Tarnished Dreams
Page 17
I choose the word story, rather than life, because that’s how I felt after reading the pages in the living room. The feeling grew when I watched the video Lindsey had emailed me.
I showed Tommy the video in July 2012, because he didn’t understand why my attitude towards Allison had changed.
Shortly after noon, Allison sent me a text full of venom. “By the way, pretty sure I’m going to get suspended.”
“Suspended for what?”
“Since apparently you told the lady in the attendance office that it wasn’t your signature for study hall.”
Just like her father, Allison wouldn’t own her actions. She was the one who tried forging my signature, but it was my fault she might get suspended.
Although Allison hadn’t been home for a couple of days again, by 7:39 a.m. on March 30th, she was ready to concede via text message. “I would like to focus on school. If I came home I would. I’d also be able to shower.”
I was already at work by the time I read the text message at nine. Had she been trying to get into the house, to take a shower, that morning? Rather than waste time or any more effort, I sent Allison a reply at 9:10 a.m. “Why should I believe you? What makes this time different from a month ago when you agreed to the terms I presented?”
Apparently, Allison wasn’t ready for the response. It took her an hour and a half to reply, but she came back with both barrels blazing. “By law to evict me from the house you have to go to the court house and pay $1,500 by the way,” she sent at 10:45 a.m.
“That means if I called the cops on you, you’d go to jail,” she sent at 10:49 a.m.
I wanted to explode. How dare my eighteen-year-old daughter threaten me in such a way!
Then I realized it was just an eighteen-year-old’s version of a temper tantrum. Who in the world, especially in the town we were living in, was going to believe her? She had been to juvy, and she had been to court for two different cases. She’d been a runaway, and was arrested for shoplifting the day she got back home The school administrators were well aware of her story-telling, and she’d recently posted a video online admitting she was a liar.
Let her call the police. Let me have witnesses to the manipulation.
I chose to say nothing to her threats.
By 11:11 a.m., the silence was apparently too much for Allison; she tried another manipulative angle with another text message. “But I guess if you don’t want me home, I’ll talk to the guidance counselor and see if I have enough credit to graduate early and go out to Wyoming a.s.a.p.”
I maintained my silence.
I guess, in all honesty, I was ready to let her go. This wasn’t the way I ever imagined my daughter’s senior year to pan out, but I wasn’t going to spend the next two months playing her game of who-can-outsmart-whom. I was forty-seven years old. I had two jobs to pay the bills while Allison had none. The days Allison was home, she was either reclining on the couch, watching television, or heading out the door to do whatever with whomever until whenever she felt like coming home again. I didn’t need the stress of a perpetual roller-coaster ride with Allison as the train’s conductor.
Unable to eat dinner because I was so upset, I broke down. I couldn’t stand the silence anymore. I had calmed down enough to want to talk to Allison, and hoped she had as well. I created a text message to bridge the chasm of silence between us. “I want you to be happy, I want you to love yourself, and I want to keep our relationship healthy for the long haul. If that means I have to let some physical distance grow between us while you find yourself, so be it.”
Allison’s venomous response came back three minutes later. “There ain’t gonna be a relationship now . . . Once I leave your [sic] not gonna hear from me. Your [sic] not gonna see your grandchildren. I hope you know what your [sic] doin. Ill [sic] be there to pick up a few things in a few days.”
The venom was Allison’s. The threat was almost identical to what Allison’s father said to me in January 1998, the day he received the divorce papers from my lawyer. The typing, though, was definitely someone else’s. I had seen Allison dictate to Katie when Allison came home from her month living with Kaleb. Katie sat on the couch with Allison’s phone, reading and responding to whatever text messages Kaleb sent. I didn’t like being treated that disrespectfully by Allison.
“Why are you so angry?” I sent back. “What do you want that you’re not getting? You’ve wanted to leave, you have left how many times—what do you want?”
Silence.
Shortly after eleven o’clock the morning of March 31st, I sent Allison another text message. “You honestly confuse me, sweetie. One text you say you want to come home, the next text is full of threats, the third says you are going to own your life by heading west. When I honor your decision to run your own life, you get mad all over again—for giving you the freedom you’ve been fighting for? I love you, sweetie. I will always love you. I’ve raised a strong young woman, and have confidence in your ability to accomplish whatever goals you set for yourself.”
Two minutes later, Allison sent a reply. “I wanted to come home, and I’m headed out west because you won’t let me come home.”
“I never said you couldn’t come home—you made that decision by leaving. When you came home a month ago, I presented the conditions . . .”
“I just wanted to spend the night at Katie’s for one night,” was Allison’s ready excuse.
Sure, Allison. You just wanted to go for one night, which is why I didn’t hear from you at all for two nights. So, what’s your excuse for forging my signature on the paperwork at school? Or, cutting all of those classes again? Or, bringing home all of the alcohol bottles I keep finding hidden throughout the house? Or, telling people you had a miscarriage? Or, creating the online video?
I wished Allison would own all of her actions. Then I might want her back home. Do I let her come home, so she can at least finish out her senior year of high school? She almost has me over a barrel on this one. My mom says I need to let Allison finish. My sister says I only need to allow Allison back on my terms. Allison has no leverage. Allison will still spin the truth as she pleases.
I know these things.
I also know how life has been in our house. I know how Tommy has been affected by all of this nonsense. I know how many sleepless nights I’ve had. And, I know there are eight more weeks until graduation.
Two hours later, I offered an option I could comfortably live with. I carefully prepared the text message for Allison, and sent it at 1:50 p.m. “As you can see, I have zero tolerance for the bullshit anymore. A return to my home one more time would be just that: one more time. It requires strict adherence to the rules, whether you like them or not, 100 percent attendance at school (even study hall) no more alcohol, helping out with chores, and full respect to me (I’m sick of the swearing.)”
Eight minutes later, Allison sent back her one and only response to the subject: “Funny, you just swore in the beginning of the text. That’s like smoking in front of me and telling me not to smoke.”
By three, I had reconsidered the one-option nature of my earlier text message, so I prepared a second text, with another option for Allison, and sent it at 3:06 p.m. “Or I can help you pack, wish you well, visit you in Wyoming, and pay the cell phone bill until the contract runs out. It’s your life—I will love you no matter what you do.”
A year—even six months later—I would see how the push-pull dynamic of both my mother and daughter created the insecure parent I’d become.
One of the tapes playing over and over in my head was my mother’s voice saying, “You need to get Allison to settle down. If she doesn’t, you’re going to be the one cleaning up the messes she makes.”
Just like Frank, everything was always my fault—and my responsibility. At the time, however, I just wanted a cooperative, loving relationship with Allison.
It took me six minutes to process the information before I could reply with a simple “Wow.”
Wow, my daughter is such a gold-digger.
Wow, my daughter is such a user.
Wow, my daughter really doesn’t care about anything or anyone other than herself.
Wow, is my daughter really bi-polar or manic or something yet to be diagnosed?
Wow. Forget school, forget your mom worrying sick about you at home, forget about your high school diploma that might be swinging in the breeze. The dangling carrot of a purse from a boy who blew you off just two or three weeks ago apparently makes everything all better. Wow.
My phone rang at 7:25 p.m. The caller ID feature on my cell phone didn’t register a name, but it showed a number. I recognized the area code: Chicago.
Frank. Allison’s dead-beat father.
I let the call go to voicemail.
I listened to the message right away. I wanted to hear why he called, but didn’t want to talk to him directly. Allison had called him, in tears. He wanted me to call him back, because he realized there are two sides to everything. He wanted to hear the other side.
How truly gracious of you, Frank. You just don’t want to deal with her. You walked out of the children’s lives fifteen years ago, and wouldn’t even man-up when Allison ran away from home three years ago. Why would you take care of her now, when she’s eighteen?
And how totally manipulative of Allison to call her father and turn on the tears.
An hour later, I decided to call Frank back. We talked for about twenty minutes, probably the longest we had talked to each other in several years. While I didn’t ask for his help, or even his understanding, I explained some of the highlights living with Allison had brought me. “She took off right before midnight on New Year’s eve, she moved out for the month of February, she hasn’t been home in several days . . .”
Frank finally began to accept what his absence from Allison’s life had meant for her—and, in turn, for me. “Wow, I had no idea.”
Whether he knew it or not, Frank’s words of acknowledgment meant so much to me. It was the closest Frank ever came to an apology.
“Well, I’m supposed to call her back yet tonight,” Frank continued. “I get off work earlier tonight, since I worked so late last night, and I’m going to call her on my way home. I’ll call you again tomorrow, and let you know how it goes.”
I was annoyed by the arrogance of the absentee father who thought one simple phone call would correct fifteen years of indifference, but I was pleased by his involvement even this late in the game of parenting.
17. April—Seriously?
I turned my phone on before church the morning of April 1st because I was eager to see if Allison was speaking to me yet. Lindsey, not Allison, had sent me a text message at 2:26 a.m. “She begged a ride to Wyoming on her social networking site, but evidently no takers.”
Even though I had spent eighteen years with Allison, I was still stunned by her singular focus at times.
Allison’s first text message came at 10:14 a.m. “My knee is four different colors and swelled three times its size, and I can’t move my leg at all because the pain shoots from my knee to my toes.”
Rather than play into her quest for attention, I sent a carefully crafted reply twenty minutes later. “Wow, sounds like you banged it up pretty good. Last night? You might want to try heat and elevation at this point, as ice only helps right after the banging.”
“I didn’t bang it on anything. It’s been like this for weeks,” Allison replied.
And then Frank called.
“She’s got quite an imagination!” were Frank’s opening words. No “Hello,” no “How are you doing today?” Just a laugh, a long release of air, and his words of amazed exasperation.
“Yes, she does. What did she say to you?”
“She makes you out to sound like the absolute worst mother! I kept listening to her, and thinking, that doesn’t sound like the Jeanette I knew when we were first married. What in the world is Allison doing?”
We talked for about twenty minutes, and a small part of me died during the conversation. If Allison was making me sound awful to her father, I shuddered to think what she’d been telling other people about me.
“She says the two of you say all kinds of mean things, and put her down. Is it possible for her to come home and just live in her bedroom for the next eight weeks without talking to her?”
Sure, Frank. That doesn’t sound weird at all. A mother and daughter living together without saying a single word to each other for eight days, maybe—but eight weeks? Ridiculous.
“She also says all of her teachers hate her, of course.”
Of course. Everyone hates Allison. Poor, poor, friendless Allison.
Frank got my full attention, though, when he shared his change of plans. “I told Allison, if it’s an incentive for her to graduate, that I will find a way to come out there for it. And, if I have to move her here with me for the summer, I will do it—at least until I move. She won’t like it, because she’ll have to sleep on the couch, but . . .”
Once again, I was simultaneously relieved and annoyed by his daddy-coming-to-the-rescue attitude. On the other hand, if it helped get Allison through to graduation, I would put up with just about anything.
“Well, I’m going to call her back,” Frank finally said. “I’m going to tell her that both of us agree she needs to graduate . . .”
“Yeah,” I offered cheerily. “It’s only eight more weeks. She can even stay a week at eight different friend’s houses, just do the work to graduate.”
Twenty minutes later, a text message from Lindsey snapped my head around again. “Allison posted today she went from single to being in a relationship.”
A minute after Lindsey’s text, Allison sent a text. “Is it okay if I come home? If I focus on school. The only thing I want is to go out like on a Saturday to hang with Katie—since I won’t be skipping school.”
An hour later, Allison called. “So, we’re hanging out at the park, since it’s such a nice day, and I thought about a bonfire. Is it okay if we come make one in the backyard and roast hotdogs and marshmallows?”
I wanted Allison home. I agreed, because it would be easier to keep the peace about small things, saving the fights for bigger concerns.
“I have nine hot dogs, but no buns,” I told Allison in lieu of a Yes.
“Okay, we’ll stop and get some buns.”
After we hung up, I sent a text message to Lindsey. “And just like that she’s coming home. Now I get to make nice-nice, like I don’t know what she said about me. Eight more weeks until graduation!”
“It seems like she gets on a pity party,” Lindsey sent back, “runs so she can party and do what she wants, then no one wants to take care of her any longer and let her play a victim, so she has to run home. While watching the video she made, what came to my mind is ‘that’s cool, one more way to manipulate a large group.’”
The group of five kids and one dog showed up at six-thirty. Allison was carrying a pair of crutches she got from Sharon, rather than using them, and left them in the living room where they would sit until school Monday morning. Allison, Katie, Sharon, and two boys I had never seen or heard of before came in the house through the front door, walked through the house, and headed out the back door.
Why not just walk around the outside of the house, you guys? The teenage brain.
According to Lindsey, while the kids were sitting in the middle of my backyard, Allison somehow managed to update her social networking site with the message, “Having a great time at my house building a fire and eating hot
dogs.”
How does a parent begin to curtail inappropriate behavior when the tools surround these kids everywhere they go? Allison didn’t have a phone with Internet capability—but one or more of the friends in the backyard with her did. And, even though we didn’t have Internet access in our home, one could apparently pick it up in the middle of the backyard of a house sitting on the corner lot of a dead-end, in an area far enough outside of town that everyone in the vicinity owns a number of acres as a yard. Welcome to parenting in the year 2012.
Two hours later, everyone was gone, and Allison actually helped me clean up the grilling table—walking up and down the stairs of the house without the assistance of the crutches she was borrowing.
Biting my tongue to keep from saying what I wanted to had been a big challenge with Allison for a while. Keeping facial expressions from revealing my thoughts was an entirely new challenge Allison tested the morning of April 2nd. While getting ready for work, Allison told me about Katie having a seizure a day or two earlier. “I saved her,” Allison reported. “I got her flat on the floor . . .” The explanation was given to me straight-faced, full of emotion, and so close I couldn’t turn away for even a second.
“Wow,” was all I could safely say.
Wow, Allison, that’s quite calm and efficient of you. Wow, Allison, that’s an amazing story. Do you really expect me to believe it?
“I’ve had seizures too,” Allison continued. “That’s why I’ve stopped drinking, Mom.”
Allison stared at me some more. Was she hoping I would call her a liar? Was she hoping to start another fight?
I kept all of my energy focused on not bursting out in laughter. I wanted to tell her alcoholic black-outs weren’t the same thing as seizures. I wanted to tell her she shouldn’t go around making up such complicated medical lies for herself, because that’s the absolute worst way to get people’s attention. I wanted to tell her how full of shit she was, and that people who really do have seizures would get very angry with her for making up those kinds of lies about herself. I wanted to laugh in her face.