The entrance is so much more welcoming than where I had stayed when I was down. The reception area is furnished like a cheerful, feminine living room, with flowered sofas and pale yellow walls. The receptionist, of course, does not recognize me but has me sign an entry register and directs me to room 137, on the ground floor. I feel a dim recollection of walking down this hallway with Patty five years ago.
The door to 137 is opened partway, and light emanates from the room. I knock and hear a faint “good morning.” My mother’s face is a beached seashell, retaining its fine curves but drained of all color. She sits upright in bed. Her right hand fidgets atop the covers, while the left lies dead still. “Mother,” I whisper, and sit down next to her on the bed. Her eyes reflect surprise and question, but they are alive and warm. I take her right hand in both of mine and stroke it gently. The fidgeting halts. “It’s Karen,” I say gently. “Karen,” she repeats reflectively, “Karen” again, as if to remind herself by the sound, but her face registers no recognition. Yet she smiles a welcome, stranger that I am. “I’m your first daughter, Patty’s sister.”
“Patty,” she repeats, with the same vacant testing of the sound.
Her eyes take on a sudden radiance, as if she recognizes me. She smiles at me warmly. “You look like a younger me,” she says with some small degree of wonder. I realize she is right; I am now the age she was when I graduated from college and I recall her from my graduation photographs. “Mother,” I say again, and squeeze her hand. Her eyes take on a doubting cast, grow cold, and she withdraws her hand. She averts her face, as if to cast me out. Her eyes glance around the room, anywhere but at my own, ending on the small table next to her.
“My tea,” she says with some authority. A glass of water sits on her table, but no tea.
“I’ll try to find some for you.” I get up quickly, as if welcoming the excuse, and walk down the hall toward the receptionist. An attendant in uniform comes out of a different room, tray in hand, and I ask her where I can get tea.
She gives me a knowing smile. “Is that for Mrs. Haskins in 137?”
I give her a quizzical look and tell her yes.
“I’ll bring it to her, dear. Do you want some too? She always asks but never drinks it.”
“No, thanks. I’m a coffee person.”
“I can get you that too.”
“No; I’m fine.” If I had asked for coffee, I’d have to sit here and drink it with her and I am not sure I can last that long. Tea, I think, as I walk back to the room; she did always drink tea while the rest of us drank coffee. A particular kind, but I can’t recall just now what it was.
When the attendant returns with tea, the ceramic cup holds a Lipton tea bag. Whatever my mother’s tea was, it wasn’t Lipton. I watch her take one sip and then put the cup on the table next to her.
“No good tea here,” she explains. She smiles at me, one stranger to another across a public space.
“What kind do you like?” I ask stupidly, as if she can remember.
“Lemon,” she pronounces definitively. Whatever her tea had been when we were all together, I am pretty sure it was not lemon.
“What else would you like?”
“Lemon,” she says again, as if I had forgotten.
I excuse myself, but promise to come back.
As soon as I open the door to the outside, I feel rejuvenated, even though it is bracingly cold. The sun shines, I am outside, not in the institution, and I am free and in possession of my health and faculties. I drive directly to the eclectic tea store in Nevada City, hoping it might bring to mind whatever tea my mother drank years ago when we all lived as one family.
The front of the shop holds more exotic teapots than varieties of tea, but the back room hoards a wall full of bins of loose tea. A slender Asian man with graceful hands stands at the counter and asks how he can help me. With an apologetic shrug, I explain I am trying to recall what kind of tea my mother liked years ago, and neither she nor I can remember now.
“Can you remember what it smelled like?
“No, but it came in an English-looking tin.”
“That could be anything,” he tells me. “Let’s try to remember what you can about its scent.” He stands before me expectantly, a curiosity in his dark eyes. He likes this game, and his readiness removes my embarrassment at what I do not know.
I relax into a memory of my mother at the stove, pouring hot water from the teakettle into her lavender mug. Aromatic steam rose from the mug, a morning ritual as familiar as my childhood seat at the table, across from Patty, and to the right of my mother’s chair.
“A bit of citrus, but not lemon, and not exactly orange either.”
“Aah,” he almost hums knowingly. “Let me try to reproduce that for you.”
I glance up at the many bins while he brews a cup of loose tea and sets a timer. A timer? My mother was never that precise. He keeps the cup and his machinations in front of him, his back covering his actions, while my eyes rove over the variety of mostly Chinese teas. I doubt my mother drank Chinese tea; it wasn’t even much known, let alone available, in those days. Yunnan, Pu-erh, Oolong -- all strange words to me.
When the timer pings, he motions for me to sit at one of the tiny tables near the rear window. He places a steaming cup in front of me, and removes the saucer from the top of the cup, placing it underneath, releasing a suddenly familiar scent and a tiny cloud of steam. I lean over the cup, inhale and close my eyes, smiling with recognition. I take a sip, but don’t like its taste any better now than I did as a child. Yet, the scent recreates a comfortable scene.
“That’s it! How did you get it on the first try?”
“You described bergamot, which is the signal ingredient of Earl Grey tea. It’s a bitter citrus fruit.” He waits expectantly for me to drink some.
“I’m sorry. I don’t like the flavor myself, but it’s my mother’s favorite. You’re amazing. Can you sell me a small packet?”
“Of course.” He clasps his graceful hands again and retreats to the other side of the counter, where he measures a pile of the black leaves with white flecks onto a tiny scale and then slips them into a small bag.
“Do you have a tea bell?” My puzzled look gives him the answer, and he produces from below the counter several little metal containers to hang over the edge of a cup. I thank him, pay and clasp the tiny package to my chest as if it could conjure back my mother. I want to brew her a cup right now.
Once back in the car, I realize it may take me some time to regain the courage to visit her. The imagined visit in the tea shop was far more pleasant. My cell phone rings as I drive home, and I pull over to the side to answer it.
“It’s Analee. No, you can’t escape me.”
I laugh at her insight, and she laughs too, adding, “just when you thought you could return to your daily life.” She tells me the judge has given her the name of the San Francisco psychologist she recommended as mediator.
“When is our appointment?”
“Just calling to make sure you still agree.”
“Agree, yes. Hope, probably not.”
“That’s good enough for me,” and she hangs up.
I tell myself that, if I can face Patty in mediation yet again, I am strong enough to see if my mother recognizes her tea. I drive back to the facility and sign myself in again. When I reach room 137, an attendant is just leaving, and I ask her if she can provide a mug with hot water for tea. “Of course,” she says.
Inside the room, I see this pale version of my mother seated upright, with a tray of food in front of her, slices of orange and a half sandwich that looks like tuna salad. She holds a slice of orange in her left hand, peering at it as if she does not recognize it. I notice her hair, though nearly white, is still lively, buoyant and curled slightly behind her ears. She looks up at me and puts down the orange slice.
“Go ahead a
nd eat, Mom. I just brought you some tea.”
Slowly, without looking at me, she picks up the orange slice again and puts part of it into her mouth. Her jaw goes back and forth sideways as she mashes the orange, and I wonder if she still has teeth. She swallows, slowly. I watch her go through the same process with a bite of the sandwich.
When the attendant returns with a steaming mug, I place it on the bedside table, take out the tea packet and pour some of it into the tea bell. I realize my mother has started to watch me.
Almost as soon as I drop the tea bell into the mug of steaming water, I catch the scent of the tea. So, too, does my mother.
“My tea,” she pronounces firmly.
I make her wait until it cools somewhat, and take the dripping bell out of the mug. She slips three fingers through the handle and grasps the mug with both hands. Slowly, and with a smile at each sip, she drinks the full cup.
“My tea.” She looks at me, now fully present. At least she recalls the tea.
I sit there for as long as I can, trying to appreciate the moment, and trying with more effort not to think of where I will be at her age.
28
ANALEE
The judge’s clerk e-mailed the name of the San Francisco mediator before ten the next morning: Greta Reinhardt. I google her name and check her out on LinkedIn, learn a few bits of information but not much. She has appropriate credentials as a psychologist, no bragging list of accomplishments. Her photo reveals a pale woman in her early sixties, perhaps, with thin straight gray hair, long enough to be swept to one shoulder.
I have no other names of local mediators I want to substitute for this one, and I can see the inherent benefit of complying with what the judge herself has recommended. But I doubt seriously what this new mediator could accomplish when even Matt Shipley could not resolve this. Karen has already made it clear she would never agree to any court order that grants Patty any rights over her child.
I decide to phone Petrakis and ask him what he thinks. He comes readily to the phone and acknowledges he’s seen the court’s e-mail reference.
“Do you know anything about this Dr. Reinhardt?” I ask.
“Not personally, but I called a colleague in San Francisco who raved about her skill, so I’m going to recommend her to Patricia.” He still calls her Patricia, the only one who does.
He hesitates before speaking again. “I spoke with Patricia after our session yesterday,” he begins, “and I think she misses Dawn enough to give this a good effort. But I confess I’m skeptical. What about Karen?”
“She agrees to try this mediation. She’s really tired of litigation, but I don’t know if these two can get past their basic impasse of who is a parent. How shall we contact Dr. Reinhardt?”
“Why don’t you e-mail her and ask whether she’d be available for a conference call with the two of us?”
Dr. Reinhardt responds positively to my email within a day, and Petrakis and I speak with her a day later. She wants to know as much of the background as we will tell her, and she wants to read both Karen’s and Patty’s depositions, which we send her. She agrees to come to my office for the initial mediation, and asks that we reserve a whole day.
29
KAREN
On the drive to Analee’s office for the new mediation, I try to recall what happened at our last session with Dr. Shipley months ago. So far as I know, the visit we arranged at Patty’s home went smoothly, and I try to remember what I had offered and Patty rejected. I remember telling her that I would allow regular contact with Dawn, so long as Patty backed off on being named a parent. What I can’t remember – or never learned – is whether she wouldn’t trust me to allow regular contact, or whether she insisted on being named as Dawn’s parent. The bottom line is that I don’t know how we will ever trust each other again.
Patty and I meet Dr. Reinhardt in a small room in Analee’s office that I had never seen before, with a sofa and small round table with three chairs. Dr. Reinhardt is already seated in the center chair as we come in, and she gets up to shake our hands, sweeping her pale gray hair behind her left ear with her left hand as she extends her right hand. She is taller than either of us, nearly six feet, with a warm, slim hand and penetrating pale blue-gray eyes the color of a kingfisher feather I once found beside the river. When she smiles, I am struck by the different crows’ feet angles on either side of her face, the right side deep and curving upward and the left side shallower and tilting downward, creating a different mood on either side of her face. Gesturing for each of us to take a seat, she sits down again herself, with Patty and I on either side of her. Patty is to her left, where the lines tilt downward. I create an internal joke that I sit on her bright side.
Dr. Reinhardt explains that our attorneys have described our situation to her and allowed her to read some of the legal papers. She asks how our ‘difficulties’ started, and invites me to begin.
I describe how I fell into a deep depression almost five years earlier that led to my hospitalization and Patty’s having to take care of Dawn, and to her appointment as guardian until I got better and had the guardianship terminated.
Again sweeping a limp strand of hair behind her ear, she turns to Patty.
“What was it like to see your sister in such a deep depression?”
Patty locks eyes with her and gives an answer I had never heard before.
“Deeply frightening. Not long before, I had seen our mother become vacant – as if disappearing inside while her body was present --from Alzheimer’s. It’s a horrific disease, hollowing someone out from inside. Our father put her into an institution before she needed to go. Then he sold the family home, took everything and moved to Sacramento. He didn’t seem to want to spend time with either Karen or me after moving away. He moved in with a new woman, joined a law practice there, and then died a few years later of a heart attack.
“Karen and I were excited to create this new life in our family. Dawn was like an antidote to our parents’ collapse. Then Karen fell into her depression. I didn’t know what was happening to my sister, but I didn’t want to lose her too, and I needed to take care of this new child.”
“So it was important to you not to abandon your sister and Dawn?”
“I couldn’t let that happen, no matter what.”
“So what did you do for them?”
In this exchange, I hear for the first time some details of Patty’s rescue. I was hospitalized in the psychiatric facility for just six days, tested, heavily medicated, and then forcibly released. Patty and Doug were shocked that I was to be ousted in less than a week, when it hadn’t even been established what antidepressants would work for me. So they took me home with them. Dawn slept in the same bedroom as Ian, and I slept on a sofa bed in Doug’s study. I have no memory of this time at all, but they must have been rocked. I was assigned to an outpatient program at the hospital, and Patty had to drive me there every morning and pick me up every evening. After many frantic phone calls, Patty found a group home where I could stay with other recovering mental patients, some of them drug addicts, and there I stayed for several months. They had to pay for the group home because my insurance did not cover it.
“You had to pay for me? You never told me that,” I interrupted.
“What good would that have done?” Patty looked at me for the first time.
I bowed my head, unable to speak. Dr. Reinhardt encouraged Patty to continue.
“It was a hard time. The children were all scared. Doug couldn’t use his study and there was tension between us. The bills mounted. And I didn’t know whether Karen would get better.”
“Did she?”
“Yes. She had an excellent psychiatrist, who found the right medication, referred us to an endocrinologist for her thyroid, and assured us she was improving. About a year after her hospitalization, she found her own housing, and we began to allow Dawn to go visit her.�
��
“How did that work?”
“Pretty well, until Karen started to want to take Dawn back and end the guardianship. Then all this started.”
“If you knew Karen were fully recovered, would you let go of this lawsuit?”
“No, because she won’t even let us see Dawn. And Dawn is my child as much as she is Karen’s. I can never abandon her.”
Dr. Reinhardt leans forward momentarily to make a note, then looks up again at Patty, using both hands now to tuck her hair behind both ears. I want to give her a hairband.
“I hear you say, when you were describing your father’s abandonment and your mother’s illness, that you did not want to lose Karen too.” Patty nods, sadly.
“Is that still important to you?”
“What can I say? We’ve never been further apart.”
“Can you think of any way you might become sisters again?”
“I have been giving this a lot of thought, believe me. And I have a proposal.”
Dr. Reinhardt nods, giving her permission to continue.
“I can make my peace with Dawn living with Karen and visiting with Doug and the children and me. Karen can have full custody of Dawn. All I ask is that I be Dawn’s parent also, so that she isn’t left with just one parent.”
I practically leap out of my chair.
“No way! A month won’t go by before you tell me that I’m making bad decisions for Dawn or endangering her or she needs to go to a different school. I can’t sit here and let that happen.” I see I have paced back and forth all of the three or four feet of unoccupied space in the small room, and I sink back into my seat.
Dr. Reinhardt and Patty both stare at me, expecting more. I take several deep breaths to try to sort out what I can and cannot live with in what Patty has just said. I stay quiet as long as I can. I see Dr. Reinhardt shift in her chair as if she is about to say something, but I want to go first.
Raising Dawn Page 21