I threw a few things of mine into a bag. I wanted my own clothes too since I’d been alternating between the clothes I was wearing the night they brought him in and the scrubs the nurses gave me. I didn’t need much since they weren’t going to let me stay with him once they moved him to the psych ward. I didn’t know how I was going to leave him. Not in the condition he was in. But he needed to be safe, and they’d keep him from hurting himself again. No matter how hard it was for me, it was the best thing for him right now. I was waiting for the medication to have an effect. He’d never been on medication before, and I’d always been against antidepressants in kids, but I was willing to try anything that might help because I refused to give up on him even if he was giving up on himself.
I walked into Noah’s room to pack his things, unsure of what they’d allow in the psych ward. I’d never been in one before and all the images I’d seen from movies flashed through my mind. I folded his favorite sweatpants and t-shirts in the duffel bag he used for swim meets. I grabbed the book he’d been reading off his nightstand, and that’s when it caught my eye—a piece of paper lying on his pillow.
Everyone in the hospital asked if he left a note and I said no, but there it was, beckoning me. I picked it up and took a deep breath, bracing myself for what he thought would be his final words. My hands shook the paper. I wanted to read it, but the lines swerved in front of me, not coming together in coherent sentences. I forced myself to breathe and focus.
Dear Mom,
I love you. This isn’t your fault. This is my choice. Tell Katie I love her and will always be her big brother even though I’m gone. Tell Dad he doesn’t have to worry about me anymore.
I’m sorry I had to do this to you. If there is a God, I pray you aren’t the one to find me. I never wanted to hurt you, Mom. I swear I didn’t.
This is best for everyone. I’ve torn our family apart, and none of you deserve it. You all deserve to have a happy life, and none of you can do that with me in it. I don’t want to hurt you or anybody else.
I can’t stand the way everyone looks at me. And not because they’re wrong. Because they’re right. I’m a monster. I know you don’t want to believe it, but I am.
I am a pedophile.
You can’t treat what I have. It’s not ever going to go away. This thing inside of me is who I am and I hate who I am. I can’t fix me. Nobody can.
I know who I am. They taught us at Marsh that we weren’t pedophiles even though we’d committed a sex crime. They said pedophiles were really rare because it means you’re attracted to children. It’s disgusting and repulsive, but that’s who I’m attracted to. And I know that it’s wrong.
I’ve known this is who I am for years. Ever since seventh grade. I’ve tried everything I could think of to like girls my own age, but nothing works. I was terrified of ever acting on my attraction because I know it’s wrong. Nobody had to teach me that. Nobody had to tell me how much damage I was doing to Maci and Bella by touching them.
I have to live in a world where I can’t be around children. Where I can’t see them. Where I can’t be tempted. But even without any reminders, it’s still there. And each time I have the desire, I’m reminded of how sick I am. I don’t want to live with this sickness. It won’t leave me alone. It doesn’t let me sleep. It eats away at me more every day.
I can’t hide from it. There’s no escaping it. People will always find out. They will always know who I am. They will hate me and attack me like they’ve always done. And they should. I deserve every hit and broken bone. Next time they might kill me, and I don’t blame them. I am going to die, either way.
My mind has never been clearer about what I have to do. Never been sure of anything except this. I have a responsibility to society to make sure I don’t hurt anyone else.
I know this will hurt both you and Katie and I’m sorry. Dad will be relieved and Mom, he shouldn’t feel bad about that. Please don’t hate him when he’s glad I’m gone. He’s right. He’s always seen what you haven’t. Please go on to live a happy life. It’s all I want for you. It’s something I can never have, but you still can. Katie too. Please be sure she does.
And know that I love you. None of this is your fault. Don’t take the blame. Nobody could ask for a better mother.
Please don’t have a service. Save yourselves the expense. I’d like to be cremated. Burn me and scatter my ashes. Don’t keep them. Don’t hold on to them. Let me go.
Love,
Noah
I dropped the letter. The light in the room blinded me. I staggered backward. My heartbeat thrashed in my ears. There was a roaring in my head. My thoughts chased each other with lightning speed. His lines repeated. I couldn’t breathe. Every wisp of air stolen from my lungs. My intestines churned. I bent over, clutching my gut, trying to stop my body from emptying itself down my legs. My knees were weak. I sank to the floor.
*****
I didn’t have any memory of driving to the hospital. One minute I was curled up on Noah’s bedroom floor and the next, I was sitting in the parking lot of the hospital with the car running. It had gotten dark. My phone buzzed next to me. I picked it up like I was sleepwalking. My hand looked bigger, like it belonged to someone else.
“Adrianne? Adrianne, are you there?”
I must not have said hello.
“I’m here.” My voice reverberated in my head.
“It’s Dr. Park. I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. We were supposed to talk at two. Is everything okay?”
I turned the car off.
“No. It’s not. It’s not okay.” It hurt to talk.
“What happened?”
“He left a note.” I barely got the words out before sobs ripped through me. The more I tried to stop crying, the harder the sobs came, each one more intense than the last. She stayed on the line as my anguished cries became silent weeping and waited until the grief had gone beyond tears and sounds to find its way to my center, where it would never leave.
“What’d it say?” she asked.
I swallowed hard and wrestled to gain control of my voice. “He said he was a pedophile.” My breath was sharp and shallow.
She was silent, and she was never quiet. She always had something to say.
Finally, she spoke. “It’s what I was afraid of.”
Afraid? She never said she was afraid.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
She paused again. The silence stretched out between us. “Are you ready to talk about this? I tried to talk to you about this before. Remember? When he was being discharged?”
“You said you were concerned because he wanted to write the girls a letter. I don’t get it. How’s that related?”
“I would’ve been able to explain it to you then if you’d given me a chance, but you didn’t want to hear it.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear it now.
“Noah was an exemplary patient. We’ve talked about this so many times. He had insight into the ramifications of his actions. He took responsibility. He knew it was wrong. Never denied it. He showed remorse and empathy. There was never a fight on any account. This isn’t usually the case. Most kids we work with lack insight into their own behavior. Some of them don’t even know it’s wrong. They lie more than they tell the truth.” She paused, giving me a moment to digest her words. “The only time we don’t see this is when we’re dealing with kids like Noah, and kids like Noah are rare. Really rare.”
“I’m not following you.”
“A true pedophile in an adolescent is unusual. It means they have an attraction to children. Most juvenile offenders don’t have an attraction to children. The predatory ones are doing it to inflict pain, and children are an easy target because they’re vulnerable. There are others who are social misfits and want to have a girlfriend who is their age, but they don’t know how or have the skills to do it. So, instead, they experiment with children. Then, there are those who act out because they’re under the influence of chemicals o
r are mentally ill, so they don’t know what they’re doing. But pedophiles? It’s an actual attraction to kids.”
As detestable as it was and as much as I didn’t want it to be true, her explanation for Noah was the only one that made sense. He didn’t fit any of the profiles. Not one. He never had. It always troubled me. The last piece of hope for a better life shattered inside me. There was no grief with it this time. Just an empty hollowness as if the last parts of my insides had been scraped out and discarded. There was nothing left.
“How do you treat them, then?” My voice cracked.
“We don’t know how to change the fact that people are sexually attracted to children. The only treatment we can provide is trying to train them how to manage and control their desires.”
Her words were a death sentence.
“Being a pedophile doesn’t mean they’re sexual predators. Sometimes they never touch a child. It doesn’t mean he’s evil. Nobody has control over who they’re attracted to. He can’t control who he’s attracted to any more than you or I can control our attractions.”
Denial was a powerful protective mechanism and I felt naked with mine stripped away.
“We fear what we don’t understand, so it’s easier to think of them as monsters. It makes us feel safe rather than having to think about the possibility that some people are just born that way, and it could be any of us or someone we love.”
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“I wish I knew or had answers to give you, but nobody knows what to do about pedophiles.”
14
I stared at the crucifix hanging on the wall in front of me. The altar stood below it with the candles lit. I’d been sitting in the chapel for over an hour, trying to summon up the courage to talk to Noah about his note. He’d been in the psychiatric ward for two days, and I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do it.
If anyone would’ve asked me two years ago if I believed in God, I wouldn’t have had to think about my response. It would’ve been a firm yes, but I didn’t know what I believed anymore. What kind of a God would create a person at war with his own body? People hated pedophiles, but nobody hated Noah as much as he hated himself. How could God do that to him?
I went to talk to Father Bob during Noah’s pretrial when I was drowning in my depression and afraid I might not make it out. Every day felt like I was walking through mud with concrete slabs tied around my ankles. The priest was usually one of the first people to show up during a crisis, but even Father Bob wouldn’t come to see us even though he’d officiated our wedding, christened both our children, and celebrated their confirmation. I was the one who had to go visit him.
My faith was shaken to my core along with everything else. I’d never questioned my faith before because I didn’t have a reason to. I’d never doubted God’s presence or his goodness. It wasn’t as if I was deeply religious. I didn’t give much thought to God outside of weekly mass because I believed he was out there working things out for good for the people who lived by his rules, and I’d always lived by his rules as best I could.
I’d expected to meet with Father Bob in his office like we’d done in our other meetings, but he walked me to the back of the church and sat down in the last row of pews. I slid in next to him. I’d never seen him uncomfortable. He couldn’t stop shaking his legs and looking over his shoulder like he was afraid someone might catch him with me.
“It’s probably best you find another parish,” he said before I had a chance to speak.
“Um ... okay, but I’m not sure I want to go to mass anymore. I’m having a hard time with God right now.” I tried to hold back my tears. I was working hard at keeping myself together in front of other people. “It’s why I came to you. I was hoping you could help.”
“You might want to get yourself into counseling.”
I nodded. “Counseling is a good idea. I’m sure I’ll do some once things with Noah are settled, but I don’t know if it’s going to help with my feelings toward God. I feel so lost and abandoned. Nothing makes sense. I can’t pray or—”
He cut me off. “Sometimes God does things we can’t understand.”
His answers sounded like they came from a Hallmark card.
“I just—”
He coughed, nervously. “I’m sorry, but I’m really busy right now and need to get back. Take care of yourself.” He stood and didn’t bother to shake my hand, just left me sitting in the back of the church by myself. He couldn’t get away from me fast enough.
I felt as hopeless as I did that day. The door opened and quiet weeping began in the row behind me. I rose, wanting to give the person their sacred space. Besides, I hadn’t found any answers here in a long time. I crept out with my head down, trying not to disturb them.
I made my way through the series of hallways that was becoming more and more familiar each passing day. I twisted and turned, winding my way from the east side of the hospital to the west. There wasn’t any sign that you were getting close to the psychiatric ward until you came to a series of locked doors. Then, you had to push the call button next to the doors and wait to be buzzed in. Once through, the ward had the same fluorescent lights and pink-tiled hallways as the rest of the hospital. I walked up to the nurse’s station and signed myself in on Noah’s visitor log. One of the nurses pointed toward the dayroom without looking up.
The dayroom was the place where everyone who wasn’t in group therapy or meeting with their psychiatrist congregated. It was also the place where all resemblance to a regular hospital faded away. It looked like the leftovers from a garage sale had been thrown into the room and forgotten. None of the furniture matched. There were beat-up cardboard boxes filled with old magazines and paperback books. Games were scattered all over the tables in the room—jigsaw puzzles with missing pieces, a Scrabble board with missing letters, and a ping-pong table with no paddles. Besides the junk, the room was always filled with people. Some of them sat on the furniture while others manically paced the length of the room. I’d never seen so many people in such a small space with absolutely no interest in interacting with each other. Everyone always seemed like they were in their own world and wanted to be left alone.
I tried not to stare as I walked into the room, because I didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. I spotted Noah right away. He was sitting in a chair underneath the TV with an unopened magazine in his lap as he stared into space. He was on suicide watch, which meant he had to have a staff member with him at all times. They bothered him with questions about hurting himself every fifteen minutes.
“Is it possible I could talk to him alone in his room?” I asked the woman standing guard beside him like he might try to strangle himself at any moment even though they’d taken away anything he could possibly hurt himself with, including his shoe strings.
“You can’t be alone with him in his room, but I can let you into one of the therapy rooms if you’d like,” she said.
“That’ll work,” I said.
We followed her down the hallway on the left and into one of the therapy offices. She opened the door and motioned us inside. The room was small and cramped. It was completely bare. There wasn’t even a picture on any of the muted blue walls. There was only a single table with a chair on each side. I sat on one while Noah took the one across from me. It reminded me of the interrogation rooms I’d seen on TV and wasn’t anything like Dr. Park’s therapy room that was so comfortable and inviting.
“Take all the time you need,” she said soothingly, closing the door behind us.
Noah hadn’t looked up or spoken, but he rarely spoke anymore. The doctors weren’t sure if it was due to brain damage or what they referred to as catatonic depression. I stared at him like I was seeing him for the first time, trying to imagine what it was like for him and how tortured he must feel. Somehow, I found the strength to break the silence.
“I found your note,” I said quietly.
He lifted his head. The first real sign of life in his eyes. �
�You did?”
I nodded.
“So you know?” His pained stare pierced me.
“Yes, I know.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I didn’t have the words for this conversation.
He rubbed his hands down the pale blue scrubs they made every patient wear until they’d earned the privilege of wearing regular clothes. “Did you tell Dad?”
“I didn’t tell him.” I cleared my throat. Cleared it again. “I’m sorry, Noah. I didn’t understand, but I do now, and I still love you.”
Tears spilled down my cheeks. I loved him despite what he’d done and who he was.
“Do you?” He cocked his head to the side.
I was taken aback. “Yes, of course I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
“You love who you think I am. Not who I really am.” His eyes flared with anger.
“That’s not true.” His anger took me by surprise.
He jumped up from his chair, pushing it backward as he stood. He slapped his hands on the table in front of us. “Yes, it is, Mom! I’ve tried to tell you. Tried to make you see, but you refused. I—”
I stopped him. “You’re right. I didn’t get it before. But I read your note—”
“So, you get it? You understand I’m a monster? How can you say you love me, then? I’m a fuckin’ monster.” He grabbed his chair and threw it against the wall. The nurse from the hallway rushed in.
“What’s going on?” Her eyes never moved past Noah. She cautiously stepped toward him.
“It’s okay. We’re okay. He just got upset for a moment. We’re fine.” I motioned for the door. “You can go. Really, we’re okay.”
Saving Noah Page 14