All She Ever Wanted (3 page)

Seymour.”

Kathleen cleared her throat. “I’m sorry. But trust is a real big issue with me.”

“Would you like to tell me why that is?”

She shook her head. She remembered reading in a self-help book that when a child’s trust in her parents was breached at an early age, it made it difficult for her to trust anyone else—including God. But the reason for her lack of trust was a Pandora’s box that she certainly wasn’t going to open now. “I thought this was about Joelle, not me,” Kathleen finally said. Dr. Russo didn’t miss a beat.

“Would you say Joelle’s assessment of your relationship is a fair one?”

“You mean, that we don’t communicate very well? Yes, that’s fair. I majored in mathematics and business administration in college. I’m a CPA with an MBA. I never was much good at all that touchy-feely kind of stuff or expressing my
inner feelings
.”

But she wasn’t a total failure at communicating, she wanted to add. She and Mike communicated very well and seldom argued. They had married when they were both in their mid-thirties, both comfortable with their single status and with the lives they lived apart from each other. Kathleen wasn’t the sort of wife who needed a man to “complete” her or who demanded long, introspective talks about every issue. What business was it of hers what Mike was thinking or feeling every minute of the day?

“Joelle is a very sensitive young woman,” Dr. Russo said, interrupting her thoughts. “She
wants
to express her feelings—to you, not just to her friends. But she needs to feel like you’re giving something of your inner self in return. You see, she’s trying to discover who she is, and part of that exploration includes the need to know where she came from—where her parents came from.”

“Whoa!” Kathleen held up both hands. Alarm bells and warning sirens began to shrill in her mind like a four-alarm fire. She half-expected the sprinkler system to kick in, or for the secretary to burst through the door shouting “Call 9-1-1!” Kathleen wanted to bolt from the room and never return, but her concern for Joelle was stronger, deeper, than her fear. She still wasn’t convinced that exposing her carefully hidden self would save Joelle from a life of crime, but she knew that she would face a raging inferno for her daughter’s sake.

“Look, I’ll be honest, Dr. Russo. I brought Joelle here because she was caught shoplifting. I don’t understand how talking about my past is going to prevent her from doing it again.”

“You’re approaching this as if Joelle has a problem and you want me to ‘fix’her so you can be a perfect family again.”

“You’re wrong. I’ve never had a perfect family. I wouldn’t know what one looked like, much less how to live with one.”

The doctor tucked back a loose strand of hair—and three more long, graying strands fell down in its place. Kathleen bit her lip, resisting the urge to say “For crying out loud, get it cut!”

“Well, to answer your question,” Dr. Russo continued, “yes, I do believe that talking about your past will help Joelle. I believe that the shoplifting incident was a cry for your attention.”

“I’m home with her all day now! She can talk to me for twelve hours straight if she wants to.” Although Kathleen would never admit that the idea terrified her.

“I’d like both of you to come to our next session,” Dr. Russo said calmly. “I’ll provide a safe place for self-expression and act as a moderator as we work through some effective communication strategies.”

Why did she make it sound like something much more complicated than a mother talking with her daughter?

Kathleen spent the next few days dreading the joint therapy session. When the time came, she sat facing Joelle with the same sweaty-palmed fear she’d felt when facing Dr. Russo alone. Kathleen might have been strapped into an electric chair, waiting for the first bolt of electricity to hit her.

Then it did.

Joelle pulled the balloon-covered invitation—now splattered with sweet-and-sour sauce—out of her purse and waved it at Kathleen. Did that thing have a boomerang attached to it? How did it keep returning from the trash can to haunt her?

“I found this in the garbage,” Joelle said accusingly. “Why don’t you ever talk about your family, Mom? Why don’t I even know my aunt—” she glanced at the smudged writing—“my aunt Annie? Don’t I have a right to know her or my own grandparents?”

“I want nothing to do with them, and they want nothing to do with me,” Kathleen replied in a tight voice. “Believe me, you’re better off not knowing them—not having them around as part of your life.”

“Why?” Joelle glared at her, demanding an answer.

Kathleen turned to Dr. Russo, pleading silently for help. She couldn’t do this. It was too upsetting. She longed to talk to the doctor alone, to explain everything to her without Joelle listening. But she also knew that if she sent her daughter away now, without an answer, it might be a mortal blow to their already shaky relationship. She gripped the armrests, hanging on for dear life.

“I made the decision to cut myself off from my family a long time ago,” she finally replied. “It was in the interest of self-preservation.”

“Your
sister
is giving a
party
for your
dad,
” Joelle said dramatically. “How can you be so cold and unfeeling?”

The electric chair delivered a second jolt. “Is that what you think? That I’m cold and unfeeling?”

Joelle didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. She slumped back in her chair, staring at the ceiling to keep her tears from falling.

Dr. Russo finally intervened. “I think what Joelle is trying to express is that she sometimes finds it difficult to understand you or to feel close to you. Is that a fair assessment, Joelle?”

She nodded, swiping at a tear that had slipped past her defenses.

Kathleen exhaled. She was running out of ways to avoid the question. “I came from a terrible background,” she said. “No one in my family was a Christian, and I am. That created a lot of tension. We have nothing in common with each other. I chose to walk away—and I’ve stayed away.”

“But when you cut yourself off from your family,” Dr. Russo said, “then you also severed a part of yourself. If you’re a Christian, then you must understand the principles of forgiveness—”

“I
did
forgive my family,” Kathleen interrupted. “A long time ago. But I’ve stayed away to avoid being hurt all over again. I had to establish safe boundaries and all of that.”

“Boundaries are helpful as long as they’re not an excuse to avoid issues of forgiveness. And as long as they’re not at the expense of your own feelings.”

“I’ve trained myself not to feel anything at all as far as my family is concerned—as if I never had a family. It was the only way I could get on with my life and start all over again.” She turned to Joelle. “I’m sorry if that makes me appear cold and unfeeling. You must know that I… I love your father and you… very, very much.”

Joelle didn’t reply, wouldn’t look up, and the icy distance between them terrified Kathleen.

Dr. Russo finally stepped into the silence. “Joelle, wasn’t there another question you wanted to ask your mother?” Joelle shrugged and wiped her nose with a tissue. When she didn’t reply, the doctor said, “Mrs. Seymour, Joelle wondered what your relationship with your own mother was like when you were Joelle’s age.”

“Terrible,” Kathleen replied. “We fought constantly. About everything.”

“How are things between you and your mother now?”

Kathleen’s heart started to thump. It was as if the doctor was probing her wounds, inching closer and closer to the part of her that was broken and bruised. When she finally touched it, Kathleen knew there would be unbearable pain. She glanced frantically around the room, searching for an oil painting or a college diploma to focus on—anything to replace the image of her mother that was beginning to crystallize in her mind. “My mother is dead,” she said softly.

“I’m sorry. Was there closure? Reconciliation before she died?”

Far from it. The last words Kathleen had ever spoken to her mother were angry ones—words that could never be taken back. The doctor was waiting for an answer.

“My mother died very… suddenly. Unexpectedly.” Kathleen couldn’t explain any further. “I don’t see how this helps anybody.”

Dr. Russo smiled. Kathleen supposed that she was trying to look sympathetic, but under the circumstances, with Kathleen’s life unraveling all around her, the doctor looked like a disheveled Mrs. Santa Claus. “Maybe if you talked with Joelle about some of the difficulties you had with your own mother,” she said in a kindergarten-teacher voice, “then Joelle would feel more connected to you.”

“And see me as human, instead of cold and unfeeling? Tell me, when will it be my husband’s turn to come in and have his past excavated?”

“Of course I’ll want to talk with Mr. Seymour, too. All three of you together, in fact. I know that digging into the past can be painful, but I like to picture it as winding a broken strand of yarn backward to see where it leads. Once we understand what it was once a part of, we can begin to reweave it into a beautiful new pattern.”

Who was this woman, Mr. Rogers in drag?

Kathleen had brought Mike into the conversation deliberately, hoping he would deflect some of the heat she was feeling. But once she was finally out of the doctor’s office and off the hot seat, she began to wish that she had left Mike out of it. She knew exactly what he would say; they’d had this conversation before. Mike would tell her that she should try to make amends with her family before it was too late. He would remind her of the Scripture verse that said if you have a grudge against your brother you should go and be reconciled before you came to the Lord for forgiveness. He would ask her how she would feel if Joelle walked away from home, the way Kathleen had, and never came back.

Kathleen suddenly remembered the stupid invitation that wouldn’t stay in the garbage pail where it belonged. Should she go to the party for her father? She certainly couldn’t use her job as an excuse.

On the drive home, Kathleen stole glances at her daughter’s perfect profile and shining corona of hair. Memories of her as a baby brought tears to Kathleen’s eyes. Why had she never been able to convey her love to Joelle adequately? She longed to draw Joelle close and fasten her securely to her own heart, yet she was prevented from doing so by the terrible fear that she would let her down, destroy her trust… as her own trust had been so cruelly destroyed. She saw Joelle drifting away and ached to pull her back before it was too late. But how? If digging into her own past was the only way to save Joelle, then Kathleen decided she would do it. She pulled the car into the garage and turned off the ignition.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Joelle asked when she noticed Kathleen staring at her. Kathleen cleared her throat, blinked away tears. Why was this so hard?

“I love you, Joelle.”

“I know,” she mumbled. They got out of the car and walked into the kitchen in silence.

“Could I have my invitation back, please?” Kathleen asked in a near whisper. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to go.” Joelle wouldn’t look at her as she handed it over. She fled upstairs to her room.

Kathleen picked up the phone before she had a chance to change her mind. If she called her sister in the daytime, maybe Annie would be at work and Kathleen wouldn’t have to talk to her. She could leave a message on the answering machine. It upset her to realize that she wouldn’t have known her sister’s phone number if it hadn’t been printed on the invitation.

Annie’s phone rang four times… five times…
“You’ve reached Annie and Bob. Leave a message. …”

Thank God.

Kathleen gripped the receiver. Her voice shook. “Hi, Annie, this is Kathleen. Yeah, I know, you’re probably surprised to hear from me. Don’t faint. … Anyway, I’m going to try to make it to the… um… gettogether next week for Daddy.” She couldn’t call it a party. Wouldn’t. “So… I guess I’ll see you then? Bye.” She carefully set the receiver on the kitchen counter as if it might jump up and bite her.

What in the world was she doing?

Chapter
3

T
he phone rang at 4:13 A.M., startling Kathleen awake. She felt the bed shake as Mike groped in the dark for the receiver, then heard him mumbling into it in a sleep-thickened voice: “Hello… Yes…

Really…? How far behind?”

Kathleen groaned and rolled over with her back to him. Mike’s engineering firm did consulting work all over the world; wasn’t anyone on his staff bright enough to figure out what time it was in America before calling him?

He hung up and climbed out of bed—a bad sign. She pulled the pillow over her head when she heard the water running in the shower. Then she remembered that she was leaving today to drive to New York for her sister’s party and a wave of nausea washed through her. It had taken two hours and a sleeping pill for her to fall asleep the first time. She would never get back to sleep now. Kathleen still wasn’t sure how this sacrifice— and there was no other word for it—would help Joelle. She only hoped that her daughter would see it as a gesture of love.

She was wide awake, staring at the ceiling, when Mike finished his shower. He tiptoed to his closet with a towel tied around his waist, drying his bristly hair with another towel. “Who was on the phone?” she asked.

“Our client in South Africa. I’m sorry he woke you. It looks like I’ll have to fly over there.”

She scrambled to sit up. “To South Africa? When?”

“Well, if I hurry I can catch a morning flight and be home again by the middle of next week.”

“But… but I’m supposed to go to my sister’s get-together this weekend. I’m leaving today, remember?”

“So?” He looked at her blankly. Was he that dense?

“I can’t leave Joelle here all alone. And it’s too late now to make other arrangements for her.”

Even as she said the words, Kathleen felt relieved. Maybe she would be spared this ordeal after all. Maybe her willingness to go would be proof enough that she loved Joelle.

“Take her with you,” Mike said. “She can meet your family.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!
I
don’t even want to be with those people— how can I inflict them on my daughter? I’m so ashamed to show her where I came from, how I lived, who my family is. …” Tears cut off her words. Mike sat on the bed in his wet towel and pulled her into his arms.