It was hard to believe I wouldn’t graduate with my class. No cap and gown, no celebration. This milestone would slide by in unremarkable fashion, a notation on my transcript. Somehow that seemed fitting. I was no longer the little girl who’d watched her father drive away in his Ford, leaving me in a strange and frightening place. The world of giggling girlfriends and worrying about grades had been concerns of a different lifetime.
Griff snapped his fingers to get my attention. “Cavanaugh?”
“Sorry. What was that?”
“I asked if you’d found something in the catalogue. Short of a master’s degree in English Lit, did any of the one-year vocational programs interest you?”
“One did,” I said. “The Psychiatric Technician program.”
“Psych tech! I’d have thought you’d never want to see the inside of another mental hospital.”
“It appeals to me more than radiology tech or veterinary assistant. Besides, I think I might be good at it. I can finish my bachelor’s once I get a job.”
Griff rested his chin in both hands with a silly grin. “Boy, you do think big. And long term.” He snatched the catalogue from my hand. “Psych tech, psych tech. Here we are. Let’s see, it looks like you’ll need some pre reqs—English 1A, chemistry, speech, physiology—that’ll do for a start.”
“What if I’m not in Family Care by the time fall semester starts?”
“I’ve had second thoughts about waiting. Dr. P’s on board. I’m going to get your Voc Rehab paperwork rolling. Once funding comes through, I can get you enrolled at VC. You can catch the second summer session.”
“College? Now? While I’m still in the hospital?”
“I’ll arrange rides. We have staff who live in Ventura.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Alright, now get outta here and let me get to it. Oh! I almost forgot. How would you feel about grounds privileges? Go anywhere you want on your own…the commissary, the library.”
My grin was as big as the day FD had lavished me with the Christmas dresses.
“No one else on the ward has privileges at the moment. You’ll take some guff over it.”
“I’ve gotten good at taking guff.”
*
It was late afternoon, the air stifling in the ward. I sat tucked in a corner of the day room with my book.
“CAVANAUGH!”
Hearing my name at bullhorn level gave me such a start that Edna St. Vincent Millay tumbled off my lap to the floor. I went to the nurses’ station where Dolores, the psych tech, slid open the glass partition.
“You have a visitor. Raoul went to fetch him in Admissions. You can talk in the snack room with the door open for thirty minutes, that’s it.”
Who would be coming to see me except Tim, who always came directly to the ward? I walked down the long hallway and waited at the door. Five minutes later Raoul opened it. I stared at my visitor, struggling for recognition. It wasn’t a him. It was a her.
“Reese!”
I backed up instinctively. The voice registered. “Petra?”
“Hahaha. Yeah, it's me!” She came forward and threw her arms around me in a bear hug.
“Oh my gosh, look at you!” I moved back enough to take a good look, like an elderly aunt noting changes in growth.
We stood facing each other in mutual shock, hers no doubt at the clinical surrounding and me at the specimen that was Petra. Her hair had grown long. Heavy bangs covered her forehead all the way to the rim of her square rose-colored glasses. Around the guru neck of her white tunic was a strand of wooden beads in a variety of colors.
All that would’ve been enough of a statement without what she wore on the lower half—cotton pants in psychedelic oranges and blues that tapered to her calves where they widened into voluminous bells.
“Is there somewhere we can talk? I think I'm becoming the main attraction,” she said, conscious of patients staring.
I led her to the relative privacy of the snack room.
“Holy moly, hon, this place is nuts. They had to search my bag and me before they'd let me in. The windows are barred. The doors are locked. What is this, San Quentin? What are you doing here?”
“Long story.”
She looked at me a long time in search of the old me, the one she remembered. “You know what I mean. Why in God's name are you in this scary place? You haven’t answered a single letter.”
“The insurance ran out at St. John’s and Mom intercepted my letters.”
“Hon, your mom told me you couldn’t have visitors. My gosh, don’t you think I would’ve visited before now? Uncle Walker wouldn’t tell me anything more than you’d been transferred to another hospital. I thought he meant another hospital like St. John’s. But Camarillo? Norwalk State Hospital has been all over the newspaper with reports of patients being abused—as in beaten and drugged. Why didn’t you go home from St. John’s?”
“I’m…it’s just depression. And this place is free. I mean it’s for patients who need to be hospitalized a long time and don’t have enough insurance. My doctor here is real good,” I said in a feeble effort to steer the conversation away from the setting.
“Do they have you doped up?”
I cocked my head. “Do I look doped up?”
“No, but how is being locked away in this God-forsaken pit helping you? Isn’t this kind of extreme just for being depressed?”
“My doctor just doesn’t think I should be home right now. Hey, want some juice? We have orange, tomato—”
“Hon, I don't want any juice. Look, if you can’t be home, you don’t have to be here. Come live with me. I’ve moved to Santa Monica…to an apartment near the yarn shop with Dodi. She won’t mind your rooming with us until we can figure something out. You and I could get a place together.”
My mind ran amok at her logical suggestion, knowing it was impossible. “Right. I’m sure my doctor would discharge me right away to a wild hippie woman. One look at you and they’d see Flower Child written all over.”
Petra burst out giggling. “What if I dug out my old nun’s habit? That would convince them!”
This time we both laughed.
I explained about the plan to find a Family Care home, about how Dr. Pallone and Griff were helping me. Assured that I wasn’t a prisoner, Petra moved on with the news she had come to tell me.
“The reason Aunt Maria and Uncle Walker haven’t been coming to see you isn’t because they don’t care, it’s because they’ve separated.”
“Separated?” My mouth dropped.
“I found out a few weeks ago. I dropped by the house for a quick visit and saw the For Sale sign in front. I couldn’t believe it. Uncle Walker had already moved out.”
“What happened?” Had Dad finally learned the truth about FD and the baby? Had he shot him? Was he in jail?
Petra went on to tell the story as Dad described it to her when she reached him by phone at work. One day he had come in the kitchen from outside and didn't shut the back door all the way. Mom was working on a scrapbook of FD’s career, bits and pieces spread all over the table. For years she’d been saving newspaper clippings about his role in the community—getting fat donations for the Church, his commendations from Cardinal Mahoney, and so on. The door blew open. Clippings flew everywhere.
Mom had gone crazy, yelling at him about what a stupid buffoon he was and how he was never interested in climbing the career ladder like FD had in the church. Petra said she figured maybe Dad had gotten tired of always playing second fiddle to FD. They had a big blowout and Mom told Dad she wanted a divorce. Dad agreed right on the spot. Mom told him she wanted whatever they got for selling the house, plus her car and all their savings. Said she deserved it after spending twenty years making a home, giving up her career to raise a family.”
“Wow. What’s Dad going to do? Move to Santa Monica closer to work?”
“He said on the phone he was going to quit his aerospace job and move up the coast, find something less st
ressful.”
As Petra talked, I realized how much I’d missed her, missed the sound of her voice.
“There’s more, hon. Brace yourself.”
“What else could there possibly be?”
“Uncle Walker told me FD was leaving the priesthood. He wants to marry Aunt Maria.”
“What? He always talked about becoming a bishop someday!”
“Apparently he’s willing to give all that up to marry Aunt Maria.”
“Whew. How can that even work, leaving the priesthood? I don’t think he knows how to do anything in the real world. He can’t even change a stupid tire.”
The thought of his worldly incompetence sent us into giggles again.
“Hey, maybe Aunt Maria could teach him secretarial skills. Look how it worked for me.”
That brought another wave of giggles. The news hit hard beneath the laughter. I was struck by a crushing realization. My big secret, the one I had been willing to die for, the one that had landed me first in St. John’s and now Camarillo, had been revealed at last. Mom herself had exposed it!
The world hadn’t come to an end. Dad hadn’t shot FD. All my suffering had been for nothing. How could I have swallowed Kit’s ridiculous fantasy? She had used me for her own ends to stay in the Palisades and keep Mom off her back.
Dad hadn’t needed protection from the truth. He’d probably known it all along. Maybe telling Dr. Pallone about their baby had finally opened his eyes, made him see there was something worse than losing Mom. Maybe he realized he’d lost her already, along with both daughters because of her conniving and manipulation to keep her affair under wraps.
My whole life had changed overnight because I’d believed one stupid story from my sister. Could Kit have known I would carry it as far as it had gone, keep my secret no matter what it would cost me?
“You okay? You haven’t said much.”
“Yeah, I’m okay, just taking it in.”
Our half hour visit was up. Petra shuffled through a humungous burlap purse. She opened my palm and placed a velvet box in it. “I got you something. Think of it as an early birthday present.”
“This is July. My birthday isn’t until January.” I opened the gift. It was a gold ring with a tiny stone.
“Garnet, the birthstone for January.”
I gazed at Petra. How happy I’d been during those few months she lived with us. We had come to love each other like sisters. This ring was a special gift for a special birthday, something a mother might give a daughter. Or one sister might give another.
I hugged Petra tight. “I’m proud to have an honest-to-God hippie sister. I’ll wear the ring forever.”
Raoul opened the locked door. Petra and I stood in the arched corridor resisting our goodbyes. Out of nowhere something slammed me against the wall. Petra jumped back in horror.
“Reese! Reese! Pretty Reese! You have a new friend. Am I still your friend?” Archie was on his knees, his helmet off kilter as he rubbed my shoes.
“Of course you’re still my friend, Archie. Get up and meet my…sister. C’mon. Aren’t you supposed to be with Hector?”
Archie’s eyes widened. “Gotta find Hector, gotta find Hector, gotta find Hector.” He took off toward his unit in lop-sided motion. Petra looked at me wide-eyed. We burst into giggles.
This time there was no tension in our goodbye hug. Petra turned away. She waved the peace sign overhead, bellbottoms swaying around her feet.
*
A letter arrived from Mom.
July 28, 1965
Dear Clarice,
I hope you are getting well and cooperating with the doctor. I am still convinced the hospital is the best place for you.
By now Petra has told you about the divorce. This shouldn’t be a surprise and should affect you very little. We’ll stay in the house until it sells, then Jack and I will find a place and your father will move up the coast.
Jack has submitted a request to the Vatican for release from his vows. We’ll wait to marry until that’s official, but as you know, that takes time. Since you’ll be staying in Ventura County once you’re out of the hospital, it shouldn’t matter to you where Jack and I end up living. I’ll be packing your belongings and giving them to your father for safe keeping.
I assume you’re still in contact with Katherine. I’m sure I can count on you to give her the news.
Take care of yourself, Clarice.
Mom
I ran my fingers over the letter, blue ink swirls of cursive, the exaggerated strokes of Ls and Fs as familiar to me as her face. I could feel my mother’s presence on the page, even imagine a whiff of Chanel #5.
Had Mom felt anything for me as she’d written these words?
In spite of everything, I still yearned for my mother. In moments of happiness, it had been enough just to be in her presence, surrounded by the electric field of energy where anyone within range could experience the strange and mysterious charge attracting us to her light.
It had always bewildered me that someone with such magnetism could also possess equally strange and mysterious attributes of repulsion. There had been no way to predict which Mom would show up on any given day. My secret-keeping ability hadn’t been honed by discipline. It was collateral damage from a lifetime of apprehension. I had made it my business to avoid Mom’s wrath. Kit had taken pleasure in triggering it.
No wonder the world had looked at Mom and Kit and seen strength—two unyielding personalities vying for dominance with me and Dad in subordinate roles keeping peace. Outside the context of my family I had no idea who I was. Even that identity had been issued in comparison to Kit.
All this time I had been banking on some fictional character as the road to self-discovery by proxy. Instead the search had become a process of elimination, ruling out who I wasn’t rather than discovering who I was.
Mom and Kit had been checked off the list ages ago. I didn’t have, nor did I want, Mom’s charisma with the control to manipulate, or Kit’s force of will energizing rebellion. Whoever I would become, I wanted a kind of strength neither of them had—strength of character.
I knew I didn’t have it, not yet. Otherwise I would’ve defended the girl Angela had attacked in the bathroom, but I could recognize it in those who did, people like Shirley, Dr. Pallone, Petra—a spinster psychiatrist, a paid employee, and a-nun-turned-hippie.
I hadn’t figured out the qualities they shared amounted to strength of character. I had experienced it as empathy, genuine concern for my distress that made them reach out with tender mercy. That doesn’t sound earth shattering. Yet I had tried to conjure a memory in which Mom had expressed interest in anyone who didn’t serve her needs, a friend or neighbor she might have consoled. Nothing. My cool detached mother was above the crowd as if she had filtered her emotions to extract self-interest from altruism, insensitive to feelings and needs beyond her own, separate and apart because of it.
Maybe it wasn’t that Mom couldn’t express empathy, rather she didn’t have it to express.
Maybe she was incapable of love for me or anyone else. Maybe she was lacking the one trait needed in forming an attachment between mother and child, the core emotion passed down from one generation to the next that linked past and present in a continuous line of humanity—the capacity to care for someone else.
Dad’s desperate need to please Mom had nothing to do with love. It had to do with hate, self-hate—deep regret for not having had parents who instilled in him the moral fiber to stand up for what he believed was right; bitter disappointment that it had been another man with whom his wife had fallen in love; disgust with himself for failing the children whose job it had been to protect. Dad was Edgar Linton in Wuthering Heights, a constitutionally weak man who desperately loved his wife despite her love for another man and who loses everything because of it.
Father Donnelly was the last person in whom I could’ve found character strength. Presenting himself as a man of God, he turned out to be the most morally bankrupt of all, t
he personification of human frailty. He not only betrayed my father by cheating, he let Dad believe Mom’s desertion had been his fault.
My pedigree didn’t look good for developing virtue if empathy was the core requirement. Yet I knew I had it in me. I knew it was empathy I’d felt the day Griff categorized my suffering as abuse and I had taken my place in an endless line of those who had suffered in ways similar and different from my own.
At the time I’d been both ashamed and comforted by the banality of my plight, mortified that I had perceived my life as spectacularly awful, at the same time consoled that others had suffered like me. I had been part of an invisible community. I did belong somewhere after all. That seemed as good a place as any to join the human race.
The absence of this life-sustaining emotion from the very people who brought me into the world meant that any hope of my finding love in the future would require a monumental leap of faith—belief that I was, in fact, capable of being loved.
Maggie called me to the nurses’ station. I folded Mom’s beautiful blue-ink swirls and slid the letter into my pocket.
*
I took advantage of grounds privileges with long walks after appointments with Dr. Pallone and Griff. I had just left his office. Griff had done his social worker magic, enrolling me in three of my pre-req classes at Ventura College for the second summer session beginning the first week in August. A psych tech living in Ventura who worked nights would drop me at the college on her way home from work in the morning. An evening shift psych tech who also lived in Ventura would pick me up from campus later in the afternoon on her way to the hospital.
As summer school got under way I lived in a different world five days a week. At night I studied and did homework in the day room. Weekends varied only in the addition of Tim’s visits Sunday afternoons.
Sessions with Dr. Pallone remained a central focus. In the safety of her office I was able to cope with feelings of overwhelming sadness—the pain of estrangement from my parents and the reason for it; feelings of loss over everything familiar, including a bedroom that would no longer exist once the house sold; deep disappointment at not graduating with my class or starting UCLA with Francie.
The Road at My Door Page 19