Linda Wolfe - My Daughter, Myself: An Unexpected Journey

My Daughter, Myself

An Unexpected Journey

Linda Wolfe

Also by Linda Wolfe

The Murder of Dr. Chapman

Love Me To Death

Double Life

Wasted: The Preppie Murder

Private Practices: A Novel

The Cosmo Report: Women and Sex in the Eighties

The Professor and the Prostitute: True Tales of Murder and Madness

Playing Around: Women and Extramarital Sex

The Cooking of the Caribbean Islands

The Literary Gourmet

For R.S.B. and M.J.B.

Table of Contents

Part One: Every Mothers Nightmare

Chapter One: Mothers Day

Chapter Two: The Great Mother, Son-in-Law Struggle

Chapter Three: New Pathways

Part Two: The Long Road Back

Chapter Four: Trapped

Chapter Five: Eighty Feet

Chapter Six: A New Beginning

Chapter Seven: Im Her Mother

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Part One

Every Mothers Nightmare

Chapter One

Mothers Day

The nightmare began, although I didnt recognize it at the time, on a Mothers Day weekend a few years ago. I was in San Antonio, Texas, having flown down from my home in New York City to spend the weekend with my daughter, Jessica, her husband, and their children, my two young granddaughters. Sometime in the black-as-pitch hours before dawn on Sunday morning, Jessica was startled into wakefulness by a splitting headache. She went to the bathroom, used the toilet, splashed water on her face, and was headed back to bed, when suddenly one of her legs gave way beneath her and she fell.

Asleep in the guest bedroom across the hallway, I was not aware of this. Nor was I aware that Jessica pulled herself up from the floor and, convinced shed feel better if she got some more rest, lay down in the queen-sized bed she and her husband shared, curled up beside Jons slumbering body, and went back to sleep.

I didnt know that when she woke up again it was light out and her head was still hurting, only now it was hurting so much it was making her nauseous. I didnt hear her gagging in her bathroom or dialing her doctors office, didnt know that a covering doctor, upon learning her symptoms, told her to go at once to an emergency room. Nor did I hear her discuss with Jon which emergency room to go tothe one where her doctor practiced, or the one closer to home, where theyd taken their elder daughter when shed gotten a cut that needed stitches.

Wed had a wonderful weekend until then. My plane had come in late on Friday night. Jon and the children were already in bed, but Jessica had waited up for me. Thirty-eight years old, she was slender and tall, with an olive-tinted complexion and brown eyes that sparkled beneath twin scimitars of dense eyebrows. Shed looked especially pretty that night, her thick chestnut hair newly bobbed to a fashionable shoulder length. Shed cut it, she told me, for her new jobshe was doing political and judicial research for Texass Bexar County, whose capital is San Antonio. It was her first job in what was for her still a new hometown. The family had moved to San Antonio from Berkeley, California only a few months earlier, when Jon, whod just gotten his Ph.D. in political science, had landed a teaching position at the San Antonio branch of the University of Texas. Jon liked his new job, Jessica had told me, and hers was perfect. She loved the work.

Id gone to sleep happy for my daughter, and on Saturday gave her and Jon a break from childcare by playing House and School for hours with my grandchildren, three-year-old Miriam and eight-year-old Rachel. Saturday night Id taken the family out to dinner at a restaurant my son-in-law wanted to trya new Chinese place, festive with red and gold Good Luck banners. The menu was filled with an alluring array of dishes, and we had ordered expansively.

That dinner seemed to be what was on Jons mind Sunday morning when I came downstairs for breakfast at about 8 a.m. Jessicas not feeling well, he said to me as soon as I appeared. Shes been throwing up. I think maybe shes got food poisoning. Can you watch the girls while I take Jess over to the hospital to get her checked out?

Of course, I told him, pleased to be put in charge of my granddaughters; living so far away, I didnt get that assignment very often. But food poisoning? I asked Jon doubtfully. None of the rest of us is sick.

Yeah, but she ate the crabmeat and none of the rest of us did.

Then Jessica came downstairs. She looked awful, waxen as an Easter lily and all bent over, her normally strong and vertical stride a shuffling parenthesis. She grabbed her wallether medical insurance card was inside itand said goodbye to her daughters. A moment later she and Jon were gone, though not before she whispered to me, Mom, I woke up with a headache in the middle of the night. But it wasnt just a normal headache. It was like the inside of my head was ripping apart.

I discovered what time truly is that afternoon. A minute is 60 seconds. An hour is 3,600 seconds. A May afternoon is 21,600 seconds. All day, the seconds plodded funereally forward while I tried to keep the children distracted. They knew their mother wasnt feeling well, but Jon had told them it was nothing serious, and when he assured them it was just a stomachache and shed be back in time for the Mothers Day celebration theyd been planning, they had accepted his explanation. I wasnt able to, not when shed looked so dreadful. But for their sakes, I pretended not to worry and flung myself into round after round of lets-be-this or lets-be-that games, mostly chosen by Rachel, who was forever making up games and writing plays. Among her recent hits was The Prince and the Bowling Ball, which featured a princess who puts a bowling ball under a visitors pillow to determine whether hes really, as he says he is, a prince. Id brought my video camera with me to Texas, and after lunch proposed that the girls act out the drama. Grandpa Max will love it, I coaxed. He feels bad that he couldnt come with me this weekend, and if we make him a movie, hell be so happy.

It worked at first. But after an hour of gathering all the propsthe crowns and cloaks and beads, the feather for the princes hat, the large rubber ball that could serve as a bowling ballRachel suddenly turned sulky and refused to go on with the show. We acted it out when we were in New York last time, she bawled. Grandpa saw it. Grandma! Dont you remember?

Was she feeling my anxiety? Was that what was making her so cranky? I couldnt be sure, but there was no diverting her. Miriam wailed but Rachel prevailed, and I decided we needed a change of venue. The afternoon had grown increasingly hot, and although going outdoors would be less comfortable than staying in the air-conditioned houseat least for me, who was unused to Texas torridityI began to insist that we do something outside. Play ball? Make chalk drawings on the sidewalk?

The children grimaced, but I figured outdoor play would quiet them down, break up their quarrel. Besides, I wanted to be out front, where I could spot Jessica and Jons Toyota the moment it rounded the corner.

All right, Grandma, Rachel finally acquiesced, but no playing ball and no drawing on the sidewalk. I took my cell phone outside with me. It was 2002; Jessica and Jon hadnt yet bought cell phones, but Jon had promised theyd call from the hospital after Jessica was seen by a doctor.

Once the girls and I were settled down in front of their house, Rachel devised a game that involved gathering twigs, pretending they were tantalizing toys and having Miriam, for whom the concept of money was a total mystery, purchase the imaginary toys with bits of rock and stone. It was an endless game, and an endless afternoon.