CHAPTER 18
Those were about the longest two weeks of my life. No news about Mom. No more Sisters meetings. V finally came off Level One, but every time I saw her, she was shadowed by two Level Six girls or a counselor. Bebe wasn’t looking at me, let alone talking to me. Martha was always MIA—Red Rock had her on a strict schedule of death marches. And Cassie was glued to her new roommate, Laurel. No letters from Jed. No distractions. Nothing to think about but Mom.
When Clayton came back, looking neither tan nor rested nor bearing any visible signs of a fun vacation, I was polite. I asked her about her trip. Then I asked her about Mom.
Clayton leaned back in her chair and twirled the pen in her hand. She adjusted the air-conditioning knob and straightened the notebooks on her table. Then she opened my file and pulled out a letter. From the looping cursive, I knew it was from Grandma. From the tape on the back of the envelope, I knew it had been opened. I looked at the postmark: Monterey, California, dated almost four weeks ago.
“You’ve had this letter a month?”
“Something like that.”
“So why did you make me wait?”
“I didn’t think you were ready.”
“That’s not what you said. You said you weren’t at liberty.”
“Fine. I wasn’t at liberty. I hadn’t given myself the liberty to give you this letter. And now I have.” Clayton glared at me, waiting for me to open the letter so she could pick over every last piece of it. I slipped the envelope into my back pocket. Clayton looked surprised.
“You were so anxious last session. I thought you’d want to read it right away.”
“I don’t want to waste our session. And whatever’s in the letter will still be in it later,” I said with a fake smile. The enveloped burned a hole in my pocket for the rest of the hour. As soon as it was up, I ran to the bathroom, where I could read it in peace.
My Dear Brittie:How are you? I hope you are okay. I worry about you endlessly. Your father tells me you are in a special school, that you’ve been in some kind of trouble, but I just can’t believe it. Not my girl. You’ve always had such a good head on your shoulders, so I know that if there is anything wrong, you’ll work to fix it.Are you warm enough out there in Utah? Are you eating enough? Can I send you some oatmeal bars? I would like to make a visit. I might even fly to see you. I’m getting used to airplanes now. I’ve actually flown quite a bit of late. I’ve been taking trips up to Spokane…..to see your mother.I probably should have told you about all this sooner, but I didn’t want to get your hopes up, or down, depending. About a year ago, I stopped hearing from Laura altogether. After spending months lying awake at night, imagining all the awful scenarios that could’ve befallen her, I hired a private investigator to track her down. Well, the first man I hired was a charlatan; he took a lot of money and did nothing. But after Christmas, I hired someone else. This gentleman, a former police detective from Los Angeles, found your mother in no time. She was living in a homeless shelter in Spokane, Washington.As soon as the detective found her, I flew up to see her. I was hoping that she might come live with me, or even check into a good private hospital I found in Santa Barbara. But mostly, I just wanted to hold her, to make sure she was all right.From what I can gather, your mother has been living in this shelter, which is more like a group home, for a few months. She is physically in good health. Mentally, I wish I had better news. One of the reasons I didn’t tell you about my visit right away was that I didn’t know how to break it to you. Your mother is very agitated still. She recognizes me one day and then doesn’t respond the next. I showed her a picture of you and she froze up, refused to talk. I can’t imagine what it’s like to live inside her head, and you mustn’t take anything she does personally. Your mother is mentally ill, but I know that deep down she loves you as she always has.On the positive side, she has a group of what I suppose you could call friends and seems to have a little bit of a safety net. There are social workers who work at the shelter, so there’s always someone keeping an eye out for her. On my first trip, I tried to persuade her to come back to California with me, to check into a hospital, but she refused. I flew back home all set to forcibly transfer her and then I thought better of it. She has a modicum of stability in her life right now. She’s being looked after, to some degree, which is better than nothing. She still refuses any kind of treatment, still thinks the doctors are all out to get her, but my feeling is that maybe over time, if I stay close to her, I can change her mind.Which brings me to my current plan. I am going up to Spokane for the summer, to be closer to Laura, to see if I can’t gain her trust, find a way to help her. There are so many new medications she could benefit from. I can’t give up hope, and neither should you. Laura probably won’t ever be the woman we once knew, and it may take years to even get back some semblance of the woman she was. But we’ve got to try, right?Oh, Brittie. This is all so hard, and I know how difficult it must be for you. I know you’ve been through so very much. As has your father. Now that I have become your mother’s legal guardian, I understand the weight of that responsibility. Don’t be mad at your father for what he has done to you. He does it out of love. I understand that now.I love you, darling. Stay well.Grandma “I hear your crazy mother was found wandering the streets in Canada,” Missy chirped to me, her eyes bright with enthusiasm. It was the following day in CT and, what a coincidence, I was in the mush pot. Sheriff was leading things, as he always seemed to these days.
“Spokane’s in Washington. Learn some geography, why don’t you. And how’d you hear?”
“I was told.”
“By Clayton?” So much for patient confidentiality.
“That’s not important,” Missy said, with this great, big sympathetic look on her face. “We’re here to help you process. Tell us how you feel.”
“She’s right, Hemphill. Own up to your feelings,” Sheriff said.
“You tell me what you know,” I said, facing Missy.
“Your grandmother tracked your mother down, found her living like, like some crazy homeless person,” she said.
“Mama’s a wild child, just like you,” Sheriff said.
“Neither of you know crap about my mom.”
“I know she lived in denial about her illness until it was too late,” Missy said.
“Shut up!”
“Whoa, girlies. Looks like someone touched a nerve there,” Sheriff said.
“Unless you get with the program, you’re gonna end up just like her,” Missy said.
“Missy, there is so much in the world that you don’t know, that to even begin explaining it all to you would take the rest of my life.” My voice came out steady, even though my insides were burning. “And I’d rather end up like my crazy, messed-up mother than spend even a moment as a conniving, cowardly little conformist like you!”
Everyone cracked up when I said that, even Sheriff, who loved nothing more than a good catfight. Missy’s face went white with rage and finally she shut up. But when she caught my eye, she mouthed “I’m gonna get you.”