All She Ever Wanted

by Lynn Austin

  “Hi, it’s me,” she said, swallowing a knot of sorrow. “Well, I’m officially unemployed.”

  He was silent for a long moment. Kathleen could tell from the background noise that he was at a work site, not his office. She pictured him wearing a yellow hard hat, closing his eyes and lowering his head in grief as she had done. “I’m so sorry, Kath,” he finally murmured. “Are you okay?

  Where are you?”

  “In the parking lot at work. I should go back inside and pack all my stuff, but…”

  “Leave it for now,” he said when her voice broke. “You can get it another day. Tell me what happened.”

  She leaned her head against the headrest and switched the cell phone to her other ear while she removed her earrings. She and Mike had talked about her dilemma at length last night, and they had agreed that standing up to her young boss was the right thing to do. If only she’d been able to convince her boss to see the situation the same way they did.

  “Well, I explained to him that things have changed since the new corporate accounting laws were put into practice, and that I couldn’t, in good conscience, sign off on the Danbury project. He forced me to admit that, yes, technically speaking, he wasn’t breaking any laws—so in the end, it came down to my Christian convictions. We reached an impasse. He told me he would accept my resignation.”

  “You did the right thing,” Mike said quietly.

  “Yeah—well, it sure doesn’t feel like it. This never would have happened if his father was still the CEO… but…” Kathleen stared through the windshield, her tears blurring the pink and red impatiens that lined the median strip. She drew another shaky breath, knowing that she had to stop crying long enough to drive home. “I guess I’d better call that corporate headhunting firm your friend used last year. It looks like I’ll be needing another job.”

  “I think you should wait, Kath. Take some time off. Impost will give you a severance package, and you have some vacation time coming, don’t you? Maybe it’s better if Joelle isn’t home alone all summer.”

  Kathleen had managed to push aside her problems with Joelle as she’d focused on her problems at work. But the pain of what her daughter had done suddenly sprang from hiding, like an intruder waiting behind a closed door, and hit Kathleen squarely in the gut.

  “So, I get to be Joelle’s prison warden from now on? Great. What are we supposed to do together all day? Shopping at the mall is out.”

  Mike didn’t react to her sarcasm. “They were asking for volunteers at church last Sunday for vacation Bible school. Why don’t you and Joelle—”

  “Right. We’re wonderful role models. I’m sure the other mothers would love to have me teaching their children when I can’t even control my own.”

  Mike’s long silence made her regret her bitter words. She was sorry for using him as an outlet for her anger and grief, but so very grateful that he was willing to listen. She heard him sigh.

  “I know you’re hurting, Kathleen, but don’t take it out on Joelle.”

  “I’m sorry… but I’m just so scared for her! I’m afraid of what she’ll become. …” The tears that she thought were under control started falling again.

  “Hey, hey, listen to me. I’m worried, too, but she’s hardly a career criminal.”

  Yet. Kathleen barely stopped herself from voicing the thought out loud.

  “I talked to Al Lyons from my men’s prayer group about Joelle this morning,” Mike continued. “He works at the Christian Counseling Center and—”

  “You didn’t! I don’t want everyone at church to know our business!” Kathleen was appalled. She knew that the body of Christ was supposed to offer help and consolation in times of trial and loss, but she would sooner die than share her needs and fears with her fellow church members. She was known as a mature believer, a woman who was strong and in control, a woman of unquestioning faith. It horrified her to think that people might learn what Joelle had done.

  “Al is a professional,” Mike said calmly. “He knows all about patient confidentiality. He thinks a few sessions with a therapist might help her, and I agree. He said they’d assign someone who isn’t a family acquaintance.

  I already set up an appointment for her.”

  “Fine. If you think it will help.”

  “I’m sure it will.” Mike sighed. “It’ll be okay, Kathleen. Drive safely.

  I’ll see you when I get home.”

  When Kathleen hung up, she felt as if she’d worked a full day of hard labor on a chain gang. She drove the familiar route home in a daze, wondering how Joelle would react to the news that Kathleen had lost her job at Impost—and that Joelle had an appointment with a shrink. What on earth would they do together all day? Joelle had long outgrown craft projects and trips to the children’s museum.

  Kathleen arrived home to find her daughter still in bed. In fact, she discovered over the next few days that she needn’t have worried at all about what they would do together. Joelle rarely awoke before one-thirty in the afternoon, and after eating a bowl of cereal, she spent most of the day watching soap operas or sitting by the pool slathered in oil, talking to her friends on her cell phone. Kathleen began to wonder if Joelle had shoplifted out of sheer boredom. The thought was somehow comforting.

  Maybe her daughter wasn’t a sociopath or a kleptomaniac after all.

  Kathleen certainly wasn’t going to stay in bed until one-thirty every day, but she had no idea what to do with all her free time, either. She returned to Impost and cleared out her office, read a novel she’d been wanting to finish, and then spent a few hours on her home computer doing a halfhearted job search on the Internet. The prospect of facing a job interview made her quickly decide that Mike was right: she should take some time off. She was much too depressed to act perky for a bunch of Donald Trump wannabes in a grueling series of job interviews.

  It was almost a relief when Joelle’s twice-weekly therapy sessions began, giving both of them a reason to get up and get dressed. Joelle’s therapist, Dr. Marie Russo, was short and round with graying brown hair that she wore pulled back in an untidy bun. She wore sensible shoes and drab brown suits that looked as though they’d been purchased at a garage sale in some eastern European country. After Joelle’s fourth visit, Dr.

  Russo called Kathleen into her office.

  “I would like to spend part of our next session with you, Mrs. Seymour, instead of Joelle.”

  Kathleen stared. “Me! Why?”

  “I think it would help if I got a sense of your family dynamics. Your daughter’s behavior didn’t occur in a vacuum.”

  “Right. The mother’s always to blame,” Kathleen said, only half-joking. “And here I was hoping it would turn out to be something simple, like peer pressure.”

  Dr. Russo didn’t smile. She poked at her sagging hair to no effect. “I’ll see you on Thursday, Mrs. Seymour.”

  When Kathleen woke up on Thursday morning, she immediately understood why Joelle had cried and argued and pleaded with Mike when he’d told her she would be going to a therapist. It was very disconcerting to think that a stranger might try to pry open doors that had been carefully locked and secured all these years—like a computer hacker cracking your secret codes and gaining access to your private files. She sat stiffly in the chair across from Dr. Russo, her feet flat on the floor, her palms sweating as she gripped the armrests. It wouldn’t take an expert psychologist to interpret Kathleen’s body language. Dr. Russo didn’t waste any time coming to the point. She was the type of woman, Kathleen decided, who rips off bandages in a single jerk.

  “Joelle tells me that the two of you never talk,” the doctor began. “She says she finds it very hard to communicate with you.”

  “Isn’t that typical of teenagers?” Kathleen asked with a nervous laugh. The doctor didn’t smile.

  “When I asked her to describe you—to give me her perception of you as a person—she couldn’t do it. She doesn’t know who you really are when you aren’t wearing the obvious hats
of wife or successful businesswoman.”

  Kathleen couldn’t reply. She had worked very hard to make sure that no one knew the real her. And the last thing she ever wanted to do was look too closely at herself.

  “I can tell from your expression that Joelle’s comments have upset you,” Dr. Russo said, leaning forward slightly. “I think it would be helpful if you shared what you’re thinking.” When Kathleen still didn’t reply, the doctor said, “I know this is your first session with me, but you can trust me, Mrs.

  Seymour.”

  Kathleen cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. But trust is a real big issue with me.”

  “Would you like to tell me why that is?”

  She shook her head. She remembered reading in a self-help book that when a child’s trust in her parents was breached at an early age, it made it difficult for her to trust anyone else—including God. But the reason for her lack of trust was a Pandora’s box that she certainly wasn’t going to open now. “I thought this was about Joelle, not me,” Kathleen finally said. Dr. Russo didn’t miss a beat.

  “Would you say Joelle’s assessment of your relationship is a fair one?”

  “You mean, that we don’t communicate very well? Yes, that’s fair. I majored in mathematics and business administration in college. I’m a CPA with an MBA. I never was much good at all that touchy-feely kind of stuff or expressing my inner feelings.”

  But she wasn’t a total failure at communicating, she wanted to add. She and Mike communicated very well and seldom argued. They had married when they were both in their mid-thirties, both comfortable with their single status and with the lives they lived apart from each other. Kathleen wasn’t the sort of wife who needed a man to “complete” her or who demanded long, introspective talks about every issue. What business was it of hers what Mike was thinking or feeling every minute of the day?

  “Joelle is a very sensitive young woman,” Dr. Russo said, interrupting her thoughts. “She wants to express her feelings—to you, not just to her friends. But she needs to feel like you’re giving something of your inner self in return. You see, she’s trying to discover who she is, and part of that exploration includes the need to know where she came from—where her parents came from.”

  “Whoa!” Kathleen held up both hands. Alarm bells and warning sirens began to shrill in her mind like a four-alarm fire. She half-expected the sprinkler system to kick in, or for the secretary to burst through the door shouting “Call 9-1-1!” Kathleen wanted to bolt from the room and never return, but her concern for Joelle was stronger, deeper, than her fear. She still wasn’t convinced that exposing her carefully hidden self would save Joelle from a life of crime, but she knew that she would face a raging inferno for her daughter’s sake.

  “Look, I’ll be honest, Dr. Russo. I brought Joelle here because she was caught shoplifting. I don’t understand how talking about my past is going to prevent her from doing it again.”

  “You’re approaching this as if Joelle has a problem and you want me to ‘fix’her so you can be a perfect family again.”

  “You’re wrong. I’ve never had a perfect family. I wouldn’t know what one looked like, much less how to live with one.”

  The doctor tucked back a loose strand of hair—and three more long, graying strands fell down in its place. Kathleen bit her lip, resisting the urge to say “For crying out loud, get it cut!”

  “Well, to answer your question,” Dr. Russo continued, “yes, I do believe that talking about your past will help Joelle. I believe that the shoplifting incident was a cry for your attention.”

  “I’m home with her all day now! She can talk to me for twelve hours straight if she wants to.” Although Kathleen would never admit that the idea terrified her.

  “I’d like both of you to come to our next session,” Dr. Russo said calmly. “I’ll provide a safe place for self-expression and act as a moderator as we work through some effective communication strategies.”

  Why did she make it sound like something much more complicated than a mother talking with her daughter?

  Kathleen spent the next few days dreading the joint therapy session. When the time came, she sat facing Joelle with the same sweaty-palmed fear she’d felt when facing Dr. Russo alone. Kathleen might have been strapped into an electric chair, waiting for the first bolt of electricity to hit her.

  Then it did.

  Joelle pulled the balloon-covered invitation—now splattered with sweet-and-sour sauce—out of her purse and waved it at Kathleen. Did that thing have a boomerang attached to it? How did it keep returning from the trash can to haunt her?

  “I found this in the garbage,” Joelle said accusingly. “Why don’t you ever talk about your family, Mom? Why don’t I even know my aunt—” she glanced at the smudged writing—“my aunt Annie? Don’t I have a right to know her or my own grandparents?”

  “I want nothing to do with them, and they want nothing to do with me,” Kathleen replied in a tight voice. “Believe me, you’re better off not knowing them—not having them around as part of your life.”

  “Why?” Joelle glared at her, demanding an answer.

  Kathleen turned to Dr. Russo, pleading silently for help. She couldn’t do this. It was too upsetting. She longed to talk to the doctor alone, to explain everything to her without Joelle listening. But she also knew that if she sent her daughter away now, without an answer, it might be a mortal blow to their already shaky relationship. She gripped the armrests, hanging on for dear life.

  “I made the decision to cut myself off from my family a long time ago,” she finally replied. “It was in the interest of self-preservation.”

  “Your sister is giving a party for your dad,” Joelle said dramatically. “How can you be so cold and unfeeling?”

  The electric chair delivered a second jolt. “Is that what you think? That I’m cold and unfeeling?”

  Joelle didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. She slumped back in her chair, staring at the ceiling to keep her tears from falling.

  Dr. Russo finally intervened. “I think what Joelle is trying to express is that she sometimes finds it difficult to understand you or to feel close to you. Is that a fair assessment, Joelle?”

  She nodded, swiping at a tear that had slipped past her defenses.

  Kathleen exhaled. She was running out of ways to avoid the question. “I came from a terrible background,” she said. “No one in my family was a Christian, and I am. That created a lot of tension. We have nothing in common with each other. I chose to walk away—and I’ve stayed away.”

  “But when you cut yourself off from your family,” Dr. Russo said, “then you also severed a part of yourself. If you’re a Christian, then you must understand the principles of forgiveness—”

  “I did forgive my family,” Kathleen interrupted. “A long time ago. But I’ve stayed away to avoid being hurt all over again. I had to establish safe boundaries and all of that.”

  “Boundaries are helpful as long as they’re not an excuse to avoid issues of forgiveness. And as long as they’re not at the expense of your own feelings.”

  “I’ve trained myself not to feel anything at all as far as my family is concerned—as if I never had a family. It was the only way I could get on with my life and start all over again.” She turned to Joelle. “I’m sorry if that makes me appear cold and unfeeling. You must know that I… I love your father and you… very, very much.”

  Joelle didn’t reply, wouldn’t look up, and the icy distance between them terrified Kathleen.

  Dr. Russo finally stepped into the silence. “Joelle, wasn’t there another question you wanted to ask your mother?” Joelle shrugged and wiped her nose with a tissue. When she didn’t reply, the doctor said, “Mrs. Seymour, Joelle wondered what your relationship with your own mother was like when you were Joelle’s age.”

  “Terrible,” Kathleen replied. “We fought constantly. About everything.”

  “How are things between you and your mother now?”


  Kathleen’s heart started to thump. It was as if the doctor was probing her wounds, inching closer and closer to the part of her that was broken and bruised. When she finally touched it, Kathleen knew there would be unbearable pain. She glanced frantically around the room, searching for an oil painting or a college diploma to focus on—anything to replace the image of her mother that was beginning to crystallize in her mind. “My mother is dead,” she said softly.

  “I’m sorry. Was there closure? Reconciliation before she died?”

  Far from it. The last words Kathleen had ever spoken to her mother were angry ones—words that could never be taken back. The doctor was waiting for an answer.

  “My mother died very… suddenly. Unexpectedly.” Kathleen couldn’t explain any further. “I don’t see how this helps anybody.”

  Dr. Russo smiled. Kathleen supposed that she was trying to look sympathetic, but under the circumstances, with Kathleen’s life unraveling all around her, the doctor looked like a disheveled Mrs. Santa Claus. “Maybe if you talked with Joelle about some of the difficulties you had with your own mother,” she said in a kindergarten-teacher voice, “then Joelle would feel more connected to you.”

  “And see me as human, instead of cold and unfeeling? Tell me, when will it be my husband’s turn to come in and have his past excavated?”

  “Of course I’ll want to talk with Mr. Seymour, too. All three of you together, in fact. I know that digging into the past can be painful, but I like to picture it as winding a broken strand of yarn backward to see where it leads. Once we understand what it was once a part of, we can begin to reweave it into a beautiful new pattern.”

  Who was this woman, Mr. Rogers in drag?

  Kathleen had brought Mike into the conversation deliberately, hoping he would deflect some of the heat she was feeling. But once she was finally out of the doctor’s office and off the hot seat, she began to wish that she had left Mike out of it. She knew exactly what he would say; they’d had this conversation before. Mike would tell her that she should try to make amends with her family before it was too late. He would remind her of the Scripture verse that said if you have a grudge against your brother you should go and be reconciled before you came to the Lord for forgiveness. He would ask her how she would feel if Joelle walked away from home, the way Kathleen had, and never came back.