Naming the phones and Philip Seymour Hoffman

Philip Seymour Hoffman died eleven years ago today

Here is an excerpt from my memoir about the day Philip Seymour Hoffman died and my son’s phone call that same day - eleven years ago.

It was a Sunday afternoon just like today. I was in the same little Alabama house where I am now writing these words when my son called me from Los Angeles to tell me the news.

I had just read the headline and the phone rang.

***

Excerpt:

Welcome to the Fun House of Addiction.

It reminds me of the Ocean City Boardwalk in Maryland where I went in the summertime with my siblings and cousins. There was an amusement park with a “HAUNTED HOUSE” called "PLAYLAND." It was my first time in such a place at the age of six or seven where I rode in a box car with my little brother, and we sat cold in the darkness, rolling down the eerie tracks. A few creatures cried "boo" but the scariest was all the relentless darkness, as we rounded corner after corner, not wanting to see what was coming for us. I remember a pair of hands sticking out of a flushing toilet at the end and my brother burying his head against my shoulder so as not to look.

I couldn’t stop looking.

This is about the age we were that summer in Ocean City. There are no pictures from that summer. Or maybe there is one of my Uncle Michael, who had to sleep in the bathtub because the beach house was so crowded, and when he woke up, his sleeping bag was soaking wet, or maybe that image is burned in my brain.

***

My son has had 45 phone numbers or thereabouts.

My husband didn't name/save Son's numbers, but I saved each one.

His siblings’ numbers stayed reliably, blessedly the same all these years from when we first got them cell phones.

I honestly don't know why I saved all his numbers. Somehow, I thought that giving each a phone name would be proof that our boy was trying to join the world again, but by the world, I mean - our world.

See, he's getting better.

He wants a phone.

He got a phone.

Next, it will be a job.

Oh wait, he should get sober first.

But a phone is a good start.

We've turned a corner.

I was batshit. We turned so many corners we were right back where we started.

I wanted to wipe him clean the way I wiped phones clean we would get for him.

NAMING THE PHONE NUMBERS

1. Son - the original phone number.

2. Son-Flip Phone 7-14 - Desert Rehab

3. Son-Borrowed Phone

4. Son-Dec

5. Son-Friend

6. Son-New phone

7. Son-Newnewphone 12/16

8. Son-Summer 2017

9. Son-fornow

10. Son-Phone Spring 2018

11. Son-August 2019

12. Son-October 2019

13. Son-New December 2019 phone

14. Son-Quarantine 2020

15. Son-2020 Phone

16. Son-Fall 2020

17. Son-Nov 2020

18. Son-Now

19. Son-Jan 2021

20. Son-New#3

21. Son-2021

22. Son-3/22

23. Son-friend 4/2022

24. Son-New June 2022

26. Son-July 2022

27. Son-Millionth Phone Summer

28. Son-May 2023

29. Son-June 2023

30. Son-July 2023

31. Son-Now Scott

32. Son- (whatever number)

33. Son-October 2023

34. Son-(Andrew's Phone) December 2023

35. Son-Spring 2024

36. Son-June 2024

37. Son - Instagram Messenger

38. Son – On His Birthday

39. Son – Time Traveler

40. Son Calling Sister – 10/1

41. Maybe Son Maybe

42. Son London License Text

43. Son Keyboard

44. Son December 2024

45. IG Number 2025

The last number was posted on an IG post across a night sky, and I’ve added that one too.

I honestly don't know how many numbers he’s had.

When I feel like torturing/comforting/escaping myself, I read addiction memoirs or I watch addiction movies or clips.

My favorite memoir is still the late Carolyn Knapp’s Drinking: A Love Story. I also love her best friend’s memoir, Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell about their friendship. I love Pete Hamill’s A Drinking Life and Debra Gwartney’s Live Through This, which was (and is) as beautiful as Beautiful Boy, but the latter got all the attention way back when. I also love the The Night of the Gun by David Carr.

I began reading them all when I saw hints of what I refused to see coming.

This one from Spaulding Gray gets me every time in “Drunks.”

For no reason that I can articulate, Ben is Back, is my least favorite – maybe it is too close? I want to tell Julia Roberts to get back into the car now and keep driving.

I watch them alone mostly because my other children say, “Mom! Don’t watch that.”

Sometimes, I say, “I watch them, so you don’t have to.”

A dumb joke.

They don’t torture themselves with addiction movies. And they are right not to, and I don’t know why I seek answers from these movies.

I haven’t seen 28 Days in a long time. I wonder if it holds up.

But in all the stories, I want the words to rearrange themselves so the characters who are using or misbehaving stop and learn their lesson and everyone goes home and straightens up.

Or maybe my son steps into the pages of the books or scenes in the movies and gets healthy, too.

I used to send him science movies of spiders on drugs to make him stop. I stooped as low as I could go. I couldn’t have gone any lower in my attempts to rescue, fix, cajole, shame, blame, threaten, beg, and save the day.

Once at a desert rehab when he got clean for a while and became a sort of designated “Welcome Wagon” committee all in one, and he would invite the frightened incoming ones for walks to look at vistas, desert landscapes, or the garden where he grew a single small but perfect watermelon that summer. As if it were any of my business, I asked him what he said to them, and he said he would tell them it would be okay.

One mom wrote to me after we were in family therapy together. “Your son really helped my son, and my son is clean now in part because of your son. Thank you.”

Did I tell her my son went back out there again? Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. It was almost a decade ago. I was sometimes jealous of the parents whose kids got clean while mine was still out there running the streets, but more than jealousy, I was glad their kids were clean. I was grateful they were clean, and I hope they stayed clean.

In my darker days of magical thinking and playing with time, I want to bring Philip Seymour Hoffman home. The day Philip Seymour Hoffman died my son called me that Sunday afternoon in 2014, and I had just read the terrible headline.

I couldn’t breathe. What was I even reading? It had to be a mistake.

Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman dies of drug overdose at age 46

Then the phone rang, and it was my son.

Mom, I know you just heard about it. It’s everywhere. And I swear it won't be me. I swear.

What? But how did this happen? He was going to get better…

I know. But listen to me, Mom! I don't want you to go down the rabbit hole of reading everything about his life and watching shit, okay? He would hate that. Are you listening to me? He would really-really hate that. I know you loved him but don't do it. Promise me, promise me! Mom!

Philip Seymour Hoffman died on February 2, 2014, eleven years ago today. I had taken my kids to so many of his movies. Our middle child saw him in Death of a Salesman while in school in New York. Of course, I read everything about him to try to make sense of it even though my son asked me not to and I could not make the pieces come together. I even remember reading before his death how he went into rehab and I thought - well, it’ll be a great rehab because of who he is, and he’ll get better.

It was unimaginable to me then how much the disease could take.

It's no longer unimaginable.

Sometimes, I still want to time travel and tell Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Look at your beautiful son, Cooper, who looks so much like you and is making movies. Your beloved wife and your daughters. Your siblings. Your mom! Come back to life. We know you didn't mean it. You are missed, and you are loved. Please go home to your family - isn't enough quite enough?”

How crazy is that?

Philip Seymour Hoffman never knew me. I never knew him. But I think about him a lot. I’ve read essays by his sister, Emily Barr, and wife, Mimi O’Donnell, that are so beautiful and incredibly familiar.

Of course, I went down the rabbit hole and when I miss my son more than I can bear, I sometimes watch Capote or Doubt or Almost Famous or The Savages or Love Liza or Synecdoche, New York or Boogie Nights or Magnolia.

The list goes on, but those are films I can watch again and be grateful that we live in a world where once upon a time Philip Seymour Hoffman lived too. He would have loved my son. He would have understood.

An acquaintance asked me about my son when she heard I was trying to write something, and I described him as a sweet and funny kid who climbed trees and loved people, sang and danced and played baseball and loved to perform and draw and paint. I didn’t add that he was a perfect mimic, and how in high school, he would prank call his friends’ landlines disguised as their dower/dire counselor delivering bad news on grades or tardiness. “This is Mrs. Burlington. (fake name) Your child was late to Economics Class three times, is failing history, and will be UNINVITED to UC Santa Cruz for college. Please call me at your earliest convenience for a conference before it is too late.”

Our son sounded so much like her that it stressed out the parents, and they asked him to stop.

The new acquaintance said, “Sounds like your son was a shooting star.”

A shooting star?

“Oh, yeah. But he’s still here. But yes, I can see that.” A shooting star.

My dad used to say, “The sky is the limit with that kid. The sky is the limit. Is there anything he can’t do?”

He and Dad once had a bet that he could tell the difference between a Democrat and a Republican just by looking at their pictures without names.

Of course, my son won the bet easily.

So, what happened? How did it happen? How do I tell this story? Why can’t I ask Philip Seymour Hoffman? Why has he been gone for so many years while so many without a shred of his soul, kindness, humanity, and brilliance live on and on?

Where are you dear son on this Sunday in February?

OLD MESSENGER CHAT

ME: We found a keyboard for you.

SON: You found a keyboard?? Yay

ME: Two keyboards. Some of the keys are not working, but hey, we found two. For the smaller one, we need a speaker to make it work. There is a plug for the bigger one.

SON: Which keys?

ME: I couldn’t tell you.

SON: Is it the old Yamaha?