Lost & Found

The phone number for the incoming call was not one I recognized. But the area code, 425, was. It was from the Bellevue-Mercer Island area or the “eastside” of Seattle, Washington – where I’d grown up.

“Tom LaRossa,” I answered.

“Hello. Uh, Mr. Thomas M. LaRossa?”

“Yes, speaking. Who is this?”

“Hello. My name is Liza Valdez. I’m a Sargent with the Issaquah Police Department. Sir, are you related to a David James LaRossa?”

I froze. A wave of anxiety rising in me like an icy tide. I had heard about these kinds of phone calls from my siblings. Each of them, still living in the Seattle area, had received at least one over the years. The call informing my brother that Dave had bitten a police office and had been arrested. The call to my sister from her landlord telling her Dave was threatening neighbors. The countless calls from Dave himself, asking for money or a ride or for “a fucking hotel room” so he could take a hot shower and get a decent night’s sleep. But having moved away years ago, for me, this was a first. “Yes,” I said, cautiously “Dave’s my brother.”

“Mr. LaRossa, I’m sorry. Your brother died, last night.” She paused, waiting for a response but I had none. “He was found this morning in a tent under an overpass on I-90.”

“How?” I heard myself say.

“It appears your brother died of natural causes - ”

“I’m not there,” I blurted.

“Uh, excuse me?”

“I mean, I don’t live there, anymore. I live in Detroit. But I can come...” I stammered, realizing I wasn’t making any sense.

“Well, sir, there are some personal effects and we’ll need someone to confirm identity. But if there’s someone else – someone closer, maybe?”

“No,” I lied. “No. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

At 6:05 a.m. the next day, I boarded a flight from Detroit to Seattle. For some reason, I had decided not to call any of my six remaining brothers and sisters – despite the fact that they all lived in the Seattle area. For the better part of the last 30 years, each of them, in varying degrees, had borne the brunt of our brother Dave’s mental health – or lack thereof – and his subsequent homelessness. It was they, not I, who had offered him an extra bedroom for months or years at time, who had tried to get him treatment, who had endured his increasing paranoia, who had seen the occasional return of his endearing wit, warmth and charm only to feel the emotional gut punch a moment later, as he suddenly lurched into a barrage of irrational accusations and physical threats. Like a wounded, cornered animal that you’re simultaneously trying to help and protect yourself from, Dave had held them all hostage for decades. I guess, in some way, I felt it was now time to pay my share of the ransom.

After drifting off to sleep as the plane lifted off, I was awakened by a brilliant sunrise, pouring like glowing water through the cabin windows. I closed my eyes as clips of the “the old Dave” played in my head.

In the private, all-male Jesuit high school that we had attended, I was one year behind Dave and, as such, inherited most of his freshman textbooks – much to my delight. A natural artist with a sarcastic, Mad Magazine sense of humor, Dave had clearly spent most of his class time doodling, scattering the margins of these books with hilarious caricatures of teachers or fellow students. On page 87 of World History, a dead-on sketch of Fr. Hess –– foaming at the mouth and shouting, “Get out, LaRossa! Just get the hell out!” On page 129 of French 101, a drawing of the well-endowed Ms. Dubois asking “Aimez-vous les gros melons?”

Years later, after graduating from art school and working with a local advertising agency, Dave abruptly quit to start his own firm. As he showed me around his newly rented office space, with a view of the Seattle waterfront, he talked excitedly about finally having creative freedom. He’d no longer have to answer to “those hacks” at the agency and, even better, he would be working “his way,” pointing slyly to a half-smoked joint in an ashtray on the windowsill. “Who’s this?” I laughed, “pointing to one of his sketches pinned above his drawing board. “Higgins,” he smirked, “my old Creative Director. Good dude, I guess. But he never approved my best ideas.” The drawing, in typical Dave style, showed his former boss pointing to an ad. The talk bubble read: “Seriously? You call this an idea?” It was funny at the time. But looking back on that moment, I see it as the confluence of the two forces that would rewire the circuitry of Dave’s life: his increasing sense of paranoia – everyone, everywhere was somehow trying to screw him – and his relentless efforts to counter that sense by self-medicating.

In the decades following, I watched from afar as the threads of Dave’s life further unraveled. With every visit back to Seattle –– Dave became increasingly absent. Our questions evolving from, “What’s with Dave?” to “Is Dave coming?” to “Has anyone heard from Dave?” and, eventually, “What are we doing about Dave?” He stopped working. He divorced his beautiful and loving wife. He saw less and less of his two children, moved from one apartment to another and eventually to the streets disappearing from us all over time, gradually engulfed in the fog of his own mind.

What made Dave’s dark spiral even more heartbreaking were his intermittent flashes of light – the frequent displays of his creative brilliance. On one visit home, I stopped by the house my younger brother had recently purchased. Dave had moved into the house’s large garage, converting it to an artist’s studio where he would paint, write, play guitar and, according to my brother, “pretty much smoke pot all night.” The less capable he was with normal everyday existence, the more capable he seemed to be at everything else.

I remember seeing his paintings for the first time. Abstract objects with hard shadows – a bolt, a nut, a guillotine, a grindstone – hauntingly and beautifully laid against a ghostly field of purplish white. I listened enviously as he picked up his guitar and effortlessly rolled from a Stones lick to Stevie Ray Vaughn to Nirvana. I struggled endlessly to learn chords and keep a beat, but it all just flowed out of Dave. He also talked about writing. On another visit, as I was driving him somewhere, John Lennon’s Imagine came on the radio. He immediately bounced to excitement in the passenger seat. “Shit, Tom, Lennon was so right,” he said, nearly shouting. “‘Imagine no religion. I wonder if you can,’” he recited. “That’s what America was supposed to be about – no religion! Separation of church and state, man! But they couldn’t! They couldn’t do it,” he laughed. “In God we trust. One nation under God. They fucked it up! Just think about how different this country would be without religion dividing us. I mean literally, imagine, right?

“Right.” I said.

“I’m writing a book about it,” he concluded, calming slightly and looking out the window.

“Sounds cool.” I said.

“Yeah. It’s gonna’ be good.”

One of the last times I actually spoke to Dave was the morning of our father’s funeral. I had packed an extra suit, tie, shoes, etc. for Dave to wear. The night before, we had made arrangements to meet at the hotel we’d put him up in, so he could get dressed and we would drive together to the ceremony. But when I called in the morning, he didn’t answer. I called again. And again. Finally, he called me back, asking about my father’s will. “Dad said he was leaving us all money. When am I getting my money?”

“I don’t know, Dave, that’s all being worked out. Maybe we can talk about it when I get there.” The more calmly I tried to explain, the more agitated Dave become. Until “Fuck it. I’m not going to the funeral,” he shouted. “You’re all just trying to screw me! I can’t handle being there, anyway!” and hung up.

I didn’t call him back.

Eventually, when the estate was settled, each of us received an inheritance of $20,000. We urged Dave to use the money to pay for subsidized housing for the next year, but he refused. “I’m not touching that money,” he said. “Dad worked his ass off for it and he wanted me to have it.” Less than six months later, Dave texted me: Can you cover the hotel for a week? I texted back: What happened to the $20K? He replied: Will you pay or not? I had no idea on what – probably pot and guitar strings – but I knew that money was spent. I paid for the hotel.

The plane landed in a typical, gray Seattle mist and I Uber-ed to the address Officer Valdez had given me. For a moment, I entertained a desperate hope that it was all a mistake. A misidentification. It wasn’t. The body looked more like a skeleton, with every ounce of his incredible light drained away, but it was Dave.

I signed some papers and the heavyset man at the long, cold counter gave me a bag containing the belongings Dave had on him when they found him. No watch. No rings. No phone. Just his clothes and a well-worn wallet with an expired driver’s license, and a dozen pre-paid gift cards to Denny’s, Motel 6, Starbucks, and others – cards we’d all given him over time. He’d told me once, that he used to hide the cards in the lining of his guitar case but they’d been found and stolen. “These people are animals,” he once said about living on the street. “If it might be worth anything, they’ll steal it.”

He was right. When I arrived at the cluster of tents under the freeway and found the red tent I’d been told was Dave’s, someone had obviously gone through it. Other than a few guitar picks, pencils and a broken umbrella there was literally nothing there. Outside the tent, I heard the wheels of a grocery cart rattling past, then abruptly stop. I stepped out to see a tall, thin kid behind the cart. “This was his,” he said. “They pretty much got everything else.”

‘Thank you,” I said, doing everything I could not to cry. He nodded and begin walking away. “Hey,” I called. “Do you need a tent?”

“Thanks. Got one.” Then he smiled and was gone.

In the shopping cart, there was Dave’s guitar, his amp, a rectangular bundle held together in plastic and duct tape and one last sketch. I unwrapped the bundle to find eleven leather Moleskin notebooks – each carved with a dice-like dot pattern, apparently indicating its volume in the sequence. I opened the notebook marked with a single dot and read the title page: God Bless America: How the U.S. would be different – and better – if church were truly separated from state. In the title’s drawing, the letter B had been erased changing the word Bless to less. On the next two-page spread was a dedication, reading: “To my editor, Charles L. Wattles, for always never believing in me.” and a caricature of a pompous-looking man holding up a book bearing the same title page, with a talk bubble reading, “You call this writing?” I burst out laughing and then started crying.

Tears streaming down my face, I lifted the last item out of the cart. It was a black and white line art drawing that Dave had done years ago of the house we grew up in. The glass was now cracked and the frame so battered, that it fell apart as I lifted it. Pulling the drawing from the frame I noticed something taped to its back. There, in meticulously arranged rows, were twenty crisp $1,000 bills.