Some Bright Morning, I'll Fly Away

by Alice Anderson

  Every pink flamingo looked at me with its one black beady eye to see what I might do.

  And then, Dr. Colette V. Colette and I broke out laughing.

  “Dissociative identity disorder!”

  “I know!”

  “She diagnosed you from a poem!”

  “A single poem!”

  “She got dissociating confused with a whole diagnosis!”

  “Amateur hour!”

  “Hack!”

  “Loser!”

  “Buford’s babe!”

  We were laughing so hard that Dr. Colette had to ask me to pass her one of the client tissues from my side of the desk. I had never been so relieved in my life. I took a deep breath and a swig of water from my water bottle, and Dr. Colette said, “But anyway, I do have to ask you about the thing.”

  “The thing?”

  “The father thing.”

  “Oh.”

  “That’s the other part of what brought us here, and honey, I’m almost embarrassed to bring it up. I read your book. I’ve been evaluating you all day long. I’ve already evaluated your husband. So, not to divulge anything, but I have learned a thing or two. However, I am obliged to address all the issues. And this is the remaining issue, so I am required to go there.”

  “I understand. Please. What would you like to know?”

  “Your father molested you.”

  “Yes, yes, he did.”

  “Did you, as your husband alleges, have a ‘lifelong consensual sexual relationship with your father’?”

  “Of course not. No.”

  “How long did your father abuse you?”

  “From when I was about three or four to about ten.”

  “How severe was it?”

  “I would say it was mildly severe. But how do you define these things? Any sexual abuse is extreme. Was I brutally raped? No. Was it subtle inappropriateness? No.”

  “But it seems that you, through writing this book, have dealt with it rather well.”

  “Yes, I think so. It has been a shock to have it dragged up this way, considering.”

  “Considering?”

  And that’s when I started to cry.

  “Because I didn’t speak to my papa for nine years. Nine entire years. After my book came out, I stopped speaking to him. Completely. No contact. I had my babies, I got married, I moved away. I moved on. I tried to heal. And then one night, one ordinary night, the phone rings in my kitchen in Mississippi, and it’s Mama, and she says, ‘Your daddy is dying.’ So I tell Liam. And Liam, who is really better about death than any doctor I know, says, ‘Don’t let him pass without trying to resolve it.’”

  “Wow, he said that?” asks Dr. Colette.

  “Yeah,” I say, “he did.”

  “So he encouraged it.”

  “Yes. So the next day, I pick up the phone. Just like that. After nine years, I pick up the phone, and I call my papa. And he answers the phone.”

  “And what happens then?”

  “And then he doesn’t die for four more years.”

  Dr. Colette laughs, and I laugh, too. Everyone laughs at that line. It’s a funny thing, how in a hurry I was to call before his death and how he stuck around four more years. But it’s what happened in those four years that is the important part.

  “So what happened in that first phone call?” Dr. Colette asks.

  “Right away in that first call, he admits to everything. He says he violated me and he’s sorry and he wishes he could take it all back and he knows he can’t and he’s read my book and he’s proud of me and I’ve made art of the pain he caused and he knows that while he hurt me I’m helping someone else and he knows he doesn’t deserve my forgiveness but he’s asking for it anyway.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know.”

  “That’s pretty—”

  “I know.”

  “And basically we had four years. Four years of making amends. And having fun, too. And he met my children. I mean, he was never alone with them, but he met them. And we became friends again. And I was able to forgive. Like, really forgive. And by the time he died, I wasn’t locked in that cage anymore, that cage of shame. It was never him keeping me in the cage anyway; it was me and my anger and my shame and my inability to trust, but who gets that? Your abuser willing to make amends? And all along, Liam encouraged it. Liam helped me. Liam was there for it. And the last time I talked to my papa, he called me and he asked me if I was coming, and I was pregnant with my fourth. Fourth baby. And I told him I didn’t think I could make it. Because Liam would never come to California with me. Hated my family. Didn’t care that my papa was dying enough to come and help me, really. So I told him it was okay and he could go. And he hung up the phone and he did just that. He had the hospice nurse help him with a bath, he sat in his chair, and he passed away.”

  I forgot for a moment that Dr. Colette was evaluating me. I was telling her my most sacred story: the story of how I freed myself. And the second part of the story is how the freedom story became a story that shattered me again. I continued.

  “The thing was, at that very same moment that Papa died, I miscarried that child. She died. And Liam never forgave me that. So maybe this is all his payback. But my papa? He left his body to the medical school that saved my life when I was in a scooter accident at nineteen. He told me he was going to do it before he passed. He told me: Babe, my body for your body. Amends. This was one of the most sacred things in my life that Liam has now dragged through so much misery mud. And for what? To make me out to be what? A whore? A pervert? What he did with this is unforgivable. But I guess I’m not supposed to say that, right? I’m not supposed to say he’s unforgivable. I’m supposed to say I’ll work with him to co-parent no matter what, right? But I’d be lying if I said that this, this thing with my papa, was okay. It was the ugliest thing he could think of. And that’s who he is. And that’s why I worry about him with my children. So, no, I don’t have proof he’d do them any harm, but I do have proof of his character, and this is that proof. And if that makes me terrible, then I’m terrible. But this broke my heart.”

  “Miss Alice, I’m going to go ahead and mark you down an A plus for honesty. People come into these things and they bullshit me and they tell me everything they think that I want to hear. They don’t dare tell me what they really think. So thanks for just being honest. That’s what I need to hear: the truth. A parent willing to tell the truth is a good parent.”

  Avery would be evaluated the next day, and Dr. Colette would give her formal recommendation in a week.

  THREE LITTLE BIRDS

  The days after the psych evaluation passed by in silence. I didn’t leave the house. I didn’t eat, didn’t watch television, didn’t read, didn’t listen to music. I mostly slept. I would go from room to room, crawling into each of the children’s beds: first Avery’s firm twin in her sky-blue room, the hot-pink walls of her bathroom giving the bedroom a constant sunset hue. Then to Grayson’s little fortlike bunk, where I’d flip through his truck and train picture books mindlessly. I even crawled into Aidan’s crib once, watching out the high windows for sandhill cranes that never passed now.

  Aidan’s first word was uttered in that crib, upon awakening from a nap: “Bird.”

  I said it now, aloud: “bird.”

  So much house and no one but me in it; I wished I could fly away.

  I heard the garbage trucks come, heard the crunch and creak of mechanism crushing what I’d thrown away. I thought of all my journals, all those plain white pages covered with my wide, looping cursive, like wings. I imagined each page rising up, taking flight, escaping into the slate-gray sky.

  Liam was erasing me. My history, voice, my writing, my children.

  Soon I’d no longer exist.

  They called me crazy, and I felt that I was losing my grasp on reality. I shut the slatted wood blinds against the misty bayou sunlight. Everything fell to shade.

  I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I knew, there was a horn
honking insistently in the drive. I crawled from Aidan’s crib, peeked out of the blinds, and saw Addison standing next to her Mini Cooper, honking the horn and looking up at the house, her hand in a salute above her eyes to shield the sun. Addison had never stopped by before. Heart racing, I ran down the stairs, out the front door, and to the drive.

  “Dr. Colette made her recommendation,” she announced, a stack of papers in hand.

  “And?” I thought a whole flock of cranes had crowded in to my lungs at once.

  “‘Dr. Rivers shows a tendency toward violence toward the vulnerable…,’” she read off one of the papers.

  “Oh, my God…”

  “‘Dr. Rivers speaks of minor child Avery with profound disrespect…’”

  “Oh, my God…”

  “‘Dr. Rivers admits to a profound substance addiction…’”

  “Oh, my God…”

  “‘Dr. Rivers admits to bringing the knife from the kitchen on the night in question…’”

  “Holy fuck…”

  “‘It is my recommendation that Mrs. Rivers be given full physical custody of the minor children, commencing immediately…’”

  “Addison!”

  “I know! I couldn’t wait to call you.”

  “When?”

  “He’ll be delivering them here in the next hour.”

  “Oh, my God, I can’t believe it!”

  “You did good, Alice. She saw through everything. She saw the truth.”

  “Thank God. Thank God someone saw the truth. Finally.”

  “Oh, and by the way? I’m sure Liam isn’t thrilled your IQ came out much higher than his!” Addison added, throwing her head back and laughing.

  “So much for ‘stupid’!”

  It was the first time I’d laughed in weeks.

  And, as promised, Liam’s parents drove up in their rental car not long after with him smashed in front between them and the three kids in back. The kids poured out of the back seat, crying, “Mama, Mama, Mama!” and ran into my arms.

  Liam got out and tried to hug them goodbye, but they ignored him. He looked at me and said, “Try not to kill them.”

  I hoisted Grayson up on one hip, Aidan on the other, took Avery by the hand, turned our backs on him and locked the door. That night, we all piled up together in my bed and slept in a tangle like bears—content in the warmth of each other.

  PAJAMARAMA

  We fell back into a routine. Avery went back to first grade, Grayson to kindergarten at Magnolia Park Elementary, and Aidan to preschool at St. Alphonsus with Miss Charlie. We had simple dinners, and the kids did things they’d never been allowed before.

  We had mashed potatoes and hamburgers with no buns (their choice, something they’d never had power over before) for dinner one night, and I casually passed Avery the salt shaker.

  “I get to put it on myself?” she asked, eyes huge with wonder.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Sometimes I let them eat on the couch and watch TV when they ate, and they thought they’d been given the keys to some wild castle of abandon. Gone were the days of the formal dinners skating around Liam’s perfectionism and unpredictable rages. It was a little bit like the summer before our house was finished being built. We sold the old house before this one was finished, so Liam sent us over to a rented beach house in Gulf Shores. He’d stay in the clinic during the week and come join us every weekend. You’d think the best part of that arrangement would be the wide sugar-sand beaches of Alabama; the warm, shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico; the way you could stand in the Gulf at sunset and a school of stingrays would slip right around you, their sleek edges skimming your skin as they passed. Instead, we lived for the quiet easiness of days without Liam. The minute he walked through that beach house door on Fridays, everything changed. Towels could not be left hung cockeyed on a ledge, a glass could not be stray in the sink, a single grain of sand on the landing could set off a rage so intense the baby would run away and hide under the coffee table.

  So those days after the custody evaluation were like the beach house summer, and everything relaxed. I had to stop myself from turning boxes and cans to perfectly line up in the pantry. I took the hundreds of perfect white hand towels I usually kept folded perfectly in baskets in each of the six bathrooms, stuffed them in a black trash bag, and shoved them to the back of a hall closet. I wore my nightgown all day long.

  On Friday nights, after the kids bathed and put on their pajamas, we started what we liked to call the Pajamarama—which was just the four of us piling up in the car in our pajamas, going down to the Sonic, and ordering ice cream sundaes and fries and people-watching and picking shapes out of stars and clouds and listening to kids’ music CDs too loud in the car.

  Appearing in public in our pajamas? Scandalous.

  Out past bedtime on a Friday night? Unheard of.

  Laughing and carrying on without a care in the world and a drunk man to manage? Heaven.

  Those were the easy days, when everything seemed like it might be almost over.

  The only difficult part was every other weekend, when I had to exchange the kids with Liam. He’d meet us in a Denny’s parking lot, just as nasty as ever, cussing me out under his breath. I tried to ignore him completely—as if he were a ghost. The only thing strange about it was every time we exchanged the kids, he was driving a minivan.

  Liam in a minivan.

  Liam always had the nicest car. He never even went to a car lot to pick them out. When you’re a small-town doctor in the South, you have certain perks. Liam would call up dealers in Mobile, tell them what car he was interested in, and they would deliver the latest Mercedes, BMW, Range Rover, or Porsche to our house. Just like that. He’d drive it for a weekend and decide. He’d lease them for a year at a time, then get a new one (after a year, a car had too much wear and tear for Liam’s OCD standards). So to see Liam pull up in a rented minivan week after week was just odd. I figured he was trying to be a Disneyland dad.

  On one of those weekends, at 2:00 A.M., I woke up with a strange feeling about the minivan. My hair stood on end, and my skin was afire. The van: something wasn’t right. I just knew it. He wasn’t trying to be a Disneyland dad and drive a van for the kids’ sake; that wasn’t in his nature. If he wanted the kids to watch movies, he’d have screens installed in his Mercedes. As my feet hit the floor, the vision of him crammed between his parents in that front seat when he’d had to bring back the kids flashed in my mind. I ran down the stairs to my study, turned on my computer, watched the screen flash on in the pale Mississippi night. The shadow of the big magnolia still standing after the storm swayed slowly across the pale-green wall behind me. The search screen connected and filled the study with a filmy light. I typed in five words:

  Liam Rivers Arrest DUI Mississippi.

  And there it was: He’d been arrested almost two months before for DUI with not one but six—count ’em, six—counts. He’d barreled through a sheriff’s checkpoint, took them on a high-speed chase, ran several red lights and stop signs, and finally ran into a ditch before being arrested on scene.

  I called Addison’s office machine in the middle of the night, voice shaking, and read off the report from the newspaper clipping on the screen.

  Hey, Addison, it’s Alice. I know it’s the middle of the night but well, this is going to sound crazy but I had this weird feeling because it bothered me that Liam always exchanges the kids on the weekends in this minivan because you know, he’d never be seen in one, anyway. Um, well, like I said I had a weird feeling so I Googled it and guess what? Liam Rivers, arrested, DUI, six counts, reckless driving, driving through checkpoint, driving through red light, excessive speed, resisting arrest, refusing alcohol testing. Anyway, you can read it all online, it was almost two months ago. He can’t possibly have a license. He’s driving the kids without a license. He knew all this during the psych evaluation and everything. I can’t believe it. Call me in the morning. Can you get the arrest report? I can’t believe it. Okay
, call me in the morning. We need to file our own emergency motion.

  Here I had been telling everyone from day one that it was dangerous for him to drive my children, and everyone—Addison, the judge, Dr. Colette, Jack Calhoun—had told me that you can’t keep him from driving the children based on what he might do. What he could do. Well, now he had done and he did do, and it turned out I was right all along.

  I went back to bed, heart pounding. I don’t know what woke me up in the middle of the night: Mother’s intuition? Grace? Whatever it was, I felt like it was about to change the entire course of my life.

  Addison called me right away the next morning to tell me she was putting a motion together and requesting the arrest report. She said that since Liam didn’t have any visitation scheduled until the next weekend, we should wait to get the arrest report to file the emergency motion.

  I agreed.

  I can’t tell you how much I wanted to call Liam and tell him what a lying, reckless, minivan-renting, slimy piece of shit he was, driving the children around on a suspended license. (Clearly, the van had been so his plates wouldn’t get pulled, a kind of “just in case” stopgap.) He’d been sitting in Dr. Colette’s office calling me a homicidal maniac and pervert all the while failing to disclose he had lost his license. But I held my tongue. I had learned well how to hold my tongue in my marriage, and I could hold it just a little more.

  Besides, I was busy with everyday life. It’s funny how in the midst of total chaos, normal life just keeps rolling along. The kids had school and homework. I was chairing the “Country Store” at the St. Alphonsus fall festival. The town of Ocean Springs has a huge art festival, The Peter Anderson Festival, every year that about a hundred thousand people come to from all over the world, and St. Alphonsus has a school festival the same weekend to raise money for the school. It’s a win-win, because people at the art festival have some fun things to do for their kids. There are rides and games and food and the Country Store, where we sell various homemade items—mostly holiday items but other stuff as well. If you’ve ever been to a Southern craft fair, you probably know exactly what I mean. For my part, I made onesies with little iron-on sayings like got milk? and thunderpants and eat, sleep, cry, repeat.