The Girl Behind the Door (17 page)

He asked us to wait in the kitchen while he went to talk to Casey. There was a “click” from the bathroom and I caught a glimpse of a shadow dashing to Casey's bedroom. Thank God she was alive.

After about ten minutes, Officer Gilbreath rejoined us in the kitchen. He didn't say what they'd talked about, but assured us that Casey had calmed down and that she'd be okay.

I apologized profusely as I escorted him to the front door, but he laughed it off good-naturedly. This was probably not the first time he'd had to deal with domestic disturbances in tony Tiburon.

I watched as Officer Gilbreath pulled away from our house, checking up and down the street for nosy neighbors. Looking at my watch, it was 9:40; it felt like much later. We needed to cool down.

Erika and I left Casey alone that night on the condition that she wasn't to leave the house. There was no sense in trying to tackle the drug issue that night. We were exhausted and would deal with it later.

T
he next morning, as I was getting ready for work, I decided to check in on Casey. Often, the morning after a major blowup, she'd appear refreshed and chipper, acting as if nothing had ever happened. On my way to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, I glanced toward her room. The door was cracked open, so I ventured over and peeked in.

She was gone.

Her bed was made, the mountain of pillows was neatly arranged, and her room was spotless. In fact, it looked as though it had been decluttered down to the bare essentials.

On the hutch above her desk where she kept schoolbooks and tchotchkes she'd collected over the years there were personal things missing: the wax dragon statuette we got her one Christmas, the Buddha she bought in the Haight, the ceramic rhino she asked for on a visit to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and a small framed photograph of Igor as a puppy.

Her bookcase had also been swept clean. Photo albums I'd made for her, soccer trophies, the Robin Hood American Girl doll, school yearbooks—were all gone. Initially, it didn't strike me as a bad thing for her to organize her room, especially since it was usually a mess. We'd given up hassling her about it; let her live with it.

I turned to her closet, assuming she'd stowed everything away and out of sight. But when I peered in, it looked like it always did—a chaotic mishmash of clothes, some dangling off hangers, others fallen to the floor.

Where had she put all her stuff and, more important, where the hell was she? We had told her not to leave the house. I looked out her window and saw the Saab parked outside. She couldn't have run away, but then, I was never sure what she was truly capable of.

I went to the kitchen and found the
Chronicle
folded on the counter as if it had been waiting for me. An empty coffee cup had been set on top of it. My heartbeat quickened and I thought about calling the police again, but a slip of paper with Casey's handwriting under the coffee cup caught my eye.

Sorry. I went to Bell Market to get a bagel. Be right back.

I exhaled slowly. Thank God she was okay. But what was she doing up so early? It was summer vacation and there was no school. There was no time to investigate. The coffeemaker had been set the night before, so I poured myself a cup, taking a few sips, hoping to clear my head as I reached for the
Chronicle
. A sheet of typing paper lay underneath, folded in half. I opened it—a formal-looking typewritten letter from Casey. I was running late but took a minute to scan it.

Mom & Dad:

I knew this was the only non-confrontational way to get my point across because I doubt in any other situation I would be adequately heard. We would engage in some immature and unnecessary arguments, which would solve nothing.

That sounded mature and reasonable. At least we were having a conversation, albeit by letter; better than no conversation at all. Maybe that was how we should communicate—in writing.

I'm not saying that experimenting with drugs is part of growing up, but it can be a learning experience. I'm not saying it's right. What I'm trying to say is that experimentation (not addiction) as a teenager can have a relatively positive outcome.

Great. Spoken like a true devotée of the sixties psychedelic icon, Dr. Timothy Leary, who told us to
Turn on, tune in, and drop out.

I am not (this has to be clear) in any way a constant and recreational “drug user.” This letter is not a valiant attempt to have you agree to let me take drugs, but I do believe that a mutual agreement (or tolerance) should be obtained between child and parent.

Boy, this kid had balls. She was asking us to adopt a “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy. I would never have dreamed of writing anything like this to my parents. I imagined her as a future William Kunstler, the controversial civil rights lawyer who defended the Weathermen and then went on to defend clients such as terrorists, drug dealers, and arms merchants.

I know that you both are highly against any sort of drug use. But a one-time discovery of Ecstasy possession is not an indicator that the child (me) is “on the road to addiction.” I do not smoke cigarettes, and have smoked marijuana rarely. I am in no way a “druggie.” I'm sorry it had to happen this way.

I disagreed with the entire premise of her letter—that her drug use was negotiable—but was impressed by the way she built her case.

I left the letter on the counter for Erika to read, and went to knock out the coffee grounds in the trash under the sink. The trash was full, so I took it out the kitchen door to deposit in the garbage can outside. When I lifted the lid I was shocked at what I saw: the wax dragon, the Buddha, the ceramic rhino, the photo of Igor, the photo albums, trophies, American Girl dolls, school yearbooks, video games, jewelry Erika had made for her. It looked like Casey had taken her entire life and thrown it in the garbage.

I'd read stories on the Internet that people bent on killing themselves sometimes gave away their possessions. Was she trying to rattle us, or did she just not think this through? Sometimes, in a fit of rage, she could be destructively impulsive.

Once, after a fight, Casey got into Erika's computer and deleted all of her e-mail addresses, just to spite her. Another time, she went to Erika's closet and pulled all of her clothes down from their hangers, leaving them in a heap on the floor. We could never get her to explain her extreme behavior. For all of Casey's bluster, I could never imagine her going to the extreme of taking her life. I could see her running away from home, even taking my car as the getaway vehicle. She was probably trying to piss off her parents, and she did.

Maybe Casey was right. We had no idea who she was.

That night, Erika and I sat locked in our bedroom; she sat on the bed while I perched across from her on a love seat.

We struggled to understand the room-purging incident. Erika's eyes were moist from anger. She told me that she'd spent the morning picking through the trash can to recover Casey's possessions, careful to clean off the coffee grounds, banana peels, and chicken bones. She was almost tempted to leave everything where it was and let Casey suffer the consequences of her impulsiveness. But she couldn't let go of keepsakes that meant a lot to her, even if they meant nothing to Casey.

“Did she explain why she threw her stuff out?” I asked.

Erika dabbed her eyes with a Kleenex and shook her head. “She refused to talk to me. She's just been holed up in her room.”

I chewed on my lip in frustration as she continued. “She really worries me, John. The tantrums, the resistance to therapy or discipline, the erratic grades, the drinking and drugs, that call to the police, and now this. I don't know whether she's self-destructive, suicidal, or crazy.”

I avoided Erika's gaze, staring at the floor, struggling to respond, but my mind was a blank.

“You know what we should do?”

I looked up.

“We should send her away to one of the schools for kids with behavioral problems.”

I grimaced. “Do you have any idea how much those places cost?” She never thought about money.

“Is that all you think about? Money? Why don't you think about your daughter?”

I resented the accusation. Someone had to be responsible for our finances. “If we send her away—
if
we can get her to go—then there goes her college fund.”

Erika jabbed at me with her finger. “
If
we can get her to go? We can't let her push us around like this! You're always giving into her and undermining me, so now she doesn't respect me! Meanwhile, she has you wrapped around her little finger. When are you going to act like a father and be tough with her?”

I knotted my fingers as I looked down at the floor.

How many years had we spent trying to “control” Casey's behavior? Why couldn't Erika see that just “being tougher” never worked? Casey was impervious to discipline. I was afraid that outsourcing our parenting to a reform school would further push her away and poison an already toxic environment at home. There seemed to be no alternative that didn't smack of a cop-out, such as grounding. It rarely worked, and besides, she couldn't spend her whole teenage life grounded, could she?

The room-cleansing incident remained a mystery. Despite the harshness of Casey's actions, I thought that Erika still read too much into it. Casey was just being her usual impulsive self. Act first, think later. We hadn't even dealt with the issue of the discovery of the drug cache and the call to the police the night before. That was a whole other issue that had become overshadowed by this most recent crisis. Was she a drug dealer on top of everything else?

Erika's voice was flat. “So if we're not going to send her away—which is what we agreed to do—what do we do now?”

I fell back into the love seat and sucked in a breath of air, letting it out slowly. “I don't know. I'm just worn out. I guess she'll remain banished to her room until further notice.”

“You
guess
?”

I shot Erika a glare, tired of her constant accusations since Casey was in grade school that I wasn't tough enough. I had no idea of how strict or forgiving to be with Casey anymore. Her grounding meant that we'd have to keep an eye on her at all times. So we'd all be angry, miserable, and grounded together.

Fortunately, our misery was short-lived. We'd planned a trip back east in July and August to look at colleges. Casey's grounding was lifted after just a few weeks. There wasn't much we could do while we were traveling but make empty threats to deal with bad behavior later. In all likelihood, it would be forgotten or ignored until we got home. After all, a parental threat of punishment was only enforceable at the moment of the offending behavior. It wasn't deferrable.

Casey was excited about the trip. She'd spent hours online dissecting every one of her dream college websites, comparing notes with her other friends, trading intelligence. She was enticed by images of white-steepled churches on college campuses bursting with fall color, and stories of boarding school during her late-night iChat sessions with her friend Roxanne. She had long since forgotten about her early years in just such a picture postcard New England village: Simsbury, Connecticut.

We spent the trip in a fragile truce, driving through New York, Vermont, and Massachusetts in a rented Toyota Camry, visiting five schools in two days. We fought over directions, campus tour schedules, radio stations, restaurants, and hotels. After two days confined like three caged ferrets, we limped into the Hertz drop-off at JFK. Soon enough, Casey would have her freedom and independence and, hopefully, she wouldn't forget us.

S
enior year at Redwood started in September 2007. Erika remained unhappy with my lack of a follow-up response to Casey's drug bust earlier in the summer. She had always resented my tendency to default to a family cease-fire to preserve the peace over confrontation. But time had passed, and in the eyes of a teenager, the statute of limitations—measured in days, not weeks or months—had long since expired. Meanwhile, Casey had thrown herself into her schoolwork and I didn't want anything to distract her.

She worried about the effects of the missed and late assignments and spotty attendance on her once-stellar academic record and, potentially, her college plans. She was determined to raise her GPA to something that began with a three so that she had a shot against stiff competition, and she had only one more semester before she'd send out college applications.

The only way for her to accomplish that in one semester was to sign up for Advanced Placement courses for extra points. She signed up for three, insisting she could handle—even welcome—the challenge. From past history, I knew that was when she was at her best.

By October, she'd made up her mind about college. Her announcement was a declaration rather than a request for permission—so typical. It was a glorious Indian summer Sunday afternoon under a cloudless sky as Erika and I sat outside. Those were the days we lived for. Casey burst through the screen door in a typically dramatic entrance, plopping herself down in a chair between us, a look of satisfaction on her face.