Tarnished Dreams

by Jeanette Lukowski

  “Well, at least I didn’t sneak out. So can I go?”

  “No!”

  My parents’ word was law. Unquestionable, unequivocal, non-negoti­able law.

  I don’t think I wanted to be as tyrannical a parent as my parents had seemed, but I also have never understood why everything I said seemed negotiable to Allison.

  In spite of the middle-of-the-night interruption, I woke up the next morning hoping for a brighter day.

  The first thing I noticed was the virgin layer of snow outside the front door. Allison hadn’t exited through the front door, at least. There was no way to say if she left through any of the other exit points from our house, but I let it go for the sake of a good day.

  By 1:30 p.m., the mantra began again. The day’s snowfall cut the babysitting start time for the evening from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., so Allison believed it would be an earlier end time than midnight. “So, can I go out with Katie tonight?”

  “No.”

  I was thrilled when Allison sent me a text message at 11:40 p.m., telling me she was heading home from her babysitting job. I erroneously interpreted the message as a sign: the kids and I were going to watch the New Year’s ball drop in Times Square like we had every other year. No sooner was Allison in the house, though, than she announced, “Katie’s coming to get me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We’re going over to her house, remember? Since I didn’t sneak out last night.”

  “I never said you could go.”

  “You can’t stop me, either.”

  “Excuse me,” I choked out. “This is my house, and you are still my daughter.”

  “So, I can just move out now.”

  Allison may have spat the words out, but they entered my heart like knives. “Then you won’t have to put up with me anymore,” she continued.

  I wanted to slap Allison across her smart mouth. Instead, I walked into the bathroom.

  “Mom, the ball’s about to drop,” Tommy yelled. When I didn’t respond, he repeated, louder. “Mom, the ball’s about to drop!”

  When I still didn’t respond, Tommy ran to the bathroom. Just in time, I managed to get the bathroom door locked—something I never do. “Mom, the ball’s about to drop!”

  “I heard you,” was all I could say. What I couldn’t explain was why I was no longer in the mood to celebrate.

  From the peace of the bathroom, I sent Allison a text message at 12:08 a.m. “This house is not yours to run.”

  Receiving no rebuttal text message from her. I fooled myself into believing the fight was fizzling. Sadly, she was just waiting in the living room to spit more words into my face when I exited the bathroom.

  “I just can’t stand being here anymore,” she yelled when I came out. “We’re always fighting, and yesterday you were even yelling at Tommy for eating all of your bread!”

  “That was very special bread . . .” I began, then realized she was just baiting me into a fight again. It’s not a problem for Allison to yell at Tommy when he touches her iPod, or eats her candy, but it’s apparently a problem when I yell at him for eating a half a loaf of expensive bread I bought in Chicago. Rather than take the bait, I returned to the bathroom to brush my teeth. At 12:12 a.m., I sent Allison one more text from the bathroom: “If you think you can avoid fighting in your life, I guess you’re going to be living alone.”

  Once I finished in the bathroom, I walked out to the living room, kissed each child’s head in turn, told them I loved them, and walked down the hall to my bedroom.

  I heard the front door open and shut before the chill left the sheets.

  I didn’t know what to do anymore.

  14. January—Defiance

  New Year’s Day. My alarm clock woke me at 6:30 a.m.. Time for church. Tommy wanted to have a friend over after church. Rather than spoil their fun, I tried to be my cheery self, and waited for Allison in simmering silence.

  Finally at 2:57 p.m., she sent me a text message. “I’m now awake enough to leave, but Katie isn’t.”

  I toyed with my response. Should I tell her I thought her leaving without permission the night before meant she wasn’t coming home anymore? Should I offer to drive over and pick her up? Should I ignore her, the way she ignores me?

  By 3:53 p.m., I decided on a response. “At least I now know you are alive.”

  When the hands on the clock passed 5:00 p.m., and I hadn’t received any more word from Allison, my anger began to boil. I sent a text message to my friend Sara at 5:13 p.m.: “Allison left home just after midnight last night, without permission, and she’s still not home—grrrrr.”

  Since I didn’t have Internet access at home, Sara filled me in on the Internet-front. “She’s been on her social networking site—informing everyone of her New Year’s cheer.”

  I didn’t have a New Year’s cocktail, or watch the New Year’s ball drop, but she spent the rest of the night drinking. Lovely.

  At 6:06 p.m., Allison sent her next text. “Katie will take me home when the movie is finished. We’re more than halfway through it.”

  Just before 7:00 p.m., Allison walked through the front door. Once again, no “Hello,” no “How are you?” just a direct walk to the bathroom. She showered, made herself a scrambled egg, brushed her teeth, and headed to bed.

  Seventeen hours later, Allison resurfaced. She walked over to me, hugged me, and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what, specifically?” I asked. I wanted Allison to be clear and admit where she felt she went wrong.

  “For going out the other night, and for calling you stupid.”

  I accepted her apology by giving her another hug. “How are we going to go forward?” I asked while still hugging.

  I explained to Allison that living in my house meant living by my rules; she couldn’t ignore my rules whenever she felt like it because Tommy was going to follow whatever example she set.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  An hour later, Allison was outside, shoveling the driveway—by herself. I had planned on going out to shovel when the movie I was watching was over, but Allison didn’t know that. I could not remember a time when Allison voluntarily shoveled the snow.

  I’ve heard of parents who assign chores to their children as a form of punishment. I’ve never wanted chores to be seen as a punitive activity, because they felt that way to me as a child. My sister, four years older, got to dust and vacuum the living room every Saturday. I got to clean the only bathroom in our two bedroom apartment.

  I also don’t pay the children to do chores. In my opinion, things like laundry, cooking, cleaning, raking, and shoveling are part of being a member of a household. You can either watch me do them all, and hear me say, “No,” when you ask for something like having a friend stay overnight, or a special item from the store—or you can help me, and reap the rewards of helping.

  Allison received a thick envelope in the mail January 3rd. I was excited to see a return address with the words Admissions Office. The envelope was from one of the out-of-state colleges Allison applied to before she began talking about wedding plans.

  “Congratulations,” Allison read the enclosed letter aloud. “You have been accepted . . .”

  “Wonderful!” I cheered. “I’m so proud of you! And I have to admit, I’m a tiny bit jealous, too. I would love to teach there! But you got admitted! Good for you, sweetie. I’m so proud of you.”

  Will she go? I think having choices is the important thing. Perhaps she will stop thinking about getting married, knowing she has more options.

  Driving her to the public library an hour later, Allison was on her cell phone. “I don’t know. I’m either going to Montana (the college) or Wyoming (the marriage). I just have a lot to think about,” I heard her tell the person on the phone.

  I find hope in the
smallest sentences.

  An hour later, I worked up the nerve to ask Allison about the erasure of the wedding dress appointment on the calendar.

  “Yeah,” she began. “I told them I needed to postpone it. I told them I’d call them back when I had everything figured out.”

  I had no way of knowing what precipitated the cancellation of the appointment, and wasn’t about to ask. Perhaps Carl got cold feet. Perhaps he had only been patronizing Allison’s dreams of getting married, and had finally come clean.

  Ultimately, I was content with the knowledge Allison cancelled the dress appointment and was thinking about her options.

  I agreed to marry Frank because I felt option-less. Hans, my best friend had gotten married on my twenty-first birthday.

  Even though Hans and I never dated, or even kissed, I internalized the movie message “I married my best friend” enough times during my life to believe that was the key to success. The Brady Bunch, Partridge Family, and Jackson Five were my peers. Buffy and Jody lived with a wonderful, loving uncle. Nancy Drew’s dad never yelled when her natural inquisitiveness solved the mystery. Gloria ended up married to a great guy she met in college, in spite of Archie Bunker’s awful behavior.

  I was too young to understand my parents’ miserable marriage was my dad’s fault. I was too young to understand my father’s volatile moods, low self-image, or drinking fueled the fire of his discontent.

  I was too broken to understand I needed to find someone who wasn’t just like my father.

  When Hans married someone else, I worried about my own future. If my best friend didn’t want me, I rationalized, who ever would?

  The morning of January 6th, the Today show aired their first here-she-is-again news story about Casey Anthony, the young mother from Florida who was freed from jail in July. “We’ve heard the word ‘narcissist’ thrown around a lot,” I think I heard the reporter say. Hearing the words, “the definition of a sociopath . . . takes no responsibility for their actions,” and “doesn’t change their behavior even after being caught” gave me the chills. Those two descriptions seemed to fit Allison as well. Is a sociopath created by the environment, I wondered, or is it something genetically predisposed, like addictive tendencies or body shape and size?

  Before I headed to work, I sent my friends Sara and Lindsey each a text message asking for their opinions about Allison being a sociopath. Then from work, I tried searching for the DSM-IV definition to satisfy my curiosity, but decided the answer might change the way I parented Allison the last months of her already difficult senior year. Could I, for instance, endure more fights with her about starting all over with another new psychiatrist? Could I take more time away from work—and attention from Tommy—to visit specialists in Fargo or Minneapolis? Therapists were always sending us away, after a few visits, saying Allison was “cured,” or “fine,” before they even offered to set up appointments for me. I didn’t create Allison’s behavior. I wasn’t sleeping around, bringing a new guy home every week. I wasn’t out at bars, ignoring my children for hours while I got drunk. I didn’t walk away from being a parent, like Frank.

  Although I’m only her mom, rather than a school-trained psy­cho­logist, psychiatrist, or social worker, Allison’s behavior appeared to be getting worse over time. She’d been through court proceedings for running away, had been on ninety days of probation for shoplifting, and had spent nearly twenty-four hours in juvy for the pictures she emailed—yet she had a new digital camera in her dresser drawer two weeks before her eighteenth birthday. I found it while putting clean clothes away.

  When we got home from school, Allison asked permission to have a new boy “hang out” at our house for a while. I thought this was very nice, considering most of her previous young men had remained faceless names. Allison talked about them, went to see movies with them, and even got rides home from school with them—but I was never allowed to meet them. Until Matt, who came to the house at 4:00 p.m.

  Matt was a nice looking, clean-cut young man, tall, firm handshake, steady eye contact, bright smile. I was impressed with Allison’s new friend. Although I still had lingering concerns regarding sociopathy from the morning, I clung to the hope Allison wouldn’t become the major news story discussed some day.

  I hoped, until I received Lindsey’s reply. “I think she is a master at manipulation. She gets pleasure, or payback, for making you feel bad. It isn’t good enough just to destroy herself, she wants to destroy you.”

  My heart dropped. Does Allison really hate me that much?

  “So you think it’s true? Or not?” I sent back. The question I was ultimately asking: Do you think Allison is a sociopath?

  “I didn’t used to,” Lindsey replied, “but now I am starting to. Especially if she doesn’t take ownership. If she feels her unhappiness is your fault. She will want you as unhappy as her.”

  It’s hard to think about your child hating you so much she would purposely hurt you the way Lindsey suggested, but Frank manipulated me for so, so long. And if Frank was talking to Allison all the time, giving her additional information about how to manipulate people in general—and me specifically—there was no way to predict how far Allison’s behavior would extend. One time, Allison mentioned her dad saying, “No one understands people like us.” While I didn’t understand the importance of the comment then, it still echoes back into my conscious­ness every so often.

  No parent wants to think their child is capable of such intentional and focused hatred, but the careful manipulation of my feelings could be the payback Lindsey suggested, the payback for placing parental limits on her perception of a young adult’s freedoms.

  It must have been pre-school when someone first described Allison as being strong-willed.

  I remember thinking it was a good characteristic. No one would be able to push my daughter around the way I had been pushed around. No one would be able to take advantage of my daughter the way so many had taken advantage of me.

  When she played in the mud, wearing a cute pink outfit she had chosen, I cringed because I wondered how to get the mud out—not because Allison was in it.

  When she flew through the air in a gymnastics class at five years old, I marveled at the courage Allison had. She must have practiced more than a hundred times to make the jump on the spring-board, which propelled her over the vault, appear so effortless.

  When I saw her for the first time in the waiting area of the psychiatric hospital in Chicago, after she ran away from home, I rushed across the room, tears streaming down my face, relieved that my daughter was whole—and safe.

  Only now was I beginning to accept the fact Allison won’t take “No” for an answer. If she heard “No” from me, she asked the next person—and the next person—until she heard “Yes.”

  But this was only the case for things Allison wants.

  Allison came upstairs just before noon on January 7th. Matt called Allison. He wanted to “hang out” for a while. Allison was out the door by 1:00 p.m.

  Matt dropped her back off about 4:00 p.m., and I started to think about what to make for dinner. Before I could flesh out the menu, though, Allison got a call from Katie. “Can I go out for pizza with Katie?”

  Katie pulled into the driveway about 5:30 p.m., and Allison was out the door.

  At 7:11 p.m., I received a text message from Allison. “Can I spend the night with Katie tonight, if I don’t drink? She’s all alone at her boyfriend’s house, because he won’t be here.”

  Rather than waste time arguing with Allison about the lack of logic to her inquiry, I simply replied with a “No” at 7:13 p.m.

  “What time do I need to be home then?”

  Rather than reply too quickly with a time I might later regret, I took a few minutes to think about my answer. “Before I go to bed,” I sent back at 7:18 p.m.

  “So like 10:30 p.m.?”

>   “That would be livable.”

  Allison came home at 10:35 p.m., loudly announcing, “I’m home on time!” as she shut the front door behind her.

  I remember working really hard to hide my experimentation with smoking and drinking from my parents.

  When I was in eighth grade, I liked a boy who happened to smoke. Rather than be made fun of for one more thing, I would sneak a few cigarettes from my dad’s pack every so often. But, in order to not be caught, I would wait to light up until I was on an “L” train platform—or walk through an alley in my neighborhood, rather than the street—so no parents would see me.

  Drinking at seventeen took on the same level of sneakiness.

  So why does Allison so blatantly announce what she does? Is she hoping I’ll make a big deal out of it? Or, is she hoping Frank will? (He’s one of the many Friends on her social networking site.)

  Allison wore a skirt to school January 13th, a barely-covers-your-behind skirt, without nylons or tights for warmth, in spite of a temperature forecast in the high single digits.

  “Can I hang out with Katie?” she asked me when she reached the car after school. How about a hello, how are you, thanks for picking me up from school today, Mom?

  Rather than start the fight at the curb, I simply said, “Why don’t we go home first, so you can put on warmer clothes.”

  “Katie, can you pick me up at home? I’m going to put on some pants real quick,” Allison said into her cell phone.

  They left the house at three-thirty. “I’ll be home by six,” Allison shouted over her shoulder as she stepped out the front door