The Philadelphia Quarry by Howard Owen

polite, ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘Yes, sir,’ like he still knew he was a kid. He told them in the ninth grade that he was going to Princeton, Harper said.
    “And then,” Clara says, snapping her fingers “just like that, he changed.”
    They tried everything money could buy. The best shrinks, private schools that focused on “special” students, every kind of magic dust some drug company could come up with that might help but didn’t.
    “The worst thing,” Clara says, “was that day at the Quarry.”
    She thinks it was about a year after Wesley was first diagnosed as schizophrenic. He was there with his parents and Alicia.
    “I remember it was Fourth of July weekend, so the place was packed. Old Richmond all in one little knot there. I was sitting at one of the picnic tables, with the Tayloes, I think, when suddenly we heard this commotion.
    “And then I hear Harper yell, ‘Get back in there. Get back in there, goddammit.’ Excuse me.
    “We all look up, and there’s Wesley, naked as a jaybird, walking and running toward the water, with Harper right behind him, trying to catch him. He runs out on the diving board and jumps in.
    “He was a good swimmer. He must have stayed out there in the deep water for fifteen minutes at least, mooning everybody and giving us the finger. Harper just stood on the beach and finally gave up even trying to coax him in. By that time, I think Simone had gone to the car.”
    He finally had to come in, and by then whatever had gotten into him seemed to have gotten out again. Harper threw a towel around him, Clara said, and more or less dragged him to the car, with Alicia in tow.
    “I heard a smack, we all did, and then Alicia screaming, ‘Don’t you hit him! Don’t you hit Wesley!’ ”
    Clara sighs.
    “I never saw Wesley at the Quarry again. I don’t know if he was banned or not, but after that, it was like he was invisible.”
    Finally, his father just seemed willing to cut his losses.
    “Harper and Wesley had been close, closer than most fathers and sons, and I think what happened just killed something in Harper. He couldn’t deal with it, couldn’t accept that Wesley was broken, couldn’t accept that Wesley couldn’t help being broken. Simone wasn’t that strong, I guess, and she kind of went along with sending him away. Lewis was older and I think just wanted some peace. I suppose it was all about Wesley back then.
    “The only one that didn’t give up on him, I guess, was Alicia.”
    I’ve got to get back to the paper before Sally sends out a search party, or they just say fuck it and hire a new night cops reporter. But with a little encouragement, Clara tells me the rest.
    Wesley was eighteen when Alicia was raped, living in a group home somewhere on Meadow Street. Everyone was so upset that it was three days before they realized Wes was missing. It took six months and a private detective to find him, in a jail in Nevada. Apparently, a cop had tried to arrest him, and Wes took a swing at him.
    “I guess what happened to Alicia just drove him over the edge. Harper spent a few thousand dollars, I heard, to get him out of there and back home and back on his medication.”
    Home, Clara explained, wasn’t the stately manor where I’d tried to talk with Alicia. Or at least not for very long. Something, she said, would always happen, and Wes would be evicted. He lived in various “homes,” and sometimes in his own apartment, depending on how well his current drugs were working and how faithfully he was taking them.
    He enrolled at VCU and eventually got a degree, more than I can say for my darling daughter so far, and was hired to work for the law firm of one of Harper’s old friends, “probably just clerical stuff, but he had a job.”
    “Lewis said he lives somewhere over in the Museum District now. He kind of keeps to himself, and she said he hasn’t had an episode in more than six years.”
    “Had an episode” apparently is code for “went batshit.”