The stakes are too high, I don’t get a do over, this is it. Going through the records of my life and Mia’s really drives that home. Twenty years of my life is spread out on my living room floor, which is some mirror.
It’s all spread out before me, tufts of brown carpet sticking up between stacks of papers. Mike feels I’m ready to read the packet my mom sent me about my old dad.
“She labeled everything,” he says. “I’ve spread it out for you by type—court documents, various letters, reports. Do you want me to be here when you read them, leave and come back when you’re done, leave and not bring it up until you do…how do you want to do this?”
“I think I’d like to read them alone. But can you come back when I’m done?”
“How about I go electroshock some people for the next couple hours and then swing back by?”
I smile, that works. I decide to start with the hard facts and reach for the court reports when an envelope marked Do Not Bend catches my eye. I’ve never seen a picture of my father. My heart pounds lightly as I slide it out and stare at it for a few minutes. He looks so nice and safe. I study the soft brown eyes and shiny, light hair. He looks like the type of dad any little girl would want; I’m surprised to see he’s not the seismic force of evil I’d always envisioned.
I scan the photo for any resemblance. There’s some, but I’m definitely more my mom’s child, which is comforting. One by one, I go through all the documents. My mom’s written a history of our life and hours pass as I catch up on the Chicago years. Before I know it, Mike’s peering through the door.
“Still need more time, kiddo?”
“No, you can come in, I was just finishing up.”
I read for a minute more and then we sit in silence for a while. I feel like I should be crying or raging, but I’m calm. After another minute, I look up.
“I’m not really that upset, Mike, is that normal?”
“It’s not normal, it’s not abnormal, it’s yours.”
I nod. Mike’s comfortable prodding if I’m not talking, but he’s silent now. I have to do this one on my own.
“It’s weird, like reading about someone else. It’s just details, you know. They almost seem irrelevant now. It didn’t change how I feel about myself or my old dad. It helped me see those events as…just events, not anything that necessarily defines me anymore.”
Mike smiles. “And that’s a good place to be, Mia. I have to remind kids constantly that no one’s touching you now, no one has for years. It’s the beliefs you form about yourself based on those events, it’s what’s going on in your own head that’s paralyzing you.”
I nod and grab a Tootsie Roll.
“My mom’s stuff was hardest. The court reports were tough, but in a physical way. It made me feel squirmy because it’s gross, but it didn’t screw with my head too much. Reading about her tying me to her waist and sleeping on the beach—that was hard.”
I always thought of my mom as fragile, emotionally. But she was rock solid. She was just a few years older than me when all this happened. I couldn’t do what she did—the death threats, the not being believed, being a single mom in college, it’s amazing, she’s amazing. And I’m amazingly lucky.
In going through my family history, I was looking for closure. And I guess it did close the door with my dad to a degree, but what I didn’t expect is that it opened an even bigger one with Paul.
I always subconsciously figured that if my first dad abandoned me, Paul could, too. Also, something about knowing another dad of mine was floating around out there was just weird and until I had completely laid him to rest, it was hard for me to fully let Paul in. As hurt as I was, I wasn’t ready to let my old dad go.
I wasn’t ready to let go of my anger at him, or my secret hope that he would apologize. The hardest thing to let go of though, was the fear. It controlled me for so long, it made me feel so weak and small, it just seemed like it was part of who I was.
But after reading about how drugged up he always was, how dysfunctional his family was, he shrank from a towering, terrifying presence to a cowardly, wretched little man that, poof, I can just blow away.
30.
Nick looks like a dimmed version of himself. He’s paler and his voice is thinned, higher, he sounds squeezed. Even his familiar combination of arrogance and menace is watered down. One thing hasn’t changed. His eyes are still bloodshot.
He sits across the room from me and his presence doesn’t upset or intimidate me anymore, nor does it elicit any hatred or anger. I look at my first husband and feel two things: sadness and pity.
His first tactic in the case was to refuse any responsibility to pay for psychological care related to the abuse, as court ordered, because he never abused Mia in the first place. Sorry, Mr. P, that case has already been tried and the judgments stand.
His next position was that he wasn’t obligated to pay for treatment because no one ever informed in all these years that Mia ever had any problems at all related to him.
“Is this your handwriting, Mr. P?” my attorney asked in deposition.
Ooopsie. Claire kept your letter asking her to stop writing to you about Mia’s emotional difficulties. I’d kept him very well informed since the divorce, and sent bills for Ella and Colleen, which he never paid. By the time Mia was twelve, well, he’d just heard enough of Mia’s “problems and therapy.”
Okay, then, he doesn’t have to pay because he was never contacted by professionals. But the order never stipulated that, Mr. P; your wife’s notification wasn’t enough?
Claire could be lying. She could have made up all those invoices.
But there are canceled checks, Mr. P, going back years.
It’s still a possibility these bills aren’t legitimate, he claimed.
Then he argued he shouldn’t have to pay because Claire found someplace too costly. He’s read about teenagers in state institutions that are doing pretty darn well.
State institutions are for indigent people, Mr. P. Are you saying Mia’s indigent?
Well, he doesn’t exactly like the word “indigent.”
Then, he tried saying he was never notified that Mia had any problems recently.
But, Mr. P, we’re all here because you received notification six months ago.
But he had no clue in the world that all those dates and names of doctors and psychologists and institutions and treatments meant that Mia was getting treated for anything.
You’re telling me that you don’t know what the phrase “medical and psychological expenses for Mia Fontaine” means, Mr. P?
It’s a falsehood, he announced, there is no Mia Fontaine. (She hasn’t used his name since the divorce.)
Round and round we go. “The girl’s” problems had nothing to do with him. It’s not a treatment program, it’s just a private school.
I cannot force him to apologize to Mia. Nor can I force him to pay, even if we win the case. Because, as I expected, his financial affidavit shows a man with no assets except a pension fund. And that’s untouchable. Because our government feels that no child, abused, unsupported, or otherwise neglected, should afflict a man’s golden years.
But I can ask the court to hold him responsible and accountable. Even if all he pays is a dollar a month, that dollar will remind him of his crime every month. A judgment would say that you, Mr. Nicolas P, are accountable for the pain and shame Mia’s felt, for the nightmares and self-loathing and fears.
There’s a synagogue nearby that I stop in for a moment before meeting old friends for dinner. I pray for Mia to be safe and know happiness, for God to watch over Paul, my mother, all my loved ones, over children everywhere. That last one’s always a sticking point. How could God create a world where children suffer so much?
God doesn’t create suffering, Claire, we do. We make the world and then we break it. It occurs to me for the first time that I don’t think you pray to change the world, you pray to change yourself. That you may change the world.
I rememb
er something I read in Samantha Dunn’s moving memoir of her spiritual awakening after her horse nearly severed her leg. She wrote that when God wants your attention, first He throws feathers. After that, He starts throwing bricks.
I obviously missed the feathers, God. But, let me make of these hard clay lessons not a wall but a staircase to climb, to lift me out of blindness, anger, judgment, ego. To see more clearly and deeply, within myself and others, so that I may live what I’ve repeated in a hundred yoga classes, Namaste: the God in me sees the God in you.
And, so, before I leave, I pray for Nick, too, that he may know peace.
I’m picturing my father in court, a man I know nothing of but his own personal demons, and I see a haunted man. The feelings he instilled in me, self-hatred, anxiety, sadness, he must feel these every waking moment. And having lived and felt as he must—and then had the chance to change—I feel sorry for him. Sorry that he was too weak to face himself and change, that his pain was so great it poisoned him and he chose lies instead of me. Sorry that the only legacy he left with me was one so dark.
And it hurts all the more because I understand it. Because I know how it feels to only be able to operate from the shadowy part of you that feeds off pain, because it’s familiar and it makes itself available in such abundance.
Sometimes I wonder if I was attracted to the streets, to those darker places, as a way of getting to know him, of feeling some connection with the man who half put me on this earth. I knew nothing of him but that black hole he left inside of me. There were times I would wake up in so much pain it felt like the world was crying in my ear as I slept. It was a sadness I wasn’t equipped to handle and I did it the only way I knew how. Maybe diving in was my way out. Maybe this is what I had to understand to let him go.
I spend the next day driving around the places we lived. I drive by the complex where I rented my first apartment with Mia. Where a policeman sat in my pink velvet chair and forgot the English language.
I walk around the university in a light rain, enveloped by the smell of wet sidewalks, the quality of the light, the heaviness in the air. All at once, the sense of it floods me. Of my life here, of the craziness of being in the system, of him whispering threats in the courthouse elevator; and of the memory of Mia behind me on our bike, giggling as her red helmet bobbed up and down with the bumps, of the hours in the library while she slept in her stroller, of singing in our campus apartment in the dark, of the anticipation on her face at the word “beach.”
The sky clears as I drive there, to where we built sandcastles and she made me chase her in the sand, saying catch me, Mudder, catch me! I can see the image of us running along the water’s edge and it almost takes my breath away—how young I was! Barely six years older than Mia is now. I see my young face and I feel such tenderness for that girl. She did the best she could with what she knew at the time. And I wonder: what if in looking back no one were to say bad Mommy, bad Claire? What if I didn’t? What if I forgave myself completely and saw her smile back at me?
I walk until I find the place I slept with Mia on a hot day under an umbrella. With her tied to my waist so she couldn’t run away while I slept. In the end, she did run away, when I was asleep in my own life, when I wasn’t looking because I didn’t want to see. She untied the knot between us and ran as far and fast as she could. Because, I now believe, she knew, she always knew in her heart, that her mudder would catch her, still.
31.
“You don’t think we should at least consider it?”
“Come on, Paul. It’s the same manipulation and control we saw before.”
Mia’s doing well, but in terms of certain behaviors, there’s more work to be done. The reasons she gives for not needing to graduate—I’m different, I’m special, I don’t need to do what everyone else has to do to succeed—are the same reasons she gave for doing what she did last year.
“That’s the way the world works, Paul, you have to jump through hoops to accomplish something—getting a degree, a promotion, getting anything. She’ll sabotage herself with this same attitude when she comes home and justify it every step of the way down.”
“I’m just afraid she’s going to get discouraged, it’s been such a long time. Don’t you remember being sixteen, Claire?”
“If it’s such hell, then why doesn’t she do what she needs to do to come home? All twelfth-graders are sick of school, but they finish that last semester, they do whatever’s necessary to graduate—why should she be different? I’m not taking the bait this time. I’m not sending the message that all she has to do is dig her heels in and we cave. I also think she’s had enough failure; it’s about time she create some success. She needs to have a sense of solid accomplishment.”
“Mia’s right,” Cameron tells us on a phone call. “She has gotten all the tools she can get from us. She’s just not using them. She’s afraid to shine, she’s a leader who won’t lead. She calls it ‘show-up games’—a lot of it is, so is life, that’s the point! What she doesn’t see is that she’s playing her own show-up game—how to show up empty-handed. It’s never about the levels, it’s about growth. This ‘waste of time,’ as she calls it, is her biggest mirror, it’s her biggest opportunity to grow.”
“So, what do we do now? She’s not budging, and she knows we aren’t either.”
“I think Mia’s lost her desire because she doesn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Not because it’s too long, she could be out of here in two months tops, but because she’s filled the path with obstacles. I want to give her a jump start, something to motivate her.”
32.
“You don’t know what it’s like. I haven’t seen Paul in over a year!” Mia complains on our phone call.
We can hear Kim in the background telling Mia to wrap up.
“Don’t worry, Mia, you’ll be seeing us before you know it,” I assure her.
Like in two minutes. We’re on the phone in the visitor’s trailer at Spring Creek, where we’ve come for a surprise visit. Cameron felt we were the motivation she needed. We hurry outside into the snow and run to the building where Kim told us to wait.
The door opens and I clutch Paul’s arm. Mia’s looking down as she and Kim walk outside toward us. Kim grins at us. Mia finally looks up and freezes.
“Mommmm!!! Paaaaull!” She runs at us full speed, flies into my arms, and sends me flat on my back, then she jumps up and leaps up into Paul’s arms the way she did when she was little.
“My little monkey!” Paul says as he spins her around in the air.
It’s all Paul and I can do to muffle smiles as we watch Mia with the menu. We’ve taken her to a restaurant overlooking the Clark Fork River and her eyes are practically bugging out of her head as she agonizes over what kind of steak to order.
“What?” she says, noticing us. “I haven’t had good food or been out in the real world in ages!”
She eats enough for two, with the same relish she did in Prague. The meal, the scenery, catching up on everything back home, is all so enjoyable we don’t want to spoil it by broaching the subject of her being stuck.
Kids are forbidden to speak of the seminars in front of anyone who hasn’t done them, so as soon as Paul gets up to use the men’s room, we talk about Focus.
“I noticed a huge difference in the way you relate to me since you’ve taken it, Mom.”
“I agree, monkey. There’s a difference in the way I relate to everyone.”
“See, better living through delinquency,” she quips. “Was getting cradled the most amazing thing? That was such a high for me.”
“I know! When Dolly Parton sang the ‘sparrow when she’s broken’ part, I couldn’t stop cry—”
Mia’s fork stops in midair. “That was my song, too!”
“You’re kidding! How funny they saw us the same way, Mia.”
“No it’s not, Mom. Mike’s been saying we’re just alike since the first time he got off the phone with you!”
I get to stay with my p
arents at their hotel, which means a hot bath! I still have no idea why they’ve come, I’m not at a level it’s allowed, but they’re avoiding the subject, so I figure I better wait for them to say something first. I slip into the new PJs they brought me and go outside to where Paul’s stargazing. He turns when he sees me.
“You’re lucky to look up to this every night.”
“You’re lucky you don’t have to!” We laugh and a he gives me a hug.
“Dad,” I suddenly ask, I can’t help it, “are you guys taking me home?”
He looks at me carefully for a minute.
“No, sweetie, we’re not. I won’t lie, I’ve wanted to, but we agree that it’ll be good for you to have a sense of accomplishment. And to know there are some situations you can’t manipulate out of.”
Paul calling me on manipulating is unexpected. His calling me on anything is.
“I know it’s hard, Mia.”
“You have no idea,” I sigh.
“What’s the worst part?”
“Missing out on real life. It’s not what we do in here that makes it hard, it’s what we don’t do. Hilary just wrote me saying what she and my old friends have been up to lately. They’re all doing such fun things, traveling to Europe, touring colleges, I feel like I’m wasting my life in here.”
We’re quiet for a minute. When I look up Paul has tears in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, Paul! I didn’t mean anything…”
“No, no,” he says, “it’s good, Mia. It’s good to hear you have aspirations now besides drinking and speedballing with creeps. Just hearing you talk like this makes me glad that we’re doing what we’re doing.”
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