The Life and Adventures of Gillian McKenna
“Not to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.” -Spinoza
Part Five
40
Gillian owned a couple of cats that she’d had long before getting married. Mikey was black and white with tuxedo markings, and Pinky Lee was all white with pink ears, nose, and paw pads. They curled up next to her when she was upset, lay warmly on her abdomen when she had stomach pains, and became her greatest companionship and comfort while married to Jack. Before the baby came, her mother and her aunts began scolding her about the felines, demanding that she get rid of them because the demonic creatures were known to kill infants by creeping into their cribs at night and stealing their breath. That didn’t sound quite right to Gillian, but her family’s relentless verbal attacks led her to bring Mikey and Pinky Lee to the animal shelter. She cried the rest of that day and, for a good while, every time she thought about them.
Bringing them to the shelter was a bigger mistake than even she realized. She and Laura were no longer friends. Jack’s interaction with Gillian consisted in his forcing her to have sex, since he was aroused by her still swollen belly after delivery. At one point he burst her stitches, necessitating another surgery to repair the perineal tears. After about six weeks her figure returned to normal and he no longer required her services.
After bringing the baby home, Gillian would have liked some help from her mother, who would have at least provided a modicum of physical assistance and support. Emily’s own mother was dying, however, and she devoted most of her time to sitting with her. When Emily wasn’t in the hospital with her mother, she was sitting with Schultz, who had gone into a nursing home some months back. Without Mikey and Pinky Lee, Gillian was alone.
Audrey turned out not to be the easiest of babies. When she received the Diptheria-Tetanus-Pertussis vaccination, she went into convulsions that night, her face beet red, eyes rolled back, her little fists balled up. She was allergic to the Pertussis, they said. Seeing her child in that state upset Gillian greatly, but she got though it. Audrey was born with two bottom teeth, which hurt like hell whenever Gillian tried to nurse. At her first checkup, the doctor said the teeth were too loose and would probably fall out, whereupon Audrey would choke on them. By the time they got the teeth removed, Audrey had adjusted to the bottle, so that’s how they kept it.
Gillian weathered these and other minor contingencies well enough, but they were not the issue. From the start, she found herself at odds with the child. Audrey howled bloody murder non-stop all day. Gillian could not make her happy no matter what she did. She would give her a bottle or a pacifier, attempt to play with her, change her diaper, rock her, the result was always the same, the kid screamed and cried without letup. Gillian wanted to flee, or take her back to the hospital and retrieve her two cats from the shelter. She might have considered it possible that Audrey’s continuous shrieking had a medical cause, except that when Jack finally got home and held her, she immediately shut up. She smiled and looked contented, almost as if out of spite. The next day she would start up again. Their first month together, Audrey screamed and Gillian sobbed.
Jack made himself as scarce as possible during this time, or he might have noticed that more was going on with his wife than just a bad mood. Or maybe he wouldn’t have. He had no patience with her misery. He would tell her her to just shut up, then leave the house when she didn’t stop crying. He wasn’t aware that Gillian was having difficulty putting whole sentences together, since to do that, he would have had to have talked to her. Sometimes she wasn’t quite coherent, but again, not something Jack was astute enough to discern. One evening Gillian, after another long day of shrieking and frustration, became unhinged. Jack came in and found her once again at the end of her rope. He was furious. “Why do I come home to this shit every day?” he shouted. “Because every day you go off and leave me with this little bitch!” Gillian wailed, then dissolved into sobs. Gillian in her right mind would never have referred to her daughter that way, but even this didn’t register with him, and he stormed out, as usual. It was also becoming harder and harder for Gillian to drag herself out of bed. She never seriously considered suicide, but she found herself weighing the pros and cons: alive or dead, which was preferable? A few weeks after Audrey was born, Jack’s family had a get together on behalf of the new baby. Gillian, exhausted, numbed out, and all but unresponsive, sat on the couch in a state of torpor. Had anyone asked her the date or the name of the president, she couldn’t have told them. Jack’s sister-in-law strode over, parked herself on the couch, and scowled at her. “You’d better straighten up,” she declared, “or you’re going to lose your handsome husband.”
One afternoon the water burned out of the pan when Gillian was heating a bottle of milk, causing the kitchen to fill up with smoke. Audrey had been screaming all day and was still screaming. Jack had just gotten home but had gone to the back of the house. In her deeply muddled state, Gillian panicked. She ran out the back door and clambered over the fence, completely unmindful of her second set of stitches, which hadn’t healed yet. She stumbled sobbing to the neighbor’s back door and pounded on it. Fortunately, they were home. They calmed her down as best they could and walked her back. Jack was surprised to see them at the front door. In an unusual display of compassion and good sense, he took her to her gynecologist the next day, who referred her to a shrink, a Dr. Carey.
Carey’s nurse handed Gillian a clipboard with several pages of forms on them. She lacked the wherewithal to fill in any of the blanks and simply signed her name at the end. When Carey sat down with her in his office he flipped through the pages, then began firing questions at her. He wanted to know how much alcohol she drank. He wanted to know if voices spoke to her when there was no one around. Gillian heard the questions as if from a great distance away and answered mechanically. He wanted to know if she had any illnesses or injuries. None, she continued dully, except for her second set of perineal stitches. When he asked how that happened, she told him. That shut him up for a minute or two. He continued in a softer tone with questions about anything similar that might have happened to her, recently or otherwise. Gillian told him. At the end of the hour he wore an expression of extreme dismay, and he had barely scratched the surface.
She didn’t have health insurance, so Emily paid for that visit with the headshrinker and a couple more. He seemed to feel bad that she didn’t have the resources to pay for the sessions, but not bad enough to lower his fee.
Gillian was starting to pull out of it anyway. Her mood went from depressed to pissed. She didn’t want to play Suzy Homemaker, stuck in the house around the clock with a screaming infant, a million things to do, no help or support, no friends, and no company. Everyone had acted like they were so excited about her having a baby, then they all disappeared. On the phone with her mother one day, Gillian broke down, crying in anger and pent-up frustration.
Emily responded immediately. She called Gillian’s father, Arnold, and relayed to him verbatim everything Gillian had just told her. “Find out what you can do for her!” she admonished. “Go visit your grandchild! And bring Gillian something to eat! That’s the least you can do!”
A couple of days after she spoke with her mother, Gillian was having a typical evening with diapers, bottles, housework, and her wailing, discontented daughter when she heard a tentative, barely audible knock on the door. It was her father.
Gillian stood in the doorway looking at him.
“Hi sugar,” he said. “I brought you something and came to meet my grandbaby.” He held up a covered casserole dish. “It’s a pot roast with potatoes, carrots, and rice. Hot off the press. It’ll be delicious.”
Gillian let him in but she wasn’t in a good mood about it. She was seething, in fact. Halfway to the kitchen she turned and faced him.
“So just out of curiosity, where have you been the last five years? You would run away from me in the street. Now you show up out of the blue with a pot roast, like that’s going to smooth everything over?”
He listened contritely with his head down. Gillian drilled her eyes into him, trembling inwardly in a violent rage. Then her anger opened a door; something wanted to slip through, and she let it.
“By the way, I know you messed with me when I was a kid!” She hadn’t thought about it, she just said it. As soon as it was out, she was glad.
Arnold’s head shot up, his face twisted with fear and outrage. “You’re crazy as hell! You were dreaming! You—”
Gillian cut him off. “No, I don’t think I was! And I don’t want you around here molesting my baby!”
That really wasn’t a concern of hers; she knew she’d never let him be alone with Audrey, but she knew the statement would rattle him. He took a few backward steps and made for the door. Gillian let him go. It would be years before they saw each other again.
Even after Emily’s mother died, Emily made it clear she wasn’t interested in being with Gillian and the baby and wasn’t going to babysit, so don’t ask. Neither was Jack’s mother, the lady without a personality, an option for assistance or companionship. She was so distracted and forgetful Jack simply didn’t trust her with the baby.
To Gillian’s surprise and relief, Jack became a help with Audrey. He would get up with her at night, sometimes dress her to take her to visit his mother or to the park. Gillian was so grateful she hugged him and kissed him and thanked him profusely. He would shrug off her gratitude, not hiding the fact that he didn’t think much of her as a mother. As the months went by, she strove to make inroads into her daughter’s affection, but she didn’t know how. Sometimes when she was able to grab a nap during the day, Jack would come into the bedroom with Audrey in the “ventriloquist’s dummy” position in his arms. It was more of a lie-down than a nap, but she always remained still, with her eyes closed. “Look at Mommy, she’s still sleeping,” he’d say quietly. “She doesn’t love us.”
It wasn’t true, she loved her daughter more than she could express; that she had no substantive rebuttal broke her heart. She would sit by the crib whenever Audrey was sleeping and gently stroke her cheek. “You look so beautiful, like a princess. I wish you loved me.”
Interlude—Present Day 2
Anne Booth set her purse on the bar and ordered a beer. Walter Callonet stumbled through a couple more songs before he set down his guitar and joined her.
“Sounding good,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“I actually just came from Gillian’s appointment. She wanted to move it to Thursday. That’s our day to meet, so it worked out perfectly.”
“While it’s fresh in your mind.”
“Exactly. So you’re pretty much caught up on her history, the high points anyway, up to about halfway through her first marriage.”
“Yes.”
“I have a couple of questions.”
“Fire away.” The bartender brought him a Scotch. Anne poured beer from the bottle into her glass. When she was sure the foam wouldn’t bubble over the rim, she went on.
“Would you agree, from her description of the events leading up to her pregnancy and the early part of her marriage, that she would meet criterion for PTSD, generalized anxiety, and major depression with post-partum onset?”
“Sure,” Callonet nodded. “I would.”
“Would you also agree that she probably met criterion for the first two of those for most of her life up to that point?”
Callonet swirled his ice cubes, took a sip, carefully set down the glass. “Describing a person’s whole life, ‘up to that point’ in clinical terms, is a mistake.”
“I know you don’t like to use that language, but I have to. I’m at work. I have to document everything in clinical terms.”
“As you described, PTSD and depression with post-partum onset make perfect sense in her case. She was raped and she feared the child was the rapist’s. She received no support from her husband, friends, or family. She was in a destructive marriage and she was sexually assaulted by her husband. The baby had some health issues, an extremely difficult temperament, and there were breast feeding problems. There could very well have been medical issues, dramatic hormonal shifts that we don’t know about. So those diagnoses, for that period of her life, I’d say are accurate.”
“All right. So she went to a ‘shrink.’ Whether it was a psychiatrist or a psychologist is unclear. Lots of people don’t know the difference between the two.”
“Right.”
“Either way, she got virtually no treatment. Gillian usually remembers everything, but she doesn’t remember being told about any of those diagnoses.”
“That’s because they didn’t exist back then.”
“What?”
“The specifier ‘post-partum onset’ wasn’t added to major depression until 1994. Until then, women were saddled with a diagnosis of ‘post-partum psychosis.’ PTSD did not exist as a diagnosis until 1980, when some Viet Nam veterans, with the help of a couple of New York psychiatrists, successfully lobbied the AMA to make it one.”
“How about that,” Anne said.
“That disorder has always been recognized unofficially by everyone except the U.S. government. They had other names for it. ‘Soldier’s Heart’ in World War One, “Shell Shock’ in World War Two.”
What took so long, I wonder.”
“What took so long was the VA fought it at every step. Their official position was, and I quote, ‘It has never been shown that PTSD is relevant to the mission of the Veteran’s Administration.’ They have to acknowledge it now, but if you ever have to deal with the VA, be warned. Their unofficial policy is that people with PTSD are simply weak.”
Anne nodded. “Then since neither of those conditions were officially recognized in the mid seventies, nobody bothered with, for example, prescribing her an antidepressant.”
“Antidepressants weren’t around in the mid seventies either. The drug ‘Fluoxetine’ was the first. It was released under the trade name ‘Prosac’ in 1988.”
“Oh. Well, that’s a shame,” said Anne.
“What’s a shame?”
Anne turned her palms up. “That she wasn’t able to benefit from antidepressant medications, of course.”
“Antidepressant medications don’t work.”
She chuckled. “Of course they do. SSRIs boost Serotonin levels in the brain and—”
“It has never been shown that Serotonin levels are low in a depressed person. The whole chemical imbalance theory in psychiatry is a marketing scam. Study after study has shown there is no chemical imbalance of any kind in any of the so-called ‘mental illnesses.’ No physician or hospital, psychiatric or otherwise, ever orders Serotonin, or any other neurotransmitter level, to be checked because they have never been found to be abnormal in mental disorders.”
Anne squinted at him dubiously.
Callonet went on. “The pharmacological effect of psychiatric medications in general is not significantly different than placebo. They don’t work, in other words. They do get you a little high, which is why people like them. But they fix nothing. They’re cosmetic. Like alcohol or marijuana or any other drug, illegal or otherwise, they allow people to suppress their problems without addressing the underlying issues.”
Anne held her hands in the “time-out” signal, like a coach on the sidelines. “Hold on. Psychiatric medications are a multi-billion dollar industry. Why would they constantly be prescribed if they didn’t work?”
“Because they’re a multi-billion dollar industry. If antidepressants, for example, actually worked, depression would be a minor issue in this country. As antidepressant use continues to rise, so do hospital admissions for depression. The number of people treated for depression has tripled in the past twenty years, and ten per cent of the population now takes antidepressants. If anything, these statistics seem to indicate that antidepressants cause depression. I won’t even go into the expense and side effects of these drugs. That they weren’t around when your client had post-partum depression, I’d say, is a good thing.”
Anne thoughtfully poured the rest of the beer into her glass. “I agree there’s a lot of ambiguity in what we do.”
Callonet took a sip of scotch. “There’s no ambiguity in what I do. Either I can play the song, or I can’t.”
Anne turned and glanced back at the guitar and amplifier in the corner. “Speaking of, do you need to go back to work?”
“No. It’s not like he pays me. In fact, since he doesn’t even comp my drinks, I’m actually paying him to play here.”
“He doesn’t pay you anything?”
He pointed to a large glass jar at the end of the bar. “He lets me set it there, for tips.”
Anne noticed a lonely dollar bill at the bottom. “It looks like at least one person has enjoyed your music.”
“I put that in there so people would know what the jar was for.”
“Oh,” said Anne. “In that case I’m in no hurry.” She fortified herself with a long draught of beer and continued. “Gillian and Jack were together about five years. Their marriage never improved. In fact about a year after the wedding, frustrated and angry with the whole relationship, she told Jack that Trevor had raped her before she got pregnant, that she’d spent the whole pregnancy worried sick that it was Trevor’s baby. Gillian said he didn’t react at all, just looked at her. Either he thought the worst, as her so-called friend Laura had, or he simply didn’t care, since the baby was his, after all. She said she’d pretty much disengaged emotionally from Jack when he’d been so callous to her right after the baby was born, and his blank stare when she told him about Trevor just kind of put the lid on it. She said she cheated on him a couple of times after that. Good on her, I say. One was a nineteen year old who worked at a nearby bank, the other was a taxi driver. Neither came to anything.
“Her relationship with Audrey didn’t change appreciably either. She told me she could see why her daughter never wanted to be close to her. She had no idea how to behave with a child, how to please her or make her happy. She remains confused and despondent about that to this day.”
“Didn’t you tell me that Audrey has cancer?”
“Yes. She’s not doing well.”
Callonet nodded.
Ann turned her glass around a couple of times. “I guess the question I have for you is, what is it with men?”
“What is what with men?”
“What is the problem? Is every last one of them a salivating predatory sexual weirdo? Gillian was raped and sexually assaulted multiple times in her life. That’s not including the occasions when she was very inappropriately accosted, aggressively propositioned, or sexually harassed. I don’t believe that I’ve stumbled onto the one woman, or even one of the few women, who has had that kind of history with men. I’m guessing it’s much more common that anyone wants to admit.”
“You’re right, unquestionably.”
“When Audrey was about two, Gillian told me, they were in the tub together for their nightly bath. Suddenly Audrey pointed over her mother’s shoulder and began shouting, ‘That man! That man!’ Gillian turned around and saw a guy’s face in the bathroom window. She jumped up, wrapped herself in a towel, and called the police. The cops knocked on the door while she was still dialing the phone. They had been driving by and saw this peeper standing on a concrete block. ‘Yes ma’am, we caught this man looking in your window,’ they said. Turns out he was a neighbor. Gillian was friends with his wife. They were Jehovah’s Witnesses. The wife got mad at Gillian because her husband had seen her naked and never spoke to her again. The guy told the cops he was just playing a joke. I doubt they believed him, but they let him go anyway.
“Another neighbor, Bart or Burt or something like that, came rapping on the back door glass at 6:30 one morning. Jack had already gone to work, Audrey was in a high chair, and Gillian was feeding her breakfast. Gillian said Burt was fairly attractive and had seemed like a nice guy. In the complete absence of any kind of relationship with her husband, she’d flirted with him once or twice, and they waved to each other across the street. So he’s rapping insistently on the glass and hollering for her to let him in. Gillian took Audrey out of the high chair and did just that, let him in. He then knocked her down, dragged her into the bedroom, and raped her while Audrey cried at the door. When he was done he walked out like it was nothing. They didn’t wave to each other across the street after that. Gillian said she didn’t call the police because she figured she was to blame, flirting with him the way she did.”
“Is it getting to you, listening to Gillian talk about these experiences?” Callonet asked.
“I know not all men are rapists,” Anne said. “But I guess I do have concerns, since I’m getting ready to marry one.”
“You’re wondering just how good a judge of character you are.”
“Maybe that’s it. How do I really know my fiancé isn’t one of them?”
“How do you know that he isn’t a salivating predatory sexual weirdo, to use the clinical term?”
“Right. Gillian never once saw them coming, and she’s no fool.”
“It’s not about intelligence.”
“That’s what’s scary. And hey, once again, good on her for giving her dad hell about his sexual bullshit, right? He didn’t admit to anything, but she definitely got it out in the open.”
“Good on her indeed,” said Callonet. “That’s rare. By the way, pedophiles never, never, ever admit it. It doesn’t matter how reliable the victim or how clear and consistent the victim’s story, they always deny it. The only time they ever admit anything is when they’re caught dead in the act. FYI.”
The two of them contemplated the remaining liquid in their respective glasses.
“I’ll be interested to learn if she ever finds herself a decent fellow,” said Callonet.
“She told me her second husband was a good guy. We’re about to delve into that marriage. It lasted twelve years. Eight of them were good.”
“Eight good years.” Callonet mused.
41
Audrey began walking at nine months. Shortly thereafter she wobbled into the kitchen, said, “bye bye binky,” and threw her pacifier into the garbage can. Gillian thought she might want it again, so she retrieved it and sterilized it. When she offered it to her daughter the next day, Audrey reared back and hit her. It was that kind of relationship. Throughout her toddler years Audrey never wanted Gillian to hold her, and would scream whenever her mother tried to. She was much the same when any female went to pick her up or give her a hug. She wasn’t as standoffish with men, for some reason. After age two she started to like Gillian a little bit, although she remained resistant to any kind of physical contact with her.
Audrey was around three years old when Gillian went to work at Odeco Oil Company. She’d called Frank Patterson, her boss when she worked at Merle Norman, and asked if he knew of any place that was looking for help. Frank was then working for Odeco in the Canal Street Office. He put in a good word for her and she got the job.
With only one vehicle, they dropped Audrey off at day care, then Jack drove Gillian into the city much earlier than necessary. She killed time before work with a book at one of the Canal Street restaurants near her office, usually Tiffin Inn or the Delta Towers Cafe.
At the Delta Towers eatery, Gillian often sat near a noisy group of four women and two men who presumably all worked together. She would give them the side-eye when they got so loud she couldn’t read. Whenever she did, one of the men was usually looking back at her through his horn rims. He wasn’t very attractive. Balding, overweight, with a barrel chest and round belly.
Gradually, this guy began nodding and smiling. Gillian kept a diary, and he began appearing in its pages. “He’s always dressed in a suit, his shirts crisp” she wrote. “He’s no Adonis but he looked distinguished.” She noticed the gold band on his left ring finger, but she always smiled and nodded back. It was just a smile, after all.
It wasn’t long before he added a wave to his nodding and smiling. He seemed genuinely happy to see her, and she found she looked forward to this exchange every morning. She began eavesdropping more and reading less. She heard him say “Charlotte” a couple of times and she suspected that to be his wife’s name. On days when the group didn’t meet, she was disappointed. In her diary she wrote, “He seems like someone I’d like to get to know.”
One day he vanished from the morning get-together. She missed his smile-nod-wave and realized just how much she came to depend on the daily boost it gave her.
Each morning she hurried into the Delta Towers Cafe hoping the overweight-but-distinguished guy had returned, and when he wasn’t there, her heart sank. Finally, after a whole week, she walked into the cafe and found him sitting there alone, as he had arrived earlier than usual. She was elated when he gave her his friendly greeting. As she walked toward her table, he spoke for the first time.
“I sure missed that smile,” he said. It sounded rehearsed. He looked down and fiddled nervously with the spoon in his cup. He seemed embarrassed.
Gillian’s heart went out to him. “Same here,” she said cheerfully. “This place was so empty without you.” The moment the words were out of her mouth they seemed a bit much, and she hurried to her table and began reading.
The rest of his group arrived shortly. She kept her nose down until she heard one of them, an elderly women, say, “What’s your name, honey?” Gillian peered around her book and saw that the lady was talking to her. They invited her to come sit with them, and after they introduced themselves around she was chatting away with her new friends. The nice, distinguished man’s name was Ben Wallace. She noticed he had pretty blue eyes.
The group worked for the Louisiana State University Medical Center, who had offices on the third floor of the building. Ben was a purchasing agent. Gillian thereafter sat with them most mornings, but Ben began showing up when she did, about forty-five minutes before everyone else. Gillian found him eloquent and effusive. He was intensely interested in her daily activities. He was astonishingly observant. He noticed and complimented every detail, such as when she changed her hair, wore new shoes or clothes, even different eye shadow. He told her how much he admired her.
They quickly discovered they were the same age and had been in empty marriages for about the same length of time.
“We don’t talk much,” Ben said during a discussion about their respective spouses.
“Why is that?” Gillian asked.
“We never really did. She comes home from work and goes immediately to sleep on the couch. I fix dinner, wake her up when it’s ready. We eat in total silence. Then she goes to bed. That’s pretty much it.”
From the few conversations she had with the shrink after Audrey was born, it sounded to Gillian like this woman was depressed, but she didn’t say anything. Ben showed her a picture of Charlotte. She wasn’t at all pretty.
“It’s the same with Jack and me. No communication at all.” It was probably too soon to talk about her husband’s sexual fixation with distended abdomens and her busted perineal stitches. “So, how did you come to be ensnared in Charlotte’s web?” she asked.
Ben laughed heartily. He laughed heartily at all of her jokes.
“I met her in college.” He seemed about to say more, then stopped himself.
“That makes sense,” Gillian said. “It must have been nice, meeting someone on your level.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
She shrugged. “I have a high school diploma, you both have college degrees. I’m sure I sound like a simpleton sometimes.”
He was completely aghast that she could even think of such a thing. To the absolute contrary, he said, he held in very high regard her inborn intelligence and wisdom. He told her she had an “old soul,” and concluded by saying, “Your qualities are priceless and can’t be bought with a degree.”
Gillian discovered she was having similarly warm and laudatory feelings towards him, and she began devoting more space in her diary to him. “He’s extremely expressive, but a very private person. If he wants to say something sweet and other people are within earshot, he’ll write it on a pad or a napkin and push it across to me. How charming is that!”
Before long Ben was driving her back and forth to work. Since he was her ride, they could stay to have coffee before he took her home. If Jack even noticed she was coming in late every evening, he didn’t care— or at least he didn’t complain. He was just as uninterested when Ben invited her to his office Christmas party. Gillian told Jack she was going to “the office Christmas party.” She wasn’t lying.
Gillian wanted something special to wear to the event. Her mother went with her to buy a new dress. Emily frowned upon Gillian going to another man’s office party, even if he was only a friend, but she said nothing more about it. It wouldn’t have changed anything if she had. When Gillian arrived at the party, Ben rushed to greet her. He was bowled over by her red dress with black velvet trim. They held hands under the table, danced dreamily to Christmas songs, and re-clasped hands the instant they sat down again. At one point he rested his palm on her thigh. It was a charged moment. Her diary entry read, “My heart was thundering loudly. It was the most physical intimacy he’d ventured yet.”
They began having lunch together, and they stayed later and later in the evenings after work. Ben’s penchant for wooing Gillian with words on paper continued; each night he wrote her a charming letter, which she found waiting for her on the passenger seat each morning. Gillian had been careful to place Ben in the “friend context” with Jack, casually mentioning, “Ben did this” and “Ben said that” now and then. Nevertheless, she felt a little odd spending so much time with a man-not-her-husband, so she invited him home for dinner to prove to Jack that she and Ben were just good buddies. The dinner was uneventful, but afterward, Jack commented that their guest was interested in being more than just her friend. No, she replied testily, he isn’t. She asked Jack why he gave a shit— was it because someone else was looking at her?
That’s when it occurred to her that there was a missing piece. Ben gushed compliments, spent every spare minute with her, guffawed at her jokes, wrote her a florid letter every day, and had clutched her hand tirelessly at the Christmas party. “All well and good,” her diary entry read, “but for a guy in a loveless, sexless marriage, he sure is satisfied with the status quo.” Ben never broached the subject of whether or not they were going to get serious, and a serious relationship, preferably a marriage, was what she wanted. She was, she had to admit to herself, more than a little disgruntled with his complacency. She continued to meet Ben before and after work, just not as often.
Gillian would occasionally drink coffee and read her book across the street at the Tiffin Inn, where she caught the attention of a tall, handsome, well-built policeman who never failed to stare her down. One morning at the register she came up two cents short.
“I got this,” someone said behind her. She turned and looked up. It was the cop.
“That’s all right. I just need two cents, but thanks.”
“No, I got this,” he insisted. He paid for her meal, then extended his hand. “I’m Lance.”
“Gillian, and thank you,” she said as they shook. “You just made my day.”
“You make my day every day,” he said. He took out a business card and handed it to her. “Call me if I can ever help you with anything.”
Gillian was pleased to have a direct number to a policeman, especially this one, and she soon had occasion to use it. After a torrential downpour that flooded large sections of the city, she found herself stranded in her building on Canal Street. Even had Ben been in town, he wouldn’t have been able to drive her. She called Lance. “Not a problem,” he said. He picked her up in a police jeep with oversized wheels and ferried her home.
They would have coffee together at Tiffin Inn on mornings she didn’t meet Ben and his crew across the street. She was very attracted to Lance. When he told her he knew of a secluded, woodsy spot not far away and suggested they could go there for lunch, she quickly took him up on it. It wasn’t as if Ben were stepping up his game, after all.
Lance picked her up in his personal vehicle. It was a nice car but it had a rear window stuck in the open position. They were having a great time in the back seat until it started raining sideways and they got drenched. “I’ve been meaning to get that fixed,” he said. They checked into a motel a couple of times after that, but Gillian knew the thing with Lance would be short-lived. He wasn’t someone she’d ever consider getting serious with. He, too, was married, for one thing. He was great looking and easy to talk to, but the instant they were alone together, all conversation stopped in lieu of making out.
She’d been seeing Lance for a few weeks when Ben gave her a letter on the way home instead of putting it on the seat for her the next morning. Jack was in his recliner in the living room, so she went into the bathroom to read it. “I thought I had a lot of time to work up the courage to tell you how I feel,” the letter said. “Now I see someone is using you to get into your pants. My time has run out. He doesn’t love you, I love you.”
Ben must have seen her with Lance at the Tiffin Inn and decided to get a move on. Gillian was surprised and elated. “I almost fell off the commode!” she exclaimed in her diary. Gillian had to sit through dinner with Jack thinking about how she was going to end it with him. She couldn’t wait to see Ben and start making plans. He was the guy she wanted in the long term. He was kind, smart, educated, responsible, he obviously loved her dearly, and now that he’d made his feelings clear, they could finally embark on their life together.
“I just feel like we should get to know each other better,” Ben said, “before we make any big decisions.”
Gillian cocked her head sideways and squinted at him, as if a different angle might make him a little more comprehensible. They’d been together at every opportunity for months now, had both expressed their love for one another, and had declared flatly that they had no intention of spending the rest of their lives with their current spouses.
“Look, I’m not asking you to meet me at the altar any time soon,” Gillian said. “But if we’re going to be together— which you say we are— then I need to move out of Jack’s house. I have to buy a car. Again, I’ll pay my own way, but I’ve never had to support myself and a child and I’d like to know you’ll help me out if my back is ever against the wall.”
“But what exactly are you asking me to do?” Ben said, waving his arms. Gillian knew this was a go-to behavior of Ben’s, gesticulating exaggeratedly whenever he felt cornered. “What does ‘back against the wall’ mean?” he went on. “Of course I’d always help you out… if I possibly can.”
“I understand there are no guarantees, but I want to hear you say you at least intend to be there for me if I need you.”
“Once again, the term ‘be there for me’ is so vague!”
“You know what it means. I want a commitment from you.”
“A commitment! A commitment! Don’t I seem committed?”
“One of us should be committed,” she snapped. “And I think it’s me, for putting up with this!”
Gillian marveled at her own prescience. She had told her mother and her friend Billie about Ben, but at the same time she hadn’t burned any bridges with Jack nor, for that matter, Lance. Billie was happy that Gillian found a good guy she wanted to be with, but with a caveat: if Ben couldn’t commit to her, she should let him go.
“Seriously, Ben, I don’t understand what the problem is,” Gillian said. “This isn’t making any sense. I’m not giving you a deadline. Why is it so hard—why is it impossible—to tell me you’ll be as devoted with your actions as you are with your talk?”
He winced when she impaled him with the word “talk.”
“I just… of course I’m devoted… there’s just a lot of stuff…”
“Stuff? What kind of stuff?”
An elaborate shrug. “I don’t know. It could be anything. Who knows? Who can foresee these things? I mean… just take for example… with Charlotte… my mother hates her…”
“Your mother hates Charlotte.”
“Jeezus, yes. Part of the reason I married Charlotte was I thought… well I thought she’d approve of her… or could at least accept her…”
“You married Charlotte because you thought your mother would approve of her.”
“Mom can be very opinionated… she doesn’t like people from New Orleans.
“Oh, has she met everyone from New Orleans?”
“No, of course not. She’s against them on principle…she’s always been very clear about that…I admit I dread telling her you’re from here…from New Orleans.”
That night Gillian wrote two words in her diary. “His mother?”
When she’d told her mother about Ben, Emily’s response, predictably, was that Gillian was making a terrible mistake and should stick with her husband. Emily had her own ideas, too, about commitment. “If this guy loves you so much,” she said, “let’s see him find you a place to live.”
Gillian was frustrated, but she didn’t want to give up on Ben. They talked through it, much of the time on paper, exchanging letters when they saw each other before work. The whole thing took on a soap-operatic feel. Even though she and Ben had yet to have sex, his co-workers knew they had a romance going. Whenever she walked by they watched her searchingly, trying to glean the current state of the relationship. Gillian didn’t mind—she knew they disliked Charlotte and were rooting for her.
One morning, at a time when Ben was feeling more or less safe and comfortable with her, they ran across each other in the cafe. They decided to sit down together. While they sipped their coffee, she saw Lance looking at her through the door window to the parking garage. In a panic she remembered she’d promised to meet him at Tiffin Inn for breakfast. Lance’s expression didn’t indicate anger, exactly, but he waggled a finger at her, as if to say she shouldn’t be spending time with another man. Perhaps Ben saw him, too. Lance’s face vanished from the window, and Gillian took out after him, leaving Ben in mid-sentence. She hurried out and spoke to Lance in the garage. She told him she hadn’t stood him up, that she was just having coffee with a friend of hers. When she got back, Ben was gone.
Ben was still angry when she went up to his office that afternoon. She tearfully explained she had rushed out only because she needed to apologize to Lance and didn’t want him to get away. “I agreed to meet him for breakfast and I totally forgot because I was with you.” Then she said, “I’m not going to see him any more, anyway. You’re more important to me than Lance or anyone else.” She meant it, and she hoped it would put an end to Ben’s see-sawing.
It didn’t. Whenever she managed to reassure him sufficiently, he would settle down and turn back into the kind, appreciative Ben who was happy to discuss their future together. Then something would scare him. He became wary and uncomfortable, for instance, when men ogled Gillian, which happened often. The next thing she knew he’d be talking again about how they should get to know each other better before making any plans. This usually frightened her and made her angry, but she was sometimes able to shrug it off and find opportunities to tell him how attractive he was to her. “You’re intelligence and sense of humor are a definite turn on,” she said. She remembered that men don’t want to be appreciated for their mind alone. She told him he had beautiful blue eyes. He looked good in shorts, with his strong, athletic legs. She also loved his beard. “I can’t take my eyes off you,” she declared.
Gradually he would feel more comfortable and resume talking about their life together. Then came something, any little thing, like Gillian smiling at a joke some guy made at the register, and he’d back off. It always surprised her, the kind of thing Ben interpreted as a dealbreaker. They argued about it ceaselessly in letters back and forth.
“How long are you going to keep vacillating?” she wrote. “How many times are you going to get your back up about something and break it off?”
“I never said I want to break it off. I just need a little space.”
“I agree.”
And she would give him his space, staying away from the Delta Towers Cafe and having coffee with girlfriends from work at Tiffin Inn. Then she’d look up and there would be Ben, watching her from a table across the room.
They were having drinks in the revolving bar at the Top of the Mart. It had been so long since Ben had last become frightened and bolted that Gillian was certain all of that was behind them. They discussed separating from Jack and Charlotte and maybe getting a place together while the divorces were finalized. Gillian had never been happier with Ben. He was more relaxed and open than she’d ever seen him. They’d been drinking for a couple of hours and Ben said he wanted to know more about her life before they met, and Gillian, completely off her guard, proceeded to tell him. She told him about all of the men, and all of the things that had happened with them.
Ben held it together for almost another two hours. Had she been paying closer attention, she would have recognized his deer-in-the-headlights expression much sooner. But it was too late. The man was so terrified he was trembling.
“What’s that matter?” she asked. But she already knew.
He appeared sickened. He began shaking his head. “Look, I… I’m sorry…”
“Ben.”
“No. No, I can’t. I love you but… I can’t handle this.” He left, and immediately broke off contact with her.
They’d had separations before, but this one felt different. Previously, she had been the one to storm off, angry at his reticence. Nor was he disgruntled by something she did, like flirt with a handsome waiter. This rift had an air of finality.
Gillian was devastated. She moved vacantly through the days like a wisp of smoke, unable to find purchase on the ground or her shadowy surroundings. She watched herself drift in confusion, it seemed, through a dank fog. She had believed herself about to begin a life with a good man she loved. A simple thing, but as it turned out, it was too much to ask. The reason? She had foolishly let the man see her for who she really was. Marrying Ben had been impossible all along, a castle in the air. She wrote despondently in her diary, “I should have seen this coming.”
Ben startled her on the sidewalk on Canal Street one week later when she exited the building for lunch. He’d been waiting for her. He stepped closer and delivered one of his rehearsed speeches, like he’d done when he first spoke to her. He talked with tears streaming down his face.
“I don’t care what happened in your past. I’m going to make the future the best part of your life, and I will love you through all of your pain. Being without you in order not to deal with your past is far worse than being with you and having to deal with it.”
Gillian was crying too, but she laughed because that last sentence was so awkward. She wiped her eyes and smiled sadly at him. Of course he meant what he said and he would try his best to live up to it, but she recognized it as more of his great talk.
Just as she’d often been surprised by the kinds of things that had frightened him off, he surprised her again.
“I ended it with Charlotte,” he said. “She moved out.”
42
Gillian moved into an efficiency apartment several miles down Canal Street from Odeco’s offices. Ben had started searching for a suitable two bedroom apartment, but Gillian needed something quick. Jack had read her diary, learned all about Ben, and pitched a fit. He screamed and cried that it was all his fault, that he deserved it because he was a terrible husband and didn’t pay her any attention, and so forth. In the middle of the tantrum he flipped over the dining table, slamming it into her leg as she tried to lunge out of the way. Other than a sore shin, she felt little more than irritation at his invasion of her privacy— her diary even had a lock on it— and mild confusion, since he’d never before given a damn whether she came or went.
Ben helped her with the deposit and the first month’s rent. She took the bus to work with a stop at the day care center to drop Audrey off. After a few weeks she bought one of Odeco’s used fleet cars for five hundred dollars. Her note was twenty-five dollars per month. Gillian was making ends meet, but money was tight. A few months later she found a higher paying job as a clerk at Canal Mortgage, three blocks down the street. She still worked at Wilson’s Jewelry and Department Store on the weekends.
The tiny apartment wasn’t large enough for Ben to move into, but he was with Gillian every night. Charlotte never gave him a moment’s trouble about splitting up. She quietly went back to Texas to live with her parents.
Ben soon found a suitable two bedroom apartment in Metairie, a New Orleans suburb not too far from downtown. They moved in and set up a bedroom for Audrey, who spent every weekend with her father. Gillian had to hand it to Jack; he didn’t welch on child support, and he appeared to have a good relationship with his daughter. In fact, Audrey couldn’t wait to get there on Friday evenings and cried unconsolably on those occasions when Jack didn’t have her over. Gillian couldn’t help but feel a little dejected about that, but forced herself to be grateful: Jack had never attempted or pretended to love her, perhaps he was trying harder with Audrey.
The law at that time required that married couples remain separated for a year before they were eligible for divorce. During that period, Jack began dating a woman named Leanne. Very quickly she moved in with him. Gillian didn’t know much about her, but she got along okay with Audrey, which to her mind was all that mattered.
Ben had worked out a plan to propose marriage one morning at a restaurant called Steak and Egg, where they often breakfasted before work. Ben was always playing romantic songs on the juke box. He put in his quarters and returned to their table with the ring and his speech all ready to go, but in instead of “Endless Love” the speakers blared “I’m Going to Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home.”
“I did not play that!” he protested loudly. They both had a good laugh over it. He could have spent another quarter, but the moment was lost. The marriage proposal wasn’t going to be a surprise, anyway. He and Gillian had already picked out the engagement ring. He’d asker her to go to the jewelry store and select two or three that she liked. She did, then urged him to buy the cheapest one. He bought the most expensive one, one quarter carat. It cost $1,200, a lot of money at the time, especially on Ben’s salary. At their next visit to Steak and Egg, he pressed the correct button and, when Lionel and Diana began their duet, Ben took Gillian’s hand and asked her if she would do him the honor of being his wife. They set a date for September of that year.
Even after they’d set up housekeeping, lived together for almost two years, and had become engaged, Ben would still come down with the fantods. These episodes were usually triggered by men looking a little too closely at Gillian. He would begin expressing his reservations about their relationship, Gillian would then become defensive and angry, and the result was a big fight. So it was with the greatest trepidation that she stood before him ashen faced one day and said she needed to talk to Jack.
“What about?” Ben asked warily.
“About getting back together with him.”
Ben looked as though he were going to pass out, so Gillian went on hurriedly. “I don’t want to be married to him, I love you, but just hear me out.”
“Ok,” Ben said as he moved shakily to a chair.
This conversation, during which Gillian quickly put Ben more or less at ease, had been preceded by one disaster and one stroke of good fortune.
The disaster had been Gillian’s introduction to Ben’s parents, or rather, Ben’s mother. His father, Milton, had been physically present but was otherwise absent, having long before replaced his manhood with numb resignation. Ben would intermittently attempt to engage him in the conversation, to no avail. When he became visible at all, it was only to smile wanly at his wife, Ben’s mother, who had long ago replaced her loneliness and dissatisfaction with cold viciousness and a diffuse, undisguised, and indiscriminate hatred.
Ben believed that his mother hated New Orleans and everyone in it because of some unpleasantness she once endured on Bourbon Street. He decided he would change her attitude with a more pleasant experience, so he invited his parents to meet Gillian at Brennan’s, a famously fancy restaurant on Royal Street, also in the French Quarter, just around the corner from Rue Bourbon. His parents agreed to drive down from Alexandria for a late breakfast.
Gillian had picked out a lovely pink suit and matching shoes for the occasion. She was determined to make a good first impression, but in truth, it was all over before it even began. Francis, or Fran, as she liked to be called, wasted not a moment. When they met on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, she gave Gillian the disapproving once over, complete with unsubtle sneer and narrowed eyes as she examined her pointedly from head to toe and back again. When Ben introduced them, Fran was ready with, “I’m pleased to meet you” executed with a patronizing drip. Gillian, on the ropes before she knew it, could do nothing but be polite. She was confused further by a kind of horrified fascination. The woman had this hairdo that was flipped up on both sides like wings with a ridiculous curly-cue in the front, and a pinched face that was rigid, grim, washed-out, oily, and immeasurably unhappy.
Ben had reserved a table in the posh Chanticleer Room. They ordered coffee.
“What do your parents do, Gillian?” Fran asked.
“My mother is a banquet waitress at the Fairmont Hotel.”
Silence.
“My father is a watchmaker.”
“He makes watches?”
“Well, he fixes them.”
“Oh. Then he’s not really a watch maker. He’s a watch repairman.”
“That’s what it’s called,” Gillian sighed.
“Can he make a living doing that? Are there that many watches needing repair?”
“Um, Dad,” said Ben. “You should order the Eggs Benedict. This place is famous for them.”
His father smiled at him.
“That’s what I’m going to have,” said Gillian.
“Do you have any siblings?” Fran asked.
“My brother, Gary.”
“And what does Gary do?”
“He’s a waiter at Shoney’s.”
“I see.”
It was clear to Gillian that she was not making a good first impression. This rattled her enough that when the waiter appeared and placed two containers of cream on the table for their coffee, she grabbed the one in front of her and took a big swallow, as if it were a glass of milk.
“Do you realize you just drank everyone’s cream?” Fran said, making no attempt to hide her jubilation at the blunder.
“Oh…I thought that was…sorry.” She glanced around the table. Fran’s smirk was equal parts disdain and triumph, Ben rubbed his forehead, and Milton looked down at the tablecloth. Fortunately, the waiter soon returned with their coffee and took their order. Gillian gripped Ben’s hand under the table while he made light chit chat with his parents until the food arrived. When everyone had their meal, Gillian said, “Excuse me, Sir?”
The waiter, walking away, turned around. “Ma’am?”
She touched the sides of her plate with both hands. “Could you please ask them to cook my eggs a little more?”
“Yes, of course.” He quickly picked up the plate and vanished into the kitchen.
“Don’t you know what you want before you order it?” Fran asked Gillian.
“Yes Ma’am, I do,” said Gillian. “I ordered Eggs Benedict.”
“You do realize they are going to have to cook you a whole new breakfast, don’t you?”
Gillian looked at Ben for a long moment, then back at his mother. “I ordered my eggs over medium. They were raw. The slime was running over the English muffins. I thought I was going to vomit.”
Fran snapped her eyes. She turned to her husband. “Milton, don’t you think they will charge her for another whole breakfast?”
“Uh…uh…” said Milton.
Ben broke in. “If they do, I’ll pay for it,” he said, exasperated. “Let her eat what she wants to eat.”
That evening, Ben told Gillian his mother called him as soon as his parents returned to Alexandria. Fran had tearfully begged him not to marry Gillian, that she didn’t raise him to end up with a person of such low caliber.
“What did you say to her?” Gillian asked.
“I told her she didn’t know you like I know you.”
The stroke of good fortune was a call to Ben from a head hunter about a position in Alexandria. It would be some months before the job actually opened up, but it was a great opportunity. He would be a department head at a much higher salary, plus the cost of living there was lower than in New Orleans. “I’d prefer you didn’t work,” he said, “and you wouldn’t have to. You could really get closer to Audrey. Sort of win her over.”
“I guess that’s true,” Gillian said.
“My parents would be in our lives,” he said. “I know you and my mother didn’t exactly hit it off.”
“No,” said Gillian, but clearly the offer to Ben was too good to pass up. “I guess I’ll just have to win her over, too.”
Their wedding date was just around the corner when Gillian stood before Ben ashen faced and said she needed to talk to Jack.
“What about?”
“About getting back together with him. Ben, I don’t want to be married to him, I love you, but just hear me out.”
“Ok.” When he was sitting down, Gillian continued.
“What you said about winning Audrey over. I’m not sure I can do that. I’m afraid I can’t, Ben. If I moved to Alexandria I’d be taking her from away from the one person she’s close to.”
Ben looked at her meaningfully, but Gillian stopped him before he could say anything. “I’m not willing to let her live with him. I can’t give her up. And you should take that job.”
Gillian closed her eyes. Ben usually became anxious and angry when another man looked at her. Her proposing that she return to Jack would certainly be cause for a full-fledged melt-down.
Instead, he startled her by placing the tips of his fingers together and becoming the soul of reason. “I do understand your concern,” he nodded slowly. “But it’s not like we’re moving to the moon, angel. It’s Alexandria. It’s not even three hours from here.”
Gillian refused to trust her senses. It sounded to her as though he wasn’t upset at all. “What?” she said.
“Jack could visit Audrey whenever he wanted, of course. We could even meet halfway for the exchanges, to save everyone time. Say, in Krotz Springs or somewhere.”
Gillian didn’t know whether to nod or shake her head, so she alternated between the two for a few moments. Finally, she mumbled, “I should ask him, though.”
“If you must, you must,” Ben said amiably.
If Ben’s equanimity were the result of a belief that she wasn’t serious or that she would never actually go through with it, he was wrong. She wept non-stop as he drove her to Jack’s, then asked that he wait in the car. In the house, she asked Leanne to wait outside. When Jack’s girlfriend had gone, Gillian broke down into bawling, hyperventilating, snot-nosed hysteria.
Jack listened uncomprehendingly, unsure of what she was asking and completely mystified as to the reason for this emotional display. In fact, Gillian was just as in the dark as he was. Any disinterested observer would have seen a desperate 29 year old woman in a brutal marriage who struggled despairingly to connect with her daughter, but who also saw a chance for happiness. Not apparent in the moment was her mauling by the American egregore, that blind and stupid monster who tore and shook her like a doberman with a rag doll: Gillian saw herself as a contemptible failure as a mother, adulterous and amoral, who selfishly spat on her sacred marriage vows, and in so doing would probably cause her daughter to dislike her even more. Since everything was her fault, it fell to her to rectify everything, even if that meant rejoining a man who ignored her at best and abused her at worst.
Through Gillian’s sobs and tears, Jack was finally able to discern that she was offering to get back together with him for Audrey’s sake. Fortunately, this was Jack she was talking to.
“What? No. That’s absurd. How could you even… that’s out of the question.”
“Alexandria is pretty far away,” Gillian said between gasps and sobs.
Jack waived his hand dismissively. “It’s not that far. I can drive up to see her. She can come here in the summer. Anyway I’m with Leanne now. In fact it’ll be good to have the weekends to ourselves for a change.”
Gillian blinked away tears and breathed easier. “Really?”
“Really.”
Ben and Gillian were married on September 12, 1981. Gillian had talked with the minister at a Presbyterian church not far from the apartment, and agreed to let them have the ceremony in one of their back offices. Ben’s parents were presbyterian, so maybe she could score a couple of points with Fran. Gillian wore a grey pin striped suit with a pink frilly shirt and her hair up; Ben wore a matching grey suit with a pink shirt. The wedding was performed by her attorney, who was also a justice of the peace. He had helped her with the divorce from Jack. Besides Ben’s parents, Gillian’s mother and brother, Gary, attended. Her friend Billie from Wilson’s Department store served as Maid of Honor. Ben didn’t have any close friends, so he asked a guy named Rick from work to stand as best man. The wedding was a very small to-do and only took about ten minutes, after which everyone went home.
Ben negotiated for a while with the folks from his new job, and there were some delays, but he was eventually locked in to everyone’s satisfaction. Gillian tried to spend more time before the move to Alexandria visiting with her mother, taking Audrey along. Emily was more available now, as Schulz had died in the nursing home some months before.
On July 9,1982, shortly before Ben and Gillian were to pack their bags and move to Alexandria, Pan Am flight 759 crashed in Kenner, Louisiana, killing all 145 people on board and 8 on the ground. Kenner, a New Orleans suburb adjacent to Metairie, where the couple lived, was the location of Audrey’s day care center. As soon as Gillian heard about the crash, she left work and raced to pick up her daughter. All roads into the small suburb were closed, however. Attempts throughout the night to reach the center by phone failed. Gillian called a couple of other parents, who were having the same experience. Ben tried to reassure her that since the plane hit the main road, the day care center, located in the back of the suburb, was safe. Gillian passed the night sick with worry and stomach pain.
It wasn’t until late morning that someone from the center contacted them saying everyone was fine. Enough debris was cleared from the highway that people could come get their children.
They arrived at the center at the same time as many of the other parents. Some of the children seemed to have treated the event as a surprise sleepover and excitedly told their relieved parents about their adventure. Others were frightened and crying. Audrey seemed utterly indifferent until Gillian, in tears, tried to embrace her. Audrey, who still resisted any physical contact by her mother, wrenched herself angrily from Gillian’s grasp and stood several yards away with her arms folded. She went to Ben when he kneeled down and opened his arms, however, and she offered no resistance when he put her in the car.
“As I told you,” Ben said as they drove off. “Everything’s fine.”
