“Okay.”
Phew, I thought. No tears and no anger. “It’s been a long time since I have used birth control. I’m a little out of touch. Want me to make an appointment for us to speak with someone?” I emphasized “us,” and enjoyed an internal chuckle at the thought of needing birth control myself. How long had it been? … The chuckle quickly turned to concern for the same reason. My sexual activity was at least post-chastity-belt era. But I knew a lot had changed in the time since birth control pills were the only game in town. “I’m not prying. I just want you to be safe and protected. Okay?”
“Yes.” And that was the logical place to end the conversation. We went about our business and enjoyed the boat ride home, Mariah perched this time on the stern transom, looking like any other very pretty and wholesome kid. I made an appointment with the nurse who travels to our island aboard the mission boat. She went through all of the options available, gave us pros and cons of each, and ordered a prescription. Although I was a little late in the game for the speech, I felt compelled, if I were to be any degree of parent at all, to give the one about the merits of abstinence and how she was too young for sexual relationships. I believed this to be true in Mariah’s case. She at least listened politely; never even rolled her eyes or exhaled at full volume. The next time we went ashore, we picked up the prescription and I was happy to think that Mariah was protected from an unwanted pregnancy. Of course, when Mariah started bringing her packet of pills to the kitchen table when we had guests, it was time for me to reprimand her again. I told her that her birth control was a private item and should be kept in her bathroom. We were right back to the eye rolling, and “why are you picking on me?” stage. Come on, Turkey Day!
I think an innocent bystander might have observed falsely that I had been left holding the bag with regard to Mariah’s health and well-being. Yes, I took sole and full responsibility for making her appointments, transporting her to them, and funding all the requisite payments. Hair, teeth, eyes, physical exam for school—I took care of everything by my own volition. But many summer residents offered financial help. My friends and family continued to volunteer assistance in any way. I took seriously my responsibility to grab the reins for the duration of Mariah’s raising. I had signed a document in front of a judge. But it was more than that. I felt responsible for more than guardianship. Parenting was what was needed. It didn’t seem right to farm that out. On the few occasions that I did accept help, it was as if I were doing the helpers a favor by allowing them to contribute. And I’ll always remember that as being pretty cool. There is one guy friend in particular whom I still refer to as “Mariah’s fairy godfather” because he split with me the costs of her full braces and school necessities, including books.
We went off island to do a bit of shopping for school clothes. I understood that Evergreen Academy had a dress code and that the majority of students there came from somewhat well-to-do families. I wanted Mariah to feel comfortable and not self-conscious about her clothes. God knew she had other things to worry about without having the wrong wardrobe! I couldn’t help but notice while handling laundry that Mariah was in dire need of underwear. Not that she wasn’t in fine shape with the amount of articles she owned, but quality and fit were not optimum. I took her to be fitted for a bra. This is quite humiliating at the age of fifteen, I learned, or was reminded. Knowing what I did about this kid’s past, I suppose I should have anticipated her being prudish about purchasing underwear and undressing in front of strangers. When the sales assistant referred to Mariah as my daughter, both our jaws dropped. But we let it slide because to do differently would be too confusing and provide too much info. The salesperson handed Mariah a couple of bras in different sizes to try on and led her to a dressing room. After Mariah had been in the room for what seemed long enough, the salesperson called through the curtain, “Come on out and let’s check the fit.” There was no answer. “Let us take a look. It’s all girls out here, honey.”
The curtain opened a crack at eye level. Mariah stuck her head out and said, “And that would be the problem!” Slam! The curtain was drawn closed with great force. I laughed out loud while the salesperson was clearly taken aback by what I am sure was perceived as rude behavior. Well, I thought, maybe Mariah really could be my daughter. We spent the rest of the day wandering around stores, riffling through racks, and not buying much. Everything Mariah showed interest in was skimpy, too low cut, or too small for her. Everything I suggested was “lame.” I tried to comment in ways that would not insult her. I never said that her choices made her look like a tramp. I pointed out that it would be cold at Evergreen. She was particularly drawn to heels when we looked at shoes. Strappy, spike-heeled shoes at Evergreen? The school is at the base of Sunday River, one of the two biggest ski resorts in Maine. I didn’t expect Mariah to dress like an old lady. I mean, I didn’t think she should buy tweed jackets or anything similar. She reasoned that she had attended Evergreen the winter before and knew what was permissible in the dress code. We ended up compromising on a few things, and we were both happy to be done with the shopping. The last stop we made was at Mariah’s suggestion. We needed to get some shampoo for Cowgirl.
This was the best idea ever, I thought. I intended to ask Simon to take Cowgirl to Vermont, and it would be nice if his introduction to the cat at Thanksgiving made a better first impression than what I imagined was probable. Simon was a tenderhearted guy. He didn’t really like cats, though. But he claimed to be my best friend, and I was in need. Need, indeed! And if he refused, Cowgirl was going to become an outdoor cat, period. I hadn’t mentioned my plan to Mariah yet. No sense upsetting the apple cart. No sense ruining this otherwise joyful togetherness. I believed that Cowgirl embodied all of the bad vibes left behind by Ken. The cat skulked around the house and gave me the creeps. Ken had left behind plenty of fodder for bad memories and scary thoughts without the daily reminder from the gross cat. Simon had to take Cowgirl. It was a long car ride back to Stonington. When Mariah wasn’t sleeping, she cranked up the radio to some rap station. She quickly changed all of the preset stations on my radio from my easy listening to her noise. Oh well, I thought, Thanksgiving is just a few day away. I was nearly rubbing my hands together.
…
It might have been a case of sensing light at the end of the tunnel. Or it could have been because Mariah and I were growing on each other. I’m not sure it really matters how we got there, but we seemed to have been moving to new and better ground. The days just prior to Thanksgiving weren’t that bad, in a relative way. I actually looked forward to picking her up after school. And she wasn’t crying herself to sleep anymore. The single rule that we followed at our evening meal together was that there was no TV. I had grown up with the rule that dinner was time for conversation. Dinner was so quiet with Mariah that I nearly rescinded the rule many times. Then, out of the blue one night at dinner, she asked, “Have I ever told you about the phone at Ken’s house?” This seemed a strange conversation starter given our history of noncommunication. I resisted the urge to explain that she hadn’t ever told me anything. I didn’t dare respond with more than a head shaking for fear of saying the wrong thing, pissing Mariah off, and eclipsing what could be real dinner conversation. She went on to tell me about the day she was home alone and heard a clicking sound that was becoming annoying. She tracked the irritating sound to Ken’s bedroom, which she was absolutely forbidden to enter, and found a recording device. She followed the wires from the device through a closet and into the phone jack in her bedroom. So Ken had been recording all of her phone calls! This girl had had no privacy at all. It was no wonder her trust threshold was sky high. I assured Mariah then and there that I had no interest in listening in on her.
“Ditto,” was her response, which I chose not to take as a smart-assed statement of how she felt about anything I said (and which I was certain it was).
The next night Mariah shared with me what I would call a recurring nightmare. It sure sounded terrifying, and
was certainly haunting her at the expense of solid, restful sleep. That very night I put my head on the pillow, closed my eyes, and drifted off to the horrifying image of a young girl running for her life with something evil on her heels. The girl stopped everyone she passed and begged for help. But the people she approached turned their backs to her. That was certainly an image that would not weather or fade away with time without some help, I thought. When I explained to Mariah that she had quite literally shared the bad dream in that I had seen it in reruns, she seemed to appreciate that I was feeling her pain. Mariah was beginning to open up a bit. She spent a night with the Clarks when I had to travel off island. Brenda reported that Mariah had asked for a notebook because she felt like writing. Mariah told Brenda that she could read what she had written, and went off to bed. Brenda read the story of a very young girl whose mother had punished her by sending her to bed with no dinner. The mother’s boyfriend came to tuck the girl in. He rubbed her back and consoled the girl. “Things got out of hand, and the whole thing led to entercourse,” she wrote. Brenda asked Mariah if she was the girl in the story. Mariah said she didn’t remember. I vowed to get Mariah any counseling that was available to her for as long as she agreed to it. The calls from the social worker, Gretchen, continued. The state was willing to help if needed. But call it islandish, whether it’s resistance to speed limit signs or laws governing our clam flats, we prefer to resolve our issues from within the island bubble.
…
’Twas the night before Thanksgiving and all through the house … was the sound of hysterical laughter. The time had come for the cat bath. I cringed when Mariah filled the kitchen sink with warm, soapy water, resisting the urge to scream, “Not in the kitchen!” I bit my tongue when she reached for my kitchen scissors to trim the dingle berries from around Cowgirl’s buttocks. (Note to self, I thought, throw away scissors.) The cat, being a cat, did not cotton to the grooming. By the time Mariah turned on the blow-dryer, her forearms were clawed to hell and she was as wet as the cat. The blow-dryer sent Cowgirl into a real tizzy. The cat squirmed, squealed, and clawed some more while Mariah resorted to a towel. A rack of bones with long, angora-like hair, the cat looked quite hideous. Cowgirl was all eyeballs. And the eyes looked at Mariah with confusion as she forcefully towel dried her pet. “Do you suppose Simon will take her?” she asked.
“God, I hope so,” was all I said as I watched the performance from a safe distance on the couch.
“Me, too,” she whispered in the way that people do in front of babies when they don’t want them to hear something they might understand. Mariah turned and walked away from the sink with the cat all swaddled in the towel. “She’s a pretty kitty now, all clean … don’t you want to keep her?” And she threw the cat into my lap! Cowgirl was so repulsed that all four legs scrambled and she hit the wood floor running with her tail straight up in the air, giving me a full view of what I imagined was the feline equivalent of flipping me the bird.
“Cowgirl has butt bangs!” It was the funniest thing I had ever seen. And I was laughing so hard that tears rolled.
“Linny!” Mariah screamed as if upset by my commentary on the new hairdo. It was the first time she had called me by my family nickname. It was the first time she referred to me by any name, come to think of it. We laughed together. We really laughed. This was beginning to feel like what I had imagined it might be to have a daughter. We were a small, nontraditional family unit, I thought. But we were a family unit.
…
The long-awaited day finally came. We had thirty people for turkey, which is the usual for my family Thanksgiving dinner. We had family and friends, including Simon, who had neither interest in nor intention of taking the clean kitty back to Vermont with him. (I knew it would be better if he came to it on his own, and I calculated how to make that happen naturally.) Fortunately, the aroma of roasting turkey overpowered the cat stench that up until now had been remarked about by everyone who had entered since the arrival of Cowgirl.
Mariah and I had our first holiday together at “our” house. I made a point of telling her every chance I got that this was now her home. She didn’t need to ask before helping herself to something to eat. She didn’t need to ask permission to do laundry. She didn’t have to ask to use the phone. She would need to ask me for money when necessary, as I had no idea what her financial requirements were. When I needed money at her age, beyond what I could make doing various small jobs, I held my hand out to my parents. If I needed twenty bucks, I asked and usually received. I told Mariah that I expected her to do the same with me, and that I would provide for all her needs and some of her wants—within reason, of course. I knew it would take time for Mariah to believe me and trust me, if she ever would. And I began to have second thoughts about sending her away to school. Our relationship was beginning to resemble something close to a caring parent/child situation. What was more important, her education and healthy social life? Or some semblance of what could be considered a maternal and nurturing family situation? I was torn. Did I really think I could do better by Mariah by keeping her with me? She had great advisers who really cared for and about her at Evergreen. The advisers and the assistant head master had become friends of mine in all of the back-and-forth discussions and negotiations. She would have access to counseling. She would have more and better opportunity all the way around at Evergreen than she would here on the island in winter. But how much of this justification was my selfishness in wanting my old life back? And now that things seemed to be improving on the home front, did I still want my old life back?
The next time Mariah and I were alone, which was Thanksgiving night after everyone had left, we were finishing up washing the mountain of dishes and talking about the fact that Simon had agreed to take Cowgirl to Vermont. It was a warm and civil talk, most of which consisted of our bolstering each other’s resolve in making the right decision for Cowgirl. Simon was super nice. He would take good care of the cat. And Simon needed the company, we decided. He must certainly be lonely in Vermont. We were doing Simon a favor. I was relieved that Mariah did not mention that I would soon be alone. I would have had a hard time disguising my elation about my upcoming, much wanted loneliness. I wanted to tell Mariah that she didn’t have to go to Evergreen. I should have said that I wanted her to stay home until the next year. She had been pushed away, given away, and signed away too many times in her short life. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to say it. I would wait for a better time, though I knew that time was running out to give Mariah the option of staying home with me. I’m not sure what I feared more, another scathing rejection or an acceptance of an invitation that I was nervous about extending.
Sunday came and Mariah was all packed up and ready to make the journey to Norway, Maine. Simon came to collect Cowgirl that morning with a little cage he had borrowed from a friend. I had already packed the litter box, shampoo, and cat food that we had left into a box that sat by the door for a quick exit. When Mariah saw the bag of food, she said, “Geez. Shouldn’t we keep the food for when Cowgirl comes back to the island?” I wanted to say that would happen only over my dead body. I didn’t want to get into the conversation about Cowgirl’s health and that the cat was on her last legs. It was about time for Cowgirl to do the “into the wild” thing. Isn’t that what sick cats are supposed to do? But instead of telling Mariah that Cowgirl would be lucky to live long enough to breathe the Vermont air and not expire during the eight-hour ride, I offered that we could visit Cowgirl at Simon’s over Christmas break from school, which was only a short time away. (Simon and I had already discussed it and were both excited about spending Christmas and New Year’s at his place with our Vermont friends, all of whom, I was sure, would take to Mariah as if she were my own flesh and blood.) And during that break we could all ski together. Wouldn’t she like to learn to ski?
“Well, actually, I was talking with my mom. I think I should go home for Christmas. I haven’t seen my brothers in a while. Is it okay with you?”
“Yeah,” I said, “sure. If you want to go to Memphis for a visit, that’s fine with me. Let’s talk about it later. We’re going to miss the boat if we don’t hurry.” I guessed I would be visiting Cowgirl in Vermont by myself. No possibility of hurt feelings in that relationship.
CHAPTER 9
Strings Attached
Lifesaving Lessons Page 14