The next morning, as usual, I woke up first. I watched about an hour of the Saturday morning news program by myself in the living room, then jumped into the shower before anyone else woke up.
I left the bathroom about 10:30 a.m., refreshed and thinking about the upcoming day’s activities, and noticed the living room television was on. Since I like to follow my Saturday morning shower with a leisurely breakfast when I could, I was pleased to see my son sitting on the couch, engaged with a program on the television. Before I could even travel the distance from the bathroom door to the living room couch to give my son his good morning kiss, my “boss” Tommy said, “I’m watching this, so we won’t go out to work on the basketball hoop until one.”
I was completely thrown by the rush to business, rather than the bleary-eyed little kid I expected to kiss good morning. I only managed to react to the pronouncement with a, “Huh?”
“I just said we don’t have to go work on the basketball hoop until one,” he repeated.
Without even a boyish morning greeting, my son was re-establishing his role as boss. Rather than make a big deal about it, though, I took advantage of the reprieve to get dressed and run some errands in town.
At noon, the boss must have gotten bored with the television show he had been watching, because he suddenly appeared in front of me in the kitchen and said, “C’mon, Mom,” and headed out the door into the garage.
Unfortunately, it didn’t take too long to realize that the role reversal was more permanent than I had hoped it would be—and it had all happened so quickly. I had envisioned that I was going to be the lead builder and the thirteen-year-old was going to be my assistant, just as it had been when we built our first basketball hoop about five years earlier. This time, though, my last job as lead builder had been putting the three pieces of the pole together the night before. While I was tamping the last piece of the twelve-foot pole together, my son had removed the instruction book from the top of the chest freezer, where I had placed it for my viewing convenience, and found a more convenient spot for himself—on the garage floor. There it was difficult for me to read without getting down on my hands and knees.
Saturday’s work, then, began with an odd muttering from Tommy while I was opening the garage door, and carrying the pole, base, and backboard pieces out onto the apron where we would have more room to work. “We need four number thirty-sixes, two number twenty-fours, and six number forty-fives,” I heard him say, not realizing that these were the labels given to the various nuts and bolts that we would need for the next step. It would take me some time to figure out that the noise accompanying Tommy’s every movement after that was the sound of those washers, nuts, and bolts rattling around in his short’s pockets. When he caught me giggling over the discovery, he just chided me to “stop laughing, and come hold this while I screw it together.”
About thirty minutes into the work, Tommy yelled. “Argh! This stupid thing won’t go in!” He was trying to connect the rim to the backboard.
I reminded Tommy of how Mark, our handyman from four years earlier, would behave. “Tom, did you ever hear Mark saying stuff like that when something wouldn’t work right?” I asked. Continuing, I said, “No. He would simply say things like, ‘Okay, let’s try this instead.’ He never yelled, right, Tom? Then you don’t need to be yelling either.”
After that, he would pick up the rubber mallet when something got stuck—to either pound the part through, or to pound it back apart for another try.
When Allison ran away from home, part of me died. The ideal picture of a home I had been trying to maintain was shattered. Having a new basketball hoop standing in the driveway of our home seemed like an opportunity for me to re-establish the public image that we were okay as a family.
Frank and I were divorced in 1998, partly because he had such anger issues. I still remember how he would curse, yell, and throw tools when his building projects weren’t going well. (I was the assistant builder back then—Frank was the lead builder.) So I’d been worried about my son’s displays of anger. Whereas my mother seemed to think that no anger is “an allowable amount” in children, I embraced the research that suggested boys were actually “wired” differently from girls, so I tolerated his occasional outbursts better than my mom did. At the same time, however, I refused to let Tommy behave as poorly as his father did. Building this basketball hoop, then, was a testament to who Tommy was becoming, and working with him gave me a peek at how well-behaved I hope he would be in his adult relationships, especially with women.
To a passerby, it looked like we have a run-of-the-mill basketball hoop in our driveway. For me, the basketball hoop represented a step in our family’s healing process. Windstorms have knocked the structure over a few times, but the kids and I were always able to work together to stand the basketball hoop back up—even if it meant that we occasionally had to grab the rubber mallet to pound the rim back down, replace the net that got ripped on the driveway’s surface, or purchase another bag of sand to try and add additional counter-weight to the base. Just like us, the basketball hoop would carry the scars of these many assaults the rest of its life.
* * *
In some ways, my children and I are very much alike. In other ways, we are nothing alike at all. For instance, I am a perfectionist. I can walk into a room and feel the need to straighten up the picture that is hanging slightly to the left, or adjust the cushion on the couch to match the other cushion. While I was married to Frank, I worked really hard to keep the house orderly, because I thought people were going to judge me. When Allison was in kindergarten, though, I realized that perfectionism is a bad thing—most of the time.
I volunteered to color paper game pieces for the teacher. She was going to use them to play a matching game with the group of twenty kindergarteners. All I remember is feeling the need to color coordinate the matching pieces—and realizing how the randomness of the game would be lost. I returned the uncolored game pieces the next day, and asked if there was a cutting project I could work on instead.
Not wanting to inflict my perfectionism on my children, I have worked really hard to let go of certain traits. I won’t pick up after them, which means our house is often messy. I won’t force them to participate in organized sports, so Allison quit gymnastics in Wyoming because she didn’t like their competitive focus. (She began recreational gymnastics in first grade.) I won’t enforce rules for only one child that I’m not willing to carry out for both.
From my perspective, we have a very fair and balanced household. Apparently, their competitive spirit only fires into action when their mother is involved.
* * *
July 23, 2009
Allison and I were watching a movie on television, when at 8:15 p.m. she suddenly asked, “Where’s Tommy?”
I hadn’t realized how quiet he had been for a while, either. After a quick search through the house and yard, she confirmed that his bicycle was missing from the garage.
“Did I ever, before, take off without asking?” Allison asked.
The kids were always trying to compare their actions to the other’s, but this was more of a quiet, contemplative question she posed, rather than a competitive, “I want to get him in trouble” sort of query.
I thought for a minute, then I was able to list off some of the situations when she actually had left the house without permission. “There were the times, in Wyoming, when you wouldn’t come straight home from school because you were at the library with your friends, which would technically be ‘taking off’ without permission.
“And then there were the times when you and your friends would take off out of the backyard without asking or telling me—so I guess you technically did—at the same age that he is now.
“You know, it’s really kind of hard right now, too, to be so harsh with him about breaking the rules, after what you did . . .”
I wasn
’t trying to make her feel bad. I just needed her to understand that what she did when she chose to get on that bus in April had changed the entire family dynamic.
No, Tommy probably wouldn’t get the same rules, standards, or expectations. Part of that difference was simply the fact of Tommy place as the second child. The rest was that I no longer felt like my rules, standards, or expectations mattered, or would have any positive impact on their behavior in the long run. Maybe feeling loved, in spite of their behavior, is what matters most.
Keeping everything equal seems like even more of an issue since Allison ran away. If Tommy gets to do something that she doesn’t remember doing, she’ll call me on it. If Allison gets to go somewhere that Tom can’t, he yells at me, “How come she gets to, but I can’t?” Part of me wants to tell him it’s because I’m afraid, part of me wants to tell him it’s because I don’t want to fight with her anymore. Ever since she ran away, Allison and I seem to be fighting all of the time. She wants her independence. I just want my little girl back. I want Allison to love me again—and not always fight and compete with me for other people’s attention.
July 28, 2009
Allison and I were sitting in the counselor’s office, talking about how things had been going since our last session. I was totally shocked and surprised to hear her tell the counselor that she was concerned about pleasing me and doing things that make me happy.
“Really?” was all I could sputter out.
It was hard to wrap my head around the idea that the child who just ran away from home a few short months ago was really so consumed, internally, with a need to please me.
* * *
Maintaining my silence about April 24 has been a most difficult challenge. At first, I kept silent out of shame. My mom told me how embarrassed she was upon discovering one of the Chicago police had been a former student. Being a teacher as well, the message I internalized was to keep the news away from work. I told my supervisor, concerned that I might have a nervous break down or something, but we only had a week of classes left before semester’s end, so I didn’t have to tell anyone else.
It took me a few months, but I eventually told Sara, Lindsey, Hans, and Marie, four friends who I hoped wouldn’t openly judge either me or Allison.
August 2, 2009
The kids and I went to visit my friend Marie. I guess I’d been avoiding her because I was afraid to tell people what happened in April. I’d been feeling badly about not talking to her, though, so we bit the bullet today.
Marie and I have been friends since 1997. Moving to Wyoming got us out of the habit of talking on the phone or visiting every few weeks, but we would usually email at least once a month. Her last several emails had been asking for my phone number and offering me her phone number again, hoping, I’m sure, that the reason we hadn’t spoken in such a long time was because I had lost her phone number. We hadn’t spoken since before Allison ran away.
Allison, Tommy, Marie, and I were standing in her garage when we first arrived, and she asked, “So what’s new?”
I did my best to answer her question in a nonchalant manner, and we all proceeded into the house.
Maybe half an hour later, I was finally able to divulge my secret. Allison and Tommy were watching some scary movie we had rented and brought with for the visit when I turned to Marie, and quietly asked, “Can we take your dog for a walk?”
It gets easier to tell the story over time, but it is also harder. It’s hard to let people see my most vulnerable sense of “failure” at the most important job I do, parenting. It was hard to keep the events of the story in chronological order because Marie kept interrupting the story with questions, and hard, too, because I didn’t have all of the answers.
Marie was also perceptive enough to understand the story was far from over.
* * *
Being single suddenly felt worse. Without anyone to tell me how wonderful I was or to distract me from the pain I still felt in my heart, I would sit on the deck, in silence, and reflect on my life. I would think about the choices I had made, and wonder which ones had been mistakes. What would our lives be like if I had stayed married to Frank? Am I really that horrible to live with? Why does everyone I love abandon me?
I think I ate my way through my pain. I didn’t start smoking again, because I had watched my aunt’s five-year battle with lung cancer. Although I quit smoking January 7, 1991, I still worried about the health of my lungs.
I didn’t start drinking alcohol. The heavy drinking I had done when I was seventeen had resulted in ulcers, black outs, and poor decision making with men. I needed to stay sober for myself—and for the children.
Sitting on the deck was easy. I was close enough if the children needed me to fix them food or settle an argument, but I was far enough away from the action in the living room to quiet my nerves.
Being alone was hard.
* * *
August 9, 2009
I was sitting on the back porch by myself, thinking about how life had changed. It was hard to get beyond what happened. Allison was beginning to think about what was going to happen when she got back to school in the next month. School would start after Labor Day. Allison would be in her second year of high school. She had already been expressing anxiety about returning to school, wondering if she was still going to be ostracized by the other students and/or their parents, worrying that she would remain friendless for the rest of her high school days and fearful of things she wouldn’t or couldn’t explain to me. I tried to reassure her, just a few days earlier, telling her that, “So much happens at this age. You’ll be surprised by the things that have changed over summer. You’ll be hearing about who has dated whom, who went where, who experienced a growth spurt, whose parents are going through a divorce—”
“Mom,” she interrupted. “Nobody really cares about divorces anymore. Who’s pregnant is way more important than that.”
“Oh.”
I was caught off guard. Was I so sheltered in high school that I never thought about that? “Well, still,” I continued. “I guarantee that by December, they’ll all have gotten over your stuff.”
“That’s a really long time, Mom.”
“I know, dear, but it’ll really go quickly. You’ll see. The stuff with Nicholas might not be over yet, but the stuff with Gregory will be.”
Who was around to reassure me that it would all be okay, though?
* * *
Living in a small town means running into people you may or may not want to see, and often when you least expect it. Like the day Allison and I were volunteering with an event sponsored by my work in September 2009, and we both swore we saw Gregory. Or the day in October 2009, when Allison pointed out Gregory’s dad in the phone store. “That’s Gregory’s dad,” she whispered in my right ear, “standing at the counter.” I had never seen him before. Thankfully, he either chose to ignore Allison, or didn’t recognize her. Then, in late December, we ran into Gregory at the grocery store closest to our house. I could have reached out to touch him, I was that close to him. We had a moment of eye contact, but before I could say a word he had turned to a much taller male companion, said something to the two girls they were with, and stormed away to find Allison. With shaky hands, I tried to find my cell phone quickly enough to alert her to his approach, but I was too late—he got to her before I could. She told me later that she had turned a corner so quickly to avoid him that she had slammed face-first into a store cooler—and then he simply vanished from the store.
In March 2010, while leaving the high school auditorium after the choir concert Allison had been participating in, we both spotted Alex—the young man who had transported Allison from the high school to Gregory’s house on April 24. Alex had never been charged with anything, but had been investigated.
It’s hard to know what to do, or how to act when confronted with some
one from your past. If the relationship was a pleasant one, the reunion is easy. Allison was scared when she saw Gregory, and ran. When she saw Gregory’s dad, she was mildly panicked, but stayed in the store. When she saw Alex, she turned the other way, but kept walking calmly to our car.
For too many years, I had been afraid of Frank. Everything changed when I saw him in the airport, though. He tried to connect with me by offering me a stick of gum—my favorite kind—but I quickly diffused his power by showing him I had more control over my life than he had over his.
Allison’s opportunity to reclaim the power in her life was approaching. It came in the form of a note on the door.
13. Court
I’ve always considered myself a “good” person. Although I stole a candy bar from the corner store when I was twelve or thirteen, told lies to my parents, teachers, and even friends in order to keep myself out of trouble when I was a teenager, and have participated in other illegal activities such as underage smoking and drinking, all of those behaviors stopped when I was taken on the high school field trip to Cook County Correctional Facility in Joliet, Illinois.
I don’t remember all of the details of the field-trip, but I do remember I was taking a class called “Marriage and the Family,” and one of my classmates came up with the idea. It seemed silly to take twenty-some high school juniors and seniors to a jail, but it was a day away from school.
When we arrived at the prison, each of us received a hand stamp that would only become visible under an ultraviolet light. I remember thinking that this was an odd formality. We were high school students visiting an adult prison. Weren’t the guards going to be able to tell the difference between our fresh, teenaged faces and those of the hardened, adult criminals without the aid of an ultraviolet light stamp?
Heart Scars Page 15
