The Long Journey Home

by Margaret Robison

  On the tense ride to Northampton State Hospital, Dr. Turcotte’s words repeated themselves in my head. “Margaret, your anger is beautiful. Repeat after me: ‘Margaret, your anger is beautiful,’ Words he’d instructed John to repeat over and over, year after year. Words repeated like the click of the trigger of John’s gun night after night.

  Then the words in my mind changed: “Repeat after me: I’ll always love you. Repeat after me: I’ll always love you.” Words from Gordon Jenkins’s Manhattan Tower, a record I’d cherished as a teenager dreaming of being an artist in Greenwich Village. “Repeat after me: I’ll always love you,” I heard in my mind, and I knew it was true that I would always love John. Not in the ways he wanted me to love him, just as he didn’t love me in the ways I wanted to be loved. But I knew that despite his faults and mine, despite the anger and the pain, I would always love John even if I never saw him again.

  When we arrived at the hospital an orderly got a wheelchair because I refused to walk. Riding, I noticed blood on my right foot. I was barefooted, and the side of my foot was bleeding where it had been cut as I’d been dragged from my apartment and across the street to the police car.

  I sat mesmerized by the long red slash as June checked me in to the hospital. Then she was gone and I was alone in that nightmare. The feeling of the ward was familiar—the stench of human bodies, pine oil, stale cigarette smoke. Then, for a flash, it wasn’t a ward at all. It was an underground cage where hundreds and hundreds of us had been crammed into that one small space. Hitler wasn’t dead at all but had escaped and was concealed someplace in South America from which he ruled this inferno.

  Then it was the hospital again and an enraged woman rushed toward me. She grabbed me in her strong hands, shouting words I couldn’t understand while she began ripping my clothes off. I yelled for help. Yelled again. Finally, two orderlies wrestled her from me. I went to my assigned bed and sat down, trembling with shock.

  How easy it had been for Dr. Turcotte to simply call and have me committed. How easy to avoid facing me. I was filled with fury. I was no longer his patient. I didn’t know how I would get away, but I knew I had to. My life and sanity depended on it.

  The next morning Helen came with a box of chocolates and a change of clothes. I told her that I wouldn’t tolerate being in that nightmare of a hospital again. I asked her to tell Dr. Turcotte I wanted out now. I sat on the bed cramming my mouth with chocolates, not bothering to say goodbye as she left.

  In the afternoon Dr. Turcotte came with Chris, Amy, and Helen. I was released from the hospital and walked with the group to my car. Helen must have driven it to the office to pick up the doctor and Chris and Amy. Now she sat in the front seat with the doctor, while I sat in the back with the others. I didn’t even ask where we were going. I was just relieved to be out of the hospital. I was also in shock. Trees and cars rushed past us. We crossed the Connecticut border and kept going.

  Was it in Hartford that we stopped? I have a sense of a city in my memory. Dr. Turcotte drove through a pair of tall gates and down a long drive. He was going to have me committed to a Connecticut hospital! I followed him into the hospital without protest. Chris, Helen, and Amy walked with us.

  Dr. Turcotte talked briefly to the admitting psychiatrist, who asked me to come with him into an examination room. I sat on the edge of an exam table while he took my blood pressure, tested my reflexes, shone a light into my eyes, and looked closely into each. Then he pulled up a chair and asked me the predictable questions. Yes, I knew what day it was. Yes, I knew who was president of the United States. Then briefly we engaged in ordinary conversation. Afterward, he shook my hand and accompanied me to the waiting room, where he told Dr. Turcotte that he could see no reason to admit me.

  We spent the night in a Connecticut motel. Helen, Amy, and I shared a room. I was quiet. My voice was slipping away from me like it had done after Newport and so many times when I was living with John, upset and afraid. Sometimes then I’d only been able to speak in a whisper for six weeks or more.

  Was this happening again?

  I took a hot bath while Helen sat on the closed toilet seat and talked with me. The conversation dissolved in the fog of steam from my bath and an emotional exhaustion that dulled my senses. Helen gave me a glass of water and asked me to please take some pills Dr. Turcotte had given her for me. Without arguing I took them.

  Then I got out of the tub, put on my pajamas, went to bed, and slept a drugged and dreamless sleep.

  III

  The next morning we drove back to Northampton and parked in front of the building where the doctor had his office. He and Helen got out of the car. Amy got out of the backseat and, taking the driver’s seat, drove to the large old rambling house that served as home to Dr. Turcotte and his wife and children, along with various patients who sometimes stayed there while he was treating them. Sometimes Chris stayed there also. That past October, John and I had signed papers making Dr. Turcotte Chris’s legal guardian in order to make it possible for him to attend school in Northampton, rather than in Amherst, where he felt suicidal. We didn’t expect him to attend school often in Northampton, but we were hoping he would be able to drop out of school when he reached the legal age of sixteen. The legal arrangement, though, did not affect the frequency of his stays with the Turcottes. He came and went as he pleased.

  Amy parked the car, put the key in her pocket, and got out along with Chris. They expected me to come with them into the house. I got out and followed slowly while fumbling in my purse for my car keys. Finding them, I turned quickly, walked back to the car, and slid under the steering wheel. I called out calmly, “I’m just going to the art-supply shop to get a tube of paint.” I quickly started the car and drove off. Before either could say anything, I was on my way. But not to Pierce’s paint shop.

  I headed to Route 9, breathing more easily as the miles accumulated between Dr. Turcotte and me. At the Hadley Howard Johnson’s, I pulled up to the outdoor public phone. I got out of the car, put a dime in the slot, and dialed Suzanne’s number.

  “Margaret?”

  My voice was hoarse and weak. I could hardly speak above a whisper. “Yes, it’s me, Suzanne.”

  “Oh God. Just yesterday I’d finally given up on ever seeing you again.”

  I asked Suzanne to meet me at the College Inn in South Hadley. That was the most unlikely place I could think of that anyone might look for me. She heard the urgency in my voice and promised to meet me.

  I hung up the phone and headed for South Hadley. I had no idea what I would do, but I had to find a way to escape Dr. Turcotte for good, and I needed Suzanne’s help and support. I parked in front of the drugstore, now long since burned down just as the College Inn was burned down. I walked through the stone-covered patio with its umbrella-protected tables and into the inn, where I took a seat in the small sitting room.

  Now that I’d stopped rushing, I realized how drugged I still felt from the medication Helen had given me the night before. I’d noticed a slur in my whisper of a voice. I needed to get the drugs out of my system. I ordered an English muffin and two glasses of water.

  I drained one glass and had hardly begun to eat when Suzanne appeared. All the old familiar feelings rushed back when I stood to embrace her. How hard we’d both tried to turn our backs and walk away from the problematical and painful love between us. But no matter what different directions we’d taken in our efforts to terminate our relationship, we always ended up right back where we started—in each other’s arms.

  Suzanne ordered a cup of coffee from the waitress who’d rushed over when she saw Suzanne joining me at the table. We were the only customers in the small room. Suzanne poured cream into the cup of coffee the waitress set before her.

  Looking at her familiar hand performing its familiar motions, I felt like crying. Then my story began to spill from my mouth, my voice grown stronger, words rushing out like water bursting through a dam.

  Suzanne wanted to take me to a therapist friend
of hers in Northampton. I would follow her car in mine. Together the three of us would talk about what to do to protect me from Dr. Turcotte.

  IV

  Suzanne’s friend welcomed us into her enormous old house. After we sat down in the living room, Suzanne began to tell her the story as she understood it. Overdrugged and uncomfortable, I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t sit still, and I really need water.”

  “Yes,” Suzanne’s friend agreed. “I think you should drink all the water you can and flush the medication out of your system. And bread. I think you should try to eat. You’ve really been overmedicated.”

  I followed her into her kitchen, where she gave me a tall glass of water and put a loaf of bread on the table.

  “Just help yourself. And I think the walking is good for you, too.”

  She joined Suzanne in the living room while I walked through kitchen, dining room, entrance hall, and living room over and over. The more I walked, drank, and peed, the more like myself I felt. I was finally able to sit down.

  Having seen Dr. Turcotte harass the patient he had been in love with, and knowing his tenacious grasp on people, I couldn’t imagine him accepting my termination of therapy. I could imagine him encouraging everyone in his group to pressure me constantly. Or worse, I could imagine him finding a way to have me committed to some psychiatric hospital forever.

  “You need police protection.”

  I don’t remember if Suzanne or her friend made the statement, but hearing it upset me even as I knew I had to accept the truth of it. My poem “Soap Opera” had already recognized it. Police protection.

  Suddenly everything felt surreal.

  We called several of my friends and my daughter-in-law, Mary, all of whom met Suzanne and me at the police station. After stating my reason for being there, the policeman who’d listened to me assigned my case to Detective Richard Andrews. He was a tall, big-built man with dark hair and strong features. A clerk brought him the account of my seizure and incarceration made out by the Amherst Police Department. He glanced over the papers, then laid them facedown on his desk. I told him about Dr. Turcotte’s trying to commit me to a Connecticut hospital.

  I told him about Newport.

  “Did he penetrate you?”

  “I don’t know. I kept passing out.”

  “Try to remember if he penetrated you in any way.”

  “I really can’t say that he did. I remember the struggling and the passing out. I remember regaining consciousness to find him on top of me again.”

  “And?” Detective Andrews asked.

  “I remember how deeply and painfully he dug his hands into my body. I didn’t understand what he was trying to do. I was so confused and frightened.”

  The phone on Detective Andrews’s desk rang.

  He listened intently. “I’ll be right down,” he said, and excused himself.

  Now that it had come to this, I felt relieved. And I had friends supporting me.

  Detective Andrews returned, pulled his desk chair closer to us, and sat down.

  “That call was from Judge Allen’s office. Turcotte sent a couple of his people over to take out papers to have you committed to the state hospital. We just stopped the papers from being processed.”

  According to Dr. Turcotte, the district attorney had been trying for years to find a way to put a stop to his practice. He’d said many times that the police were after him because of his independent, rebellious, unconventional nature. I’d heard that a judge had felt that justice hadn’t been served in a case involving Dr. Turcotte and an ex-patient, and there were several area therapists who claimed that he had damaged their patients. I wasn’t at all surprised that the police welcomed me with open arms. Maybe I was their answer.

  But I couldn’t remember if he’d actually penetrated me. Would penetration have been that much worse for me than the endless hours of wrestling, fighting, drugs, fear, and confusion? What he’d done to me had nearly destroyed me, but what the police needed was a technical rape charge.

  “We have to have a charge against him in order to have the legal power to protect you.”

  Then a friend spoke up. “Well, I know that according to John Robison, he has a record of insurance covering recorded visits when he was on vacation.”

  I could see Detective Andrews’s brain go into first gear. Behind his brown eyes I could see all his training and experience coming together in an attempt to devise a plan to finally put Dr. Turcotte in his place. Could I give him names of other patients? I told him the names of those patients I knew. Could I give him dates of office visits that he’d reported when I’d not really had appointments?

  “But he saw me many more times than recorded on any insurance form.” Then thinking of Newport, I added angrily: “He saw me many more times than I wish he had.”

  “It’s better that you don’t take the stand anyway. Everything could deteriorate into a circus of a sanity trial between the two of you. He’s damn clever with his Bible clutched against his damaged heart. We’ll begin the investigation of possible insurance fraud. In the meantime, let me know about any communication you have with anyone connected to him.” Then he added, as if an afterthought, “I think it would be a good idea for you to be examined by a psychiatrist now so we could have that on the record in case Turcotte tries anything.” He suggested a conventional psychiatrist respected in the community. When I agreed, he called the doctor and made an appointment.

  The meeting was over. I drove to South Hadley, where I stayed with Mary and John Elder in their home.

  The next day Suzanne went with me to the psychiatrist. We sat together on chairs across from his desk. He began the familiar list of questions. I answered thoughtfully, politely. I felt condescended to but held my tongue. At last he looked me in the eyes.

  “Would you say that you believe someone is out to get you?”

  I returned his steady stare. “The police tell me that this is true,” I replied.

  He put his pen down.

  The interview was over.

  V

  We were sitting in the assistant district attorney’s office, and Detective Andrews was asking me questions about dates recorded for my visits to Dr. Turcotte. Was I in town on those dates? Did I go to the appointments as recorded? I responded as accurately as possible, given my difficulty remembering dates. I had no interest in having Dr. Turcotte charged with insurance fraud. I knew he had spent more time with patients than Blue Cross would ever reimburse him for. I just wanted to get away from him, and I saw no other way except by getting police protection.

  “You’re a threat to Turcotte,” the assistant district attorney said, repeating Detective Andrews’s concern. “He’d like to lock you away in some back ward forever.”

  “If the police should come to commit you to the state hospital,” Detective Andrews instructed me, “ask them to contact me through the highway patrol office. If they won’t do that, just go with them quietly.”

  I remembered being handcuffed, my body rigid against the police car. Was it true, as the Amherst police report stated, that I had tried to grab the pistol out of the officer’s holster? With handcuffs on? I only remember the brute force of the man, the coarseness of the fabric of his uniform, the strong smell of leather.

  “Remember,” Detective Andrews emphasized again, “just go with them quietly this time,” he said with a smile, a gentle tease. “We’ve already drawn up the papers for your release.”

  I’d heard from Dr. Turcotte about the priest who had fled after his accusations, and of how he believed his first patient was going to kill him. Someone had always seemed to be out to get him in one way or another. Now I was that someone, and I was not going to back down or flee. But I’d been afraid that he would succeed in getting me committed someplace for good. The assistant district attorney had confirmed my fears, and for that I was grateful.

  The last time I’d driven Dr. Turcotte home from a meeting in Amherst, I’d taken the back way to Northampton, going past the o
ld Hadley cemetery across from a cornfield, and through the flat farmland stretching to the Connecticut River. The fields with row after row of green, a scene I loved, gave me no comfort, no relief, no cushioning from his words.

  His voice was intense. He’d seen the movie Magic, a thriller about a ventriloquist who murdered people with his dummy. “After seeing that movie I realized I have a killer running around loose inside of me,” he said excitedly. “If people knew what goes on in me, they would be very afraid.”

  I thought of those words when Detective Andrews handed me Dr. Turcotte’s latest newsletter. For years he’d been writing newsletters on whatever topic he was focused on at the time—world peace, the role of fathers in the family, the importance of expressing anger—and reporting on his latest projects, ideas, and experiences. He sent his newsletters to patients, priests, public officials, and friends.

  Detective Andrews pointed out an article that Dr. Turcotte had written about me and my family. In it, he wrote that I was suicidal and would be found dead by the side of the road by my own hand. I’ll not fulfill his prophecy any more than Mary had burned down her house, killing herself and the children, or the priest had burned the parish house as he’d predicted, I thought.

  VI

  I knew I could never go back to the Dickinson house. My friend and writing student Jean Sanders rented a truck for me and got my things from the apartment. She stored them in the barn on the farm that she and her partner, Nancy Bullard, owned. Nancy found me a small apartment in Belchertown and, with the help of friends, I moved into it immediately.

  My new life had begun.

  VII

  After we met with the assistant district attorney, Detective Andrews walked with me to my car. He unbuttoned the jacket of his suit so that the gun in the holster strapped to his chest was clearly visible—a message to any of the Turcotte group we might meet. As we stepped down from the curb he took my elbow and escorted me across the street to my car.