How critical I’d been of Paula! I felt ashamed of myself. With Paula frankly stating her fear that she couldn’t live if anything sexual were to happen between us, a veil had lifted in my own mind. Of course, I loved women. I’d loved girls and women all of my life. I began listing them, beginning with childhood and adolescent playmates, and ending with Paula with her dark and frightened eyes.
II
I hardly slept the night after I returned from our weekend. Knowing clearly that I could make love with a woman had changed my entire understanding of who I was. Finally, I had realized that sex was about expressing love and had nothing to do with gender. It was such a large realization about myself that I knew I had to tell John. It felt dishonest not to.
But I was afraid. For a long time in the middle of the night, I stood at the bathroom window, feeling my fear and looking at the pines and hemlocks, a sliver of moon visible through a clearing in the woods. The worst thing I’d imagined about myself turned out to be true. But instead of the shame I’d expected, what I felt, along with fear of facing John, was relief.
I told John after the boys left the house. He said nothing but was grim and silent on the drive to Northampton to see Dr. Turcotte. He was in the office a long time before I was invited in. Dr. Turcotte had calmed and reassured John by telling him that I had not had sex with a woman, that I’d only told him about feelings, and that people have all sorts of feelings. In essence, what I’d told John was without importance. I was relieved to see John calm, though for Dr. Turcotte to dismiss my self-discovery so easily upset me. But I was too pressured to confront him. I had to keep my focus on my oral examination. Passing it was the last requirement before receiving my MFA.
III
Toward the end of my preparation for my orals, John’s behavior distressed me so much that I couldn’t focus on my work. Again and again he came into my study and demanded that I stop studying and have sex with him. When I did as he demanded, he would have sex repeatedly until I refused him. Then he would insist that I didn’t love him and begin the nonsensical talk that I thought he had stopped. I finally went to a motel to study, while Chris swam in the pool or watched television.
When the day of the examination arrived, Paula and I discussed what I should wear to face the male professors. Together we decided on my professorial tweed jacket, a brown turtleneck sweater, and brown wool pants. I also wore a pale shade of lipstick, mascara, eyeliner, a handcrafted silver bracelet, and silver earrings. I felt tired but confident as I sat down at the table with the men with whom I’d studied for three years. It felt more like a necessary ritual than an examination. By now they had an idea of what I knew. A few minutes into the process, I relaxed and enjoyed the dialogue.
My orals over, degree assured, and a first book of poetry completed and published, I met Paula at the Lord Jeffery Inn for a drink. I’d done what I’d set out to do. After the waiter brought our drinks, we clinked our glasses together in a toast and drank, late-afternoon sunlight flashing on their rims.
The moment stands out in my mind like a jewel.
IV
In bed one night, I told John that I needed him to acknowledge his aggressive behavior when I was preparing for my orals. I needed him to claim all his violent and mentally and emotionally hurtful behavior to me. It wasn’t a matter of blame, I said. It was a matter of my needing him to validate my experiences so I wouldn’t go through any more of my life feeling so alone. Especially, I needed him to acknowledge the years in Philadelphia that had been so painful.
His body stiffened as he stared at the ceiling.
“Driving home this afternoon,” he said in his strange, faraway voice, “I saw a large golden hexagon floating over the O’Rourke house.”
“Please don’t do this to me again, John. I’m desperate for honesty.” I felt frantic. “Please, John. I’m not blaming you. I just need you to own up to your behavior. Then we can go on with our lives. You have no idea how lonely it is for me when you deny what you’ve done.”
“I would never have done those awful things to you, Margaret.” His voice was flat, and he continued staring at the ceiling.
“But you did do them, John, and I really need you to just validate my experience. I’ll never even mention them again. I swear it!”
“I told you, Margaret, I never did those things. He did them, and he lives in my body.” His voice was sinister and frightening.
I gave up and turned over in the bed. All night I lay awake, images rushing through my mind like images on TV that advertise the news—one rapid clip after another of murder victims, multiple births, trials, tornadoes, famines, plane crashes, missile attacks, bombed buildings. I had no control over the images—the memory of John throwing me across the living room, ripping my blouse as he yelled at me, then storming out of the apartment. His phone call begging me to forgive him, please forgive him. John throwing my easel down the basement stairs, the painting on it smeared beyond repair. John slapping me hard across the face and accusing me of having a lover. His affair, his denial of it, and finally his admission of it. John saying that now that he had told me about the affair, he would never talk about it again, nor would he allow me to talk about it with him. Carolyn trying to reassure me that John truly loved me as she dismantled his shotgun to take it home to Georgia with her. The razor blades and the Statue of Liberty. Then the train back to Philadelphia, the sound of the wheels, their rhythm and click and how they seemed to echo the words “A safe way out, a safe way out, a safe way out. Stay with him. Stay with him until you find a safe way out.”
A safe way out.
I bowed my head and prayed.
My nerves were raw and ragged, and my heart was racing by the time morning came. I had finally reached my breaking point. I had no energy to go on. I was going to leave John.
V
The next morning I called Paula, who told me that she had Valium on hand.
I could see the fear and rage in John’s eyes as he realized that I might finally be leaving him forever. He said he would drive me to Paula’s new house in Pelham. “You’re too upset to drive,” he said, heading out of the house to the car.
I called Chris to come with us. He came running, excited that he would get to play with Ted.
By the time I picked up my purse, opened the door, and walked down the steps, I saw that Chris was in the front seat next to his father. Before I could get in, John backed out of the blind driveway at a suicidal speed. Chris began to scream. It was the most piercing scream I’d ever heard in my life. Hearing his scream in the deepest place in my heart, I began to scream that same piercing scream, the two of us connected by that terror-filled sound as the car sped down the road.
Then Chris’s screaming stopped abruptly. There was only the sound of the speeding car fading in the distance. I raced down the driveway and toward Chris’s scream. There he was—Chris running toward me as I was running toward him. Then he was in my arms, sobbing and shaking. “My father said he was going to kill what you loved most,” he sputtered. “He said he was going to kill me. I had to jump from the car.”
There was not even time to comfort him. What if John were to turn the car around and come after both of us? I took Chris’s hand and together we ran down a path in the woods. We came to a large fallen tree, moss-covered, decaying in a field of ferns. We lay down on the moist earth behind it, out of sight of the road, both our hearts racing.
We lay there for a long time before I decided that John wasn’t coming back. We ran to the house and got into the station wagon. Driving in the opposite direction from John, I took the road to the center of Shutesbury. I tried to think clearly. Where to go? I drove to Greenfield. I felt desperate and my eyes stung. I couldn’t believe John would actually kill Chris, but I’d seen the way he drove out of the driveway, and before that, the rage and fear on his face. Chris looked so vulnerable. Something in his spirit seemed crushed.
Our world was falling to pieces.
I parked the car.
; “Let’s calm down,” I said, speaking to myself as well as to Chris as we got out. “Let’s go window-shopping.”
No. That didn’t feel adequate.
“Let’s look for a new ring for you. A special, protective ring.”
Chris’s eyes brightened. Ever since he was five or so and in Mexico with all its silver rings, he’d loved rings. “Yeah! A ring. I’d love a special ring.”
We looked in store after store before Chris found the right one. It cost more than I could easily afford, but I had to buy something beautiful for him. It was a large tiger’s-eye set in silver.
“This is a very special ring,” I said, making a great show of the purchase. “A very special ring for a very special boy.”
VI
There are occasions when trauma has torn my memory apart, leaving fragments of images, minefields scattered throughout my consciousness. What happened after Chris’s terror-stricken screaming was one of those times. After buying the ring, I took him with me to Paula’s.
I remember sitting at Paula’s kitchen table, talking about Emily Dickinson’s poetry. During my most painful times, I always turned to Emily Dickinson.
Much Madness is divinest Sense—
To a discerning eye—.
I measure every Grief I meet
with narrow, probing Eyes
I wonder if It weighs like Mine—
Or has an Easier size.
The next thing I remember is sitting on the edge of the motel bed with Ethel threatening to plop her heavy body on top of me and force some antipsychotic medication down my throat if I wouldn’t cooperate and take it. The doctor sat in the chair opposite me, watching.
“You’re going to take this medication,” Ethel said in a hard, stubborn voice.
I took the pills followed by a glass of water.
Later Father Gray came in and reported that John was holding his own in intensive care, but they still didn’t know what he’d taken to bring about the bleeding in his stomach. John in the ICU? Did I know that? Who’d told me? When? Well, I’d done my best. I really had, no matter how inadequate my best might have been. After all the years of therapy, the fighting and talking, after all the negotiating, maybe John could live without me. But whether or not he could, I couldn’t live with him again.
I tried to block Chris’s screaming from my mind.
Dr. Turcotte and Father Gray went outside. Ethel got up and sat in the doctor’s chair. Overcome with a desperate need for sleep, I took my shoes off and crawled under the covers. I lost consciousness almost immediately.
I must have slept for hours.
When I awoke, several people were in the room talking. Without opening my eyes, I recognized Jim’s voice. Then Ellie, a young student at the university, June, Jim, and a new patient whose name I couldn’t recall. Eyes closed, I listened with fascination. Supposedly they were talking about me—sometimes agreeing, sometimes arguing—about my condition and how they could help me through my crisis. But in the context of focusing on me, it was clear to me that they were in fact working on their relationships with themselves and one another.
In my mind I saw a great wheel of clay, hands reaching out to partially formed faces and bodies all around the wheel, each individual shaping the one in front of her or him, molding fingers and thumbs, noses and mouths, and eyes that could take in the whole night sky with its galaxies filling the domes of their magnificent emerging heads. The Great Wheel of Creation at work in this ordinary motel, I thought, and felt humility at the earnestness of that group of young people focusing on me while becoming themselves.
Then I lost consciousness again.
It was dark when I woke up. I opened my eyes. Suzanne was sitting on top of the dresser at the foot of my bed.
I shut my eyes again. I felt exposed and defenseless. “How did you find me here?” I asked, puzzled.
“I was worried when I didn’t hear from you and got no answer when I tried to phone you. I called the house, and John Elder answered and he said you were here. He said it would be okay for me to come to see you.”
Then I realized Dee was sitting in a chair across the room.
“Hi, Dee.”
“Hi, Margaret. How do you feel?”
“Drugged. Drugged and hungry.”
I got up and went to the bathroom. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and ran my fingers through my hair. Then I came out of the bathroom, got a cigarette from the pack on the bedside table, lit it, and sat staring at patterns in the smoke. I called my attention back to Dee and Suzanne.
“Let’s go to Howard Johnson’s and get something to eat,” I said.
Suzanne jumped up from the dresser. “Dr. Turcotte told me that you weren’t to go anywhere.”
“I’m certain he didn’t mean I wasn’t to go out to eat,” I said impatiently, walking toward the door.
Suzanne stood in front of the door, her feet spread apart, her hands on her hips. The two of us faced each other, our eyes locked in a defiant glare. It took every ounce of self-discipline I could muster to refrain from forcibly pushing her aside. She stood, stubborn, and solid as stone. She wasn’t about to relent without a physical confrontation.
I took several deep breaths. Then I sat down on the bed. “Suzanne,” I said through clenched teeth but in what I hoped was a calm voice, “would you please phone Dr. Turcotte and ask him if I can go to the restaurant to get dinner.”
She made the call. Then she put the receiver back in its cradle.
“He said it would be okay for you to go get some dinner.”
“I expected him to say that,” I responded sharply. I took my purse from the bedside table, put my cigarettes in it, and snapped it shut. “Let’s go.”
I don’t remember now if it was because of our confrontation at the door, or if it was something I said in the restaurant, but Suzanne rushed off to the bathroom in tears shortly after we got to the restaurant. I followed her, apologizing for whatever I’d done. We hugged each other and went back to the table. I felt more comfortable being with Dee. We’d known each other for years, and she’d supported me through the 1971 psychotic episode. Suzanne was new in my life and—in spite of our intense feelings for each other—I didn’t feel altogether comfortable with her.
After dinner we walked back toward my room. Dee stopped at her car and said she had to go home to her family. We hugged goodbye. Then Suzanne and I went into my room, which was still filled with stale cigarette smoke.
“I told Dr. Turcotte I’d spend the night if it’s okay with you,” she said. “He doesn’t want you left alone.”
“Thanks,” I responded, and we got undressed and ready for bed.
I got into my rumpled, unmade bed.
“Would you like me to rub your back?” Suzanne asked.
“That would be wonderful.”
I turned over on my stomach. She lay down beside me and began to massage my right shoulder. After a while, she got up and knelt over me, her strong hands massaging my back.
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
To this day I can’t remember which of us said that.
The next morning Dr. Turcotte said he was going to have me committed to the Brattleboro Retreat.
Jim, sitting in a chair beside the doctor, leaned toward him. “No,” he protested. “I’ll stay with her every minute. I’ll take speed to stay awake. I’ll do anything. Anything. I won’t let you put Margaret in a hospital again.”
Suzanne interrupted, saying that she wanted to take me home with her. Dr. Turcotte said he thought that would be a good idea. He would come to Suzanne’s to work with me.
“Here,” Suzanne said to me. “I’ll help you gather your things together.”
In the meantime, John had passed his crisis. Three times in the ICU for taking overdoses of one thing or another, and he’s still here, I thought. Well, he will live after all, but never again with me.
VII
I’d just gotten out of the car after sitting and talking with John.
Suzanne stood at her door, watching me walk toward her. John got out of the car and began to yell. “The cars are mine!” he yelled. “The house is mine! The land is mine! The furniture is mine!”
When I reached the door and turned around, I saw that his face was red and his hands were trembling.
“What’s Margaret’s, John?” Suzanne shouted angrily.
I was stunned by her question. I hadn’t thought of cars, house, or furniture. I hadn’t thought of the land with its thick woods and stream.
“What’s Margaret’s, John?”
The words thundered through me. Then my hands were trembling.
A question emerged from the core of my being. It was one of the most important questions I’d ever asked myself, and it reverberated through me until I was filled with a great and sober calm. Is the story of my life mine?
Ever since I was a girl I’d felt a strong need to tell the story of my life. When I was a freshman in college I wrote a short autobiography for my English class, for which I received an A. But when I went home to Cairo I destroyed it because I didn’t want Mother to read what I’d written.
After I was married and living in Philadelphia in the late 1950s, I told bits and pieces of my stories to friends. In the early 1970s—after my first psychotic episode—I found relief by telling stories about my Georgia family. But under the telling, under all the separate stories, was the question What is the story of my life? Finding the answer had seemed crucial. Certainly the story of my life wasn’t just the collection of the stories I’d written and told over the years.
The stories were just that—stories. They were attempts to make sense of my life as I examined it—one thing happened as a result of another thing that happened before it, and so on. What I had really been looking for was the answer to the question Who am I?
The Long Journey Home Page 22