The moment our eyes met, I sensed a certain simpatico, perhaps that of captives sharing an uncertain fate who understood the importance of pleasing our captors. Whatever it was, the feeling was instantaneous. I liked this woman-child who needed me to show her the ropes.
Mom gave her a tour of the house, ending in my bedroom, our bedroom now. FD met us there with her suitcase. “Well, this is the girl’s dorm, huh?” He and Mom sized up the progress of their plan with nods of satisfaction and left.
I plopped on my bed and picked up a magazine as Petra lifted the suitcase onto her bed. There wasn’t much to unpack. A few personal belongings, mostly underclothes, filled only half the space. It was a good thing Mom had bought her starter clothes.
I turned on the radio to fill the silence.
“What’s this music? I really like it.”
“The Beatles, my absolute favorite group in the world.”
Her face was a blank.
“The Beatles? You must’ve heard of them. They’re like, the most famous band in the whole world.”
“No. In the House, we were only allowed to listen to certain pieces. We got to listen to The Sound of Music for an hour on Sundays. I like your Beatles.”
“Well if you couldn’t listen to music, and you couldn’t talk and you didn’t work…what did you do all day? Pray?”
She chuckled and sat on the bed, shoving the suitcase to make space. “We worked plenty…fourteen hours a day. Our Order made communion hosts for the greater Los Angeles area. The Sisters and I were up at five every morning for prayers. We baked all day until evening vespers and dinner. Then we put in another two hours packaging the hosts for distribution.”
“That sounds like slave labor. And you couldn’t talk all day? Or listen to music?”
Petra raised her eyebrows and shook her head. She didn’t seem to have a single edge of bitterness. In fact, I got the sense this woman didn’t have an angry or resentful bone in her body. Kit wouldn’t have lasted a day. I wouldn’t have fared much better. What an odd way of life, with no music or books, surrounded by friends, working in silence from dawn to dusk. At least the Sisters of Mercy at St. Monica’s taught in a classroom all day, which sounded a whole lot better than forming little circles from flour. How had Petra kept from going batty?
As roommates go Kit had been my only experience. Bunking with Petra bore absolutely no resemblance to that. She and I spent every free hour together. While I was at school she completed assignments Mom had given her in typing, filing, letter writing and taking phone messages. I role played with Petra and soon she took over answering our house phone.
Mom sent her on chores to Pronto market for coffee and cigarettes to refresh her memory dealing with money. It astounded me that she had lived fourteen years without basic activities such as locking the front door, making small talk at the store, dealing with cash. A snack between meals made her absolutely giddy with pleasure.
In return for Mom’s training, Petra cooked dinner—it turned out she could do much more than bake—and cleaned house, which I helped with on Saturdays. The laundry was also a joint effort. Tedious chores weren’t tedious with Petra.
Mom finally had her maid. This one came with a bonus no paid servant like Kit’s Rosa could offer. My mother made sure word got around church that Vivienne Cavanaugh had “rescued” a nun from the oppression of cloistered life. True to form, Mom portrayed herself as an advocate, bucking the system of ancient tradition to free a helpless victim.
This was a part of Mom that FD loved—her rebellious nature—especially within the context of Church authority. It didn’t matter that beyond the insular Catholic world, questioning the status quo was admired behavior in freewheeling 1964. Not only was it a badge of honor; for a woman who considered herself a feminist and intellectual it was required. Society had finally caught up with Mom.
*
Every night Petra and I talked for hours after lights out. It fascinated me that she had stuck it out so long in the convent. I had to understand why. Otherwise there was no way to determine whether she was weak or strong, an aspect of character plaguing me in my own sense of self.
“What happened to make you want to leave?”
“I was twenty-nine years old and had no idea who I really was. I was terribly lonely. When Father Donnelly filled in for our old priest and brought in a counselor, Aunt Maria, she helped me see I could have a life different than the one I’d fallen into right out of foster care.”
“Yeah, she’d be the person to do that. And her real name is Vivienne, not Maria.”
“If not for your mom I’d still be in the convent, miserable and lonely. She saved me.”
My role as her lifestyle consultant turned out to be a good fit. We peeled back layer after layer of the frumpy, sheltered nun, exploring who she was underneath. Mixing and matching, we hit pay dirt—an A-line skirt, flats, and a Poor Boy sweater, repeated in varying iterations. Armed with pictures from Kit’s movie magazines and a can of hair spray, I styled Petra’s short dark hair into a close relative of the ducktail.
Petra had adapted quickly to our world. In four short months, with her new look and marketable skills, she was ready for a life of her own.
In January we celebrated my sixteenth birthday with the usual family gathering, which included FD’s priest friends. The New Year meant it was time for Petra to face the job market. Two weeks into the job search, she landed one at a yarn shop in Santa Monica—The Skein Game, which Mom and FD gleefully deduced carried an erotic overtone.
Dad perused the classifieds for apartments to rent. A furnished one bedroom duplex off Sunset Boulevard a few miles away filled the bill.
Moving day Petra and I spent the afternoon setting up her new place, both of us encouraging our high spirits to quell the bittersweet moment. I knew her joy was due not only to a newfound feeling of self-sufficiency. It was also because she had found the one thing she’d sought in cloistered life—connection with another human being.
The fact that I turned out to be that person was pure serendipity.
*
Petra’s absence deepened the river of tension flowing between me and Mom. The respect, if not outright deference offered by Petra had nurtured Mom’s delusion of being a selfless instrument of the Lord. Now she only had me, a sullen teenager whose bitterness reflected the ugly truth. Dad’s steadfast façade was wearing thin, chipping away at his belief we could go on as if nothing had changed. It was only a matter of time before he would have to face what he already knew. In the meantime, I hoped the weight of ever-increasing depression didn’t flatten me. I had to hang on.
By February I was miserable with Petra gone. Spring break was still two months away. It was hard not to dread long days at home with the tension between me and Mom. As unbearable as the thought was to me, I’m sure it was equally disagreeable to Mom. These were my thoughts as I walked in from school. She was in the kitchen stuffing Bell Peppers.
“Clarice, you’re always home right after school. It was all I could do to get your sister here by dinner. Don’t you have some club to go to or something?”
“While you were gone I gave up being banned from the house. Dad didn’t have a problem with that.”
Her back stiffened. “That’s because your father was at work. Things are different now. You’ll need to get more involved with school activities, not be such a recluse. My gosh, most girls your age are out and about with friends every chance they get.”
I poured a glass of milk. “Aren’t you the one who’s always saying ‘just because your friend jumps off a bridge doesn’t mean you should’? Besides, I’m not bothering you. I get a snack and go to my room.”
“It’s awkward having clients in and out with my teenage daughter hanging around. There is an issue of confidentiality, you know.”
“Would you prefer I climb through the bedroom window so Mrs. Ellery could see?”
“Don’t be smart with me, Clarice.” The façade was slipping,
“
I’m just pointing out the obvious. This is my home and I have a right to be here when I want, clients or no clients. Maybe you should rent an office and stop seeing clients here.”
Mom stopped stuffing and turned to me. “You listen here, young lady. I don’t know what things were like when I was away, but I’m here now. Like it or not, I am still your mother and this is still my home. If you think you can whine to your father, I’d think twice. I’ll tell him how impossible you’ve become, with a smart mouth to boot. Now, Miss Cavanaugh, if you want to live here in peace, I suggest you damn well do as I tell you, and I’m telling you to find something to do after school.”
“You’re right. You don’t have a clue what things were like when you were away. As for living in peace, what peace can there be with you here? You’ve ruined everything!”
“That’s it, young lady. I don’t have to listen to this.” She gritted her teeth. “You’re a fool if you think you can compete with me, and if you don’t believe me…go ahead, give it a try. Now go to your room.”
That’s exactly what I did. I slammed the door so hard it might’ve broken Kit’s record. Mom wasn’t going to come between me and Daddy. I would make him see Mom was the one who was impossible to live with, that his fairy tale fantasy of happily ever after was a bust.
Kit was wrong about Dad. So was Mom. He would defend me.
*
Saturday afternoon I found Dad puttering in the garage. I sat on a stool and twirled left and right, watching him organizing his work bench. “Dad, I need to talk to you about something.”
“Shoot.”
“This situation, with Mom, it’s not working out.”
He didn’t answer.
“You have to do something. I’ve tried my best since she came home in August. It wasn’t so bad with Petra here. I cannot stand living in the same house with Mom. She hates me. She says she doesn’t want me around because her clients might see me. That’s just an excuse. What she really wants is for me to disappear.”
“Aren’t you being a little dramatic, Peanut? Now where is that half-inch wrench?”
“Dramatic? Dad, how can you forget what she did to us?”
“That’s behind us now. I’ve had to forget about it, and that’s what you need to do. It is possible for the three of us to live here as a family, I’m convinced of it. But you have to make more of an effort. You have to cut your mother some slack. She’s been through a lot.”
“She’s been through a lot! What about us?”
“Reese.” Dad took a deep breath. His shoulders slumped. “Please, for my sake, and for yours, make more of an effort to make this work. This is what you and I talked about, everything going back to normal.”
“Daddy, I’ve been making an effort and I’m telling you, it’s not working. You have to do something! I can’t live in the same house with Mom anymore.”
He stopped fiddling with his tools, hung his head and spoke in a barely audible voice. “Then, Peanut, honey, you’ll have to find somewhere else to live.”
At first I thought I’d heard wrong. The room turned white and spun. I felt lightheaded, dizzy. I waited for him to say he didn’t mean it. He just sat there with his hands resting on his knees, head hanging.
I burst out the door. Blood swooshed through my ears. I ran down the stairs through the yard to the gate and didn’t slow down until I hit the ocean.
That night in bed I stared at the ceiling and visualized the big Marlboro K, trying to remember Kit and what life had been like before everything changed. It was well past midnight with no hope in sight for sleep. I thought about my test the next day in Honors English. I wanted to do well, wanted to show Brother McPherson I understood his saying we could find comfort in poetry, the secret language in which he and I communicated through Edna St. Vincent Millay, Yeats, Frost.
I focused on something pleasant to make me sleepy—the image of Dad playing his harmonica at our old house. He would straddle a chair in the dim hallway light until the music carried me far, far away.
Two o’clock, no luck.
Mom’s sleeping pills.
I tiptoed down the hall to the bathroom. The bottle was almost full. I got a glass of water, then gently tapped the container to coax a pill into my hand. Ten tumbled out, little red Good-N-Plenty’s cupped in my palm. I didn’t move a muscle. Adrenaline electrified my body in a tingling sensation.
I felt strange, devoid of emotion, watching from someplace far away. Everything became crystal clear. How had I not seen what had been right in front of me? The secrets I’d been keeping for three years had drained the life out of me. My spirit was gone, my soul was gone, my body exhausted and numbed by depression. This was not a life or death moment. This was a moment of revelation. I was already dead, and had been for a long time.
My heart began to slow. The electric charge fizzled into a flat calm. I tossed the pills into my mouth. The plastic coated bullets stuck to the walls. I glugged the glass of water and poured another. A second handful went in. This time the pills clumped in gridlock. I gagged and gulped the glass of water. The third handful went down easily, as did the fourth.
The bottle was empty.
I crawled into bed with Cyrano and said three Hail Marys.
11 Wanderer
“Arrrghhhhh…acchhh.”
A tube the size of a fire hose filled my throat. I coughed and flailed in panic. My right arm was tied to a bedrail with an IV connected to bottles hanging on a pole.
A nurse appeared. “Miss Cavanaugh, keep still. You’re alright. You’re in St. John’s Hospital Intensive Care Unit. The tube is helping you breathe.”
I thrashed and shook my head.
The nurse held my shoulder. “Breathe through your nose with me. In, out, in, out…okay, that’s better. The more you fight it, the harder it will be to breathe.”
I tried to focus on what she was saying. My mind felt so fuzzy, like someone was holding a pillow over my face. I wasn’t dead. I was in the hospital. The nurse leaned close.
“Here, let me suction you. I know it feels like you’re choking. Try not to swallow or push the tube out with your tongue.” She vacuumed my mouth with a small plastic hose. “We’ll remove the tube once we’re sure you’re breathing on your own.”
She studied the beeping machine, green waves peaking and dropping with each breath. “A machine has been breathing for you. When the ambulance brought you to the ER, you were having trouble breathing on your own.”
I felt trapped in the bed, uncomfortable, restricted. I tugged at the bedrail.
“The tube is giving you fluids and electrolytes intravenously. We tied your arm to keep you from dislodging the needle. You’re fighting the ventilator again…keep breathing for me…in…out…nice and slow. That’s a girl.”
She brushed the damp hair from my cheeks and shined a tiny flashlight in my eyes. “You’ve been in a deep sleep for almost thirty hours.”
A doctor stepped through the curtain. The nurse said something about pupils being equal and reactive to light. He watched the breathing machine. Panic returned. The green waves reverted to irregular jumps and starts. I remembered the nurse’s instructions. The waves settled down.
“I’m Dr. Pasternak, Miss Cavanaugh. I’m going to take the tube out. You can help by not resisting. I’ll do it quickly once I turn the ventilator off.” The mechanical whooshing sound petered out. “Ready? Okay, here we go.”
Out, out, out came the fat cylinder, inch by inch like some gruesome magic trick. I clenched the sheet, certain the tube must’ve been sand-coated. The foreign object came out in one final sting. The doctor watched my chest. “You’ll have a sore throat for a few days.” A woman called his name. He swatted the curtain aside and left.
The nurse untied me from the bedrail. Both hands flew to my neck to soothe the rawness in my throat.
“The ward clerk called your parents half an hour ago when you started waking up. They’ll be in after they see the doctor. I’ll order you some broth.” She turne
d and left.
My eavesdropping ears picked up a hushed voice. “We were able to keep her heart rate up. It was touch and go there for a while. She’s awake. Expect her to be foggy and confused. It’s not brain damage; your daughter has been in a mild coma. It’ll be a day or so before she’s fully awake. If you hadn’t called the ambulance when you did, we might be having a different conversation.
“Does she know she’s not coming home today?”
“I’ll let you tell her. We’ll keep her here and monitor her vital signs for a while, then transfer her down to One North.”
I must’ve fallen back to sleep. Mom and Dad were leaning over the bedrail. Mom’s face was drained of color. Dad’s was pale and haggard, a look I knew all too well.
“You’ve given us quite a scare, Peanut. I sure am glad to see those beautiful brown eyes.”
Mom was silent. Whatever concern she’d felt was short-lived, irritation in its place. “What in the world were you trying to do? You scared the bee-Jesus out of us.” They dropped into chairs squeezed against the bed. I avoided their faces and cringed at anguish in Dad’s voice.
“Don’t you know how much we love you, Peanut? What would I do if anything happened to you?”
“Of course she knows. She was just trying to scare us, isn’t that right, Clarice?”
“I’m sorry if I scared you. I want to go home now.”
“Well that’s not going to happen. The doctor says you need to be evaluated. They’re transferring you to the psychiatric floor.”
“I won’t go!”
“Oh you’ll go, and don’t try to make this out as anyone’s doing but your own, young lady. You can thank your lucky stars that our health insurance covers it.”
Mom’s words had not one shred of compassion. Why would they? This is what she’d wanted all along—me, out of the way—and keeping her hands clean the same way they had been banishing Kit. This was the doctor’s call, not hers.
What would he think if I explained I was doing exactly what my parents wanted? There was no other way to interpret their message. Mom had demanded I disappear after school until dinnertime. Dad had told me I would have to find another place to live. My overdose had given them a solution far better than any boarding school in Arizona. Blue Cross would cover my exile.
The Road at My Door Page 13