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"Thank you. Dr. Price."
He stared at me a moment and then handed me my mother's file. Under my breast, my heart sounded like heavy rain against a window. I sat on the leather settee. Dr. Price took one more glance at me and left the office. I was alone with the truth.
I remember when I was in my early teens. I found one of Daddy's patient folders on a table in the den. I knew it was supposed to be very private. It was like looking into someone's head, as if you had Superman's X-ray vision but could see more than just a brain; you could see that person's very thoughts, dreams, memories, and fantasies. What was more private than your thoughts? What trust or what great and desperate need it took to be honest about them! To tell another person, a stranger, who was
supposedly trained not to react as any other person would, not to laugh at you or look at you strangely and make you feel foolish. You couldn't be more naked.
I was terrified I'd be discovered if I looked into that folder, but the temptation was too great. My adoptive mother was always telling me I was on the verge of becoming one of Daddy's patients. Here was one. How alike were we?
Taking care to be sure no one would see me do it. I had opened the folder and begun to read. It was very disappointing. The writing was so technical. I didn't understand much at all. I knew it was about a seventeen-year-old boy who had a schizophrenic disorder. He believed his parents had conspired with television producers, radio producers, and music producers to control him and as a result suffered a psychosomatic hearing disorder. In other words, he was deaf.
Reading that had put such terror and fear in my heart. I felt as if my fingers were burned by the pages and shut the folder as quickly as I could. Would such a horrible thing happen to me? Was my adoptive mother right? What had I inherited? What horrible mental illness waited outside my door looking for an opportunity to take hold of me and turn me into a name on a folder like this?
I was afraid to ask Daddy about any of it, afraid to let him know I had snuck a peek at one of his very private folders, and yet I longed to be reassured. Surely, he sensed it in my questions. Years later, on one of our walks together after my adoptive mother's death. I confessed about the folder. He laughed and said. 'I had a suspicion you were into that one, worrying about your hearing, your sight, afraid you might wake up one morning and be unable to speak."
"Whatever happened to that boy, Daddy?" I asked.
"I'm happy to say we were able to move him on to a residence house where he continued to make slow progress toward a normal life. He was very intelligent and quite a challenge. There were some medications that helped and medications he has to remain on for the rest of his life. I'm afraid; but it's good to have drugs that can help people like him."
I had wanted to ask him about my real mother then. but I was actually afraid of the answers. I didn't know he was my real father, of course. It might have been different for me if I had known. I might have asked. But back then. I didn't want to know what was possible in my future. and I knew if I learned about her. I would be forever expecting some terrible thing to happen to me. It was better to remain in the dark about it--which was really Amou's advice the night before_. I thought as I contemplated the folder now in my hands.
However. I had come too far. and Daddy's romance gave me a sense of some security. He couldn't fall in love with someone who was as sick as that young man, could he? She had left the clinic. She had been cured, hadn't she? She was certainly capable of a great love affair. I was no longer afraid.
I opened the folder and read about Grace Montgomery's history of depression, which brought her to Daddy's clinic when she was just twenty-five. She had been referred by a Dr. Donald Anderson, who had a psychiatric practice in Palm Beach, Florida. After some psychoanalysis, she revealed her stepfather often behaved inappropriately. This grew to the point where he forced himself on her, and she became pregnant.
She apparently kept her pregnancy hidden because of her own embarrassment and feelings of failure. Toward the end of her pregnancy, she was practically kept under house arrest by her mother: then she delivered and went into a deeper depression. She had been treated with various drugs for some time before finally being referred to Daddy.
She was suffering all the symptoms of acute melancholia: low self-esteem, inability to find pleasure in anything, insomnia, and a tendency toward being suicidal. I read how Daddy adjusted her medications and soon began to make progress with her in therapy. The date of her release from the clinic was shortly after my own birthdate. With that was the simple notation that she had returned to her family in Palm Beach for follow-up as needed with Dr. Anderson.
Much of the folder contained technical medical data, lists of medications and dosages. Aside from the brief account of her history, there was little to give me a sense of who she was. There were no pictures and, other than the paraphrasing of some of the
information she gave in the therapy sessions, no statements by her. I could have been reading any other dysfunctional person's psychological history.
I was sitting and thinking about all th
is when Dr. Price returned. "What else can you tell me about her. Dr. Price?" I asked him immediately.
"Not much," he said. "Remember, she wasn't my patient really. She was your father's."
"Have you ever heard from her or about her since? I mean from her doctor in Palm Beach?"
"No. My guess is that was a decision your father and she had made." he added. He took the folder from me and sat behind his desk. "You have to remember, this was all quite a long time ago. 'Willow."
"I know. I'm nearly nineteen," I said. He smiled.
"At least, from reading that, you can be reassured that you're not in the line of fire of some mental malady. Her problems were related to the behavior of the people around her. You've had quite a different upbringing."
I raised my eyebrows. "My adoptive mother could easily have tilled every available room in this place. Dr. Price."
He laughed. "Yes, but your father was there and that wonderful housekeeper who was much more of a mother to you, anyway. What was her name?"
"Amou." I said.
He smiled, "That was your name for her. In other words, you had love in your home, the sort of love she" --he put his hand on my mother's folder-- "apparently never had. Go on back to college. Willow. Make a life for yourself, and please, please keep in close touch with me."
I rose. "Thank you. Dr. Price."
We hugged, and he escorted me to the door. "The day she left." he began.
