The Girl Behind the Door (14 page)

“Wow, honey, that's exciting!” I loved the Dead too.

She noticed me admiring her. “Dad, could you stop looking at me and go?” She hated being stared at, even if it was in adoration. As I pulled away, she fished through her pocketbook, pulled out her red Razr cell phone, and flipped it open.

“I'vegottatextJulian!”

I loved her to pieces at that moment.

Soon after New Year's Day, 2007, Casey was back in school. Her bank account was stuffed with more than eight hundred dollars, which she'd made from her job over Christmas break, the equivalent of eight months of her allowance. Work had given her self-esteem a much-needed boost. She'd dismiss compliments from Mom and Dad, but it was entirely different when praise came from bosses and customers, especially famous customers.

I began to feel as if the years of fighting, worrying, and false starts were finally behind us. Casey was in the hands of a good therapist, she was intensely focused on schoolwork and college plans, and it seemed she felt good about herself. If she could just keep it up until we got her off to college.

But she couldn't.

I walked through the front door from work on a Friday before the Martin Luther King, Jr., Day weekend to the sound of Erika's screams reverberating through the entire house. “Casey Brooks, you are impossible!”

Part of me wanted to turn around and leave.

“John? Is that you?” Erika marched into the kitchen. I grabbed a bottle of chardonnay from the fridge to fortify myself for the clash that was sure to come. Erika looked like she'd blown a gasket. She was practically out of breath, her eyes wet with rage.

“You need to talk to your daughter!” She pointed toward Casey's room. “Do you know what she said?”

“How could I know what she said? I just walked in.” I poured myself a glass of wine and took a long gulp. Maybe vodka would've been better.

Erika scowled. “You better take this seriously! She says she's not going back to therapy!”

“Shit.” My head drooped. “Did she explain why?”

“Why don't
you
ask her?” Erika took the half-full wineglass from my hand and finished it, while I poured myself another glass and took a gulp, feeling a calming buzz.

I tried to stay composed. “Could you stay here while I talk to her?”

“Sure. I'm done talking to her.”

Casey's bedroom door was open. Looking at it, I was disgusted. The lock was broken from our numerous attempts to jimmy it open with a screwdriver. The cracks running through two of the inset panels where she kicked it were the result of her on-again, off-again raging fits. That had been a new door. Didn't she have any respect for the things we worked for? I pushed it open and stepped inside.

It was quiet, the lights were off, and the window shades pulled down. The dark blue color of the room made it look like a cave except for a narrow shaft of light through the skylight. Casey was in bed burrowed under the covers, her back turned toward me. A lock of her brown hair poked through a gap where her cream-colored down comforter exposed her head. Her comfort pillow was a mangled ball by her head, an appendage of her body. She couldn't possibly be sleeping—just pretending, a ploy to get me to go away. She certainly wasn't afraid of me; she just wanted to avoid a conversation. I sat down on her ratty secretarial chair in front of her desk.

“Casey?”

She pulled the comforter over the remainder of her head that wasn't covered. As angry as I was, I still found her adorably childlike.

“Casey, I need to talk to you.”

A muffled voice answered from under the covers. “I know. You hate me.”

“I don't hate you, honey, but please let me at least see your face.”

“No.”

“Casey, Mom said you refuse to go back to therapy. Why?”

She turned around on her back, lifted the comforter off her face, and stared at the ceiling, away from me. “Dad, it's a waste of your money.”

“I think I'll decide that.”

“Besides, she's just stupid.”

“You mean Dianne?”

“Dad, my friends know ten times more than she does, and I can talk to them.”

I sat back in the chair to think.

“You can't make me go back, you know.”

“Excuse me, Casey. I'm the parent. I think that's my decision, not yours.”

Damn her!
How do I control this kid?
I couldn't force her to do anything and she shrugged off any threats of punishment. Did she have any respect for me at all or was I just some useless buffoon, easily manipulated to fulfill her needs and make her happy? Did I even exist as anything other than a conduit for her to get what she wanted? What did I mean to her? Did she love me or just use me?

She had to love me, as much as she was capable of loving anyone.

I think.

Still, I couldn't help but feel like a failure, utterly incompetent as a parent.

“Casey, I'm extremely disappointed with you. Do you know how hard Mom and I have worked to get you help? We'll talk to Dianne about this.”

She pulled the covers back over her head. I was too tired to fight.

A few days later, Erika and I were back in Dianne's office, slumped in the oversize black leather chairs. She watched us with a sad expression, sympathetic to our latest setback as Erika and I sat holding hands. In her forty years of practice, Casey was one of only two teen patients who'd quit therapy. How would she explain this?

I asked her. “Dianne, you're the third therapist we've been to. No one has been able to get her to open up. You're the professional. What are we doing wrong?”

Dianne thought for a moment. “I can't go into detail because of patient confidentiality, but I don't think it's you.”

“Okay, so what is it?”

“Well, I've thought quite a bit about her early childhood—the abandonment, the orphanage. Have you ever heard of something called
attachment disorder
?”

“No.” Why did everyone have to have a disorder? ADD, ADHD, OCD. Now attachment disorder.

Dianne continued. “Children with attachment disorder have often been abused or abandoned at a young age. Many of them are orphans who've missed out on the nurturing of a parent. They often have difficulties bonding.”

“Dianne, how is that possible?” I said. “The orphanage was so many years ago. How could that have an effect on her today? She's had a perfectly normal life, and most of the time she's a great kid.”

“The first twelve months of a child's life can be crucial to her development,” Dianne said. “The effects of Casey's childhood could be deeply buried in the subconscious.”

We sat, mute, until Dianne moved on to another topic. “But there's something else about Casey that
really
troubles me.”

Erika and I leaned forward, waiting intently.

“It's her drug use.”

Dianne went on to paint a disturbing picture of teen drug use in Marin County, a virtual epidemic, exacerbated by the availability of more powerful and addictive strains of marijuana, hallucinogens, cocaine, and prescription drugs. She had seen the devastating effects over the years on dozens of teens firsthand—mood swings, limited impulse control, inability to concentrate, social withdrawal, poor judgment.

Erika shot me a scowl. “I knew it.”

Dianne continued. “All of the symptoms are there—the rages, tantrums, academic problems, antisocial behavior. It's that crowd she hangs around with. They're a bad influence.”

I chewed on my lip as I listened, bristling at the accusation that my daughter had a drug problem and that her friends were somehow enabling her destructive behavior, like pushers. I glanced at Erika, perched on the edge of her seat.

“Do you think we should put her in rehab?” Erika asked.

“At this point I don't have enough information to say one way or the other, but I wouldn't rule anything out.”

I laced and unlaced my fingers as we sat in silence again. We'd failed at parenting and failed at therapy. And now we were told that the root cause of Casey's problems was either a lack of bonding or drugs or both.

Was she a hopeless case or was there a magic pill that could fix her? Medication had always been my last resort.

“Dianne, what do you think about medication?” I asked.

“Well, I can't make a diagnosis,” she replied. “But it might be wise for you to have a psychiatrist evaluate her. My associate, Dr. Palmer, is an excellent child psychiatrist and can prescribe medication. He's right across the hall.”

Perhaps sensing my frustration, Dianne said, “Look, I know this is a lot to digest. I haven't spent much time with Casey, so I can't be certain of anything yet. There's a lot we don't know about early childhood trauma. And without any information on her physiology or family history, Casey's drug use could have serious consequences.”

I sank back into my chair and stared at a Japanese watercolor on the wall. The fighting at home, anxiety over schoolwork, the purging, cutting, drugs, and fruitless meetings with therapists had been debilitating. We couldn't keep changing therapists.

I looked to Dianne for help. “Where do we go from here?”

“I'd love to continue seeing Casey,” she said. “But she has to want to come back, and right now she doesn't.”

I cradled my face in my hands while Erika rubbed my back.

Dianne looked heartbroken. “I'm so sorry. She really is a wonderful girl. I was drawn to her instantly.”

We got up to leave and Dianne gave each of us a long hug. As we turned to leave, Dianne spoke up. “You know, there's a good book about attachment disorder you might want to check out.” Erika jotted down the title and author.

On our way out to the car, I tried to grasp the magnitude of Dianne's words. Attachment disorder? Drugs? This was serious stuff that was hard to take in. Every pediatrician and therapist who'd seen Casey since she was a toddler had been amazed at how far she'd come. No one had ever mentioned any connection between her behavior and her infancy in the orphanage.

I resisted Dianne's implication that Casey was some kind of druggie, but she was the expert. I wasn't qualified to challenge her opinion. Though I'd come around to considering medication, it still worried me after stories I'd read about their potentially deadly side effects.

We were running out of options. Erika and I agreed to set up an appointment for Casey to see Dr. Palmer.