A Mother's Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy(80)
Mid-February, Dylan came downstairs dressed to go to work, though he wasn’t scheduled. Eric’s dog Sparky was seriously ill, so Dylan had picked up Eric’s shift at Blackjack. I was fond of the little dog and felt sad for Eric; it’s hard to lose a pet, especially an animal you’ve grown up with. As he left the house, I gave Dylan a hug and told him how proud I was that he was such a responsible employee and a good and loyal friend.
Later that week, the two of us looked at degree requirements for the schools he’d been accepted to, and we both revved up when we saw all the classes he could take. Tom grappled with financial aid forms while Dylan and I began to plan college visits.
One night at the end of February, I surprised Tom and Dylan by bringing home a couple of fruit pies and Seven Samurai, a classic Japanese film from the 1950s directed by Akira Kurosawa. Dylan had heard about Seven Samurai in a class at school, and was curious about it. I’d never seen it, although I knew the American Western remake from the sixties, The Magnificent Seven. Snowy and cold outside, it seemed like the perfect night to light a fire, pig out, and watch a movie, but I worried about my choice as soon as the film began: I wasn’t sure Dylan was going to stick around for a long, black-and-white, subtitled movie about a sixteenth-century Japanese village.
I was wrong. Dylan was spellbound; we all were. Poor Byron dropped in for an unexpected visit in the middle, and even though we couldn’t understand a word of the Japanese dialogue, we shushed him when he tried to talk. He sat down and tried to get into it with us, but he had the reaction I’d expected from Dylan. In a matter of minutes, he’d kissed me on the top of the head and let himself out. Rapt, we barely looked up long enough to say good-bye.
After the closing credits rolled, Tom, Dylan, and I stayed up late on the couch, talking about some of the more remarkable scenes. Because he’d made videos and done sound for plays, Dylan had deep appreciation for the technical challenges the movie presented. He was particularly knocked out by a complicated choreographed battle scene staged in a downpour, which I would come to learn had inspired directors like Martin Scorsese. I was thrilled he’d appreciated the subtle artistry of the film.
The first week of March, Dylan said he and some friends were going to the mountains to do an assignment for his video production class. Tom was scheduled for yet another surgery that week, to replace his right shoulder joint. I asked Dylan who was going on the trip, and who would be driving; I had not met two of the kids he mentioned. March is still winter in Colorado, and I reminded him to bring warm clothing, food, and water in case of a weather emergency. When I kissed him good-bye, I made him promise he wouldn’t trespass. It was public land, he assured me; one of the boys knew the area well. He told me they were making an action film in a natural setting, using toy guns. In truth, they were filming the “Rampart Range” video, which I did not see or even know about until we were deposed, four years after the tragedy. In it, Dylan, Eric, and Mark Manes—the man who sold them one of the guns—shoot the weapons they have stockpiled.
On March 11, I took the day off so the three of us could visit the college in Colorado that Dylan had been accepted to. He was not overly enthused about the visit—he claimed to be intent on moving to a desert climate—but I was pleased to note he became more engaged when we took a tour of the computer lab. His academic performance in high school had always been a little mysterious to us; for someone who had shown so much early promise, he hadn’t excelled. Watching him on that campus, I felt sure he was going to thrive at college.
That evening, Tom and I attended parent-teacher conferences at Dylan’s high school. We’d received a midterm report the previous week showing that Dylan’s grades had dropped precipitously in calculus and English. I was pretty sure it was “senioritis,” a high school senior goofing off after being accepted to college, but wanted to touch base.
Dylan’s calculus teacher told us Dylan sometimes fell asleep in class, and had not turned in some assignments. He’d taught Dylan before, and was disappointed Dylan wasn’t more motivated. I was bothered to hear Dylan was slacking off, but not alarmed.
“Is he being disrespectful to you?” I asked.
The teacher replied with amusement, “Oh, no, not Dylan. Dylan’s never disrespectful.” I wondered aloud if being a year younger than his classmates explained his immature attitude, or if he was blowing off the subject because he planned to take it again at college. Then I worried I was making excuses for Dylan, and I shut up.
When I told the math teacher Dylan had been accepted at the University of Arizona, he seemed impressed and slightly surprised. When we mentioned the other Arizona university, he laughed and said, “Oh yes. That’s where all the jocks go after they flunk out of UCLA.” We later shared this comment with Dylan, who changed his mind about visiting the school. The upshot of our meeting was that Dylan wouldn’t fail the course if he went to class and turned in the overdue assignments.
We sat down with Dylan’s English teacher next. She’d taught both of my sons, and I felt a comfortable familiarity with her. I was relieved to hear Dylan had turned in some missing assignments after she’d sent out the midterm report, and his grade had moved from a D to a B. His teacher also praised Dylan’s writing abilities. Tom and I were happily surprised. We’d always thought of Dylan as a math kid, and Byron as the son with the talent for language.
After this praise, the tone of the conversation shifted, and she told us Dylan had turned in a disturbing paper. (Tom remembers the word she used as shocking, because he wondered if it was a reference to sexual content.) We asked for details, but she only said the paper contained dark themes and some bad language. To illustrate the inappropriateness of Dylan’s composition, she told us about a paper Eric had written, from the first-person perspective of a bullet being shot from a gun. Eric’s story, she told us, could have been violent, but when it was read aloud the class was amused. Dylan’s story, on the other hand, was dark. It had no humor in it at all.