The Road at My Door

by Lori Windsor Mohr

  “I know, it’s just—” Tim shook his head in confusion. “I imagined you and I having the long conversations we’ve always had, just on the beach instead of…you know…here. I was sure you’d be home in time for spring quarter, summer for sure. I don’t understand why you would waste your time finishing this one year program. Is that why you want to stay in Ventura County?”

  “It’s not exactly a waste of time. I’ll need to support myself once I leave Family Care. With my psych tech license I can get a job near UCLA, or maybe UC Santa Barbara, and transfer.”

  “A job? Why wouldn’t you live at home, or in the dorm?”

  There was no way around it. I told him about the divorce—omitting the little detail about Mom and FD—and how the house was on the market. I had no home to go to anymore, so it was just as well I would be going into Family Care.

  “Oh, hon, Reese. I’m so sorry.”

  He pulled my head to his chest. After a moment of hesitation, my shoulders relaxed. I sensed Tim’s need to comfort me yet I felt a growing unease. I tried to make light of it. “I guess that officially makes me an orphan.”

  Tim squeezed me close, whispering shushing sounds and stroking my hair. He wasn’t about to make light of it. Then again, this was all news to him. I’d been adjusting for months.

  “Hon, you’ve been through so much. And now, at barely seventeen, you’re going to be on your own in the world, cut off from family, no home. You must feel like the rug has been pulled out from under you. There will come a time when you’ll soar free. You’ll find your home. Being in this place I don’t imagine you’ve felt safe for a long time.”

  “Safe doesn’t mean the same thing it used to. I’ll take this dilapidated dungeon any day over fancy St. John’s when it comes to—” I stopped myself.

  He chuckled and pulled away so he could look at my face. “What? You’re being sarcastic, right?”

  Sadly I wasn’t. I couldn’t tell Tim that the places I’d thought would be safe, should be safe—my home, a private hospital—had turned out not to be, and the one place I had been certain was dangerous had offered me safe passage to adulthood.

  I steered the conversation a different direction. “You’ve been such a good friend to me during the most difficult time in my life, Tim. You and I will go on being friends whether I live in Ventura or the Palisades. Or China.”

  He spoke softly into my hair as he held me. “I’m very glad to hear you say that, hon. I don’t feel nearly as lost and confused when I’m with you. Questions about my faith, uncertainties over the future…everything feels lighter when I’m with you. I care very deeply for you, Reese. I have for a long time. Your happiness means everything to me.”

  “Talking to someone really helps. Other than Dr. Pallone and Griff, I don’t talk to anyone about anything, at least not anything that matters.” I broke free of his hug with a mischievous smile. “Maybe you should be a patient too. I know a good shrink I could recommend.”

  The laughter broke the stubborn unease I had felt since the moment we sat down, a tension I’d never felt before with Tim.

  “Hey, you haven’t opened your present yet.” He reached into the pocket of his jacket and produced a beautiful aqua colored box with white ribbon bow. The box inside that one needed both hands to pry it open. I lifted the necklace out. A gold Saint Christopher medal the size of a dime dangled on the end of a glittering chain.

  “Tim! It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on!”

  He wriggled in pleasure. “I got it at Tiffany’s in Beverly Hills…it’s 22 karat gold.”

  “No! Tell me you didn’t! But—”

  “Instead of sending me a Christmas package this year all the way from Ireland, I convinced my folks to be practical and send a check.”

  “You spent gift money on me?”

  “I knew right away it had to be something special. Brother Dominic has a very stylish sister who regularly brings care package to the clergy house. I consulted her and this is what she suggested for a very special friend.”

  I kept my eyes on the gift. Any unease I’d felt earlier returned as full-fledged discomfort. I guided the necklace back in the box and snapped it closed. “Tim. I can’t keep this.”

  “I want you to have it. Saint Christopher is the patron saint of travelers.”

  “I can’t, Tim. Anyway, even if I could keep it there’s no way to have something this precious here. It would be stolen in no time. Then I’d really feel awful.” I held the box and waited for Tim to take it. He reached over. For a moment we both held the box. I felt trapped in his gaze, those intense green eyes that now searched mine, for what I don’t know. It seemed like so long ago that I’d walked into class and laid eyes on Brother Tim McPherson.

  “Tell you what. I’ll hold onto it for safe keeping…for now…with the understanding that it’s yours and when you leave this place you’ll wear it.”

  I let go of the box. “Okay.”

  The rest of the visit we spent wandering the grounds, clinging to the minutiae of UCLA’s freshman curriculum in full awareness it was a diversion from for the real subject.

  *

  On the ward I stayed extra busy to avoid thinking about Tim.

  The school teacher, Joanne, agreed to let me volunteer in the classroom with whatever time remained after my classes and studying. Angela and company refused any assistance in that setting. The ward was a different story. She led her pals to the monastery table, the same three pals who hadn’t been interested in class. Angela said they needed a little help if there was any hope of passing algebra and English. It wasn’t a request for help. It was an order.

  If our tacit agreement over algebra homework had earned me chops on the ward, my status as academic concierge practically made me a guru. Angela spread word that I would help anyone she asked. No one dared approach me without prior permission from my gatekeeper.

  It was around this time I noticed Angela watching me, whether she was in front of the TV or with her friends styling each other’s hair. Even though I pretended not to notice once in a while our eyes made contact. This odd acknowledgement gave us some kind of bond. I wasn’t sure what Angela made of my endless studying, except that my days had purpose—well, if not purpose at least a short term objective.

  In me I believe Angela saw a world beyond the adolescent ward. I think she knew reaching the pinnacle as reigning Top Dog in a state institution only to age out and be transferred to an adult version of confinement was not the same as making something of her life. The more I got to know Angela, the more I saw her shrewd intelligence, as well as sensed defeat.

  A knife attack on her teacher had topped a history of incorrigible behavior and severe depression. That’s the rumor I’d heard anyway. Whatever had landed Angela in a state hospital, I think she knew life beyond these walls was not in her future. I finally understood why she had singled me out in the beginning. It hadn’t been personal. Angela had to denigrate anyone passing through rather than inhabiting her insular world.

  I suspected beneath the bravado Angela and I weren’t so different. We may even have suffered in similar ways. That experience has no boundaries in social class, though whatever advantages offered by mine had not likely been available to her. I could’ve told her the fancy psychiatrist and private hospital of my world had not only failed me, it had inflicted irrevocable damage. A state employee in the public institution of her world had saved me.

  My guess was Angela craved purpose in life every bit as much as I did and thought in watching me she might find hers. I had noticed her eavesdropping the day I told Maggie about Viktor Frankl’s life as a death camp inmate, how it led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in all forms of existence, even the most brutal ones.

  Whatever it was that transpired in the course of our eight months together, Angela had changed her tone. She couldn’t be outright friendly; her surly demeanor never wavered. The message came through anyway. One morning after breakfast, I needed a book fr
om my locker for a patient I was helping in the classroom. I had taken to stuffing Cyrano under the bed since his urine bath my first morning. Any trip to the dorm included a quick check to make sure he was there.

  I opened my locker and reached for the book. I stood to close it when something caught my eye. There it was on the bottom shelf.

  My Christmas purse.

  *

  Three weeks went by without a word from Tim. That meant either he’d felt rebuffed at my not accepting his gift or he was every bit as confused as I was by the aura hanging over us. I had played and replayed our visit a dozen times. Nothing jumped at me that might’ve cleared the confusion. Something between us had changed. I had to find what that something was before we saw each other again.

  It wasn’t that I was clueless. I knew he liked me. Most of that stemmed from a shared love of poetry, which neither of us had in common with anyone else. It had become the cornerstone of our relationship. It had never made me uneasy and didn’t now.

  I thought if I could identify each feeling separately, by a process of elimination the answer would emerge and end my confusion. The most obvious feeling was that I missed him. I enjoyed our time together. It had to be more than that.

  It also didn’t feel weird that our friendship had gone beyond the classroom. Over the course of a year I had grown very fond of Tim. It had never been about physical attraction, handsome as he was. Like most girls in class I’d had a bit of a crush on him, nothing even close to Francie’s groupie adoration. I didn’t feel obligated to him in any way. He had always enjoyed loaning me his books. I was grateful he had continued making the effort to visit with an hour drive each way. Appreciating Tim didn’t equate with obligation to him. No matter how hard I searched I couldn’t find the basis for my icky feeling. But there was one.

  It came to me in a sucker punch. Subconsciously I must’ve been attracted to him in spite of my claim otherwise. Maybe I had been sending signals without even knowing. Given my history with Derrick it’s understandable I would resist admitting to myself any kind of physical draw.

  That had to be it.

  Tim had sensed vibes, thought I was asking for more than friendship. Questions about his faith had come up in conversation more than once recently. Could the two be related? Had he thought about leaving the clergy for me the way FD had left the priesthood for Mom?

  An epiphany shook me to the core. I must’ve led him on, the same way Derrick told me I’d led him on at St. John’s. Derrick had interpreted friendliness as flirtation because somehow I had given him the impression I wanted more than a patient-therapist relationship. That’s why Tim had given me the expensive necklace. I had led him on. He had been confused enough to let me.

  I felt sick. A lifetime with Mom had infused in me the very behavior that disgusted me in her, words filled with ambiguity, actions weighted with innuendo. I had become Mom.

  Tim’s tenderness was nothing more than the product of mixed signals. I had been crossing wires as far back as Greg Stewart. It hadn’t been out of thin air he felt rejected the morning he called after the dance, the night after our toothy kiss. Greg heard something in my voice. Why else would he have rejected me in kind unless he thought I was no longer interested in him? We were best friends! How could I not be interested?

  It was my fault the relationship with Greg ended.

  It was my fault Tim sensed more than was there.

  It was my fault Derrick wanted me alone in his car.

  *

  The letter arrived late on a Friday afternoon. Maggie waved it in the nurses’ station window to catch my attention. We chatted for a few minutes. Along with Angela, the staff had changed toward me though for a very different reason. I was on the path to being one of them, which afforded status the same way the pact with Angela had.

  I polished an apple I’d brought back from lunch and headed for my usual place at the table. The fact that Tim hadn’t visited in the three weeks told me he was embarrassed about the gift and was backing off. He and I would have to work our friendship back to a comfortable place.

  I stuck the apple in my mouth and held the letter taut with both hands to flatten the folds. Keats. The poem was by Keats. I knew immediately.

  Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;

  She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

  She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

  But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.

  In a field by the river my love and I did stand,

  And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.

  She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;

  But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

  My eyes were drawn further down the page. My mouth dropped open. The apple fell out, rolling across the linoleum.

  “…and so I’ve gone to your parents for their permission to marry you. We need it in writing since you’re under age. I can happily report I now have such written permission in hand. We could wait a year until you’re eighteen but I don’t see the point. I love you Reese. I want to take care of you, give you a home, make a home with you. I’ve been a fool not seeing it before now, how lonely I’ve—”

  Marry me? What is he talking about? My mind whirled trying to understand what was happening. Why didn’t Tim come to me instead of going to Mom and Dad? Even if they still had legal authority, why in the world would they agree to my marrying Tim? I’m barely seventeen!

  I felt lightheaded.

  Oh my God! It’s happening again! My parents have found one more way to wash their hands of me. They didn’t get the chance to make FD my legal guardian and send me away to boarding school. It hadn’t been enough to let Dr. Granzow ship me off to Camarillo. Signing away legal authority as my parents wasn’t reassurance enough that I was no longer their problem, not when they could be rid of me permanently in marriage to Tim!

  I bolted to the nurses’ station, my words garbled and sluggish, like an album playing on slow speed. I willed myself to sound calm. “Maggie, I need to see Dr. Pallone.”

  “Sure, Cavanaugh. Hold on a minute. Let me call over and check.”

  She made the call and returned to the window.

  “No can do, Cavanaugh. She’ll see you Monday for your regular appointment.”

  I walked in a stupor past the day room into the hallway. Raoul came out of the storage room. I was desperate to get out of there, desperate to be outside where I could breathe and think.

  “I need out, Raoul.”

  “Sure, Cavanaugh. You sign the sheet?” He turned to unlock the door.

  “Uh huh.”

  I clenched my fists and waited for the clicking sound of the lock. Before Raoul could pull the door open, I pushed past him from behind and squeezed through it. The outside corridor was empty. I stood for a moment and looked around, unsure where to go. Griff.

  I ran down the corridor, picking up speed with each stride. At the great lawn I zigzagged through patients in transit. I reached the corridor leading to Griff’s office at the end. The sound of my heartbeat drowned everything out save the thud-swoosh-thud of a quickening beat.

  At the end of the corridor I never even slowed down. I shot past Griff’s office and kept going, running, past the cafeteria, past the commissary, the clinic, past the Bell Tower. I darted between buildings, zigzagging my way to Admissions. Once I caught sight of the driveway my feet took on a life of their own, running faster, faster. In the distance, I could see the road leading down the mountain to the highway.

  I reached the parking lot, the very one where I had watched Dad drive away. I crossed it in minutes, jumping the barriers marking each space like hurdles in a track meet.

  My chest was heavy, my brain empty, my body in overdrive. Run, Reese, run! Run like you’ve never run before!

  Somewhere behind me I heard a voice. I turned for a quick look. Raoul was running after me, shouting and waving his arms. He wa
s breathing hard. His bulky body heaved to and fro as he gave chase. Broken commands reached me in bits and pieces as he labored to catch me.

  “CAVANAUGH! Stop!”

  I ignored him and kept going.

  “Cavanaugh…STOP! If you go…beyond the gate…you’re AWOL…I’ll have to…call security…”

  I kept running. Running like I’d never run, running from Mom and Dad and FD and Tim and Dr. Pallone and Griff, running from everyone helping me, everyone hurting me, tired of trying to decipher a world where nothing was what it seemed, everyone a chameleon and me color blind.

  Another quick glance over my shoulder. Raoul had dropped back. He was staggering to a stop.

  Keep running, Reese! Keep running!

  A fog horn sounded. No. It was the hospital alarm going off. Patient AWOL.

  I came to the gate at the end of the long driveway. It was open. I flew past it onto the winding drive that would eventually take me to the main road, and from there Pacific Coast Highway.

  I rounded the first switchback and disappeared from sight.

  A voice rang out. Raoul must’ve started again. It wasn’t Raoul. It was Griff.

  I quickened my pace on the downhill grade, running, breathing, running, breathing.

  “CAVANAUGH! Stop! I can outrun you! Don’t make this any worse.”

  He had just rounded the switchback, too far behind me to catch up.

  My body became weightless, fueled by a lifetime of surplus adrenaline, nascent energy waiting for this moment, waiting for me to break free. Nothing could stop me now.

  Why hadn’t I run from this place the very first day? Run from Mom and Dad who wanted so desperately to be rid of me, run from Tim and his need to take care of me, run from Dr. Pallone and her plan to send me to a strange home.

  She had been in such a hurry to cut me free from my parents. No one could free me. I would rot for the rest of my life in a prison far more difficult to escape than any federal penitentiary. Exposing the Big Family Secret hadn’t made me whole because I could never be made whole.

  I heard footsteps behind me. Griff was gaining, his voice loud and clear.