Unfortunately, after about our fifth day together, it became obvious to me that Rich was interested in a sexual relationship. After his son’s birthday party, a trip to the movie theater that I paid for, and a return to my house where my children were babysitting his son for free, Rich aggressively tried to remove my pants and panties. When I made it clear I wasn’t “that kind of girl,” Rich scooped his sleeping son off of my bed and walked out of my house.
With that kind of history, why should I want a man? Yet I do, some days. I’m scared of making the wrong decision again, but I’m also scared of growing old alone.
* * *
People occasionally tell me I’ll meet a man when I’m least expecting it. Is this just a fairy tale for adults, or is it really possible?
I met Ron Nelson through Allison. He was the school principal in Wyoming when Allison was caught with two cigarettes in her backpack. The call came while I was sitting in my office. “Hi, Mrs. Lukowski. This is Ron Nelson, from the school. I’ve got Allison here in my office, and I’m about to have the police officer issue her a ticket for . . .” he began.
This seemed like an over-the-top approach to me. I thought every kid tried smoking at one point in their life. Since it was a Friday afternoon and I was done with classes for the day, I decided to drive the five minutes over to the school to see what he was talking about.
After Allison was released back to class and the police officer left the school, I stayed to ask the principal to explain the school’s policy a bit more. An hour and a half later, I was still trying to make my way out of his office, but he kept bringing up new topics to talk about.
A few weeks later, Ron sent me an email on a Friday: “I would really like to have dinner with you some time.”
I was in shock—and flattered.
When I told one of my friends about my pending date, she asked, “What are you going to wear?”
“I was thinking about . . . ”
“You can’t wear your work clothes, Jeanette! You have to get something sexy,” she said.
Logistically, I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of needing to wear something sexy. Why couldn’t I just wear nice stuff that I wear for work? I also didn’t think I even owned anything sexy—I’d been “just a mom” for too long.
That weekend, the kids and I drove two and a half hours to the mall to look for an outfit for me. I only found some shoes—which I bought, but have yet to wear out of the house. Ron never followed up on his suggestion that we have dinner.
I saw him at various school functions the latter half of that year and the year following, but we never spoke.
Thanks to that emailed suggestion of possibility, though, I have continued to make very specific wardrobe purchases over the years. Now, if I should ever have a dinner invitation from a man, I have a section of my spare room closet designated for date clothes. They are like an early-twentieth century hope-chest that single girls used to prepare, to showcase what makes them wife material.
* * *
My mother, who lives alone, is now starting to worry about her health. She calls me every day, just to register that she is alive. She is afraid that her absence wouldn’t be noticed for days if she were to collapse or slip and fall in her own home.
I have a divorced friend who is recovering from breast cancer. Her only son is away at college, 150 miles to the south. A few months ago, she was let go from her job, and is now selling her home. She has tried online dating more than once, because she’s so afraid of living alone, but has yet to report any success with meeting a man she would consider a “keeper.”
Another friend, Sara, is married, and raising three daughters. She called one night to tell me about how she was feeling all alone. She said that she and her husband share nothing anymore but their bed.
I am not the only one feeling scared—scared, and alone.
Which is scarier, though—living alone, or living in a loveless relationship?
9. Officer Richards
I decided to give up on relationships when I returned to Minnesota. After all, I was going to celebrate my forty-third birthday and I had been raising the children on my own, rather successfully, for over ten years. Why complicate my life? Every so often, friends tried reassuring me that I would meet the right man when I least expected it. I tried to point out that I was not expecting one. Then on April 25, 2009, Officer Richards walked through my front door. More than a year later, I still mentally wrestled with who he was, what he represented, and wondered what future he might—or might not—someday have in my life, and I had to meet him during my worst nightmare. We met because he was selected to interview the mother of the fifteen-year-old runaway.
Two months later, all I could really remember about Officer Richards from that first meeting was that he wore a tan police uniform and a darker tan baseball-style uniform cap, had nice looking eyes, a great voice, and a sturdy handshake. So, why was he still on my mind over a year later?
* * *
When my sister spotted Allison getting off the bus just after 5:30 a.m., the Chicago police took her into custody. Part of me couldn’t understand, then, why another officer called the house Saturday morning to ask if he could come over to talk about the case. Seeing no other option than to accept the request, I was glad I had just finished my shower and would have time to get dressed before the front door bell rang about twenty minutes later.
I opened the front door and Officer Richards introduced himself. I honestly didn’t retain his name from that introduction any more than I had when he mentioned it on the phone. I shook his hand, then quickly looked down in shame. I felt like a bad mother. My hair was still wet from the shower, hanging straight down across my face, so I didn’t feel like the professional, accomplished woman I was. I also imagined him thinking of my sweet, quiet, normally well-behaved daughter, who he had never even met, as being “just another runaway.”
We sat at the dining room table to talk. Officer Richards sat in my son’s spot on the slightly longer side of the rectangular wooden table, while I sat in my usual spot at the head of the table. While he flipped open his mini notepad of paper that all police seem to make magically appear from a pocket when no one is looking, I quickly glanced at his gold-colored name plate located just above the breast pocket of his uniform shirt. Officer Richards cleared his throat to officially begin our discussion, then flicked his left thumb over his left shoulder, toward my son who sat on the living room couch watching TV. “Can he go somewhere else?” he asked.
“No. He’s watching TV,” I said. “He won’t be paying any attention to us at all.”
“I’m really not comfortable with him sitting there, ma’am. I have some really tough questions to ask.”
“There’s nowhere else for him to go. He won’t go downstairs by himself, and he’ll pay less attention to you if he stays there, rather than being sent to his room.”
Officer Richards took one more quick look over his left shoulder at my son, making it clear he really didn’t like the situation, but it was already too late to shield the truth from Tommy. He was well aware of what his sister had done. The line of separation between children and their parents had been altered when their father moved out in 1997, and we became a unit of three. I also don’t believe in keeping secrets from those you love the most. I saw no reason to make him leave the television in the living room.
Before Officer Richards had asked more than one or two of his questions, another police officer came through the front door. I don’t recall her name, or even being told why she was there, but she joined us at the dining room table, sitting in Allison’s spot at the other end of the table. Officer Richards handled the meeting, making notes, asking questions, and even taking a phone call regarding the case. The other officer pretty much sat at her end of the table, listening.
I answered all of Officer Richards’s que
stions about Allison the best I could, but my mind was racing with the logistics of getting packed for the flight Tommy and I would be taking in less than two hours to bring her back home. Working on only about three hours of sleep, I was balancing myself on the tightrope of polite cooperation with the police, trying to ignore the chaos, wishing that the thirteen-year-old would get off the couch and pack his own damned clothes, and juggling the phones that kept ringing with well-intentioned updates from my sister and calls from Stan.
Acknowledging that we were running short on time, Officer Richards handed me his business card, with his cell phone number written across the bottom. He wanted me to call him with an additional piece of information before my flight left that morning. Then he asked to see Allison’s bedroom. Although it made no sense to me at the time, because she had already been apprehended, I led the two officers down the stairs to the basement bedroom Allison had selected when we moved into the house ten months earlier. After finding nothing, we headed back upstairs. Officer Richards asked a few more questions, then they were gone.
Officer Richards and I spoke on the phone a number of times in the next thirty-six hours or so, each time at his request. He would call my cell phone and leave a message while I was in the airplane, on the phone with the hospital emergency room staff in Chicago, or meeting with the social worker at the psychiatric hospital Allison had been transferred to. Each time I received a message, I called back as promptly as I could. We would discuss the case and I would hang up, thinking that would be his last call to me and that once Allison and I were reunited, the case would be closed.
* * *
After we left the hospital on Saturday, April 25, 2009, Allison and I took a walk together in the Chicago suburb where my sister lived. She wanted to buy some hair color and change her appearance before we returned home. I thought that was a pretty selfish thing to do, and wanted to yell at her for her self-centeredness, but I was also afraid that she would run away again if I did. It seemed foolish to be heading to the store at ten at night for hair color, but I wanted to keep Allison happy—and next to me. Besides, this would be our first chance to really talk about what she had done without other people listening to our conversation. I wanted to know why she had run away.
During the walk, I discovered Allison had been keeping a lot of secrets from me. The worst secret was about an older boy in town who had been stalking her and physically abusing her for months. Rather than tell me about it, she had tried fixing it on her own. She had become phone friends with Nick, thinking he was a seventeen-year-old boy, and had confided in him instead. I was sad for both Allison and me. I know what it feels like to keep secrets from your mom. But I was angry at Allison too—how dare she not trust me to fix everything for her! Swallowing my anger for her benefit, though, I managed to persuade her to speak with the police about what had taken place. I don’t know if she was agreeable because I had proven my love to her by working so hard to find her and wanted to reciprocate by doing something that I asked, or if she finally understood the danger she had narrowly missed. All I cared about at the moment was that we would be going home, together, within the next eight hours.
I called Officer Richards later that night to tell him about her plan to cooperate. He expressed surprise and gratitude, and told me to call him when our flight landed.
The next morning, I called Officer Richards from the terminal, as requested. I left a message on his answering machine that Allison and I could be reached at home. I also restated that Allison was willing to talk with him about her trip. I was so proud of her for agreeing. Allison and I were home for almost an hour and a half before the phone rang. I saw from the caller ID that it was Officer Richards, so I answered the phone.
“Hi,” he began. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you called—I took some time off this morning because my son was getting confirmed, and I had to go.”
I was completely stunned. First of all, he was apologizing to me for not being there when I called. I don’t have a history of guys apologizing to me at all, for anything. Second, he shared the information of being a dad himself, giving me hope that he understood how hard the past day and a half had been for me. Perhaps that was why he was being so gentle with me? I could get used to being treated so nicely by a guy. And third, he recognized the importance of the religious ceremony enough to take time off work to go to it. Neither my dad nor Frank were such noble fathers. If I extended the list of what are, for me, the most important features in a guy, these would probably be part of the top ten. I was falling for Officer Richards.
For two hours, Allison gave the most heart-wrenching testimony a parent never really wants to hear. I also got the details of why, and how she ran away. What follows is part of the conversation between Allison and Officer Richards:
Q: How did you get out of school without anyone seeing you?
A: I walked out the front door with my friend Alex. He was leaving for work. He dropped me off at Gregory’s house.
Q: How did you get from Gregory’s house to the bus station?
A: Gregory’s dad drove me.
Q: Did you have any money for the bus trip?
A: Gregory’s dad gave me twenty dollars.
Q: Why did Gregory’s dad do that?
A: I don’t know.
Q: How did you meet Nicholas?
A: Through a message thing for my favorite band.
Q: So you called him and talked to him?
A: No, I called and left a message. Then he called me back. He said that we should just text at first.
Q: How did you get the bus tickets?
A: Nick sent them.
Q: What were you going to do when you got there? Got to Nick, I mean.
A: I don’t know. He said he would take care of me. He told me he loved me. He said that when I was old enough, we would get married.
Some of the answers made me sick to my stomach. Some of the answers made me want to grab Allison by the shoulders and ask her how she could believe such outrageous things. Some of the answers made me want to cry. I knew I had to remain quiet, though, otherwise Officer Richards was sure to ask me to leave the room. But I also needed to remain quiet so that Allison would continue. As the story behind her running away unraveled, I realized it was about more than just she and I, and it was about more than a fifteen-year-old being frustrated with life at home. I realized she had been lured by a predator, and he needed to be caught.
I was grateful that Officer Richards was so gentle with Allison. I was pleased his tone of voice never changed to anything judgmental or condescending. If it had, she probably would have stopped answering the questions. I was uncomfortable with the direction the line of questioning was following, but kept my face down and rubbed Allison’s back the way I had done whenever she scraped a knee or received a vaccination. I focused on loving the younger version of Allison who lived in my memories, and the comforting sound of Officer Richards’s voice, hoping that someday I would forget the words and vulgar images he and Allison were discussing.
During the testimony, Officer Richards explained that his concerns were both official, as an officer of the law, and personal, since he had a fifteen-year-old, an eleven-year-old, and a two-year-old of his own. My heart dropped to my feet like a rock.
I had looked for a wedding ring on his hand when we first sat down at the interrogation table. No ring, no tan line. Not seeing a wedding band on his hand, I let my mind wander a bit. Thinking about dating him was better than listening to the details of what my daughter had done—until he mentioned his two-year-old. In my mind, older kids can be the result of a previous marriage, but a two-year-old screams “current relationship.”
Fortunately, I was squarely facing my daughter’s side at the moment he shared that information, rubbing Allison’s back. No one saw the sadness that probably settled into my eyes.
Once she had finished an
swering all Officer Richards’s questions, I took a deep breath, stood up, pasted the well-practiced polite smile back on my face, shook Officer Richards’s hand, and stiffly walked with my daughter back out to our car—telling myself once again that was the end of my contact with him.
* * *
A few hours after we returned back home, Officer Richards called again. “I wasn’t going to say anything at the time, but I’m really bothered by what she said about the father and son who drove her over to the bus station Friday,” he said. “You don’t happen to know his last name, do you?”
“No, I don’t. I’m really bad with names—it’s faces that I never forget.”
“You’ve seen the boy?”
“Yep. A number of times.”
“Hmmm. I’ve got a picture over here I’d like you to take a look at. When could you come over?”
Allison was busy watching a movie so I told him that I would run right over.
I put my jacket back on, got in the car, and drove the ten minutes back to the police station. Officer Richards spotted me the minute I walked into the building and let me in to the station office.
With only a five-second look at a small black-and-white picture of the boy in question, I confirmed his identity. Officer Richards and I exchanged a few more comments and I reached for the door knob to leave. Before I could open the door, Officer Richards said, “You know, you’re a really amazing woman.”
I wanted to scream in agony. Why the hell do men have to say something like that if they aren’t going to do something about it? I don’t want to hear about how wonderful I am from married men. Just four hours earlier, when my defenses were entirely down and I was wallowing in my school-girl fantasy that such a good-looking guy would ever be interested in someone like me, I would have loved to hear words of admiration. I’d been waiting for a man to say those things to me for most of my life. Instead of saying it when I was awake, feeling pretty, and would be able to fire back a reply like, “Want to go out sometime, then?” or “Wouldn’t your wife get mad to hear you say something like that,” it had to happen when I was exhausted and feeling like shit. All I could do was look down at my feet, embarrassed by the image of the lousy mother I felt like. I felt the blood rush up into my face, turned my face back in his direction a fraction, quietly said, “It’s not about me anymore . . .” placed my hand on the doorknob, opened the door, and nearly bolted for the exit with my head hung down carrying the weight of my sadness.
Heart Scars Page 10
