A Robin Redbreast in a Cage

by R.P. Burnham

One lucky day Tris Harris met Ted McNaughton and changed her life, but change is something you have to be ready for, so the life-transformation came only after dozens of small steps along the way. One realization was necessary to begin this journey: she had to see that she was an alcoholic. You would think a woman who got drunk every night and lived so slovenly and chaotically that she lost her daughter would pretty easily realize that she was an alcoholic, but such was not the case. Self-reflection, and accordingly self-knowledge, was not a habit of mind with her. Seeing life merely as days, as units of time that she had to get through, she did not look before and after. She always believed herself to be a strong woman because she had left home, had a baby, raised her (sort of) on her own, had never missed a day of work because of drinking, and could get just about any man she wanted because of her perfect body and good looks. After social services took Charlie away she did feel awful. The memory of fighting naked in front of Charlie and later the cops because of her sexual jealousy of her daughter brought her such a sting of shame every time she thought of it that for a long time after that night it was the direct cause (or excuse) for her getting drunk again.

  The rock-bottom point they say every alcoholic has to hit before he or she can begin to change was not, then, that shameful night; rather it came almost a year and a half later after nearly drinking herself blind drunk every night. Even when she got to the point of realizing she was drinking herself to death, she still thought of herself as a strong woman. She had moved into a rooming house run by a widow; she still made work at nine o’clock every morning; she still had found plenty of male companionship and made sexual slaves of many of them until they, or she, tired of the game and broke it off; then she’d started the cycle again. She felt she was keeping her head above water and knew you had to be strong to do that.

  But she wasn’t stronger than time, and it was the force that caused her toes to feel the rocky bottom of her life. After many tearful phone calls to her stubborn and cruel brother wherein he told he she was not worthy to see her daughter, it became clear that Charlie was gone from her life for good. The guilt and growing self-disregard she felt would visit her every sobering-up morning. The loneliness she felt grew oppressive: she knew many a bar patron well but had no close friends. The thought would come unbidden and without any immediate cause that this kind of life could not continue. The inevitability of losing her beauty was becoming very real. Despair was looming. Emptiness oppressed her. Fear was huddled in a dark corner ready to spring. Tiredness overwhelmed her like water as she felt herself drowning. Thoughts of suicide cackled madly inside her head. It even occurred to her that maybe she was not strong. Reality stared her in the face and she saw her drinking was a crutch, not a lifestyle. Nevertheless she still found herself at a bar after work that night. By chance, though, a drunken woman made a spectacle of herself when she ripped off her top and tried to do a lapdance on some guy who was disgusted with her behavior and shouted at her angrily, “Get off me, you hag!” The woman, five years older than she, had been one of her principal rivals for men through the years.

  That was it. She saw her fate. It was going to happen and she couldn’t kid herself. Not even finishing her drink, she rushed out of the bar and into her car. On the drive home she started crying, and before she knew it she was bawling her head off like a little baby and didn’t stop until she got to the rooming house, where she sat in her car for a long time composing herself before she went inside. The widow, Mrs. Franklin by name, was watching television in the parlor. They were not friends. A couple of times when she’d brought married men into her room because that was the only place they could screw, the widow-landlady had been displeased, to say the least. She was a stern old bag, fair in her dealings with her tenants but not friendly. Tris had been put on notice: one more misstep and she was out. Nevertheless Tris went into the parlor because she simply had to talk to someone. Mrs. Franklin, who already knew all about the Charlie business, listened without any particular signs of sympathy to her confused cry for help and only had one piece of advice to bestow: “Everyone knows that if you want to stop drinking you have to go to A. A.”

  So she went to A. A. But it had a surprise for her—it expected alcoholics to admit they were not strong enough alone to lick their problem: they needed God. She found that out the first night and decided the group was not going to be any help to her. But the group leader was a sensible man and explained to her in a private conversation after the meeting that it was acceptable to put her faith in a higher power without becoming a clone of her brother, who was in her eyes what a Christian meant (“a sanctimonious pig” was how she described him when she was asked to introduce and talk about herself). After a few more meetings she did start feeling support, though the higher power for her was in fact the fellowship she felt from being with people who could understand her. It was comforting to hear the others saying that thinking about having a drink could drive them crazy, that they would pace until almost running, that they would bargain with themselves to just hold off another hour, that distracting themselves by going for a walk or shopping or watching TV would help some but not completely. Others had suggestions on how to deal with the addiction. Some took up hobbies that required time and concentration. One man built furniture, another played computer games, a woman in the group began hooking rugs. Taking their advice, Tris, who had only needed four courses to graduate when she left school pregnant with Charlie, got a book on studying for the G.E.D. and spent weekends, the worst time for her, studying. It helped, but as the months passed and twice after frustrating conversations with her brother she fell off the wagon, the others were there to tell her they had done the same thing and that the way to lessen the chances of yielding to temptation was to very clearly understand what events, interior or exterior, had led to the drinking. Tris confessed that it was the helplessness and guilt she felt for not being allowed to see her daughter. Guilt was something every alcoholic felt, they told her; that is why A.A. insisted that the only way to free yourself from it was to try to make amends.

  The other and in the end far more important benefit she derived from A. A. followed from more good advice from their sensible leader. He was an accountant whose life was almost ruined by alcohol, and there was nothing he didn’t know about its power over people and how to fight that power and win. He suggested that since her brother was frustrating her attempts to apologize to her daughter and therefore hindering the healing process that she should see a psychologist who could help her talk through the unresolved issues inherited from her childhood. At work she checked and found out her health insurance would pay for counseling, and her boss offered no objections and was not judgmental.

  So four months after starting A. A. she was seeing a psychologist once a week. Things didn’t start off very promisingly. Dr. Alicia Tellas had a pinched mouth and half-closed eyes that reminded her of an English aristocrat she’d seen in a comic movie. She wore minimal makeup, just some lipstick and pencilled eyebrows. A family photo of a boy and girl sitting on the laps of her and her husband was displayed next to her fancy degrees, telling Tris she was a married woman. But although she dressed well in a silk blouse, skirt and hose, she was not an attractive woman. Tris’s first impression was that such a plain Jane could never understand the life of a beautiful woman like herself. The inner office was also small, so small that their knees almost touched they sat so close together. The close proximity made Tris uncomfortable. Worst of all was the advice she gave. She would listen to Tris relate the story of her life when she was a girl and a woman, her drinking and sexual escapades, her loss of her daughter from that drinking and those escapades, and sometimes ask probing questions, other times make general observations. It was the latter that bothered Tris. One of her office mates at work had a monthly calendar with inspirational sayings on her desk— things like “Always be true to yourself and the world will be true to you”—which Tris regarded as sappy and stupid just like her office mate. Some of the remarks Dr. Tellas
made reminded Tris of this sappy woman. “Only when you start believing you’re valuable for yourself will you start to get better.” “You need to respect yourself before others will respect you.” “When you’ve suffered a lot of pain, you can use that to understand the pain of others; then you’ll grow.”

  On the positive side, Dr. Tellas was unflappable and would remain calm even when Tris in speaking of her brother or father or some other man who had mistreated or neglected her would sometime forget herself and either lose her temper or her composure. She also emphasized and praised Tris’s good qualities, including her never missing work and always paying her bills on time. And it was Dr. Tellas who suggested that she take her studying for the G.E.D. to another level by enrolling in night classes for G.E.D. preparation at Bedford High School and attend classes two nights a week. Tris followed her advice and found the classes beneficial in two ways. First, as her group had suggested, they helped keep her mind off drink; secondly, they helped her grow in self-respect. She did so well in the courses that her instructors complimented her on her intelligence.

  She was still very frustrated at not being able to see Charlie, but here Dr. Tellas came up with a solution that revealed her humanity and made Tris begin thinking of her as a friend instead of an officious stranger. When she learned that Edward’s condition for allowing visits was for Tris to be free from drink for a year, the two entered into a conspiracy together. In a letter she wrote to Edward, Dr. Tellas stretched the truth a little and informed him that by December Tris would have gone a full year without drinking. She also suggested, in wording that hinted a legal remedy would be pursued if he refused the request, that Tris should be allowed to see Charlie under supervision before that date. She knew her man, for Edward backed down and reluctantly agreed, and for the first time in almost three years she saw her daughter, though with Edward’s presence being like a poisonous fog they were unsatisfactory meetings. But now she had a goal to aim for, and not drinking became easier. That she had come to trust Dr. Tellas and regard her as a friend also helped because if she drank it would be like a violation of the trust they had.

  So things were getting better. In the summer she took and easily passed the G.E.D. examination and was very proud of herself. She felt as if it was the first real accomplishment in her life. Then, just as in her past life bad things had caused further bad things, now it was the opposite. A good thing like getting her G.E.D. led to another opportunity. At work the company accountant was going to retire in a year. Mentioning this development to Dr. Tellas and to her A.A. group leader, both suggested she take a course in accounting. She was already familiar with much of the work because at busy times and particularly at the end of the fiscal year she had helped the accountant do the books. She had a good mind for figures and taking the course in the fall semester she got an A. After that her boss let her become the accountant’s assistant in preparation for her assuming the full-time responsibility. As if as a reward, starting in the late fall she was allowed to see Charlie alone and was able to apologize to her and tell her that she had always loved her.

  With her trust in Dr. Tellas now fully realized, the therapy became more intense. The psychologist would challenge her and force Tris to recognize her destructive behavior: “You don’t think sleeping with a guy just because he buys you drinks all night is the behavior of a woman who disrespects herself? Then what do you consider it?” Or she would create situations: “Suppose you’ve been sitting with a man all night and felt like taking a walk because you were stiff. What would you do? Ask the man you’re with to go with you? If he doesn’t want to, would you still go?” Other times simple questions would lead Tris to the truth: “Have you ever told a man of your hopes and fears?” Eventually, Tris got the point that a good relationship entailed give and take and mutual respect. She realized she had never had such a relationship. Here was no reason to despair, however, for Dr. Tellas’s purpose in making her see the inadequacy of her past behavior was to change it; once Tris understood that there had to be deconstruction before she could be built anew, she could be hopeful because she saw in a hundred ways how she was growing in confidence and understanding.

  Then they entered a dark period where probing of her childhood relationship with her parents and brother became very painful. Amidst all the pain, though, came discoveries. Somehow she had forgotten or suppressed the memory of her brother’s behavior when she went through puberty. Now she remembered the times he would spy on her, walking into the bathroom while she was naked in the shower or in her room when she was dressing. She was sure he was sexually aroused by these encounters, and she remembered how they made her feel a strange self-loathing at the same time his behavior disgusted her. She was afraid to say anything since he was so clearly her parents’ favorite.

  Her life of sexual promiscuity followed directly from these encounters with her brother, which Dr. Tellas was sure was no accident. She tied the behavior to the way her brother and father treated her, but with Tris needing to understand the man who had control of her daughter many sessions were devoted to Edward and the way he thought. Speaking generally, and not specifically of her brother, Dr. Tellas explained that fundamentalist ministers who blame Eve and woman for sin and evil were merely transposing their profane sexual temptation from its true seat in their minds and placing it outside of themselves, resigning their moral responsibility for their behavior and in effect blaming the victim. Making behavior not a ethical question but instead a set of exterior rules and beliefs that can be followed was characteristic of those people, as far as she could understand them. She thought Tris’s description of her brother both as boy and man showed that he was an egomaniac who regarded other people, including his family, as mere instruments of his will.

  But her father was even more important to her development, and many more sessions were devoted to the way his indifference to girls was destructive to Tris’s sense of self-worth. It was at this point that Dr. Tellas, in making the connection between Tris’s individual life and the social forces that shaped that life, began talking about feminism. It had always meant to Tris something that concerned rich, privileged women who wanted to be rich doctors and lawyers like their husbands and brothers, but when Dr. Tellas explained that it was opposition to a patriarchal society that demeaned women and made them feel inferior, she made the connection to the way her father and brother had treated her. She saw that she was a victim of sexism, though when she said that Dr. Tellas responded by saying that it was true but that what women needed to do was to become empowered and not feel like a victim.

  By this time she had a fairly good relationship with Charlie, who was now in college. They exchanged letters weekly, spoke on the phone together once a month, and were getting along quite well. At work she was told she would get the job as the company’s accountant. Although the slightest little frustration could still sometimes make her think of drinking again, all these personal and professional gains were strong enough fortifications against those dangerous thoughts. Dr. Tellas had strongly urged her to remain celibate until she met a man with whom she could develop a relationship. She had not been sexually active for over a year, but in the fall of Charlie’s sophomore year she met such a man.

  Ted McNaughton was an army veteran badly wounded in the first gulf war and a carpenter by trade. This and much more information about him Tris learned when he spoke about himself at his first A. A. meeting, which he attended after not drinking for a year. This strange chronology came about because the V.A. psychiatrist he had been seeing was temporarily re-assigned overseas for four months, and in his absence he had recommended the A.A. as a organization that would help reinforce his sobriety. He was not handsome, though his bright blue eyes were striking. He was tall and thin with brown hair already speckled with gray at the temples and thinning at the crown. A scar running from below his eye and down his cheek into his chin was the result of the same shrapnel that had lacerated his leg. When he noticed people looking at it, he explained its or
igin without being self-conscious about it at all. He also spoke of his war experiences and the terrible wound he had received without the slightest hint of self-pity and rather in the tone of one stating facts that could not be disputed. His leg had been so badly hurt by the shrapnel from an exploding rocket grenade that the doctors were ready to amputate it before deciding that a series of operations had a thin chance of success. He was airlifted back to the states and spent a year in a hospital submitting to numerous operations to sew his muscles and tendons back together, suffered much pain and underwent much physical therapy. One thing he learned from this ordeal was the value of patience, something he would later need when he was back in civilian life and the drinking started ruining him. He explained—again simply as fact and without any self-pity—that he’d had a rough childhood as the son of an alcoholic odd-jobber and a sweet mother whose meager income from a paper route was often the only money the family had had. When his mother died from cancer when he was seventeen, he couldn’t wait to get out of the house and joined the army a week after his graduation—but not before marrying his high-school sweetheart, who was already pregnant with their son. One thing only his father had taught him, skill with tools and how to fix things. That came in handy when he returned to Waska after his rehab stint. He got a job with a carpenter’s crew and became so skilled that four years later after his daughter was born he started his own contracting business. This hopeful idea, he said, turned into the biggest mistake of his life. Demanding customers, customers who wouldn’t pay him, screw-ups of various kinds that invariably happened, underestimating a job so that he would work crazy, long hours trying to finish it before the promised start time of another job—all these things led to pressure and tension first and then to drinking second. When the drinking started affecting his work, the tension got worse with the result that he started having terrifying flashbacks of his war experiences, which would make him drink even more to drive away the horror. With a self-deprecating smile he told the group that he became a regular posterboy for PTS. His wife put up with this behavior for years but finally filed for divorce, for which he didn’t blame her one bit—if the shoe was on the other foot, he said, he’d have divorced himself. The only thing he was glad about was that he was always loving to his daughter and son so that luckily they did not hate him.

  He was different from every other man Tris had ever know. She could easily understand why his kids continued to love him; the mystery to her was how his wife could have thrown away such a treasure. She noticed she was not alone in her admiration: everyone in the group liked him instantly. There was a calmness about him that made people relax in his presence. He had a childlike air of vulnerability and yet had a hidden strength that you felt instinctively. He was not in the least naive. He had a sweet temperament that implied he was never angry, never self-pitying and never mean. He was simple and direct; there was no humbug about the man.

  After his first meeting where all these things were learned, Tris thought about him during the rest of the week and was already half in love with him by the time his second meeting came around. That’s when she saw him do something that was so wonderful she knew she wanted him in her life. At the meeting one of the members in talking about his sad loveless and neglected life started weeping so uncontrollably that no one, including their leader, was quite sure what to do. But Ted, without a word, stood and went over to the man and hugged him, comforting him like a child until the tears stopped flowing.

  Everyone watched in awed silence before they internalized the compassion and began verbally comforting the poor man with such as remarks as: “We know how you feel, Bob.” “You’ll get through this, don’t worry.” “Hang in there, friend. We’re with you.”

  But Tris was too moved to speak. The possibilities for solidarity and strength that you could gather from others who understood your suffering was the most hopeful thing she had ever seen. No longer would she ever feel alone as long as people like Ted were in her world. She felt the tears smarting at her eyes and her heart go heavy with… with what? Was it really love? No, she thought, remembering Dr. Tellas’s teachings that relationships were reciprocal. It was the knowledge that she needed love in her life to be whole and the overwhelming desire for Ted to be that love.

  That night after the meeting she talked with him for a long time. They leaned against his car in the cool hush of the evening and watched the sunset paint the sky red. Tris, honest and forthright in her praise for his humanity, told him she thought he was a very special person, and thrilled at his apparent interest in her. She was nervous and flustered by him like an innocent and shy schoolgirl, something she had never been, but later in bed that night she thought about him and could almost believe that that red sky and that hushed evening coolness was really the dawn of her new life.

  After that it became their practice to talk before and after every A.A. meeting. Both were tentative and careful, wanting to take it slow, but both recognized the growing feeling between them was something special. When she told him about Charlie, he was extremely sympathetic, saying that to love children was our most important duty and repeated again how glad he was that he had managed never to have alienated his kids. Tris said that was because he was such a nice guy no one could dislike him, to which he replied with a smile that had she seen him in Iraq she wouldn’t say that. They discussed the possibility that Charlie knew his son Mike, who was at Courtney Academy at about the same time Charlie was. His story about a nephew who had joined a fundamentalist sect when he was young and then later managed to escape their mind-control gave her hope for Charlie. He said that you can never tell a child that you love them enough. He said that he told his kids that he loved them every time he saw them. And of course they talked about their own lives. He was working for a carpenter now and content to have no responsibility except to do a good job. She told him about getting her G.E.D. and taking the course in accounting and how that led to her being groomed to be the accountant at her firm. Remembering Dr. Tellas’s advice that a relationship had to be based on honesty and mutual respect, she told him that she had been a slut for most of her life. He, having heard about her father and brother and how they treated her, said that was because of the bad set of cards life had dealt her and her drinking. She was a lady now, he said. He could tell she was a person who wanted to do good, love her daughter, and make up for wrongs she had done. That led to their first kiss, tender and tentative at the same time.

  Both were still taking it slow. Ever mindful of Dr. Tellas’s advice, she never held anything back except the fact that she was heads over heels in love with him. She thought he knew that; she could tell he had feelings for her. They never had a first date in the usual sense. One time after the Thursday meeting he asked her if she’d like to go to the beach with him on Saturday. It was fall now, so he meant just an outing to watch the surf and hear the seagulls. They did, walking arm in arm on the sandy beach and on the breakwater at Camp Melton and having a seafood lunch at a restaurant there. The next Saturday he came to her rooming house to help her paint the walls in her room and even mesmerized that old crab, Mrs. Franklin, by repairing a gimpy leg on her dining room table.

  A few weeks later she met his son Mike, who was home for the weekend from college, and his daughter Belinda, who lived with the man she was soon to marry but came to Ted’s apartment to meet the new woman in her dad’s life. That that was the purpose of this filial visit was plain enough though unspoken, and Tris was very nervous. She knew Ted’s strong feelings for his children and feared what might happen if they did not like her. She had thought a long time about what to wear. She wanted to be attractive but demure. She finally decided on a pair of designer jeans and a light V-necked sweater. For make-up she applied only blush lipstick. But she passed the test—if it was a test—just fine, for she could tell they both liked her and admired her—in fact they both seemed awed at how good-looking she was and treated her at first more like a Hollywood starlet than a woman whom Time had battered and b
ruised. But she did have to admit that meeting Ted made her feel young and loving him made her feel beautiful, so she quickly relaxed and made friends.

  Then it was real dates, with dinner and movies, and following that weekends together and making love feeling like a new bride because it was making love and not screwing. Not many weeks after they had told each other the three little words, they were living together in Ted’s apartment. Then, because Ted had done little with the place and it was bare-boned in regard to furniture, they had other weekend projects to share: decorating and finding furniture. This was a new discovery for Tris, who had always lived in dumps after leaving home, but now finding out how much fun it was to make your private space reflect your personality. Certainly the decorations reflected joy. The walls were painted golden, like their love, the rugs and new couch were red-tinged like their passion for each other, the pictures on the wall serene landscapes reflected the trust they had in each other, and the bare, unfinished places pointed to the future of sharing their lives they had in store.

  II

  Christmas Time