Ghost Of The Past Pt. 2

It appears that I have caught a break (as the detective would say.) The phone number my mother gave me has paid off.

Yesterday I called and got an answering machine. I left a message detailing who I was, I was trying to contact a friend from high school, please give me a call back.

No response. I figured at first that I had the wrong number so they didn’t call back. To verify I decided to try again today. It was the right number.

At first I spoke with Fergal’s dad Jim. He quickly said he was Fergal’s dad and said Sydney, Fergal’s mom, would be with me in a second. The guy wouldn’t tell me anything. This was a little scary. I was bracing myself for bad news. If one parent hands the phone off to another parent instantly, it doesn’t seem good, right?

So Sydney gets on the phone and is just pleased as punch to talk to me. I don’t give out any of the info I’ve heard, I don’t want to sound like an asshole. So Sydney pitters around a bit, then starts giving me Fergal’s history. She didn’t explain any harder drugs, but talked a lot about Fergal and pot. She described it as pretty bad and from the details, it never sounded any worse than what I’d consume on a daily basis. It’s a lot, but it could have been worse.

She asked how I was and I decided to go into my past history and rehab. This was very exciting news to her. I think she liked hearing about my positive outcome. It gives hope. She asked what had happened, how I decided to get out and all of the regular questions norms ask when they are let into a lifestyle that is alien to them. I asked more about Fergal’s whereabouts.

She told me about him disappearing about three years ago in Boston. He changed his number, moved, all the standard stuff. See, Fergal is a very bighearted guy, too big some might say, and he was tired of disappointing his parents. At least that’s the working theory. So he separated himself from the folks. I feel there is also the possibility of them not being able to understand and applied pressures on the lad that made him feel that contact needed to be broken. All of these are theories right now. Only Fergal will be able to tell me what he’s gone/going through.

Then she pulls out the ace. Fergal had sent her a mother’s day card this past May. Bingo baby. He said how much he loved her and didn’t want to be in contact until he had gotten his life back together. He had mentioned a job he had at a restaurant called, “The Chateau”. Naturally she had the phone number.

Sydney hopes that I will get in touch with him and maybe our mutual addictions will make some sort of connection. I told her I couldn’t promise anything, but I’d call her and let her know how he was doing if I contacted him. She was grateful for anything I could do and we said our goodbyes.

So now I have a possible work number and I may be one step closer to tracking him down.

It seems pretty good to me that heroin never came up. It could have been one of those things like when we played “Operator” as kids. The first kid says “Jane is cute”, but by the time you get to the end of the line the last kid says, “Tom farted in Social Studies.”

We’ll see. More coming soon.