I Am Quinn

by McGarvey Black

  ‘Is he still actively involved in her care?’ Dr. Shapiro asked.

  ‘Not anymore,’ said Erin. ‘His idea of treatment was throwing her into a state mental hospital, so he didn’t have to deal with her or spend any of his money. He’s done it twice. I’m going to get more involved now. I live six hours away, but I’ll figure it out.’

  The doctor observed a vulnerability about Quinn, and despite her frail emotional and physical condition, her sweetness came through. She liked Quinn from the start and wished she could tell her everything was going to be alright but knew that chapter hadn’t been written yet.

  ‘I’ve never lived by myself before,’ Quinn told her. ‘My kids are away at college, and I never see Alec anymore. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or where I’m supposed to be.’

  Every session Dr. Shapiro had with Quinn was a surprise. Some days, when Quinn stayed on her meds, she’d be feisty and funny and tell the doctor about the myriad of awful things Alec had done or said and how she was going to confront him during her divorce. Other times, when her spirits were low, she said she loved and missed her husband and wanted him to take her back. After those sessions, Dr. Shapiro adjusted her medication.

  After a few months working with Quinn, one thing Dr. Shapiro was sure of was that Alec Roberts was a first-class son of a bitch. From her professional perspective, she figured Quinn’s husband was probably a classic narcissist. Typical narcissists see themselves as entitled and perfect, always right, and consider that the rules for everyone else don’t apply to them. No one is their intellectual equal, and they’re always the smartest one in the room. They have no empathy for others. That profile fit Alec Roberts exactly.

  Then another idea occurred to Dr. Shapiro. Alec Roberts could also be a psychopath. They live to manipulate and get one over on others, physically or emotionally. They have no regrets and no scruples. They’ll become whatever they need to be to take advantage of a situation. They’re chameleons who can be incredibly charming in their quest to get what they want. Once they have it, they’ll leave their victim hanging out to dry. Their only concern is not getting caught.

  Dr. Shapiro felt a pit in her stomach when it occurred to her that Alec Roberts might be both. It’s rare, she thought, but it’s possible he was a narcissistic-psychopath, a terribly lethal combination. She was relieved Quinn had moved out and warned her patient that she needed to keep her distance. In her opinion, Alec Roberts was a loose cannon.

  Chapter 47

  When Erin called her nephew to tell him his mother was having severe mental problems, Jack Roberts was right in the middle of mid-terms. He listened quietly, saying little as his aunt sounded the alarm. When the call was over, he was dumbfounded.

  Newsflash, Aunt Erin, you think I don’t know my mother is nuts? She’s my crazy mother. I lived with her. You’re down in New Jersey and see her once a year. She’s been whacked for years. You weren’t around to see it, but Hannah and I were. You know how many times a day she calls me at school saying all sorts of crazy stuff? This has been going on since the middle of high school. I stopped asking my friends to come over to the house because I was so embarrassed. I’m sick of her and her conspiracy theories. It’s not my job to take care of her. I’m the kid. She’s supposed to be taking care of me.

  When it started, it was just little things that didn’t make sense to Jack and his sister. Then there were those long stories that they knew couldn’t be true. Their mother was always cleaning, even places and things that didn’t need to be cleaned, on an eternal search for mold. She convinced herself there was dirt where there wasn’t, and things were growing where they weren’t. And then she’d pace, back and forth for hours. She drove her kids crazy.

  His mom’s family and her friends thought his dad was the bad guy. Jack knew his father could be a dick, but he had to put up with a lot of crap from his mother. His father went to work every day to support the family, and he came home to Mom’s crazy every night. On some level, Jack didn’t blame his father for wanting to get divorced. At least things were peaceful now with Mom out of the house in her own apartment. No more fighting. No more crying.

  It always started the same way. Dad would stop at the gym on his way home from work. He’d walk into the house with his gym bag, and Mom knew just what to say to piss him off. She’d complain about him being late or something along those lines, and he’d say something nasty back to her. She’d start to whine, accuse or yell and then things would spiral downward.

  Even though Mom usually had dinner cooking on the stove, they rarely ate together. When his parents would fight, which felt like every night, Hannah and Jack would go into their rooms. Jack would lock his door and turn up his music so he couldn’t hear anything. Dad would grab a six pack and go into the den to watch a game or change his clothes and go out for the night. If he went out, Mom would corner her two kids and tell them how unfair and mean their father was. She’d carry on for hours. Sometimes, he wished she would just die and leave him alone.

  Still, he knew it wasn’t cool the times Dad locked her out of the house at night. Jack would hear her crying out on the front porch. After his father fell asleep, Jack would let his mother back in, and she’d go and lie down on the couch in the TV room. He’d put a blanket on her and go back to bed.

  More than anything, he wanted his mother to be like she used to be. He wanted her to be old Mom, fun Mom, ukulele Mom. New Mom was wholly unglued.

  Chapter 48

  Quinn refused to sign the divorce agreement Alec’s lawyer had drafted. One week she was full of spit and vinegar, threatening to ‘take him to the cleaners’, and accusing him of hiding money. She said she was going to get a forensic accountant to ‘blow the lid off everything’. Alec didn’t want anyone poking around in his finances. It was none of their business.

  The next week she was totally different; all whiny and teary. She called Alec twenty times saying she loved him and wanted their old life back. That’s never going to happen, he thought. The life you thought we had, Quinn, only you had it. For me it was hell. You should have gotten help years ago when I asked you to. Our marriage ship has sailed.

  A few months earlier, the courts had ordered Alec to send Quinn temporary alimony until they worked out their final agreement. His lawyer talked to him about the probable outcome of the divorce.

  ‘I’ll be honest with you, Alec,’ said his divorce attorney. ‘The courts will probably award lifetime alimony for your wife because of her mental illness. She has an existing, ongoing medical condition that will impair her ability to support herself.’

  ‘Permanent alimony isn’t an option for me,’ Alec said. ‘Do something. What am I paying you for?’

  ‘You’re paying me to advise you, and the laws are clear,’ said his attorney. ‘Unless Quinn waives her rights, which her lawyer will advise against, you’ll likely be forced by the courts to pay lifetime alimony. It’s the law.’

  ‘Then I’ll just have to convince my wife to waive her rights, I guess,’ Alec said. His lawyer looked at him skeptically and shook his head, thinking his client was a pain in the ass.

  Alec decided at that moment he would have to take matters into his own hands. Why is everyone so incompetent? he wondered.

  The next day Quinn called, crying.

  ‘I want us to get back together,’ she sobbed, ‘I still love you. We have two kids. We’re a family. We need to try harder.’

  ‘Look, Quinn,’ he said gently, ‘we both know it’s over, for now. We had a good run. We have two great kids. I’ll arrange for movers, and you can take anything in the house that you want. You keep the Subaru, too. But, in exchange, I need you to sign off on the alimony and the pension. I know what your lawyer is telling you, but do you really think it’s fair I should support you indefinitely? Is that fair, Quinn?’

  There was a long silence, and then he heard her meek voice. ‘No, I guess not.’

  ‘Now you’re being reasonable,’ he said. ‘I’m perfectly willing to pay yo
u alimony for the first year to give you some run room. But a year should be enough, don’t you agree?’

  ‘I guess so,’ said Quinn, starting to whine. ‘But I don’t want to get divorced. I want us to get back together. I don’t want to be alone. Why can’t it be like it used to be?’

  Here we go, he thought. Just when it looked like we were making progress, Quinn changed her mind. He knew he had to play this exactly right.

  ‘Look, we might get back together,’ he began slowly, ‘down the road. But I wouldn’t consider getting back with you if you saddle me with some long-term alimony and take my pension. I worked hard for that pension. If you want our marriage to have a chance, you’re going to have to do the right thing on the money. Am I making myself clear?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Alimony for only a year.’

  ‘And you’ll give up all claims on my retirement funds and pension, too. Cause you didn’t earn that, did you? I earned it. Right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Retirement and pension are yours.’

  Jackpot, he thought.

  ‘We are a family,’ Alec continued. ‘The only way we might have a chance is for you to sign the documents. Then we’ll start talking about rebuilding our relationship. But not with all these legal things hanging over our heads.’

  Quinn agreed to only twelve months of support and to sign the agreement. Everything was all set until her lawyer, Barbara Waxman, got wind of it and went ballistic. She talked Quinn out of the whole thing and convinced her that she was entitled to all the money. When Alec heard that he was apoplectic. He had no intention of paying his wife alimony for the rest of his life. He was going to have to find another way to convince her.

  Chapter 49

  QUINN

  Dr. Shapiro and my lawyer made me promise to go to a domestic violence support group. I was terrified the first time. I walked into the room and wanted to sink into the floor, hoping no one talked to me because then I’d have to speak. I didn’t want anyone to know my secrets.

  As other women got up to talk, I realized most of them had been through the same things. Some, not as bad and some, much worse. One woman in the group lost an eye because her boyfriend beat her up so badly. Now she’s got a glass eye and the boyfriend has disappeared. Believe it or not, she had a happy ending; she was free and clear and starting over.

  Most of the women looked pretty normal but we all had one thing in common; we’d been abused by our partners. The group leader told us domestic violence could lead to a form of PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, the condition some soldiers have when they come back from war. She explained that continuous physical and emotional abuse mirrors some of the things that troops experience in battle. I didn’t know if I had that, but I knew I felt better after I started going to the group.

  At my first meeting, a tall woman with long brown hair and a puffy face stood up to speak.

  ‘Things got bad in my house. This one night,’ she said, ‘as I cleaned up the dinner plates, my husband started picking at me. He complained about the bills and the mess in the living room. It wasn’t messy, I always made sure it wasn’t.’

  There was a murmur of understanding from the women in the room.

  ‘It always started the same way,’ the brown-haired woman said. ‘He’d find one little thing and move to another and then another until he’d work himself into a rage. Sometimes he’d punch holes in the walls and sometimes the punches landed on my arm or my upper thigh. Always in a place where people couldn’t see a bruise. Never my face. He was too smart for that.’

  Another hum of support and camaraderie filled the room.

  ‘That night when he started in on me,’ the woman continued, ‘I must have reached my breaking point. I called my two teenaged kids who were up in their rooms and told them to get in the car that was parked in the attached garage. My kids and I got into the car. Screaming, my husband followed us into the garage and told me to get out of the car. I pushed the automatic locks button so he couldn’t open the doors. He came right up to my closed window and yelled at me through the glass. My whole body was shaking, and the kids were screaming for me to back the car out.

  “You’re not leaving,” he shouted. Then he walked around to the back of my car and laid down behind my rear wheels so I couldn’t back out of the garage without running him over. That’s when it was clear; it wasn’t me. He was certifiable.’

  There was a collective gasp from the room.

  ‘I grabbed my cell phone and called 911,’ she said. ‘Within five minutes, a police car showed up and found my husband lying under the rear wheels of my car shouting threats at me. They took him away, and I got a restraining order. That’s when I started coming here.’

  Midway through the meeting there was a cookie and coffee break and the brown-haired lady with the puffy face came over to me.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Is this your first time? You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. You get a lot from listening, too. What’s your name?’

  ‘Quinn,’ I said softly.

  ‘I’m Clare. If you have any questions,’ she whispered, ‘you can always ask me. The people who moderate this group are great, and the other women are extremely supportive. We’ve all been through the same thing. Different characters, same plot. You’ll see.’

  I nodded.

  ‘It gets better,’ Clare said, touching my arm gently. ‘Really. Come to the next meeting on Thursday. I’ll be here.’

  I forced a half smile and nodded again. On Thursday, I did go back. Clare’s face brightened when she saw me. We were all at different stages in our recovery, but somehow we understood each other. I was at the very beginning of the yellow brick road, and Oz was very far away.

  By my fourth session, I decided to speak.

  ‘My husband might start out teasing me,’ I said, making eye contact with Clare. ‘That would lead to criticism,’ I continued. ‘Then he’d bully me and get enraged when I didn’t fight back. He didn’t punch. He was more into mental and emotional abuse. Sometimes he’d give me an Indian rope burn on my arm or pull my hair hard or bend my fingers back where I thought they would break off. He was careful not to leave marks.’

  ‘The smart guys never do,’ Clare blurted out.

  After a few months in the group, I started to see Alec for who he really was. My husband was trying to cheat me out of alimony and his pension. He insisted my meds were screwing up my body and mind. He didn’t want me to take them. He wanted me to be confused and sign my financial rights away. But guess what, Alec? Dr. Shapiro put me on some new medication, and it didn’t bother me as much as the old stuff. I felt much better, more like my old self. I had energy. I was going out for walks, and that felt great. I even bought a chicken and cooked it. What do you think about that, dickhead?

  ‘You take so many pills,’ he once said. ‘You’re no better than a drug addict. Get off all that crap, Quinn.’

  ‘You think I’m a drug addict?’ I said. ‘I’m not taking opioids, you jerk. I’m taking mood stabilizers and medicine to keep me from hearing voices. I finally have your number, Alec. I know what you’re trying to do and it won’t work.’

  ‘What won’t work?’

  ‘I’m going to take you for every penny I’m entitled to,’ I said. ‘If that means lifetime alimony, “Dr. A”, I’m going to tell my lawyer to go for it. Buckle your seatbelt, buttercup, and hold on to your wallet. The Quintessa is back.’

  Chapter 50

  Forty-two and single, Alison Moore was still hopeful even though every relationship ended in disappointment. One forty-eight-year-old guy lived with his mother. Another thought a committed relationship included having other girlfriends. The most recent one couldn’t decide if he liked women more than men. Men won. Despite the string of failed relationships, Alison continued to believe her prince would come eventually.

  On her way home from the county mall one sunny Saturday afternoon, she stopped to get her car washed. While waiting in the lounge for her car to come ou
t, she killed time by thumbing through greetings cards, stuffed animals and random car accessories. To her right, a long transparent Lucite wall separated the lounge from the car wash so you could watch your car on the conveyer belt being scrubbed by large soapy mechanical arms. Several plastic water pistols filled with different colors of neon soap stuck through holes in the wall so kids could shoot pink, green or purple soap at the train of cars. Today there were no kids, only a single, tall, dark-haired man spraying foamy rainbows at the string of moving vehicles.

  The man shot the gun with the blue soap and then moved over to the orange and then to the pink. His intensity and enthusiasm made Alison laugh out loud. He must have sensed her watching because he turned and flashed a big grin in her direction.

  ‘Don’t judge me, I’m writing my name in soap,’ he called over as he gestured for her to come join him.

  ‘See,’ he said as she approached, ‘I try to write my name, Alec, before one of the sprays or scrubbers washes it off the car. If I get all four letters, I win. Try it,’ he said, smiling. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Alison,’ she replied.

  ‘Way too long. You’ll get rubbed out before you get to the “o”,’ he said. ‘Just try Ali. Which color do you want?’

  ‘Pink.’

  ‘You’re such a girl,’ he said, laughing.

  ‘That’s what they tell me,’ she said, looking over at his left hand to see if he was wearing a wedding ring. She smiled when she saw his naked fingers.

  Gingerly, she pulled the trigger on one of the guns, releasing shocking pink soap that splattered all over the side of a blue Mazda. The next time, she aimed higher, hit a window and drew a circle. She made an ‘A’ and started on the ‘L’ when a big soapy arm swooshed it away.