She was in control. I was safe.
She waited a long time after I collapsed in the chair. “Reese, you’re talking about feeling trapped, being held against your will…alluding to people who’ve hurt you, people you never dreamed would. You kicked violently when Griff restrained you. You referred to being passed from Father Donnelly to Tim like a bottle of gin…said you couldn’t tell the good guys from the bad.”
“So? I am being held here against my will. I did fight Griff because he had me pinned. My parents have passed me around like a bottle of gin. And no, I can’t tell the good guys from the bad. So what?” I fidgeted with a loose thread on the arm of the chair. “Who I’ve trusted or haven’t trusted doesn’t matter. My life was ruined the moment I snuck down the hall that night and saw something I shouldn't have.”
“Tell me what you saw that night.”
“I have told you.”
She spoke in a soft voice, its warmth drawing me to her. “Tell me again.”
I didn’t answer. The image embedded in my brain popped up every time I pushed it down. A powerful feeling of déjà vu threw my normal heartbeat into a skipping rhythm.
A surge of electricity shot through me. My senses heightened. An engine idled in the distance. Faded colors in the Persian rug grew bright. The vague moldy odor I’d grown used to in her office smelled like sharp cheddar. The texture of nubby upholstery on the chair could’ve been knotted yarn. Something was happening to me, a sensory explosion I was powerless to control.
“Reese, tell me again about that night.”
Long silence.
My eyes darted back and forth. I drew myself up in the chair. The silent stillness transported me to a strange place where past and present merged in a singular blur. I became unaware of Dr. Pallone’s presence.
I stared at the colorless winter sky. Memories flitted in bits and pieces across my vision, disappearing like soap bubbles as I tried to catch them. Vague shapes slowly came into view, nothing I could decipher. The longer I stared, the clearer the shapes became. One by one they formed images, the images passing before me like disjointed scenes in a movie.
I spoke in a high staccato voice. “She was hurt…crying and moaning. He was on top of her. She struggled. He wouldn't get off. He wouldn’t stop.”
“Who, Reese? Who wouldn’t stop?”
“Derrick. He was hurting Mom, crushing her.” My breathing quickened. “I begged him to stop. Derrick was too big to pull off her. No. It wasn’t Derrick. It was someone else. It was FD. FD was on top of her.”
Dr. Pallone said something. Her voice was so far away. The room closed in. Rapid breaths turned into shallow gasps. I couldn’t hold down the panic rising in me. Someone had to help me. I wasn’t watching from the living room hallway. It wasn’t FD crushing Mom. It was someone else someplace different, a tight space with no air. And it wasn’t Mom. It was me. I shut my eyes. The image stayed.
“I begged him to get off. I couldn’t breathe…he was crushing me. He wouldn’t stop. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone, if he would just let me go!”
Sweat dampened my back. I sat on the edge of the chair and writhed, as if held against my will. “He got mad…put his hand over my mouth. I couldn’t breathe. Let me breathe! I’m going to die! Oh God…please help me! Help me!”
I wrapped my arms tight around me, rocking forward and back in short, fast movements. Dry sobs blocked my airway. Someone touched my arm.
“Acchhh…let go of me.” I repelled the hand in a violent thrash.
A voice. Dr. Pallone. She was speaking again. I could feel her presence. She was close. I couldn’t open my eyes to see her. She spoke louder.
“Reese. You're here. You’re with me. Dr. Pallone. I want you to sit up and open your eyes.”
The rocking stopped. I opened my eyes. Everything was jumbled. I couldn’t figure out where we were, or make sense of what just happened. I felt numb, detached from my body.
“Inhale slowly.”
I did as she said. The hammer in my chest lifted. Air returned to my lungs. I slid back in the chair with stilted motion.
“Do you know where you are, Reese?”
Everything was hazy. I felt disoriented. The room seemed familiar yet foreign. Dr. Pallone looked different, younger somehow. She wasn’t wearing her glasses. They were upside down on her lap as if they’d been knocked off.
“Your office I think. Yes. Your office.”
“Do you remember where you were before coming to my office?”
“I was in the ward. No. I was someplace else…with Griff. We were running together. No, not together. I was running from him…he was chasing me. He caught up. We struggled. I got scared.” As everything came into focus my body began aching. I thought it was from running so hard. It wasn’t. My muscles ached the same way they had ached that night. “No. I must’ve dreamed I was with Griff.”
Dr. Pallone leaned close. “You weren’t dreaming, Reese. You were right here, next to me. I asked you to tell me about the night you discovered your mother and Father Donnelly. Do you remember what you told me?”
Silence.
“Yes.” I covered my face.
“You told me someone raped you, Reese. You re-lived the memory. It’s called a flashback. You re-lived the experience.”
I kept my face covered. My sense of time was all mixed up. It could’ve happened five years ago. It could’ve happened yesterday.
“Silence isn’t power. The memory you just revisited is going to come back. Remember how we talked about how silence is the way you give power to your secret. After a while you’re not controlling the secret. It’s controlling you. The best way to deal with a secret is to take away its power, face it as many times as it takes.”
Silence.
“Who’s Derrick?”
“I can’t tell you. He’ll get in trouble. It was my fault.”
“Getting raped was not your fault, Reese. What makes you think it is?”
“I acted…like Mom. I was friendly. I gave him the idea that…I liked him. The same way I gave Tim that idea. I brought it all on myself.”
“Have you given Griff that idea too?”
“No!”
“No. Your getting raped had nothing to do with how you acted or how you dressed. Sixty-year-old women get raped. Five-year-old girls. Rapists are violent criminals. This is not your fault.” Long pause. “I’m going to ask you again, Reese. Who is Derrick?”
The last rays of sunlight were shrinking from the Persian rug. I had come full circle. The first day she met me I’d been locked up inside. Now once again I had fallen into darkness. Once again, she led me into light.
“Derrick Gillespie, the Recreation Therapist at St. John’s.”
Dr. Pallone fell back in the chair with a heavy sigh. Neither of us spoke. This time the silence wasn’t waiting for an answer. In that bubble time was suspended. I felt connected to her in a way I had never felt connected with anyone, bound by the intimacy of a terrible secret shared at long last.
I don’t know how long we sat there. It could’ve been ten minutes or an hour, I couldn’t be sure. A tap on the door broke the spell. It was Audrey, saying goodnight. Dr. Pallone didn’t get up or signal the end of our time. She waited for me to say something.
“Should I go back to the ward now?”
“No. You stay with me for a while. I have some work to finish and you have some cleaning up to do. First let’s go to the vending machine. I think we could both use a soda.”
We picked our way through the scattered books and papers, closing the door behind us.
And with that my final secret was revealed.
16 The Way Home
Monday morning a detective from the Santa Monica Police Department met with me in Dr. Pallone’s office. She sat next to me as I gave a statement describing the night of the movie with Derrick and Janet, including the name of the night nurse on duty when I returned. The detective said it was possible I’d have to testify in court. Dr. Pallone promis
ed that if that turned out to be the case, she herself would go with me.
That afternoon two police officers walked into St. John’s and confronted Derrick. As it turned out, he went with them to the station without incident. After reading my statement he confessed to everything and was taken into custody.
*
I left a message for Tim at the clergy house that I needed to see him. Two days later I met him at my bench under the oak. Tim searched my face for some reaction to his letter. The speech I’d prepared in my mind evaporated the moment we sat down. Tim spoke first.
“Hon, I know this seems sudden. The truth is…I’ve felt this way for a long time. You’re an old soul in a young body, that’s why we’ve understood each other from the start. You must know how much I love you. And I think you feel the same.”
“Tim, I don’t feel the same.” He flinched. All the words I had chosen for a gentle explanation had throttled him in one blunt sentence. “What I mean is I do love you, but not like that. I love you as a friend. You’ve been my only friend for almost a year. I honestly don’t know how I would’ve gotten through this without you.”
“Hon, friendship will turn to love. You need to let yourself adjust to the idea of me as your lover, your husband. I resisted thinking of you that way as long as I could. Then I realized the only time I feel right is when I’m with you.”
“But Tim, why would you go to my parents? Why didn’t you talk to me first?”
“I thought they might object. I wanted them to see what an honorable guy I am.”
Poor Tim. He could’ve been the Boston Strangler and they wouldn’t have objected.
“When you told me you weren’t going home I knew I had to be honest with myself or I’d regret it the rest of my life. It hit me how much I wanted to take care of you, give you a home.”
“I don’t want to be taken care of by a husband. I’m seventeen years old.”
He dropped his head. I was beginning to think I was with Dr. Pallone by how long it took him to respond. “Then I’ll wait until you’re ready. We can date, or live together. That’s what people are doing now instead of getting married right away. Either way I’m leaving the clergy. I want to make a life with you, whether that’s now or when you’re eighteen.”
“Tim, you’re not hear—”
“I need you, Reese, and I think you need me. I may be ten years older, but emotionally, intellectually, we’re the same age. You’ve taken away the loneliness I’ve felt since leaving Ireland. You are my home.”
Again I was at a loss for words. Dr. Pallone had helped me understand I hadn’t been sending Tim mixed messages any more than I had invited rape. I had played a part though. Tim had misconstrued the confidences of a lonely teenage girl. Grounded in the belief no man could love me, I had rejected signs that his growing affection had crossed a boundary. And because of those missed signals I was now losing my friend.
“What I’m going to say may sound harsh. At first what I felt for you was a schoolgirl crush. The more we got to know each other the more my feelings changed. Our friendship became very special to me…but that’s all it was…friendship. That’s all it’s ever been. The safety I felt with you was based on that certainty. It never occurred to me that you might feel something stronger. Maybe this crisis of faith you’ve been having, your ambivalence about life in the clergy, has nothing at all to do with me. It would make sense that imagining a life with me would help you imagine life beyond the clergy. Maybe your feelings have nothing to do with me.”
“You’ve been around shrinks too long, hon,” he said with irritation. “I know my feelings.”
“Tim, I have cherished our friendship. I couldn’t marry you even if I wanted to. It’s not our age difference. It’s that you deserve more than I can give. All you know of me is depression. This isn’t me, not the real me. I don’t know who that is yet. If someday I’m lucky enough to find a man who can love me, I want the me he loves to be a whole person, a confident, self-assured woman who’s fully formed, not the lonely, unhappy girl you’ve known. Does that make sense?”
“I have no doubt one day you’ll be healthy. We can look back on this as a difficult time. But it’s also the beginning of our shared history. My loving you now proves that I want all the parts of you, the depressed and the healthy. If I love you now as you are, I know I’ll love whoever you become. You’ll still be you. A person’s core doesn’t change.”
His Irish green eyes pleaded with me to trust this would all feel right sometime in the future, just like the St. Christopher necklace I would accept once I changed my mind. I reached for his hand and closed it with mine, our fingers intertwined as one. My heart broke for him, for me. I knew if I cried now it would be that much harder to do what I had to do.
I kept our fingers locked tight. “Tim, you’re my teacher. You’re my friend.”
He started to say something. I placed my finger over his lips. Our eyes held each other’s in sadness, the sadness of saying goodbye to a childhood friend moving away, both of you knowing the departure marks the end of a precious moment in time, hating to let go of the present for a future you cannot see.
I kissed Tim on the cheek, then unlocked our fingers and walked away.
*
The anniversary marking one year since my first night at St. John’s came and went. Another three months rolled by with still no word of an opening in Family Care. I was soon to have a similar date with Camarillo.
Archie and I waved as I crossed the great lawn where he sat with his group. I was on my way to Griff’s office. He had kept me in funding all this time for the Psych Tech program at Ventura College. I had completed the coursework with only clinical rotations left, which would have to wait until I was in Family Care and could manage long hours in various facilities. I was excited to get started in the hopes of finishing the program with my class. I knew that was an uncertainty, like most things in my life, and tried not to dwell on it.
Griff’s door was open. He was buried behind his Field of Chaos, as I referred to his desk. He greeted me with an inscrutable grin, hardly able to contain himself.
“What are you looking so mischievous about? Did Voc Rehab double my funding?”
“Better than that, much better. Today’s your lucky day, Cavanaugh. I just got a call from Pauline Haberley at the Care Home we’ve been crossing our fingers for.”
“Don’t tease me, Griff.”
“You’d better start packing. One of her patients is being discharged next week.”
I dropped in the chair hearing news I’d begun to think would never come. “Wow.” The idea of never again seeing Dr. Pallone came to me like a kick to the stomach. It had been such a long wait that I hadn’t thought what it would actually feel like leaving any of them—Griff, Maggie, Raoul, Archie, Angela.
“You’ll like this place. Only three other girls. It’s close to the beach and your new psychiatrist, whose office happens to be in the same building as Voc Rehab.” Griff leaned back and crossed his feet on the desk. “Not so easy cutting the ties a year later, huh? It was never meant to take this long. I know you’ve gotten comfortable here.”
“To my great surprise. Just once I wish I could leave a place when I want to leave.”
“You’re only batting sixty percent finding a good home, Cavanaugh. You came to us from a crazy home and I think we agree this is your second. Third time’s a charm. This is going to give you the chance to plan your future. That’s a great thing, you know. You actually get to choose where you go from here. You have no idea how rare that is. Dr. P and I both recognized a rare opportunity to turn someone’s life in the right direction, someone who could follow through and make it happen.”
“I know. And I’m more grateful than I can tell you. It’s just…after all this time it seems so sudden. There’s no time to prepare myself.”
“You’re prepared. Believe me, once you’re gone you won’t look back. You’ll be so busy with a new home, a new doc, new people…freedom…that you’ll
forget you ever knew us.”
I gave him a crooked smile. “Not likely Griff, but nice try. Anyway, you always said I needed short and long term goals. It’s hard to tell if moving from a locked unit to a state home qualifies as a short one or a long one since it took a whole year. At this rate I’ll be sixty before I have my master’s degree. By the time I write my first novel it will have to be translated into Braille.”
He wadded a piece of paper and tossed it at me.
I thought back to the first time I met Griff, thinking him disorganized, wondering how he could possibly accomplish anything. There was so much I wanted to say to him beyond the banter, so much he’d done for me without even knowing.
Griff had provided me with what Dr. Pallone referred to as ‘an emotionally corrective experience’—a healing relationship with a man. I had asked her how I would ever trust if I had gotten it wrong with a parent, a priest, a therapist, a teacher. How could I have known a year ago that the one man who hadn’t asked me to trust him would turn out to be the one I could.
I tossed the wadded ball of paper back at Griff. “Who will I have to light a fire under me if you’re not around?”
He caught it and laughed. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll come back here some day and take over for Maggie.”
*
Word of my placement spread through the ward like a California wildfire. Maggie, Raoul and the rest of the staff were excited for me. My fellow patients were both happy and envious. Archie was the one person I wanted to hear it from me instead of through the grapevine.
I didn’t see him behind me walking to the cafeteria the next morning. In a flash he was zooming toward me. I managed to find a wall just as Archie dove for my shoes. The psych tech caught up. I asked for a moment.
“Reese! Pretty Reese! Don’t go away! Don’t go away!”
“Archie, get up. C’mon, I can’t talk to you when you’re on my feet.”
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