Tarnished Dreams

by Jeanette Lukowski

  Just before seven, Allison called. “Can I stay over at Katie’s house for a while? We’re going to watch a movie. Her mom said, ‘We haven’t seen Allison for a while, Katie. Why doesn’t she join us for Family Movie Night?’”

  Allison didn’t get home until 1:28 a.m. The first door bell woke me up. The second had me focused and climbing out of bed. The third was just annoying, as I was walking down the hall towards the living room.

  “Thanks for calling to let me know anything,” I said as Allison walked through the front door.

  “Sorry,” Allison began, “but my battery ran out at eight.”

  “And there are no other phones on the planet,” I grumbled as I headed back towards my bedroom—and sleep.

  Allison came upstairs the next morning at 11:00 a.m. I had expected her to sleep until noon or one o’clock in the afternoon. Being awake at eleven meant someone called her and invited her out again.

  “Katie and I are going to go out for coffee,” were the first words out of her mouth. No mention of the early-morning arrival, no apology for staying out so late, no lift at the end of the sentence, to imply I was being asked for permission.

  Twenty minutes after she left, Allison sent a text—asking permission. “Can I spend the night with Katie tonight? I will bring my English homework. She needs help with her math.”

  Sure. You haven’t taken math since last year—but she needs your help with her math. How stupid do you think I am, Allison.

  Allison returned home unexpectedly at two, and headed downstairs. An hour later, I heard a loud bang coming from somewhere within the house, and yelled down the stairs, “What was that?”

  Allison came upstairs to give her answer. “I don’t know, I thought it was from upstairs.”

  While I walked to the front door to look out, Allison ran to the back corner of the house—to her brother’s bedroom window. My suspicions were raised even more. I proceeded with what I then felt was a futile examination of the house, because I wanted Allison to understand I am always on guard duty.

  When I got to Allison’s room, I was rewarded. Her bedroom window was unlocked, open a tiny bit, and the blind was all twisted and turned. I decided to keep a close eye on the window going forward.

  Television shows and movies show kids sneaking out of their bedroom windows all the time. When we lived in Wyoming, and Allison had the bedroom in the basement, she once told me how Carl got crabby because her window had a screen he couldn’t remove without cutting it. I was annoyed to hear he had investigated the possibility, but was thrilled to hear it was impossible.

  Unfortunately, the basement bedroom window in this house was much easier to exit. I watched Allison and a neighbor’s grandson climb out of her bedroom window, in fact, during one of the previous summer’s block parties held on the empty lot next to our house.

  I grew up in the second floor apartment of a walk-up apartment building in Chicago from the time I was seven until I moved out as a wife at twenty-one. The only way I could have ever escaped through a window in the apartment would have been if a firemen’s hook-and-ladder truck was waiting.

  January 16th. Allison sent me a text message from Katie’s house shortly after midnight last night. I received it when I turned my phone on this morning. “Someone hacked into Jeremy’s profile and is stalking me through my phone and my social networking site.”

  The first response to go through my head was, Duh! You play around with strangers on the Internet—do you really think they’re all nice and wholesome people, with only the best of intentions?

  According to her social networking site, Allison spent a lot of time talking with people via an Internet live-chat program. Was she talking to people she knew? Or was she making new acquaintances through technology? The latter thought scared me the most. Meeting new people via technology was what got her on the bus at fifteen. Going to the police with my concerns didn’t seem like a good idea, though, considering the history Allison already had with the local authorities. Would they merely criminalize her behavior like last time, rather than help her change or make better choices?

  The second response in my head was, What do you expect me to do about it? You don’t even want to live in my house anymore—how can you come back whining to me when things don’t turn out the way you want them to?

  Allison was constantly with Katie—“spending the night,” with brief stops at home to change clothes. She came home from the New Year’s Eve celebration with a hickey on her neck. She told her brother she didn’t know who did it, or when it got there. What else couldn’t she remember?

  The third response was, Why can’t you just be honest with me, for once, and take responsibility for your own actions? No one hacked into Jeremy’s profile. I’ll bet dollars to donuts you gave your information out to the wrong guy again, and now you regret it!

  The fourth response: Gee, too bad you haven’t learned from the five other times I’ve paid to change your phone number. Wonder when you’ll have enough babysitting money saved up to pay me to change your phone number this time.

  Rather than begin her day with a fight, I simply sent back the response “Wow” at 6:50 a.m.

  Is there a way to help a child who’s unwilling to see her behavior as risky?

  I sent Allison a text message at 10:15 a.m., to remind her of the afternoon appointment with the counselor. “I will leave work at 1:30 p.m., and whip home to pick you up for your appointment,” working from the assumption Katie would be dropping her off at our house that morning.

  “Katie is going to bring me,” Allison replied.

  “So I’ll meet you there?”

  “I was going to hang out with her,” Allison sent back.

  “You have been,” I replied. For several days, in fact. Without my permission.

  As though she read my mind, rather than the three-word text, Allison sent a final message at 10:20 a.m.: “I’m moving out Tuesday.”

  Tuesday.

  As in, tomorrow? Or, Tuesday of next week?

  My mind reeled. I knew she was eighteen, which meant the law took away my parental controls. I also thought we had an agreement. I thought Allison was going to stay home until her graduation. We had ordered the cap, gown, and graduation announcements. We had talked about the graduation party. We had agreed I would drive her wherever she wanted to go—the day after graduation. But with a single text message, Allison was threatening to take it all away.

  At 1:18 p.m., Allison sent me a text message. “On my way. Got my period, so I’ll be going home to get my clothes and backpack after the appointment.”

  As I drove up to the therapist’s building, I started to feel the rising levels of anxiety I felt when I headed into the courthouse in April 1998, to dissolve my marriage with Frank. For me, Allison’s text messaged plan for emancipation felt just like Frank’s.

  Allison: “I’m still going to live in town for a while,” she explained to the counselor, “then in February, I’ll move to Wyoming.”

  Frank: “I’m just going to move out for a while, and let you straighten everything out.”

  Frank’s definition of everything: the kids, the finances, my behavior towards him.

  Frank moved back to Chicago when my attorney served him with the divorce papers.

  The counselor asked Allison questions designed to make her think: “Will doing that help you, Allison? Then, why do it?” and “What might be a better alternative than that?”

  Unfortunately, Allison wouldn’t budge. “I just can’t take it anymore,” she nearly screamed, while starting to cry. “My mom and brother are yelling at me all of the time, putting me down—I just can’t take it anymore.”

  Just like Frank, everything wrong in Allison’s life was someone else’s doing. Frank couldn’t keep a job for more than six months or a year, because someone hassled him. Allison could
n’t get a job because everyone in town hated her. Never mind that neither Allison nor Frank could receive constructive criticism. Never mind that Allison only helped with chores around the house when she wanted me to buy her something. Never mind that Allison was annoyed by every little sound (or smell) her brother produced . . . Never mind that Frank didn’t pay the court-ordered child support.

  “If we just move to a different place,” Frank repeatedly cooed, “we will have more money.”

  If I had just listened, and done what I was told, everything would have been fine.

  The counselor took on the mediator role. “You need to have some conversation with your mom, Allison, if you want to handle this like an adult. The two of you need to work out things like whether or not you still get to have a house key, what happens to your cell phone line, the terms for coming over for a visit, and whether or not you can spend the night when you come over for those visits.

  “Does your mom even have contact information for you, in case she needs to get a hold of you for anything? Who are you staying with? Have you given your mom the address and phone number for that family?”

  That’s when Allison took it up a notch. “You have to understand, I can’t tell my mom anything. When I do, she just freaks out.”

  “Allison,” the counselor said in the tone of voice adults use when they are addressing a child who is projecting the blame, “your mom is sitting right here. She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t care.”

  “Oh, yeah? How about the time she hit me.”

  “Allison,” I said rather sharply. “That was one time.”

  “Whatever, Mom. You scarred me for life when you hit me.”

  “Are you saying you’re afraid of your mom?” the counselor asked in what seemed like a disbelieving tone.

  “Allison, how many times are you going to bring that up?” I said, angry and annoyed. “That was when you were thirteen years old, and you were inviting a predator to our house!”

  “But you hit me in the head, Mom!”

  “Upside the back of your head, Allison.” Not that I was trying to diminish what I had done, I just didn’t want the counselor to think I had punched Allison in the face or something.

  “You could have hit me anywhere else, Mom,” Allison bit out, through the tears.

  “No, I was driving. You’d screamed at me, plugged your headphones into your ears the way you do when you want to shut everyone out, and had physically turned your body to face the passenger window. I just wanted to—” get your attention, knock some sense into your head, smack you across the mouth for swearing at me—I don’t remember anymore. But you sure remember, Allison. You bring it up whenever you want to shut me down. Or, perhaps you’re hoping to get me arrested. I don’t know anymore. But it sure as hell hurts that you can hang onto something that happened five years ago, and shove it back into my face whenever you please.

  I explained to the counselor why this act-of-emancipation was so difficult for me. “It’s just that through all of her court stuff and everything, everyone has been so concerned with my knowing exactly where Allison is at every moment, what she’s doing on the Internet, how she got the camera she used, why she’s talking to men she doesn’t know. All of this time, I’m held totally accountable and responsible for everything she does, and now I’m just supposed to let go because she turned eighteen?”

  “I know it’s been harder for you than for most parents,” the counselor began, “but that’s the way foster parents feel too . . .”

  I tuned out some of the rest of her explanation, because I didn’t see how she could compare the experiences and feelings a birth mother has for her child to that of a foster parent. What mattered for me was the bottom line: Allison was allowed to do whatever she wanted, just because she passed some stupid, arbitrary birthday.

  In spite of how she talked to me in the counselor’s office, Allison left the building with me, hugged me in front of my car, then walked over to Katie’s car.

  Fifteen minutes after I got home, Allison was ringing the front door bell. “I’m here to get some of my things,” she said, as Katie followed her into the house.

  The girls only stayed for fifteen minutes. Allison left, carrying out a canvas bag of clothes and a pair or two of shoes. “I love you, Mom,” she said before she shut the door behind her.

  I love you too, dear.

  Twenty-four hours later, I still didn’t have my house key back, I still didn’t have a name or address for the people with whom Allison was staying, I still didn’t have peace of mind about Allison’s health and well-being. What I did have was a basket with her dirty clothes, her unmade bed, and a deep sadness in my heart.

  I can almost count the number of times I didn’t sleep in my own home on the fingers of my two hands.

  1) The time my dad got “sick” when I was ten. We were staying at my grandmother’s house in Minnesota when my mom got the call from the hospital. My mom left my sister and me there, while she returned to Chicago for the surgery to repair the damage caused by the bursting of the cranial aneurysm,

  2) Girl Scout camping trips,

  3) The trip I took with my best friend and her family to Tennessee when I was in seventh grade,

  4) The time my dad went down the hall of our apartment to get his hammer—so he could break my bedroom door down. I was seventeen, and feared for my life. I stayed at my best friend’s house while my mother moved my dad to a nursing home,

  5) The weekend trip I took with another friend and her family to Door County, Wisconsin, when we were eighteen,

  6) The weekend trip I took with Rolf, when I was twenty, to pick Frank up from basic training in Virginia,

  7) The night Frank and I eloped.

  Perhaps I was an unusual child, because I never felt a need to leave home. Perhaps Allison’s strong-willed nature allows her to do things many of us are too afraid to do.

  The second day after Allison left, I received a text message right before noon. “Because of the cold weather, school may be cancelled tomorrow.”

  Okay. And you’re telling me this, why?

  The reason for the text message came two hours later. “Mom, you need to call the school, to let them know I’m no longer living at home.”

  I took a really long pause before speaking. “Why?”

  “For the contact information stuff.”

  I took an even longer pause. “I need to find out about things like that, dear.”

  “What do you mean, Mom?”

  I mean, dear, I’m hoping this act-of-emancipation isn’t as final as you are making it sound. I mean, dear, I still want to get the email notifica­tions when you are absent from school. I still want to receive your grades (which will be sent out next week). I still want to think you’re coming back home next week, or the week after.

  Allison didn’t like the prolonged silence. “Like, for calling me out of school and stuff, Mom.”

  And that’s what the phone call is all about, isn’t it, Allison. You are now standing in the attendance office, wanting to skip your last class of the day, and they won’t let you go without your parent’s permission.

  When I didn’t agree to do it, Allison hung up the phone.

  By four-thirty, a different version of Allison surfaced, via text message: “Is it okay if I stop by before 7:00 to get clothes?”

  I sent back a simple, “Yep.”

  Ten minutes later, another text. “If you ever want me over to talk, or for dinner, I’d be glad to. Should I do laundry somewhere else?”

  “You can do it here, if you stay and visit.” I’m not a drop-off laundry facility. If you do only one load of laundry, that gives me about thirty minutes to wash, and thirty or more minutes to dry. I can manage to say a lot in an hour.

  “Oh. Katie has to be home by 7:00,” Allison replied. “Is 6
:30 okay?”

  So, Katie has rules she follows. Even though Katie has been eighteen longer than you, Allison, and has her own car, she still follows her parents’ rules. I hope this time living with her shows you something.

  When Allison rang the doorbell at 6:45 p.m., I smiled. When she came into the house alone, without Katie following behind, I was thrilled. I was in the middle of making dinner, and had been thinking about the possibility of Allison sitting down with us at the dinner table again—something I had been missing since she began staying at Katie’s house so much. Ten minutes later, she was carrying her bags back towards the front door. She had merely exchanged dirty clothes for clean, thanks to the surplus of clothes in her dresser.

  “Oh, I thought you were doing laundry tonight,” I said, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice.

  “No, Katie has to be home at seven.”

  A quick glance at the kitchen clock revealed it was already 7:04 p.m. Again, I couldn’t help but find the irony: when I told Allison she needed to be home by 9:30 p.m. on a school night, she accused me of treating her like a five-year-old. But when Katie needed to be home by 7:00 p.m., it was a statement of fact, to be honored.

  January 19th. Allison had been gone three days. At 6:47 p.m., Allison sent me a text message requesting help, although she never formally asked. “Well, after school tomorrow I have no where to stay. Cheyenne’s boyfriend dumped her so she isn’t texting me.”

  “I’m sure your mom would take you,” I typed into my cell phone, “but you didn’t want to live in her house with her rules . . .”

  It took Allison an hour to reply. “I’m willing to work something out.”

  “With whom?”

  “You and I.”

  Not wanting to be taken advantage of, I wanted to make sure we nailed down some terms and conditions. I didn’t want to have the discussion over text messaging, though. I asked Allison if she wanted to talk in person.