The Road at My Door

by Lori Windsor Mohr

  “Cavanaugh! You’re jeopardizing everything you’ve worked for! STOP! Talk to me. Just talk to me! That’s all I ask. I won’t try to take you back.”

  I pressed ahead, rounding the next bend. I could hear traffic on the Coast Highway below, an abyss calling me home. The surge of power quickening my body suppressed all rational thought. What did I care about privileges and goals, grand plans, the future, all concocted through rose colored glasses by somebody else. For the first time, I was running for me. I was running for Viktor Frankl. For his family. For every little girl ever torn from her mother’s arms. For those who could not run.

  Griff’s voice grew louder. He was closing the gap between us. “Cavanaugh… c’mon…stop, Reese. I just want to talk.”

  Movement caught my eye. Griff. He was almost up with me. I darted left to break his rhythm. He trailed behind as we carved into the mountain for another switchback turn.

  I heard Griff panting. He appeared at my side. His legs hit the ground in smooth, giant strides. For a moment we ran in perfect unison. My body transcended asphalt in effortless moves. I was flying.

  In a burst of extraordinary energy, Griff sprinted ahead of me as we raced full throttle down, down the mountain. I fell in behind him. He pulled further ahead. I kept running.

  All of a sudden he stopped and spun around. He stood facing me with feet wide apart, arms out to the side. Caught in the force of my own momentum there was no way to slow down, no way to avoid him.

  I crashed into Griff. His body felt like a concrete wall. The blunt force knocked the wind out of me. In one deft move Griff locked his arms around me.

  “LET GO OF ME!” My arms were pinned. I struggled to push back and kick him. His restraint was a vise grip.

  “Reese! Stop fighting. It’s me. It’s Griff.”

  “LET ME GO! I swear to God. I’ll bite you. I’ll tear you apart!”

  “Whoah…whoah, Reese…sshhhhhh. Settle, girl, settle. I just want to talk. Let’s quiet down…shhhhh.”

  He held me tight in his arms. My muffled threats drowned in his chest. I could feel his heart as it mimicked my own.

  “Reese…listen to me. We can turn around right now and no one has to know how far you’ve gone off grounds.”

  He relaxed just enough for me to pull back and kick him. “Let me go!”

  He squeezed me again to stop a second kick. “Reese, calm down. I just want to talk.”

  “No! You’re going to hurt me! You’re going to rape me!”

  In a sudden move Griff let go and stepped back with his hands in the air. It happened so fast I lost my balance. I stumbled forward. Regaining my equilibrium I came to a halt and bent over, hands on my knees, gasping for air. Griff stayed back.

  “Rape? What are you saying? It’s me…Griff.”

  I stayed bent over in a fight to fill my lungs.

  “Who’s hurt you? Someone here? Tell me, Reese.” His voice had an edge of urgency that sounded nothing like the free-wheeling guy making wisecracks in his office.

  “No.”

  He stepped closer. “C’mon, it’s me, your pal…Griff. You can tell me.”

  “No one.” I shut my eyes, trying to separate past and present.

  “Was it someone at St. John’s?”

  “No one’s hurt me.” My breathing started to even out.

  “Reese, you thought I was going to hurt you a minute ago. You said the word rape. Someone has hurt you. Who is it?”

  “No one.”

  Griff waited a moment. He came closer, careful not to touch me. Our heads nearly met as he bent over on his knees again.

  “Why were you running away? Cavanaugh? What’s happened?”

  His heartfelt appeal weakened my façade. This was Griff, a man who had done everything in his bureaucratic power to help me and in doing so had offered more guidance in nine months than my father had in seventeen years. I straightened up. “Nothing’s happened.”

  “Well, something must’ve to get you so riled up that you’d go AWOL, jeopardize everything we’ve worked for all these months. Where were you running to? The Highway?”

  I couldn’t hold the anger any longer. “I thought this might be my parents’ lucky day and I’d get hit by a Mack truck. They could quit thinking up ways to get rid of me. At some point they’re going to run out of people to give me away to. Enough is enough. I get it.”

  Griff looked at me in confusion. I felt emotion pushing past the anger.

  “Yes…Miss Goody-Two Shoes Cavanaugh has a voice after all. Better call in the muscles, put me in restraints. God forbid I say no for once. No! No! No! No!” My protests were garbled in uneven sobs. I staggered back, swatting at the air to keep Griff away.

  “Reese, I’m not going to hurt you. And I’m not going to let you run away or get hit by a truck. I don’t know what’s happened but you’re safe now. You’re safe with me.” Griff stepped closer. “You’re safe.” We stood without speaking as my crying slowed. I wiped my face on the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

  “That’s it…nice and slow.”

  A security patrol car sped toward us and screeched to a halt in the middle of the road. The guard rolled down the window. “Everything under control here, Masterson?”

  “Yeah, Spivak, I’ve got it. Thanks.”

  “You’re quite a ways down the hill. Want a lift?”

  “That’s okay. We’ll walk. You mind radioing in and telling Dr. Pallone I found Cavanaugh? We’re heading to her office. Be there in fifteen, twenty.”

  “Will do.” With a nod to Griff and a suspicious once-over at me, the guard flipped a U turn and doubled back to the hospital. Griff and I watched the car disappear around the first switchback.

  “What do you say, Cavanaugh? Shall we head back? Go see Dr. P?”

  The list of damages rolled through my brain in a wave of nausea. I’d ruined everything. Ventura College. Family Care. There was no way I was going anywhere now. Maybe I’d end up in a cell block with violent patients and beat up by some crazed Angela clone. Whatever my fate, it was sealed the moment I stepped off hospital grounds. There was nothing to do now but face the music.

  Griff didn’t move, clearly hoping I would cooperate now that he’d sent Security away. I looked at him for a long moment.

  In that face I saw Derrick in his car, pleading with me to protect him from losing his job, his license, his fiancé. In that face I saw FD after the Dodger game as we waited for the tow truck, asking me to believe he was a man of God who had never been in love. In that face I saw my father, crippled with fear at losing the woman he loved, begging me to protect him from a truth he couldn’t bear.

  Keep this secret, Reese, or you will destroy me. That’s what each of them had said in so many words. I had protected three powerful men. And it had broken me. Here was Griff, asking nothing more than to help me.

  I took the first step. Neither of us spoke. Griff was probably afraid he would open a Pandora’s box in a non-secure area where he might have to physically control me again. I got the sense delivering me safely to Dr. Pallone would be accomplishment enough.

  His vigilance felt reassuring. My emotions were teetering on the edge of containment. I could go either way, especially now that I had nothing to lose and was tired of running from myself. Running from the truth. Something had to change.

  Day staffers leaving the parking lot gaped at us with curiosity to identify who had gone AWOL. The evening crew had arrived earlier for report. My escape had been serendipitously book ended by that twice daily change of shift carving patient coverage to the bone.

  Griff and I cut across the parking lot to the Admissions building, to Dr. Pallone’s office. Raoul appeared, trailed by patients returning to the adolescent ward. I lowered my head and turned away, nudging Griff to hang back until they’d passed.

  Fingers began pointing. “Cavanaugh! Hey, it was Cavanaugh who went AWOL!”

  Someone yelled. “Stop your gawking and keep it moving!” It wasn’t Raoul’s voice I heard. It was A
ngela’s. Positioned with her back to me she kept the line moving with a slight shove forward as each patient filed by, a traffic cop thwarting Looky Lou’s rubbernecking to check out the scene of the accident.

  Dr. Pallone met us at the door. She motioned me inside while she and Griff spoke in hushed tones, not so hushed that I didn’t catch the word ‘rape’. Dr. Pallone closed the door and leaned against it for a moment. Just as she had that first day, just as she had during every session since, she walked past her desk to the chair next to mine and sat down in her usual calm manner.

  I crossed my legs and faced the other direction.

  “Sounds like you gave Raoul and Griff quite a run for their money.”

  I responded with silence. She waited. By now her lengthy pauses didn’t throw me like they had at first. I knew she would wait at least a full minute for me to say something.

  “Reese, what’s happened in the last hour to trigger this?”

  “Nothing.”

  This time a thirty second pause.

  “Griff said you went AWOL. He said you wanted to send your parents a message. What were you trying to say?”

  In a mocking laugh I faced her squarely. “That they could stop trying to get rid of me. I got the message. Again.”

  “What do you mean…‘again’?”

  “I’ll tell you what! They gave me away again. Only this time instead of handing me off to Father Donnelly, they went one better. They might as well be passing around a bottle of gin the way they keep throwing me at one man after another.”

  “Who have they passed you to?”

  “Tim! Out of the blue he asked their permission to marry me. Marry me! And did my mom and dad say ‘Oh, no! Reese is only seventeen and needs time to get back on her feet’? No! Get ready for a bolt from the sky. They said ‘Of course you can marry her. We’ll put it in writing in case there’s any doubt you’ve promised to take her off our hands.’ That’s what they said!”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Well since I’m the last one to know I couldn’t tell you. I just got Tim’s letter announcing the happy news. The fact that they have no legal authority to give me away must’ve slipped their minds. That really wasn’t the point, though, was it? I thought I’d save them the trouble of a wedding and let a Mack truck give them what they really want.”

  “Is that where you were headed? The Highway?”

  Silence.

  “Griff said he had to restrain you when he caught up with you, said you kicked him.”

  I scoffed. “I didn’t hurt him. I was scared, that’s all.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “I thought he was going to hurt me.”

  “Hurt you how?”

  I turned away.

  “Reese, what were you afraid Griff was going to do?”

  I threw my hands in the air. “How did I know he wouldn’t rape me? Girls get raped all the time, you know.”

  “Has Griff ever done anything to make you think he might harm you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m wondering why you would think that.”

  I shrugged.

  “I’m wondering if it’s because someone else has hurt you…someone who raped you.”

  “I guess it all depends on how you define rape. I mean, technically, having sex with a girl under eighteen is statutory rape and my good ‘ole parents have just sanctioned that one…in writing! ‘Go ahead Tim, have as much sex as you want with your seventeen-year-old bride.’ That kind of rape?

  “Or maybe it’s the kind of rape my Mom had where everyone does absolutely nothing about it, like it’s perfectly normal for a woman to greet her husband at the door and say, ‘Hi honey. How was your day? My day was peachy. By the way, I was raped. No, it’s okay. We don’t need to report it to the police. My rapist is going to get a firm talking to from Father Donnelly.’ THAT kind of rape?

  “You see I’m a little confused here, Dr. Pallone. There are so many kinds it’s hard to tell which kind is Real Rape. Even if I could tell, what difference does it make? If my mom got pregnant from rape and no one thought that was worth reporting, rape without getting pregnant must not matter at all. Telling the police is probably just a legal thing, like being emancipated, stupid paperwork that ends up causing total humiliation and results in nothing.”

  “Rape is a crime of violence, Reese. There are consequences, for both rapist and victim.”

  “Consequences? You mean like someone losing his job? All he would have to do is deny it. So why in the world would anyone say anything to anyone? Silence, that’s my power.”

  “Isn’t silence how you got here?”

  I rolled my eyes. “That was different. That was supposed to give me what I wanted, my crazy dream to live at home with my parents until I turned eighteen, like everybody else. Now I don’t even have a home. Or parents, if you want to get technical about it.”

  “I know it’s been difficult being away from home. It’s the only home you’ve known. You just need to trust me a little while longer.”

  “Trust you? Why should I trust you? That’s been my big mistake in life. I swear, I must be as gullible as they come. To think I actually believed Kit’s story about Daddy shooting FD if he found out about the affair, or that I actually believed Mom that everything would be fine if I just played along. I even believed Daddy would stick up for me after what we’d been through. Kit told me he wouldn’t. I was brilliant enough this time not to believe her.

  “I’m through trusting everyone else. I’ll decide for myself from now on. Instead of locking me in a mental hospital or marrying me off to a man ten years older than me, a holy man, I might add, has anyone ever thought to ask me what I want? No, quiet little Reese doesn’t have a voice. I DO have a voice and I’m saying enough with everyone threatening me if I do this, don’t do that. I’m done keeping everyone’s secrets.”

  “Who has threatened you?”

  “I meant in general.”

  “It sounded like more than your parents. Is someone else asking you to keep a secret?”

  “Hey, I’m tired of doing all the talking. You know everything about me and I don’t know anything about you.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Are you married?”

  The fleeting expression on her face was impossible to read behind glasses. “No, I’m not married.”

  “I figured. You’d rather be working, like Mom. Come to think of it, you’re a lot like my mom. You’re probably sick of me too, can’t wait to send me away to Family Care so I’ll be somebody else’s problem.”

  Silence.

  “Would my keeping you in the hospital accomplish anything? Other than disavow you of the belief that you’re being abandoned again because you’re unlovable?”

  I clicked my tongue. “You always think you know what’s in my head.”

  “You drew a parallel between your mom and me. She rejected you again by agreeing to marriage and I’m rejecting you by sending you to Family Care? Is that what you were feeling when you went AWOL?”

  “I should never have trusted you. Family Care! Why should I trust a houseful of strangers? What makes you think I’ll be safe? Even with people I know I can’t tell the good guys and bad guys apart. They look the same, so honorable, so eager to help. They’ve all used me, even the ones I’d never dreamed—”

  Dr. Pallone tensed like an animal onto the scent of prey who halts in his tracks before going in for the kill. “Who did you never dream would use you?”

  I split my ponytail into halves and yanked them to tighten it. “The reason I went AWOL was because I wanted out of here.”

  “I know.”

  “I mean it. I want to go home!”

  “I know.”

  “You can’t keep me here against my will. I’ve done nothing wrong. I’ve never done anything wrong.” My body shook. “I want to go home. If I’d known the last night I slept in my bedroom would be the last night ever, I would’ve remembered it better. Now I�
��ll never have the chance. I want to watch Twilight Zone with FD on Friday night and take Mom coffee Saturday morning and sit at the foot of the bed.”

  The words poured forth in waves of longing. “I want to graduate in a cap and gown and have my picture taken with the rest of my class. If I’m not in the yearbook it’ll be like I never even went to St. Monica’s, like I never existed.” I bent over and held my head.

  “Reese…”

  “No! You can’t help me. No one can help me. I hate this place! I hate this room and these stupid books! They don’t have any answers. What do they tell you, Dr. Pallone? Do they give you fancy words so you can label me? What will you call this? Labile? Poor impulse control? Maybe I should give you a stronger one…like…like…volatile!”

  I jumped up and paced back and forth in front of the desk, my mind spinning out of control. I searched the room for an outlet. The bookcase. I lunged toward it and stuck my arm behind a row of books until my cheek pressed against binding. With a guttural cry I swept my arm along the shelf.

  Books and journals teetered on the edge for a moment before crashing to the floor. “Is that volatile enough for you?” I wheeled around and attacked the next row of books. Scraps of paper tucked between the pages fluttered in the air like captive birds set free.

  My energy settled into high gear, unleashing anger left untapped in my thwarted escape. I embraced the next row with both arms and drew the books to my chest. As they crashed to the floor I jumped out of the way to avoid getting hit. The domino effect kicked into motion as the remaining volumes pummelled onto the topsy-turvy pyramid. Books and journals scattered the floor as I cleared the next shelf and the next, standing on tiptoes and sputtering in frustration at the shelves beyond reach.

  Someone knocked at the door. I didn’t move.

  “Everything okay in there, Dr. P?”

  “Everything’s fine Audrey.”

  “Why’d you lie to her? I could throw that vase through the window and chop us both to shreds with shards of glass! Don’t you want to call Raoul to lock me up, put me in restraints? Aren’t you afraid of me?”

  “Are you afraid? Afraid you’ll hurt yourself?”

  Failing to catch a single emotion whizzing around in my brain, I crumpled to the floor. I didn’t even hear her cross the room and crouch in front of me. She took my hands and brought us to a stand together. In all the months I’d been here, Dr. Pallone had never touched me. I was grateful she did now.