive, exasperating errands, like retrieving a copy of David's DUI charge so he can register for his court-mandated Mothers Against Drunk Driving Victim Impact Panel. This is one of his many conditions for probation. There's a lot of registering for this, reporting for that, retrieving this piece of documentation from that bureaucracy. Everything requires a money order, which, of course, requires money.

Josh Bearman

Riding along for David's probationary checklist, it's easy to see how the downward spiral works. Fail to turn in one piece of paper, and next time you have to show up with two more. Miss a date, and your probation is longer. And that means paying extra to the court for the extended supervision, which means borrowing money, or pawning something, or wiring money, all of which come with huge fees. And David knows this better than anybody.

Josh Bearman

It's a powerful force, that gravitational pull of downward mobility, because, if you think about it, David really shouldn't be that bad off. He can hold down a job. And he's not a bad rapper, either. He has dozens of notebooks filled with lyrics, and he's even recorded some songs. He's also really funny. Here he is talking about his latest job at the Village Diner, a blue-plate special place that was just outside the gates of Century Village, and where, every day, a busload of regulars would arrive on the noon shuttle for lunch.

Meanwhile, my mom's $100,000 hospital bill finally showed up. This is on top of the mounting nursing home expenses. And the only way she can pay for all of it is if I get her on Medicaid and/or Social Security disability, which means tracking down records for every doctor she's ever had.

Then there's the fact that my mother is my mother. Like some kind of tragic supervillain who can't control her destructive powers, my mother somehow leaves an accidental trail of carnage wherever she goes.

Josh Bearman

In this case, it seems that my mom ran into a car, gave the woman driving outdated insurance information, and then left the scene before police showed up. I'd found a letter from the woman and her attorney in the trash, unopened. This is typical of my mother's approach. She doesn't want to confront her problems, and she finds very particular ways of avoiding them.

Josh Bearman

Every time I call now, my mother demands that I take her shopping. Each day, there's a strangely specific new request-- flip-flops, costume jewelry, hair dye, lottery tickets. When I call to get the name of her neurologist, she wants to know if I picked up the socks she asked for.

Josh Bearman

I think I understand the shopping. My mom doesn't have much control in her life-- no car, no money-- and so buying jean shorts is a goal she can handle. And in Walmart, there's no tragic past or scary future. She's just a customer in the unburdened present. And so we go to Target, Walgreens, and the Dollar Store.

One day, I find myself entering a strip mall with the following to-do list. One carton of Marlboro 100s, a 12-pack of [INAUDIBLE] adult diapers, and a jar of herring packed in cream.

My friend Starlee is visiting me in Florida, and she can see that it's getting to me. Starlee-- her voice might be familiar because she's done stories on This American Life before-- comes with me on yet another errand, and we discuss my mother's endless to-do list.

Josh Bearman

The problem is that, while my mother is obsessing with the small things, there are big things we need to do, like, for example, figure out a plan for her. She can't stay at the nursing home because it's too expensive and depressing. She can't go back to Century Village because she'd be alone and could easily start drinking again. I'd like her to go into some kind of long-term treatment center, but whenever I talk to her about it, she has her own plans.

Josh Bearman

There's this one small, but telling, moment in the movie The Exorcist that's always reminded me of my mother.

Josh Bearman

It's when the devil, through Regan, the possessed girl, is pretending to be Father Karras' dead mother.

Josh Bearman

She speaks to him softly in Greek, and he wants to believe it. You can see his face overcome with emotion, missing her, regretting, and resisting, because he knows it's not his mother. It's a demon. And it's the kind of acting job that all alcoholics can turn out at will. There have been times when my brother, Ethan, and I have had to prepare to talk to my mother the same way that Max von Sydow warns Father Karras before they enter Regan's room.

Ira Glass

Well, coming up, Josh's mom starts talking to him in Greek, so to speak. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Today on our show, a story that we first ran back in 2007, about Joshuah Bearman and the family duty that he found himself trying to fulfill. When we left off before the break, his mom was still in a nursing home. His half-brother, David, was trying to get his life together and stay out of jail. Josh picks up the story from there.

Josh Bearman

Time can be merciless in South Florida. It's easy for a numbing routine to develop down here, which is exactly what happens as I spend countless hours Xeroxing medical records and driving 40 miles to fix the kitchen sink because David can't quite figure out how to operate the plumber's wrench. Every time there's progress on some small thing, I look up and realize the horizon is still miles away.

But at least my mom hasn't been drinking. I was sure that, as soon as she could walk, she'd take the pocket cash I gave her each week and convince someone to smuggle booze into the nursing home. It really wouldn't be that hard. This is a woman who could figure out how to get hooch if she were trapped in Apollo 13. But she's resisted so far, which means one less thing to worry about. It also means I can talk to her without the sway of alcohol clouding every conversation. I can ask her questions that would have been impossible before, like how exactly did this all begin?

Josh Bearman

The scenario in Minneapolis? That's another big part of the story-- one that I haven't told you about yet. Part of the reason for my parents' messy divorce was that, when my dad left for his NASA job, my mom was supposed to stay behind, finish up our school year, sell the house, and meet him in Pasadena. Instead, she met a man named Sonny at a Minneapolis nightclub.

He was a Cherokee, six-foot-five and lean, charming but moody, and often carrying his guitar. He was the very opposite of my father. Sonny moved in, and my mother never made it to Pasadena.

Sonny was also a drug dealer. Sometimes his friends would fill the house, partying full steam and staying up late. I remember being babysat by Sonny's stoned Sioux friends, showing them my dinosaur dioramas and trying to convince them to play Dungeons and Dragons with me. I'm not sure what my mother was after, but she loved Sonny, and my father was heartbroken. And so after my parents' divorce, Ethan and I went back and forth for a while-- a year in California, a year in Minnesota.

It was around then that that photograph was taken-- the one I found in my mother's bedroom after she was rushed to the hospital. It's actually a picture of her and Sonny together. My mom is dressed up, yellow lapel points flaring out over a black dress. Sonny is wearing a tan suit. They're on a couch together, both facing the camera. It's my mother's favorite photo from those days.

Someone recently asked me if I love my mother, and I realized I actually had to think about it. I do, of course, but for months I've seen her only as a set of problems. It's often hard to remember the person my mother once was when she enrolled at Cornell at 16, spoke French, and got a master's degree. When she was lucid, I used to like hearing her stories about growing up with my grandparents and their exploits in pre-war Palestine, or talking about the news, since she was always intensely political.

I hadn't seen much of that old self on this trip to Florida. And then one evening, I took my mother to dinner at Red Lobster. It must have put her in some kind of good mood because, while we were going over the menu, she starts telling me some story, a tiny episode from my childhood, a little glimpse of what it was like before all this. And I can't even remember what it was other than it flooded me with the sudden, overwhelming realization that this person across from me actually is my mother and that if things had been different, we could have been getting dinner together like normal people.

And when I start crying right there, at 4:30 PM at the Red Lobster on Okeechobee Boulevard, my mother tries to comfort me, like mothers do, for the first time in as long as I can remember. I wish things were different, I say. I wish they were, too, she answers.

It's hard to say exactly how the woman I remember from childhood became the one sitting with me today. But there's no question a lot of it had to do with that scenario in Minneapolis, which was this one night when some strangers showed up at the house.

Josh Bearman

I was there that night, too. I actually answered the door. I remember how cold it was when the couple came inside. I didn't see him, but outside was a third man. There's always a third man at a hit, the police later said, but I didn't know what was happening. I was in the other room, watching CHiPs with David, when Sonny came home and drew his own 9 millimeter. I heard gunfire, and looked up to see bullets coming through the walls near David. I took him out of his high chair, hid in the bathroom, and watched the hitman out the window, running off past the icicles in the alley.

In the other room, Sonny was down. My mother was so frantic she couldn't remember his name when she called 911. I had to get on the line and explain to the paramedics where we lived. I was nine-- or I would be the next day. A few weeks later, Sonny died in the hospital. That's why my father got full custody of me and Ethan. David was Sonny's kid, so he stayed with my mother.

We saw them during summer for a few years, but things were never the same. I don't even remember the turning point, but eventually she stopped working, and we stopped going. I've always assumed that those missing years were rough for my mother and David, but while in Florida, I discovered that they were worse than I thought.

One day, back in the condo, I'm searching for some medical documents. Surprisingly, my mother's effects are pretty well organized, fitting mostly in one small, gunmetal file case. It occurs to me, flipping through, that there's not much in it because not much has happened to my mother. Her entire life fits in this little box.

A few days later, I bring up those missing years with David. For the first time, I get a clearer picture of what life was like for him, living with a grieving mother who was drinking more and more, and getting caught up with a string of abusive men.

Josh Bearman

David also provided some new details to the story about Sonny. Mom likes to downplay Sonny's drug dealing, although, during one of our conversations, she did let slip that, well, OK, maybe there was cocaine in the house when Sonny was killed, and that she cleverly hid this cocaine from the cops by throwing it in David's diaper hamper. And then David adds this.

It's startling to compare David's life at this time-- the life I could have had-- with the life I actually did have in Pasadena with my father. Things weren't perfect there, I should say. As a teenager, I started fighting with my dad enough that I moved out at 16. I spent a summer working at Pizza Hut in Ontario, California, sharing a house with meth heads. But the difference is that my dad gave me perspective. I knew what was normal. We'd had regular bedtimes, built model rockets, and went to art class on Saturday mornings. I always expected I'd go to college. Even at that dingy Pizza Hut, I'd sit on a pickle bucket in the back, reading The Death of Ivan Ilyich and thinking about grad school.

In other words, when I strayed, I knew it. David's problem is that he doesn't know normal. That's how he could live in squalor with my mother, drunk on the couch for a month, and not call the paramedics. It's not his fault he doesn't know that people require medical attention when their skin turns yellow. He'd seen things like that many times before.

Josh Bearman

It's four months after I first arrived in Florida. My mom is still in the nursing home. We're still waiting to hear from Medicaid. And I'm still trying to convince her to go into a substance abuse program. Then I get a call from the nursing home. My mother had been caught smoking in her room. It's a small infraction in the scheme of things, but it's against the rules, I guess. I fight with the administration, but they still give her 30 days to move out.

David and I take her to the only place she can go, the condo at Century Village, which has been empty since David started staying at his girlfriend's, and has slid back into disorder.

Josh Bearman

That's my mother. Adaptable, as usual, but oblivious to the big picture. Luckily, David is a little more stable now, with a job over at Marshall's. When he and I go out to the car to get Mom's stuff, we try to figure out what to do.

Josh Bearman

It's hard to feel like all these months have accomplished anything, even when, the next day, a spot miraculously opens at a subsidized sober living place not that far away. Of course, my mother doesn't want to go. We spend hours arguing about it. Her excuses are very frustrating. The pace will be too fast. She doesn't have the right clothes. She works better on her own. In other words, just another version of the same argument I've been having with her for the past four months.

Josh Bearman

That last recording is from a year ago. My mother ended up going to the facility, but she only lasted a few weeks. She's back at the condo now, where neither of our predictions have come true. She's drinking again, sporadically, but the house hasn't descended into chaos, either. David's back there, too. After a few more brushes with the law, David managed to complete all the requirements of his probation. He's now looking for another job to save up some money to get back in the studio for a demo. He's even talking seriously about going back to school.

Together, they're maintaining. My mother is more broke than ever, but she's not homeless or dead. Still, it's hard to let go of the notion that I could save my mother or convince her to change, to realize that this might be what salvation looks like for her. At least for now. Nothing is getting better. But if it gets worse, I'm sure they'll call me.

Ira Glass

Josh Bearman. He lives in Los Angeles. His mom passed away in 2012. He did a story about that for our show, which you can find at our website.

Ira Glass

That's Josh's brother, AKA DJ Scraps. Today's program was produced by Alex Blumberg and myself, with Jane Marie, Sarah Koenig, Lisa Pollak, Alissa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Production help for today's show by Emmanuel Dzotsi. Our technical director is Matt Tierney. Our staff includes Elise Bergerson, Emily Condon, Kimberly Henderson, and Seth Lind. Music help from Jessica Hopper.

[ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS]

As I said before in today's show, this show was originally broadcast in 2007. Vince Homenick and Norman Goodman, who you heard at the beginning of the show, they're still around, but they have retired from their job getting jurors into New York juries. Our website, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange.

Thanks, as always, to our program's co-found, Mr. Torey Malatia. You know, he's giving tours now of the This American Life offices.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life.