II
Most of the anger John expressed was about my leaving him, breaking up the home he’d built, and destroying his life. I sat across from him and listened as he yelled at me, the doctor encouraging him to express more anger the moment he paused. There was no talk at all, just explosion after explosion of anger. One of the doctor’s helpers sat between us to protect me in case John became physically violent.
After most sessions, I went to the upstairs conference room with Dr. Turcotte to review what had happened and to bolster my shaky, unstable self. An hour of John’s anger left me feeling like one of those stuffed dolls with the rounded bases that carnivalgoers throw balls at and topple again and again.
It was in the same conference room many weeks later that I met with Dr. Turcotte, John’s father, Jack, and his only brother, Bob. Dr. Turcotte had called Jack to tell him that he’d committed John to the state mental hospital, and Jack and Bob had flown up from Atlanta. We sat around the table while the doctor explained what he was doing for treatment besides keeping him confined in the hospital until he recovered from his psychotic episode. John’s drinking had gotten completely out of control, and he’d been threatening suicide. He’d smashed every piece of glass he could get his hands on—drinking glasses shattered on the bathroom floor, the water pitcher hurled against the tile wall above the tub. He’d broken Coke bottles into chunky shards in the tub. And intending to hit me, John had slammed his fist into a car’s fender. Psychotic, he was also trying to call people in the office of Georgia’s governor to help him get out of the country and to someplace in Africa. It was at that point that the doctor had him committed to Northampton State Hospital. Until his brief interlude there, John had spent most of the summer in the motel, while his colleagues in the philosophy department were taking turns teaching his classes.
“We’re defusing a bomb,” Dr. Turcotte explained to Jack and Bob.
Jack lit a cigarette and flipped the match into the ashtray.
“You see, Margaret comes here every day and under my supervision John gets his anger out at her by degrees. It wouldn’t be safe for her to just leave him. He’d most likely track her down and kill her.”
Jack leaned back in his chair and exhaled a cloud of smoke that hovered above the table around which the four of us sat. “Hell yeah,” he agreed. “If Carolyn left me I’d find her and kill her too.”
Dr. Turcotte accepted Jack’s statement without comment. “Well, we’re trying to defuse this bomb. John is homicidal right now, and we want to help him get rid of that anger. The flip side of homicide is suicide.”
Jack crushed his cigarette, shook another from the pack. “I don’t understand why you don’t just take the liquor away from him,” he said.
“Alcohol is a tranquilizer to John right now,” Dr. Turcotte said. “We have to work with him on his other problems before dealing with his drinking. He’s much too upset to deal with the drinking yet. Besides, he’d just go and buy more liquor.”
“Yeah,” Jack said, “I see.” But his tone was doubtful. As if John could or would do what Jack had done with the help of an expensive rehabilitation center and a wife who wasn’t about to leave him no matter what.
Jack had been sober for almost a year. Sitting across from me at the round table in the motel’s conference room, Jack smiled with a self-satisfied expression. “Hell,” he said in a tone of proud disbelief, his Southern drawl thicker than ever, each syllable pronounced slowly, savored. “Daddy died, Margaret left John, and John went crazy all in the same month, and I’m still sober.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette and exhaled. “I must be cured.”
III
John was in the hospital only a few days before Dr. Turcotte had him released to go back to the motel until he felt it was safe to let him go home to Shutesbury. Over the weeks I’d grown more and more manic under the pressure of John’s anger. My mind was racing; thoughts tripped over one another, becoming entangled and confusing me so that my brain raced even faster. I was so emotionally exhausted that I could barely function. Instead of getting away from John, I felt myself moving closer to him in a union of anger and resentment. “Do you love your husband?” Dr. Turcotte had asked. Someplace in the complex of emotions, I was certain that I loved John. But more than love, now what I felt was anger.
Without discussing it with me, Ruth had called Mother, who’d immediately flown up from Georgia. Having Mother with me was a mixed blessing. I was in desperate need of help, especially with taking care of Chris, but Mother’s emotional neediness was a constant drain on me. And the relationship that we’d created was one constructed with careful censorship. Clothed in Southern manners and restraint, it was like a large and brittle clay container covered with cracks. Filled to the brim with all our unspoken feelings, it was bound to break apart.
I was worn down. Not only had I been meeting with the doctor and John most days, I was also taking three courses at the university to become certified as a public school art teacher. I’d taken an apartment on Hallock Street in Amherst and rode my bicycle to classes, awkwardly balancing my paint box and canvas in the baskets on the back. John Elder, who must have been around fourteen at this time, had a bicycle, too, and rode it to Amherst, where he had a bedroom in the apartment. But he often preferred to stay with his father in the Shutesbury house, where he had his workroom and equipment in the basement, and his room filled with other projects. I was dividing the care of Chris with Mother, taking him to the public swimming pool or to the playground when I was not in meetings or classes. I was growing more and more manic, my unrelenting thoughts racing faster and faster, exhausting my brain and body.
For months I’d been dealing with John’s anger in the Town House Motor Lodge. And living with Mother over the previous several weeks had become increasingly stressful as well. Memories of my last night in my apartment before being committed to Northampton State Hospital are still cuttingly clear.
I came home in the late afternoon to find Mercer—who’d lived with Mother in Cairo since experiencing a psychotic episode while stationed off the Vietnam coast—sitting in my living room. He’d stopped taking his antipsychotic medication and had driven up from Georgia. Being separated from Mother for so long had become unbearable to him. I also came home to Mother’s firm announcement that I had to stay in that evening, that I’d been going at too rapid a pace for my own good.
Never in my adult life had she overtly ordered me to do anything. Her control had been subtle, and was internalized when I was very young. Without having realized it, I’d lived much of my life to please her. I didn’t know what living my own life would mean. But at that overt command, something inside me snapped.
I picked out a change of clothes and brought them to the bathroom, announcing that I was going to take a bath in case I decided to go out later. Then I locked the door and ran the water into the tub. After my bath I went to the kitchen to fix something to eat. But Mother said that she had cooked supper, and would I please just sit and eat. I sat down and she set a plate in front of me. I looked down at the mountain of scrambled eggs before me and felt like gagging.
Then Mother handed me a tall glass of milk.
It was a handblown glass from Mexico, filled with tiny air bubbles. Because those glasses broke so easily, the one that Mother handed me was one of the few that remained. Whether it was the pressure of Mother’s hand around the glass or mine, I don’t know. Perhaps it was something else that caused the glass to break. But just as I took it from her, the bottom of it fell out in a perfect circle, shattering on the floor in the pool of spilt milk.
“I’ll clean it up,” Mother said, rushing to get a handful of paper towels. For a second I saw her frailty and insecurity and felt pity for her. Then I felt anger and helplessness. Then anger again. “No,” I said, tearing paper towels from the dispenser. “No, I’ll clean it up myself.”
I knelt on the kitchen floor and wiped up the milk and the glass fragments.
I was utterly exhausted. I was tire
d of Mother making my bed each morning after I left for school. I was tired of feeling guilty for not making the bed myself, and resentful because I didn’t want to be pressured into making it when a made bed was the least of my priorities. I was tired of her snapping off the lights after me everywhere I went. I was tired of her doing things for me constantly when I wanted to just be left alone. I was tired of feeling her enormous need, tired of feeling sorry for her.
I was tired of always feeling inadequate.
The longer she stayed, the more the apartment felt like it was Mother’s rather than mine. I was tired of having to leave early in the morning so I could sit in a coffee shop at the university and have half an hour alone before beginning classes.
I cleaned up the milk and glass. Mother and I ate silently. I kept thinking of how frantic she’d looked when the glass broke, and I felt guilty as I was filling myself with the eggs I didn’t want. Forkful after forkful of eggs, just as I’d eaten to please Mother when I was a child.
After supper I got up. “I’m going to take a nap now,” I said, walking to my bedroom.
Mother pushed herself hurriedly back from the table and got up. “I want to take the phone from your room. I don’t want you to be woken by a phone call.”
“I need the phone,” I responded stubbornly. “I’m expecting a call.” Then I closed my door and locked it.
Mother beat on the door for a while, demanding to be let in. Then she stopped. I lay on my bed, smoking a cigarette, too upset to sleep.
In a little while Paula called, as I’d expected her to. Talking, I felt a rush of grief. Over the summer she’d grown closer to Mother as she’d grown more distant from me. And she’d recently said to me: “I don’t know how to relate to you anymore. You’ve become like a therapist to me and I don’t know what to do.”
I crushed my empty cigarette pack and put it in the ashtray by my bed, got up, and unlocked the door. I handed Mother the phone, saying that it was Paula and that I was going out for cigarettes. Then I rushed out before she could stop me.
I walked the couple of blocks to the Pizza Tower restaurant across Pleasant Street. I had exactly enough money for a pack of cigarettes and a Diet Coke, which I sat in the restaurant drinking while I smoked.
Before I’d finished my Diet Coke, Mercer came to my table and sat down.
“Please come home, Sister,” he said in his thick Southern drawl. “Mama wants you to come home.”
“I can’t. Don’t you remember the things you wrote me when you were having your breakdown, Mercer? Don’t you remember how she hurt you?”
He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray and lit another. “I was crazy then, Sister. Mama didn’t mean any harm. She didn’t know any better. Please come home.” He took a long drag from his cigarette, then exhaled. A cloud of smoke swirled between us.
“I can’t, Mercer.”
He got up then, turned, and walked away, his shoulders rounded in a permanent slump of defeat, smoke trailing around and behind him.
What could I do?
“I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar wailed from the jukebox.
Where could I go?
In a few minutes Mother came into the restaurant, walked back to my table, and stood looking down at me. She spoke in a firm, authoritative voice: “Come home, Margaret.”
“I can’t.”
Her body trembled with rage, and her neck, engorged with blood, looked as if it had swollen to twice its normal size. But her voice was still controlled, measured, and deathly calm. In the dimly lit restaurant, I looked up at her.
“Come home and take care of your son.”
I’d never heard her voice sound so cold.
Now “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” blasted from the jukebox.
There was no way I could care for my son. I thought of Dee and Tom, and how many times the boys had played together while Dee and I visited with each other.
“Mother,” I said, “please just call Dee to take Chris. She’ll do that for me.”
My voice was as controlled as Mother’s. Anger was battling with guilt. But I couldn’t go home.
Without saying another word, Mother turned away from me and left the restaurant.
I’d spent my last dollar on cigarettes. I was too upset to go to friends who lived in town. And I couldn’t go home. Would Mother send someone to look for me? Yes, she probably would. I had to get away from her. I needed to be alone. I needed to slow my racing thoughts. I desperately needed to rest.
Where could I go?
I left the restaurant and walked down Pleasant Street toward the university. Where can I go? Where can I go? The question repeated itself in my mind faster and faster, and I walked faster and faster as if to keep up with my thoughts. Suddenly I tripped on a sandal and nearly fell. It was then that I realized that I’d rubbed blisters on the soles of both feet. Stopping, I leaned against the side of a tree and unbuckled and removed the new, handcrafted sandals that Mother had bought for me, much too expensive for her poor budget, and much too large for me.
Too large. Of course they were too large. Then they weren’t sandals at all; they were a metaphor for my whole life and what Mother expected of me. Of course the sandals were too goddamn large! I flung one out into the darkness. “Damn you!” I flung the other in the opposite direction. “Damn you!” Two beautifully crafted sandals forever separated. “Damn you!” I cried out into the darkness.
Then I turned and walked back toward town.
After a while, I reached the gate to West Cemetery. I knew I would be safe from Mother in the cemetery at night. The night was starless and dark. I heard the low, long growl of a dog. Then the dog itself appeared, walking cautiously among the tombstones toward me. It was a large German shepherd. He paused and stood observing me. Walk calmly on up the hill, I told myself. Don’t give it any indication of fear. Then I thought of Saint Francis and his ability to communicate with animals, his kindness and compassion. His image had come to me so vividly when I was pregnant with Chris that I did an oil painting of him to celebrate the life of my unborn child. Now I imagined Saint Francis walking quietly beside me as I continued on up the hill.
Soon the dog turned and walked away.
I knew exactly where Emily Dickinson’s family plot lay enclosed by an old black iron fence. I couldn’t say now what thoughts were racing through my mind as I walked through West Cemetery that July night. As an adult I’d read little poetry. But as a girl, I’d read poetry almost daily and had especially loved the work of Emily Dickinson. After moving to our house in the Shutesbury woods, I bought a record of her poetry being read aloud. As I cleaned hand and paw prints off the sliding glass doors that enclosed the living/dining room on three sides, or—with an extension brush—raked cobwebs off the wood beam that ran along the apex of the cathedral ceiling, I listened to her words.
I never saw a moor,
I never saw the sea
This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me.
The Brain is wider than the Sky
You cannot fold a Flood—
And put it in a Drawer.
The more despair I felt in my daily life and marriage, the more I turned to Dickinson’s poetry as comfort and companion.
Pain has an Element of Blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was not.
I felt a Funeral in my Brain,
And Mourners to and fro …
And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down–
The Dickinson plot lay straight ahead. I opened the gate and went inside. To my right two tall cedars twisted their way toward the stars like the cedars in Van Gogh’s paintings. To my left stood the Dickinson family tombstones. I walked past the stones of Emily Dickinson’s grandparents and parents. I walked past the stone of her sister, Lavinia.
At Emily’s grave, I sat down. I could not hear one soun
d, only Emily’s words in my heart—
There is a pain—so utter—
It swallows substance up—
I stroked the grass growing over her grave—
Then covers the Abyss with Trance—
So Memory can step
Around—across—upon it—
A slight breeze rattled nearby branches.
As one within a Swoon—
Goes safely—where an open eye—
Would drop Him—Bone by Bone.
In the deep silence there, I lay down and sobbed into the grass and dry earth.
After a while, I got up and left the Dickinson plot, closing the gate behind me. I walked down the little dirt road to the other graveyard entrance, this one with a chain hung between the gateposts to keep cars out. The road went past the older, hilly section of the cemetery, with sandstone and slate tombstones planted centuries before: Mrs. Sarah, the wife of Dr. Ebenezer Dickinson, 1743; M. Ephraim Kellogg, 1777; Nehemiah Strong, 1772; Mr. Solomon Boltwood, 1762. Stones leaning in the earth.
I climbed over the chain between the gateposts. To be certain that I didn’t run into Mother out looking for me, I walked behind the stores on Pleasant Street and across the parking lot of the Mobil station, built where the house in which Emily Dickinson and her family lived from 1840 to 1855 once stood.
Before I had time to decide where to go, I saw Dr. Turcotte’s wife, Claire, parked in front of the gas station. It was as if she’d known exactly where I’d been and was waiting there for me all along.
The Long Journey Home Page 16