03.She.Wanted.It.All.2005 (13 page)

When her mother died, Tracey didn’t mention it to anyone, as if nothing had happened. At a party, Odom asked her about Mickey.

“Still drinking?” she said.

“Mickey died,” Tracey answered. “Finally kicked the bucket.”

The official cause of death was pancreatic cancer, but the underlying root was alcoholism. By then Tracey had had an affair with another woman. When Joan found out, she left her. It was a pattern that would reemerge throughout Tracey’s life. She’d fall in love, win the woman, then drink or have an affair, convincing her lover to leave.

If she hurt others, Tracey was never as hard on them as she was on herself. While she may have seemed brash and sure on the outside, she was plagued by doubts, magnified by the voice that came and went inside her.

The first time Tracey tried to kill herself was in Houston in 1981, when she was just twenty-four. After she’d attempted to overdose, a friend checked her into a ten-week treatment program. When she emerged sober, she felt as she had years earlier—as if she didn’t fit in anywhere. Her friends were still drinking, and around them she bristled with self-doubt. AA gave her a home. Attending daily meetings for months, she kept her mind clear. “I was lonely, but I
felt like I had my life back,” she says. “I felt lucky to be alive.”

Never having graduated at UT, she returned to college in the mid-eighties, this time to Texas A&M, where she completed a bachelor’s degree in wildlife and fishery science. For three years she worked for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service as a field biologist, first in Texas, then in Arizona. In November 1988 her old clique reunited, this time in Santa Fe for Thanksgiving. By then many had sobered up. It was a healthy weekend, full of hiking and horseback riding. One night, soaking in the hot tub, they talked about their favorite poems. When it was her turn, Tracey recited the first two lines from Langston Hughes’s “Dream Deferred,” a fierce warning about the danger of unrealized desire: “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” she asked.

“It was classic Tracey, intense and bright,” says Odom. “Her friends loved her.”

In 1989, Tracey returned to Austin, where she signed on as a biologist with BCI—Bat Conservation International—a nonprofit group that works to protect bat colonies and restore their natural habitats. It was a dream job for her, helping to protect a small, vulnerable little animal by working with government agencies and nonprofit groups. She ran educational trips to Africa and South America, where she brought groups into the bats’ lairs. “It was an incredible place to work,” she says, still visibly excited at the memory. “I got to be an advocate for an animal that’s misunderstood and persecuted.”

The small, furry, winged mammals became her cause. She worked for BCI for five years. Then, as she had with her lovers, Tracey made a mistake, and she was too stubborn to admit it and go on. “It was typical Tracey, adolescent boy in
a woman’s body,” says someone she worked with.

Another woman remembers that Tracey interacted well with the women on the staff, but appeared uncomfortable with men. At the same time, she acted like “one of the boys.” One day, Tracey walked up to two men in a hallway—one of whom was her boss. She grabbed one of them from behind and said, “How’re they hanging?”

Neither man laughed.

In the days that followed, the entire BCI staff was ordered to attend a seminar on sexual harassment. Rather than apologize, Tracey became adamant about not having done anything wrong. She argued with her boss when he criticized her behavior, then circulated a memo he wrote her, detailing her transgressions, to the rest of the staff, asking them to join her in protest. “This was a minor thing, but she just blew it up,” says a coworker. “It wasn’t anything to lose a job over.”

In April 1994, Tracey was fired, the official reason written in her employment record was “for displaying hostile conduct toward upper management.”

It was a comedown for Tracey, who went to work as a receptionist in Alice’s salon. But just a year later opportunity again presented itself. In 1995, BookPeople, Austin’s largest independent bookseller, expanded to a new location, a three-floor store plus offices on Sixth and Lamar, next to another of the city’s institutions, the trendy Whole Foods Market. Tracey hired on as manager of the third floor, which had sections on spirituality, health, philosophy, and men’s and women’s studies. She was dedicated, working long hours, and intensely interested. But not all was well. That year— after fourteen years of sobriety—she suddenly began drinking. She’d say later that it was a form of self-medication for the depression that had stalked her off and on since she’d been a child. Her friends called AA and asked the counselors
to conduct an intervention. A petite straight woman, a hairdresser named Zan Ray, responded.

The intervention went off as planned, and Tracey was soon sober again, and determined to remain so. Her relationship with Zan Ray might have ended there, but in July of that year Ray arrived at the Austin airport after attending a trade show, and her husband wasn’t there. Zan called Tracey, who picked her up and gave her a ride home. When the two women walked inside the house, they found his body. Days earlier, he’d overdosed. The coroner ruled it a suicide.

The discovery shook both Ray and Tracey. Months later Becky Odom saw Tracey at a party. “How terrible for Zan,” said Tracey. “Suicide, it’s just unfair to the people left behind.”

At the time, Tracey was in a relationship with a bright, engaging woman. Yet that didn’t stop her from having an affair with Ray. “I think the mutual experience brought us together,” Tracey says. “We were there for each other, and it became more than that.”

In the months that followed, Tracey and Ray lived together. But, again, she couldn’t maintain the relationship. By late 1998 she was drinking again. As it had in the past, the alcohol opened the door where she kept her demons at bay. The voice returned.

“I would try to drown it out with alcohol,” she says. “I just wanted it to stop.”

On the evening of September 16, 1998, Tracey was anxious and lonely. She drove to a convenience store in a rough Austin neighborhood, where men milled around outside and cars drove by without stopping. There she met a dissheveled man named Reginald Breaux. For reasons she couldn’t later explain, except that she wanted someone to drink with, Tracey invited Breaux into her truck. Together, they talked and drank a six-pack of beer while she drove around Austin. At one point he directed her to his brother’s house, but then
wouldn’t take her inside. “I didn’t want to bring some dyke into their house,” he’d say later. “So we drove to another convenience store.”

In the store parking lot, Tracey ordered Breaux out of her truck. What happened next they’d later explain in very different terms. Stumbling, he climbed down and started to walk away. Then he cursed at her and threw an open can of beer that hit her and splashed on her clothes. “I backed up and pulled forward, to leave,” she says. “He lurched at me. I couldn’t stop, and the truck hit him and he was down.”

The police were called, and Tracey waited until an ambulance arrived to be sure Breaux was all right. Although he was only dazed, he claimed that she’d tried to run him over. Police noticed that she smelled of beer, so they booked her and took her in. Two days later all charges were dropped. Still, the incident haunted her, as if she were never completely clear in her own mind what she’d intended that night.

When Ray discovered that Tracey had been drinking, she told her she’d have to leave. With nowhere to go, Tracey bought one of Ray’s rental properties, a run-down one-story corner house with a carport at 3601 Wilson Street, on the south side of Austin, near St. Edward’s University. She called Pat Brooks, whose father had been her father’s law partner, and asked for her help. Pat, a remodeling consultant, and her partner, Jane, a teacher, lived in a renovated home in one of Austin’s better neighborhoods.

With the backdrop of their shared childhoods, Pat and Tracey renewed their friendship. Evenings, Pat helped with the renovations, while Jane grilled dinner on the back patio. It was easy to see what Tracey loved. All she cared about were her two cats and her dog, Wren, a Corgi and whippet mix, and her collection of first edition children’s and animal books. “Tracey loved animals like they were her children.
She talked to them like they were people,” Brooks says. “Jane and I are both animal lovers, and we understood that.”

By 1998, Tracey’s dedication and hard work at BookPeople had paid off with a string of quick promotions. Wearing her plaid shirts and khakis, her nails bitten to the quick, and carrying a backpack, she was a good fit for the bohemian feel of the store. If Austin’s soccer moms and business execs bought their books at Barnes & Noble, its counterculture population, musicians, writers, and computer nerds frequented the aisles at BookPeople.

From floor manager and buyer, Tracey worked her way up to general manager. She had a staff of 150 employees to oversee and responsibility for the entire store. “It was an incredible responsibility, but I loved it,” she says. In her fourth-floor office, Tracey had an open door policy for employees. Working long hours, she pushed hard to make sure schedules were met. As in the past, she sometimes became heavily invested in her decisions. Rick Klaw, a floor manager, at times saw things differently than Tracey and felt the sting of coming up against her. “We could both become confrontational, yelling and screaming,” he’d say. “That was just Tracey. But we were still friends. We’d argue and then go out to dinner together.”

On the surface, Tracey’s life was on track and good, in every way except the alcohol.

Fueled by the run-in with Breaux, in early 1999 the voice grew louder. Soon, nothing drowned it out, not work or booze. Tracey fought to maintain control, but was barely holding on. At BookPeople, her staff noticed she was argumentative, issuing contradictory orders, as if she didn’t remember one day to the next what she’d told them. Inside Tracey’s head, the voice told her she was worthless and taunted her to end her life

At night she drank alone in the house on Wilson, then
called Pat and Jane, desperate for help. In those painful conversations she admitted secrets she’d hidden for decades, describing the horrors of her childhood, including what Mickey had done to her behind closed doors. Jane tried to help, but nothing seemed to lessen Tracey’s pain.

At the end of February, Tracey called Jane again, crying. She talked about the voice and said that she wanted to kill herself to make it stop. “I’ve been playing Russian roulette,” she said. “I’ve got one live bullet in the chamber.”

It was a cry for help. Tracey didn’t want to die.

“I’m not equipped to help you,” Jane told her. “We’re going to come for you.”

Minutes later Jane and Pat pulled into Tracey’s driveway. When Tracey opened the door, her eyes were red and her face anxious, reflecting the ache of the battle waging within her. Jane put her arm around her and led her to the car. They drove through Austin’s darkened streets to St. David’s Pavilion, a beacon of hope for Tracey, who wanted nothing more than for the torment to stop.

Inside, they brought Tracey to Admissions, explained the gravity of her situation, and asked for her to be checked into the center’s substance abuse program. They then watched as she was led away to a ward. Tracey, shoulders slumped and head down, looked as if she had no more energy with which to fight. All her reserves drained, she resembled a small child, helpless, vulnerable, and terrified.

“G
ive one of those doughnuts to Tracey,” Celeste
told Kristina, motioning at a rumpled woman with shaggy hair who sat off in a corner in St. David’s day room.

“Here,” Kristina said, holding out the box to the woman. “Help yourself.”

Appearing dazed, her eyes clouded with tears, Tracey glanced up at her, pulled out a frosted doughnut and placed it beside her. She said, “Thank you,” but never took a bite. Something in the way Tracey looked, devastated by life, tugged at Kristina. “I felt sorry for her,” she says. “She just hung her head and sobbed.”

The black and white notebook Tracey used as her journal at St. David’s reflected the pain that haunted her. On the first page she wrote:

Perhaps what touched Kristina was Tracey’s desperation. It was a stark contrast to Celeste’s attitude since arriving at St. David’s.

Despite the seriousness of her diagnosis—depression and suicidal ideation—Celeste acted more like a hotel guest than a patient since the first day she entered the hospital. She’d held a gun to her head, saying she was in so much pain only death could bring relief. But she treated the staff not like professionals she prayed would help her but as servants charged with doing her bidding. She even refused to eat the food, insisting that the teens and Steve bring her meals. At breakfast, Kristina stopped at IHOP for carryout waffles, pancakes, or eggs. That wasn’t enough. In addition, Celeste wanted doughnuts for the other patients. Kristina did as she was told.

Steve brought lunch. If he couldn’t, Justin, who took classes across the street from the hospital at Concordia College, filled in. In his heart, it wasn’t for Celeste, but for Kristina. By then they’d grown to be more than friends. They were in love, and Justin wanted Kristina to do well, something Celeste rarely paid attention to. Due to their mother keeping the twins from school, both were behind and wouldn’t graduate that May. Instead they hoped to attend summer school to graduate in August. The turmoil of the hospitalization and Celeste’s demands threatened to make even that impossible. “She didn’t seem to care about what was important for them,” says Justin.

Evenings, Steve arrived with dinner. Tracey saw his round, robust figure lumbering through the hallways with a plastic carryout box or a dish from home. She wondered about the old man and his young wife. They seemed such an odd pairing.

At home, Jen was relieved to have their mother away. But the hospitalization devastated Kristina. She worried about her constantly. She barely ate and couldn’t sleep. “Kristina was genuinely frightened,” says Anita. “She had a hard time
concentrating on anything else. She was devoted to Celeste, and having her sick threw her into a panic.”

Meanwhile, Celeste displayed no such qualms about her own health. Within days of her arrival she acted as if she’d forgotten the suicide attempt that had brought her there. Instead, she spent much of her day avoiding therapy and complaining. Along with the quality of the food, she disdained the housekeeping service. “I ought to bring in my maid,” she told a nurse. “The place is a fucking pigsty.”

Tracey and the other patients laughed as Celeste ridiculed the staff. At times she imitated the way they walked or talked. “She just honed right in on people,” says Tracey.

As always, Celeste flaunted Steve’s money, bragging that instead of insurance, like the other patients, she was paying cash. Somehow, she convinced the nurses and orderlies to look the other way as she disregarded the rules. Visitors weren’t allowed in patient rooms and treatment areas, but when Justin and the other teens arrived, they were waved through the electric security doors. “I heard one of the nurses say, ‘Those are the special kids,’” says Justin. “Celeste said she’d made arrangements.”

Suspicious of the way she was acting, one day Justin asked Celeste why she was there. She didn’t mince words, replying, “I spent so much money, I don’t know where it went, and I’m worried about Steve leaving me.”

At St. David’s, patients’ days were devoted to therapy, working through the crises that brought them to the brink of suicide. An acute care facility, it emphasized stabilization. “They tried to maintain us until they could get us into another facility,” says one patient. “It was emergency care, not long-term therapy.”

In between sessions, patients who smoked congregated outside in a fenced yard near construction for a new medical
office. It was there that Tracey and Celeste talked for the first time. Tracey noticed Celeste’s little girl voice, with its soft lisp and the way she clipped off each word. Later, Tracey would say that even during that initial conversation, Celeste flirted openly with her. “She came on strong,” she says. “We were both on heavy meds, but even then the attraction was there.”

Curious, Tracey asked why Celeste was there, and Celeste told her about her suicide threat, then blamed her depression on Steve. She described him as overbearing and abusive. When Tracey asked why she stayed with him, Celeste said she was afraid to leave: He had power and money, and—despite the fact that he was the one threatening divorce—she insisted that he told her that he’d never let her go. “I never thought he’d live this long,” Celeste complained. “I despise him.”

Celeste went on to tell her that she had first married Steve after he helped her get custody of the twins. “I thought that was noble, that she’d given up her life for her daughters,” says Tracey.

While Celeste was a distraction at St. David’s, Tracey continued to wrestle with her own demons. A week after arriving she wrote in her journal:
“I’m being treated now with antipsychotic drugs and tranquilizers to try to quiet the voices in my head. They are very insistent about suicide …I am afraid what I would do if left to my own devices.”

While Tracey fought to reclaim her sanity, Pat talked with the owners at BookPeople, making sure they’d keep Tracey’s job open for her. They agreed, and then Jane searched for a long-term facility for Tracey, one where she could finally unburden herself of her past. For her part, Tracey had heard of Hazelden, a Minnesota facility that specialized in treating patients with addictions. She was distraught
when it turned her down, judging her too great a suicide risk. “I
am in the depths of sorrow and despair,”
she wrote.

In group sessions, Tracey talked of her childhood, including the sexual abuse, and listened sympathetically as Celeste recounted her past. “We seemed to have a lot of shared experience,” says Tracey. “I never questioned those things had happened to her.”

In St. David’s, Celeste’s allegations mushroomed. Now, not only did she contend that her father sexually abused her, but also that she’d been raped by one of her brothers and Craig. “It was a lie,” her brother Cole would say later. “Just like the things she said about our dad. The most that ever happened was the normal show-and-tell stuff little kids do.”

Photos from St. David’s would later document the bond that developed between Celeste and Tracey. Reclining on a couch in one, Celeste had her legs stretched across Tracey’s lap. In another, Tracey’s arm draped over Celeste’s shoulder. “When we’d visit, Celeste spent most of her time talking about Tracey,” says Kristina. “She’d talk about how they were friends, how funny Tracey was. She said she was gay.”

One day, Tracey would later say, the relationship took a turn. “Celeste followed me into my room,” she says. “She kissed me on the lips.”

Tracey kissed her back. From that point on there were stolen moments behind cabinets, in their rooms, wherever they had a moment of privacy. They kissed and touched, Tracey slipping her hands over Celeste’s breasts. “Celeste didn’t pull away,” says Tracey. “She touched me back.”

At other times they simply talked, telling each other about their lives, much of Celeste’s conversation centering on Steve. “He’s smothering me,” she told Tracey. “He’s the
biggest issue in my life. I can’t breathe with him watching everything I do. At times I think my only escape is suicide.”

Growing to hate a man she’d only seen in passing, Tracey told her not to give up. “He’s not worth it,” she said. “And one day he’ll be gone and you’ll be free.”

A week earlier, Tracey had entered St. David’s a shell, so empty she hadn’t wanted to live. Without realizing it was happening, Tracey was quickly filled by Celeste with expectations for the future. It was obvious to Pat and Jane that Tracey was entranced. When they called, she spent little time talking about therapy, just Celeste. “She’s gorgeous,” she told them. “Smart and funny. I want you to meet her.”

Jane cautioned her, telling Tracey to consider where they’d met and that she needed to realize she and Celeste were both not well. “Concentrate on getting better, on your therapy,” she said. “Not on this woman.”

Her advice went unheeded. Days later, Tracey and Celeste had passes to leave St. David’s for a dinner out. Pat and Jane pulled into the hospital parking lot to pick them up. When they saw a flashy woman in a fur coat and big jewelry smoking a cigarette near the door, Jane said, “I bet that’s her.”

Pat shook her head. “Can’t be,” she insisted.

Minutes later Tracey appeared and took the woman by the arm to bring her over to the car. “I want you to meet Celeste,” she said.

Dinner was strained. Other patients from St. David’s joined them in the small restaurant, and Pat felt ill at ease surrounded by people who appeared heavily medicated. She found Celeste amusing if odd. Much of the night she complained about Steve, calling him names and saying that he controlled her life.

Days later Celeste and Tracey made another public appearance, this time at BookPeople. On day passes, Tracey wanted to show her around the store, a place she loved. As
soon as they entered, a small group of her floor managers gathered around. They hadn’t told the staff that Tracey was in a psychiatric hospital, only that she was ill, and they didn’t want them to see the drug-dazed look in her eyes. An argument ensued and Tracey’s voice rose, until Celeste grabbed her by the arm. As the others watched, Celeste drew Tracey to the side and chastised her. Afterward, Tracey, looking embarrassed, apologized, and then both the women turned and left.

Soon, rumors spread through BookPeople and Austin’s gay community that Tracey Tarlton had a new lover, a tall, beautiful, rich, married woman named Celeste Beard.

If Celeste initiated the relationship, Tracey latched on quickly. If nothing else, Celeste was a tantalizing distraction from the crisis that had brought her to St. David’s. At times, Celeste entertained her with stories of the things she’d done to Steve. He was a despicable man, she said, one who deserved to be drugged and given Everclear. When she described how he’d once passed out in the closet, she imitated him so comically, splayed out and bloated, Tracey laughed as Celeste chortled wildly at the memory. “When I get frustrated, I cut myself. I’ve tried to slit my wrists,” she said. “Steve’s an old man and he’s going to die soon, but not soon enough. If I can help him along, that’s a good thing. When he dies, I get it all, all the money.”

“I thought you didn’t marry him for the money,” Tracey replied.

“I didn’t, but he’ll never let me go until he’s dead,” she said. “If he dies, at least I’ll be a rich woman. And if that doesn’t happen, I’m just going to kill myself. At least if I kill myself, I’ll be some trouble for him.”

Pain was something Tracey understood. On Sunday, March 14, she wrote:

“
I think that my left arm goes numb as a response to bad memories. I’ve noticed two times that were associated with some kind of Mickey behavior. Once when a girl on our unit wailed and another time when I noticed a cigarette burning in an ashtray, a long cigarette just left there to burn down. I wonder if she shook me by my arms—I seem to remember she did that often, or at least when I was little, but I can’t bring it up clearly.

“
MY SHAME AND MY SELF-BLAME BLOCK ME FROM MY GOOD SELF.”

Despite the insights, Tracey’s future remained uncertain. Jane told her about the Menninger Clinic, a renowned treatment center outside Topeka, Kansas. They accepted her, and two weeks after arriving at St. David’s, on March 6, Tracey was released into Pat’s care. Before she left, Celeste kissed her good-bye and promised to convince Steve to send her to Menninger as well. “The plan was that we would be roommates, free to explore the relationship,” says Tracey.

On the plane to Kansas City she was heavily medicated and talked little. At one point she turned to Pat and asked, “Do you think this is the right thing for me?”

“Yes,” Pat told her. “It is.”

But when they drove up to the clinic, Pat grew worried. The facility reminded her of the haunted hotel in the old Jack Nicholson movie
The Shining.
In a rural setting, the hospital looked dreary and depressing. Inside, patients shuffled down the halls. “It felt foreboding,” she says. “I hated leaving Tracey there.”

By then Celeste had left St. David’s and returned home to Steve and the girls. Her mood seemed little improved by her time away, and she and Steve argued bitterly. “She didn’t want to be there,” says Jennifer.

With the girls, she initiated the “Rule,” an edict that banned them from being gone from the house at the same time. “We had to make sure one of us was home every evening and on weekends,” says Kristina. “Celeste didn’t want to be alone with Steve.”

On March 8, two days after Tracey checked into Menninger, Celeste met with her psychiatrist, Dr. Michele Hauser, a prim and perfectly coiffed woman with dark brown, chin-length hair. A graduate of Tufts University Medical School, Hauser had served her residency at Atlanta’s esteemed Emory University. After assessing Celeste, Hauser diagnosed her as narcissistic and histrionic and agreed with a former diagnosis that Celeste displayed a cluster of personality disorders.

Two days later Celeste returned to Hauser for another appointment. “I’m afraid Steve will commit me and divorce me,” she told her doctor, crying. Unsaid was that if that happened, she would be left with nothing beyond her half share of the houses and personal property. There would be no big settlement and no alimony.