Page 42 of That Weekend in Paris
“I read about what you’ve been doing for the foster care program back home. It has to mean so much to those children.”
Klein shrugs. “I was one of them. I know what it’s like to reach the point where you no longer unpack your suitcase because it’s pretty much a given that you won’t be staying long.”
My heart clenches at this instant image of a little boy arriving at another home, sure he won’t be staying. “That’s awful.”
“My last foster family was a different story. I didn’t get there until I was fourteen, but I stayed there until I graduated from high school. They were what you would look for in a foster family, not just in it for the money. They truly tried to make the kids they took in feel like they were finally home.”
“They sound like great people.”
“They are. As I mentioned, my foster dad drove a sawdust truck. I would go with him sometimes. He had a big hound dog named Charles who would go with us and ride in the middle of the seat. We had stops along the way where we would pull over at a convenient spot, and I’d have to run in and get Charles his favorite snack, bacon biscuit, a slice of pumpkin pie.”
I laugh. “Charles was living the high life.”
“He really was,” Klein says, smiling. “He was a great dog. He died right after I turned eighteen, and I didn’t think my dad would survive it.He loved him that much.”
“Do you ever see your foster parents?”
“I do,” Klein says. “I go back as often as I can, mostly holidays and stuff. I did buy them a new house, so they have a lot more room for the kids they take in. There’s a pool in the backyard and a basketball court.”
“That’s amazing,” I say.
“Not really. I would never be able to pay them back an amount of money to show exactly how much I appreciate what they did for me. I can’t even explain what it felt like when I began to realize theirs was a home I might stay in, that they actually wanted me to stay. And then for a long time, I felt guilty about that because I knew so many other kids who got bounced from place to place and never, before they were eighteen, had the chance to put down roots anywhere.”
“I guess I never really thought about how incredible and meaningful fostering children really is. It is amazing to think about how easy it would be to give a child a completely different life.”
“My foster family probably wouldn’t call me easy, but they stuck with me when I acted out, tried to get them to send me back because I knew it was going to happen anyway.”
“I’m sorry, Klein. That’s not what childhood is supposed to be.”
“No,” he says, “but I’m grateful that the last part of it was completely different from the beginning.”
“What happened to your parents? Or, wait, you don’t have to answer that.”
“It is what it is. They were both into drugs.”
“What kind of drugs?” I ask, admittedly stunned to think this had been his beginnings.
“Heroin, actually. Not what you picture in rural South Carolina, but they both got started on heavy-duty pain medications for different reasons. When they could no longer get prescriptions for those, heroin was the next best thing, I guess.”
I really don’t know what to say. I start to respond and then stop.
“I know, it’s out there, isn’t it? You don’t need to feel sorry for me, Dillon. It’s not like that anymore. I kind of look at it these days as it’s made me who I am and given me the incentive to try to do some good things in this world. Maybe if I hadn’t gone through all of that, I would not see life that way and just be a miserable waste of time on this earth.”
“You’re anything but that,” I say.
We finish our meal, mostly in silence, and once we’ve put everything back on the cart and rolled it out into the hallway, I say what it is I’ve been thinking about. “I want to finish the song we started tonight, but I have an idea for another one. If you don’t mind, I’d like to work on that for a bit, see what comes of it. It’s something you said that gave me the idea.”
“Okay.” We’re back in the bedroom now, and he’s picking up his guitar. “Got a title?”
“Roots,” I say.
He looks up at me, smiles an appreciative smile, and says, “Let’s hear what you’ve got.”
Klein
“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
—Albert Einstein
