“Because she’s desperate. She’ll do anything she can to win these kids. If you’re gonna lie, lie big, lie often. How do I prove that I didn’t do this? I don’t have witnesses with me twenty-four hours a day. All she can do is make allegations, throw mud and hope some of it sticks. That’s what this is. Trust me. This isn’t the last crazy story you’ll hear from her. Serena has never taken responsibility for anything in her life. It’s always somebody else’s fault. She’s hoping that if she blows enough smoke you’ll be too confused to make a decision. Then she’ll trot out ‘I’m their mother, children belong with their mother’ bullshit and try to steal this one. That’s her only hope, doctor. That’s what this is. A desperate pathetic attempt to blacken my name. Let me go on record. There’s no way that behavior like this is in the children’s best interest.”
“I don’t think there’s anything more I can do with this right now. I’m going to bring the children in. I’ll introduce myself to them, ask you to give them permission to speak with me and agree not to question them about what is said. Then I’ll see who wants to go first and interview that child. When the interviews are done, Ms. Hurtado can take the children home and to school. Each of you will be given the Rorschach by my associate, Dr. Frazier.”
Reece stood up and walked to the door. He pulled it open and Tina Tully, who had been sitting against it the entire time, tumbled into his office.
She rolled easily over onto her feet, clambered up the sofa and attached herself to her mother’s chest. Tommy had been sitting across the corridor facing Reece’s office. He stood up and walked into the room. He surveyed the situation and took up his position on his father’s lap, bringing everyone back into balance.
Reece repeated the introduction he’d given Mr. Tully. Then he asked the parents to give the children permission to talk freely with him, since he was a stranger. Then he asked them to promise not to ask any questions about what the children might discuss with him. Last, that they give the children permission to report any violations of the second rule to the doctor. It was Reece’s experience that these rules worked best in inhibiting the parents rather than liberating the children, particularly young ones.
There was no dispute over who went first. Tommy yelled, “Me,” and Tina turned her face away on her mother’s chest.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Tommy Tully looked exactly like his father but with a bowl haircut for his straw blonde hair. He wore a football jersey T-shirt with his father’s number on it, blue jeans and sneakers.
“Do you have any questions you want to ask me, Tommy?”
“No.”
Reece eased into the interview with low impact questions about school, his classmates and soccer team. A second pass elicited his favorite foods, TV shows, sports team and video games. Tommy had elected to sit in the recliner that his father had occupied. He carefully laid his arms on the rests, stretching his fingers out to see if they would cover the width of the leather. The bottoms of his sneakers faced Reece.
Reece pressed on about Tommy’s daily activities and confirmed that his mother used to do all of that, but now Felicia did. His dad liked them to be all ready for bed when he got home. He said it was like being in the army and his dad was the general who did the inspections.
Reece was ready to plunge on. These interviews were like exploratory surgeries without anesthetic. A push here, a probe there. Everything’s going okay one second, the next there’s a geyser of arterial blood all over the room.
“What’s your mom like, Tommy?”
“She’s real pretty. She’s a good mom. She takes care of me and Tina. She makes what we like for dinner and she takes me to practice. She doesn’t know much soccer, but she’s learning.”
“What is your dad like?”
“He’s cool. He’s a football player. He was on TV a lot. I have his cards and one of his old helmets. He takes me with him to practices and games. I have autographs of everybody on the team. When I get older I won’t play soccer. I’ll play football like my dad.”
“Do you know why your mom and dad don’t live together anymore?”
Tommy’s face darkened and he began to play with the adjustment on the recliner. “My mom stopped loving my dad. She took her love and gave it to somebody else. He loves her but she doesn’t love him anymore. She broke God’s rule and now my dad can’t live with her anymore.”
“How do you know this, Tommy?”
“My dad told me. He said that my mom loves me and Tina but she can’t be with us ’cause she needs to be punished. He told Mr. Gonzo that she had to learn her lesson. I heard him.”
“Do you ever have to learn a lesson?”
“In school. I learn them every day.”
“How about at home? Do you ever get punished?”
“Sometimes. If I’m bad. I’m not hardly ever bad. My mom puts us in time-out. Me longer than Tina. She cries and gets to get out.”
“What does your dad do if you’re bad?”
“He talks to me. He tells me to be good. He says he needs me to be good ’cause he has to do everything now that Mommy’s in time-out.”
“Time-out?”
“Yeah, like when we’re bad we have to go off by ourselves and think about what we did. He says that the judge told Mommy she had to go off by herself and think about what she did that was bad. He says she can come back when she says she’s sorry and won’t do it again. Mommy isn’t sorry that she doesn’t love Daddy, that’s why she can’t come back.”
“Have you ever been frightened, Tommy?”
“No, I don’t get scared. Tina gets scared a lot.”
“Have you ever been afraid of your Mommy?”
“No.” His face screwed up with the effort of trying to understand the question.
“Your dad?”
“No.”
“Has your mother ever hurt you?”
“Yes. She hurt my leg one time. Bad.”
Reece looked up. “Can you tell me more about that?”
“I fell on the playground. My leg was bleeding. She put some water on it, but it got all foamy and it hurt like it was burning. She said that was all the germs being killed.”
Reece smiled. “I see. How about your dad. Has he ever hurt you?”
“No.”
“Your mom came to see you when you were at school. What happened?”
“She did a bad thing. She was trying to steal me from my dad. She came out of time-out but the judge didn’t say it was over.”
“Did anything else happen?”
“My dad stopped her from stealing me. She tried to bite him and he had to push her down. She hit her head on a rock and fell asleep. It was an accident.”
“How did you feel when your mom came to school?”
“I was really happy. I missed her lots. I thought she told Daddy she was sorry and she could come home now. Then she was bad and ran away with me.”
“When your Daddy pushed your Mommy down and she hit her head, what did you do?”
“I wiggled out and … I don’t remember.” Tommy was picking at the buttons on the armrests.
“Were you frightened then?”
“Yes, no, I thought Mommy … I didn’t know she was sleeping. She did a bad thing.”
“I’m a little confused, Tommy. Were you frightened then before you knew she was sleeping?”
“I don’t remember.” That answer told Reece he needed to back away.
“Tommy, if you had three wishes, what would they be?”
He kept picking at the buttons. Now his feet were drumming the edge of the seat.
“I wish my mom and dad lived together.” Then a moment later. “I wish my mom and dad loved each other.” Tommy frowned as he searched for a third wish. The first two would have made his life sweet and whole. His last wish cut Reece’s heart out. “I wish I wasn’t so little.”
Reece closed his eyes. The bullet train was picking up speed.
“Doctor Reece, can I ask you a question?”
> Reece’s eyes popped open. “Of course, Tommy, anything. What do you want to know?”
“Did you talk to my mom?”
“Yes, I did. I talked to her for a long time.”
Tommy looked into his lap. “Did she give my love to somebody else?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Morgan Reece walked Tommy back to the waiting room. His sister was sitting on her mother’s lap. As he approached, she turned her back to him. Reece squatted and tried to make eye contact.
“Tina, it’s your turn. Can you come into my office?”
No answer.
Reece motioned to Tommy. “Your brother just finished. Let’s ask him how it went, Tina. Tommy, how was it?”
“It’s okay, Tina. He just asks you a lot of questions. There’s no shots or nothing.”
Tina turned her face away from her brother and hung on to her mother’s chest as if it was a granite cliff and she had no rope.
“Ms. Tully, why don’t you come into my office with Tina and then we’ll try to get her to separate from you? You too, Mr. Tully.”
Reece ushered them all into his office and left the door open. After assuring Mr. Tully that no questions would be asked in the presence of his wife, he agreed to leave the room. His departure did not alter Tina’s cliffhanger position.
“Tina, your Mommy’s going to stay right here with us.” He looked at Serena. “Isn’t that right?”
She said, “I’m staying right here, Tina. Doctor Reece is a nice man. Can you turn around and look at him? I’ll hold onto you.” She detached Tina’s Velcro fingers and turned her around on her lap. With an arm around her belly, she brushed her hair and kissed the top of her head.
“I’ve got lots of toys and games here, Tina. Let me show you what I’ve got. If you want to play with any of them, you just slide off your mom’s lap and we can play with them.”
Tina looked impassively at Reece. She had dark brown hair, pulled back with a bow at the top. Her face was round, her nose upturned and her eyes were large and blue like her mother’s. If she would ever smile he would see that the dimples too had made the next generation.
“I’ve got games: Sorry, Chutes and Ladders.”
Nothing.
Reece went over to a cupboard, sat down and slid open a door. “Let’s see what I’ve got here. Hmm.” He rummaged around. “How about Legos?” He set them out.
“I have paper and markers. We could draw pictures.”
Nothing.
Reece proceeded to show Tina his collection of dolls, Transformers, doctor’s kits, art supplies, Fisher-Price house and figures and Duplos. Nothing caused her to leave her mother’s lap.
He went back to his chair. “Well, Tina, if anything interests you to play with, feel free to check it out. I’m just going to sit here and talk with your mother.”
Serena smiled wanly. “What if she won’t climb down? Then what?”
“We wait. We talk about the weather. Once she’s sure you aren’t leaving, she’ll explore and find something that interests her. Once she’s done that, I’ll see if she’ll let me play with her. Then we’ll try to …” at that point Reece mimed her leaving the room.
“And if she doesn’t?”
“We’ll give it a decent interval. I don’t want being here to be aversive. We’ll give it a second try. If that doesn’t work, I’ll switch the sequence of the evaluation. We’ll do the direct observations with you and her and with her and her father. I’ll try to interview her after that. She should be more comfortable with me and the place by then. I don’t think that’ll be necessary. I’ve never had a child that wouldn’t separate from his or her parents, not at her age. Anxious, reluctant, slowly, sure. But absolutely refuse. Never. We’ll just take it at her pace.”
Reece noticed that she was still holding the child. “Relax. Let her go. She can’t overcome your anxiety, too.”
Serena colored. “I may be more upset about being separated from her than she is.” She let her arm slide away from the child.
Reece, whose daughter had been a select team soccer player for many years, asked some innocuous questions about Tommy’s team. He was playing for an under-eight house team in the Vienna Youth Soccer League. The coach planned to take the league all-stars and enter them as a select team when they were nine. He’d already told Serena he thought Tommy would be in that group.
Tina turned over and backed down off her mother’s lap. She went to the open cupboard and reached in for the house and figures. They were too big for her to remove. Reece slid off his chair and came up next to her.
“Can I help you get those out?”
She nodded.
Reece set the house up on the carpet. He scooped out all of the figures and laid them in front of the house. He wasn’t going to get into her play unless she invited him. Instead he hoped to use her play as an entrance into her world. A way to ask questions that was less formal than an interview. At four she was on the young end of interviewability. Reece preferred interviews to play sessions because the inferential leaps were shorter. As Twain had said, the difference between the right word and the almost-right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug. So was the difference between “My Daddy hits me” and, dolls in hand, “The daddy doll hits the baby doll.” Close, maybe very close, but not the same.
Tina was having trouble opening up the house to expose the rooms. Reece unsnapped the lock.
Tina looked perplexed. “Where’s the bed? Baby needs the bed to sleep.”
“Let me look.” Reece rummaged in the cupboard and pulled out all the loose furniture. “Here.” He handed her the bed.
Tina put the bed in an upstairs room. She selected a young girl figure and put her on the bed.
“The baby. Shhh, she’s sleeping.”
“Reece whispered, “Does she have a name?”
Tina whispered, “Yes.”
Reece chuckled. You get what you ask for. “What’s the baby’s name?”
“I don’t know.” Tina then selected a boy figure and two adults. She carefully furnished the entire house. The leftovers she looked at disdainfully and pointed to the cupboard. She told Reece, “Put them there.” He did.
“Who’s that?” Reece asked, pointing to the figures.
“That’s the brother, the mom and the dad.”
Now was the time to try to get Mrs. Tully out, before her presence could be alleged to have contaminated the child’s play or responses. Reece looked up at her. “Tina, your mom has to go to the bathroom. Can she go while we play here?”
Tina looked up at her mother who was sliding across the sofa towards the door. “Okay?”
“Tina, your mom is going to wait for you outside. After she’s done with the bathroom. Like you did when she was talking to me. We’ll keep playing here. When you’re done playing, we’ll go outside and see her. Okay?”
“I’m going back to where I was sitting before we came in here, Tina. That’s where I’ll be. You can open up the door and you’ll be able to see me. Okay?”
Tina said okay and her mother slid past her and out the door. She mastered an impulse to kiss her once before she left.
“That’s the brother,” Reece reminded her. “And the mother and father. What are their names?”
Tina looked at him incredulously. “Brother, mother and father.” She put the mother in the kitchen and the father in the den. The brother and the little girl were sleeping.
Reece attempted to enter her play a number of times but was rebuffed. Tina was intent on playing out a family drama of concern to her but did not want to answer any questions about it. Reece watched and waited.
Tina looked for another figure. A man. She stood him up outside the house. She placed a dog inside the house. She found a police car and put it down the street from the house.
“Who’s that?” Reece asked.
“The robber. He wants to steal the children. He’s a bad man.”
Tina moved the parents together into their bedroom
. For the first time she volunteered information. “The Mommy and the Daddy are sleeping too. Like the brother and the girl. The bad man is waiting until they fall asleep. He’s going to come in the house.”
Tina moved the dog to the top of the stairs and laid him on his side. She put her finger to her lips. “Sleep, Blackie.”
She moved “the robber” to the outside of the house.
“He’s got a key. He’s going to sneak into the house.”
She moved the man inside the garage. “Shhh, Blackie. What’s that noise?” The dog was up on its legs. So was the girl.
“What is the girl feeling?”
“She’s scared. She hears noises at night. Blackie hears them too. He wakes her up.”
“What does she do?”
“She has a safe place, where no one can see her. She hides in there.”
“Do you have a safe place where no one can see you?”
“Yes.”
“Where do you go?”
“In the bathroom. I hide under the sink behind the door. Tommy puts me in there.”
“When did Tommy put you there?”
Tina looked away. “I don’t know. I forget.”
She reached into the house. “The Mommy and the Daddy are up, too. They hear the bad man’s noises. Blackie is barking. The Daddy calls the police.” She reached down and brought the police car up to the front of the house. She stood the robber up in the back of the police car. “He’s going to jail. But the Mommy and the Daddy, the brother and the girl aren’t. They all stay in the house. All of them.”
Tina looked around and found that the world was not so. She stood up, opened the door and raced to her mother whose absence filled her play, and made it into work.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Dr. Frazier finished with the Bricklin and Roberts tests shortly after Tina’s session ended. She scheduled the Rorschachs with the Tullys for the next afternoon.
Reece told them that he needed to discuss the direct observation sequence with their attorneys.
Tom Tully asked, “Why?”
“Because it requires that the children spend equal time with each parent so that it’s fair for both parties.”
The Mongol Reply Page 12
