Between Here and April

by Deborah Copaken Kogan

  DR. SHERMAN: Hmm. I think it’s vicious . . . no. I believe either is correct.

  MRS. CASSIDY: Anyway, it was vicious, in any case. Then five years ago, or maybe it was four? Yes, around four years ago, because April had just turned two. Anyway, one of my neighbors knocked on the door and said he could help. With my weight, that is. I didn’t really believe him, but he and his wife were just splitting up, and he was looking to start a new business as a dietitian, and, well, I just kind of felt sorry for him. And I had nothing to lose, right? So I said I’d be his guinea pig. His name was Lenny. Anyway, Lenny came over every morning and helped me make these blender meals and taught me how to exercise and just, I don’t know, he hung out with me. He made me laugh. I think he thought that if he could just get me to lose fifty pounds, everything would be okay in his own life. Like he could conquer anything. He knew I was having a hard time, you know, adjusting. And for awhile there, he was a godsend. I was losing weight, feeling better about myself. I had someone to talk to. Even the kids liked having Lenny around. He was fun. Unlike Shep, who can be, well . . . it’s not that he’s a bad father. He doesn’t do anything wrong, really. But he doesn’t try to do anything right, either. He sort of ignores them. The children, that is. And I guess me, too. Yeah, he’s been ignoring me for awhile, too. He doesn’t do it to be mean, he just, well, he’s a bit of a quiet man. Doesn’t say much, unless he gets angry, and then, well, he says a lot. Anyway, things with Lenny were never intimate. At all. In fact, there was really nothing like that whatsoever. There couldn’t be because he was, well, he didn’t like women that way.

  DR. SHERMAN: He was a homosexual?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Something like that.

  DR. SHERMAN: Did you want to be intimate with this homosexual man?

  MRS. CASSIDY: No. Of course not! But Shep thought I did, and that’s what, well . . . He came home early one night and saw Lenny blending a meal in the kitchen. He went ballistic. Said I was a whore for inviting another man into our home when he wasn’t around. At first I started laughing, right? because of Lenny and because it was kind of preposterous, you know, the whole idea of me being a whore?

  DR. SHERMAN: Why is that?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Because I barely, you know . . .

  DR. SHERMAN: You barely what? Have sexual intercourse or enjoy it?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Both.

  DR. SHERMAN: And why do you think that is?

  MRS. CASSIDY: I don’t know. Maybe . . . It’s embarrassing, I guess. All that extra flesh. I don’t like to be without my clothes.

  DR. SHERMAN: Plenty of larger than average people enjoy healthy sexual relations, Mrs. Cassidy. Can you be more specific?

  MRS. CASSIDY: No. I don’t think I can.

  DR. SHERMAN: Alright. Let’s get back to that night your husband called you a whore. What happened next?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Lenny walked out. Then he left town. I think he moved to New York, to Greenwich Village or something like that. We lost touch, so I’m not sure. After he left, I started eating again. A lot. And, you know, I didn’t have anyone to sit on my feet anymore while I was doing sit-ups, so . . .

  DR. SHERMAN: I’m sorry, Adele, but let’s go back a second. You said your husband—Shep is it?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Yes.

  DR. SHERMAN: You said Shep went “ballistic” before he called you a whore. Can you expound on that please?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Ballistic. You know, crazy. Like I said, he’s a quiet man, but when something ticks him off, he goes ballistic.

  DR. SHERMAN: Yes, but what does that mean?

  MRS. CASSIDY: It means ballistic. He starts yelling at first. Like that night, when he saw Lenny in the kitchen, first he said, “What the . . .” Can I curse in here?

  DR. SHERMAN: Of course.

  MRS. CASSIDY: I wasn’t sure.

  DR. SHERMAN: It’s fine. Curse away.

  MRS. CASSIDY: Okay. He said, “What the fuck is going on here?”

  DR. SHERMAN: And then?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Just, more yelling. Like when he was calling me . . . when he called me a whore.

  DR. SHERMAN: And that was it? He said, “What the fuck is going on here?” and then, “Adele, you’re a whore”?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Well, no. Not exactly. It went on for, I don’t know, ten minutes I guess?

  DR. SHERMAN: And what happened during those ten minutes?

  MRS. CASSIDY: [Patient pauses.] Well. [Patient pauses again.] I started laughing after he called me a whore—I guess it was nervous laughter, I couldn’t help it, you know when you feel nervous, or when you hear that someone’s died, and even though it’s the wrong thing, you laugh?

  DR. SHERMAN: Yes.

  MRS. CASSIDY: Well, that’s when he knocked over the blender. After I laughed. And all the fruit juice spilled all over the floor, and the blender—it was glass—it broke, into a thousand pieces, and then the girls walked in, and I was saying, “Don’t come in here! Don’t come in here! There’s glass everywhere!” but of course that made them just want to come in more, and then Shep suddenly had Lenny by the throat, and he was shaking him, saying, you know, “You think you can just come in here and fuck my wife? Make her skinny so you can fuck her? Is that what you’re doing?” and then suddenly Lenny was flat on the floor, covered in fruit juice and with cuts from the glass, and Shep was kneeled over him, punching him in the face, and April—the baby—April was screaming her head off and trying to get to Lenny, and Lily was standing in the corner of the kitchen crying, and I finally just screamed, “Get off him, Shep! There’s nothing going on here. We were just blending!” which only infuriated him more, because I guess he took it the wrong way, so then he hits me in the face, and I’m holding onto my eye now, trying to get to the refrigerator to get some ice, and Lenny—I don’t know how he did it—Lenny just pulls himself off the ground from under Shep, you know, like when they say a mother can lift a car off her baby? That kind of strength. And he goes running.

  DR. SHERMAN: And?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Nothing. I was just remembering something.

  DR. SHERMAN: What?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Nothing. It’s stupid. Just a silly memory.

  DR. SHERMAN: What kind of memory?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Oh, I just. I broke a plate once. In the kitchen. When I was a little girl. It’s nothing, really. Just the broken blender made me think of it.

  DR. SHERMAN: Well, why don’t you hold that thought, Mrs. Cassidy, because that’s all the time we have for today. Let’s meet again next week, same time.

  Good for you, Adele, I thought to myself, taking a last sip of my coffee. You got right into the muck of it, right away. I wish I could have been so forthcoming. During my second session with Dr. Rivers, I spent most of the hour trying to pin her down on exactly how long my treatment would take while simultaneously denying that anything was really all that wrong. “But last week you said you felt lost,” she reminded me. “This is not just about your episodes of fainting.”

  “But I feel fine today,” I’d said. Then I made up some excuse about overexhaustion. It was so much easier to blame outside circumstances—fatigue, my husband, my responsibilities, my work—than to delve inside my own sticky tar pit, as Adele so aptly called it. The deep malaise, the nagging sense of a life wasted, the desire to find meaning: all of that, I was sure, was just a phase. Something I just needed to get through.

  “What about your childhood friend?” Dr. Rivers finally said. “The one who died. Were you able to find out anything more about what happened?”

  I told her about the police report I’d received in the mail after sending a FOIA request, about my plans to fly down to Potomac to shoot a couple of interviews, about my desire to get into the mind of her mother, to figure out the mystery of Adele Cassidy’s final actions.

  “And do you find the work meaningful?” the doctor asked.

  And I said, “I guess so. Yeah. I do.”

  “And why is that?”

  I paused to consider the question. “Because I care ab
out the answers.” And then our time was up.

  I turned to the next page in Dr. Sherman’s transcripts and read on.

  Patient: Adele Cassidy

  Date: Monday, September 11, 1972

  Note: Patient arrives already crying. It takes a full ten minutes for her to begin speaking.

  DR. SHERMAN: Would you like to tell me what’s wrong?

  MRS. CASSIDY: I’m a monster.

  DR. SHERMAN: What do you mean?

  MRS. CASSIDY: I mean I’m a monster. A monster of a mother. A monster of a wife. I’m just . . . a monster. Everyone would be better off without me. Everyone.

  DR. SHERMAN: Why do you say that? Did anything specific happen, or is this just a general sense of melancholia?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Melan-what?

  DR. SHERMAN: Melancholia. Depression.

  MRS. CASSIDY: Both then.

  DR. SHERMAN: Both depression and something specific?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Yes.

  DR. SHERMAN: Okay, and what would that something specific be?

  MRS. CASSIDY: [Patient pauses before speaking, then bursts out crying again.] I hit them.

  DR. SHERMAN: Hit whom?

  MRS. CASSIDY: The girls. [Patient still crying.]

  DR. SHERMAN: You hit your daughters?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Yes.

  DR. SHERMAN: How did you hit them? Why?

  MRS. CASSIDY: [Patient can barely catch her breath now, she’s hyperventilating and barely able to speak.]

  DR. SHERMAN: Had they done anything to deserve punishment?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Yes. No. Not really.

  DR. SHERMAN: So why did you hit them? What triggered your rage?

  MRS. CASSIDY: I don’t know. I just got angry. I got so angry. First I woke up, and I realized I’d made a mess of the sheets, because I got my, you know. So I was already in a bad mood to begin with, having to clean up the mess and strip the bed and remake it, when I’d just changed the sheets the day before. Anyway, after I cleaned up the mess, I went into the girls’ room to wake them up. They’re always late getting up. Last year they missed the bus all the time. And so this morning I said to them, I said, “Lily, April, you better get up and get in that shower and get out to that bus stop right now, because we’re not starting off the year this way. I am not driving you to school if you miss the bus again.” But they didn’t get up. Lily just lay there in bed, snoring her head off, and April had this Super Ball I bought her in one of those bubblegum machines, and when she opened her eyes, she yanked it from underneath her pillow and was bouncing it against the wall, and SHE . . . KNOWS . . . SHE’S . . . NOT . . . SUPPOSED . . . TO . . . DO . . . THAT . . . She knows she’s not supposed to do that. She knows . . . [Once again, patient unable to speak. She sobs.]

  DR. SHERMAN: Is that when you started hitting them?

  MRS. CASSIDY: No. First I filled up the cup we keep in the bathroom with cold water, and I threw it at Lily to wake her up.

  DR. SHERMAN: Do you often throw water on your children in the morning?

  MRS. CASSIDY: No. Just sometimes. If they won’t wake up any other way. My mother used to do the same thing to me.

  DR. SHERMAN: Did you like it when your mother threw water on you?

  MRS. CASSIDY: No. But it worked.

  DR. SHERMAN: And what happened after you threw the water on your daughter?

  MRS. CASSIDY: She started screaming, saying she hates me. Then I started yelling.

  DR. SHERMAN: What were you yelling?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Oh, you know, the usual stuff. I said, “Don’t you start the day sassing me like that, little Miss Thing. You get up and get yourself in that shower. And you!” That’s when I pointed at April? I said, “You stop bouncing that ball against the wall or I will ream you so hard you won’t know what hit you.” Stuff like that. And I said, “I’ve told you a thousand times not to bounce that ball inside this house,” but Lily just sat there, crying, saying, “I hate you, Mommy! I hate you!” and April just kept bouncing that Super Ball against the wall, like I wasn’t even standing there, telling her to stop, and I just lost it. I completely lost it. First I grabbed Lily by the chin, and I said, “You will get up right now, young lady, do you hear me?” Then I hit her. I hit her on her arm and on her legs . . . like this and like this and like this, all over her body, until she ran into the bathroom. By then April had stopped bouncing the ball, and she was kind of cowering in the corner, but I turned around anyway and twisted her arm, the one that had been throwing the ball? I twisted it so hard [Patient is crying hysterically now.] . . . I twisted it so hard she started to scream. I could have broken it. She was screaming in pain. [Patient still crying.]

  DR. SHERMAN: And where was your husband this whole time?

  MRS. CASSIDY: He’s in Detroit today. Maybe Chicago. I’m not sure. He’s always on the road. Leaving me alone with his goddamned kids!

  [Twenty-five minutes elapse, as patient tries to regain her composure.]

  MRS. CASSIDY: I didn’t mean to call them that. I love them. I really do. Oh, god, I’m a monster. [Patient still crying.]

  DR. SHERMAN: Adele, while some of the actions you’ve told me about this morning require further discussion, you need to suspend judgment of yourself for the moment. You’re not a monster. You’re a woman in pain, who happens to be taking out her frustrations on her children, which, yes, is something we need to address. Look, unfortunately we’re running out of time here today. Last week we left off, and you were going to tell me about the time you broke a plate, and we still didn’t get to that, because you were too upset in here today to talk, but what I’m going to suggest is this: You need to gain control over your emotions. Quickly. The problem is that this will take time. Quite a lot of time. In the meantime, I’m going to prescribe a mild sedative. It’ll take the edge off things for awhile, calm you down a bit while we sort through all these issues. You want me to call it in to Dart Drug or is a prescription okay?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Prescription’s fine. I have some errands I have to run before the girls come home.

  DR. SHERMAN: Okay. I want you to take four of them a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bedtime, for the next week, okay?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Okay.

  DR. SHERMAN: And next week we’ll discuss maybe getting your daughters in here for a session or two.

  MRS. CASSIDY: No. They don’t need to come in.

  DR. SHERMAN: I said we can discuss it. Not that we’ll definitely do it.

  MRS. CASSIDY: Okay. [Patient pauses.] Dr. Sherman, can I ask you a question?

  DR. SHERMAN: Sure. But we only have a few minutes left, so—

  MRS. CASSIDY: It’s a quick question. Um, well, I seem to become more, well, I don’t know what to call it other than “crazy,” right around, you know, that time of the month. Almost like a Dr Jekyll / Mr Hyde thing. Like my body gets possessed or something. Does that make any sense to you?

  DR. SHERMAN: No, not really. The hormonal fluctuations associated with menses are not significant enough to cause any substantial changes in mental functioning or personality. That’s mostly a myth.

  MRS. CASSIDY: A myth.

  DR. SHERMAN: Yes, a myth.

  MRS. CASSIDY: Oh. Okay. I was just wondering. And, but, so what about when babies are born? Because I’ve been thinking a lot about what I said last week, about how after Lily was born, how I felt back then, and I remembered that sometimes I’d be looking down at Lily in her crib? When she was sleeping? And I’d have these very vivid images of her being sucked into the earth. Or burned alive. Or, when April was born? After April was born, I used to think that if I kissed her cheek, her skin would boil up, like my saliva was hydrochloric acid or something, and then her whole face would disintegrate. Or I’d picture myself stabbing her to death. Over and over again. It got so bad I actually hid the kitchen knives on a really high shelf in case, well, just in case.

  DR. SHERMAN: Sounds to me like someone’s been watching too many horror films.

  MRS. CASSIDY: No. That’s not it at a
ll.

  DR. SHERMAN: Well, you probably just have a very vivid imagination. It’s nothing to worry about.

  MRS. CASSIDY: I don’t have a vivid imagination, Dr. Sherman. I really don’t. In school I couldn’t draw a picture or write a story to save my life. No, these, I don’t know what to call them—visions?—these visions just happened after the girls were born. And they lasted a long time. With April more than a year.

  DR. SHERMAN: Again, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. Now, we have to end our session today. We’re already three minutes over—

  MRS. CASSIDY: Are you sure? [Patient starts crying again.] Are you sure there’s nothing to worry about?

  DR. SHERMAN: Yes, I’m sure. Look, yes, there are hormonal changes associated with the birth of a child, but nothing that would induce any sort of, well, psychosis. It just doesn’t happen.

  MRS. CASSIDY: Oh. I see.

  DR. SHERMAN: Are you going to be okay driving, Mrs. Cassidy? Would you like a tissue?

  MRS. CASSIDY: Yes, please. Thank you. Sorry.

  DR. SHERMAN: No sorrys. That’s what I’m here for. To help. I’ll see you next week. Take those pills. They’ll do you a world of good, I promise.