Pat has gotten sick and has had a lot of bed wetting and pooping accidents and we would have to wash her sheets a lot.
It seems like the house has started to fall apart since Pat got sick. Nancy found a huge water puddle in the middle of the house and when Phillip went under to check it out discovered the pipes were rotting. The downstairs porch sink was always backed up with water and Phillip has showed us how to drain it with a siphon hose. It has to be done at least three times a day or the sink tub will overflow and then we’d have to clean up the floor. It’s already happened a few times and is a pain to soak up all the water on the floor. The water that backs up from the drain is black and gray—it’s so disgusting! I hate the job of draining. But I hate my shift with his mom even more. She is getting really demented and the only one she is nice to is her darling son who could never do anything wrong. She says really mean things when I have to take her to the bathroom or walk her or exercise her. She hates everything except Phillip. Nancy has a hard time with her, too, but sometimes can get her to listen. I feel like she deep down hates me, though, and knows what I represent even though we have never told her, I think she knows I represent a side of her son that she doesn’t want to acknowledge exists.
Before she fell I had only seen her a couple of times. She knew me as Allissa, the sister of the girls that Nancy brought over from down the street, which was the story that Phillip told her. Sometimes I think he would say these are your grandkids, too. I’m not sure what she thought. She didn’t do much after she retired; just watched TV all day and sometimes went shopping with her sister Celia, the one Phillip gave my cat to. After Pat’s fall, Celia died and Nancy had to tell her. Some days she remembered and others she didn’t. The Parkinson’s was eating her body and the dementia was eating her mind. It’s a sad thing. Maybe it’s better that she will never truly know that her son did such an evil thing.
Discovery and Reunion
On August 24th, Phillip took the girls to the FBI office in San Francisco. He said that he liked to take the girls with him because he thought that people were more apt to listen when they were with him. I thought that at least it gave the girls a chance to get out of the house for a little bit. We had not been able to go anywhere during that year because we had to take care of Pat and she couldn’t be left home alone for long. The advanced stages of Parkinson’s and dementia were taking a toll on her.
When Phillip and the girls returned home later that afternoon, everything seemed normal. I asked how it went and if everything went the way he wanted it to. And he said he had met two cops from the Berkeley campus who were very interested in what he presented. He said “they flipped” (a term he used often when describing people’s reactions) and were excited to hear more about his discovery, which was that others could hear him speaking with the power of his mind with the aid of his “black box.” He also dropped off his documents entitled “Schizophrenia Revealed” to the FBI office in San Francisco that day, too. He said he was met with similar reactions. According to Phillip, this was it and he was finally going to be able to move forward with his “God’s Desire” church and “fight for God.” I really didn’t think too much about what he said that day because I had heard it countless times before. The truth is, I didn’t want to think about it because I didn’t want to be disappointed again. Time and again he would tell me that we would finally get going and the kids could have a real tutor and we wouldn’t have to work so hard just to get by. Deep down inside I secretly held the hope that someday if he made it big, he would return me to my mom. So it was easier for me to just concentrate on the jobs I had to do and not ask too many questions. I learned not to ask too many questions to protect myself from constantly being disappointed with his answers that were always vague and repetitious.
The next day, the 25th, I was in the “backyard office” finishing up a print job that was due the next day. The girls were outside playing. Nancy was in the house taking care of Pat, and Phillip was probably also in the house, either sleeping or reading the Bible. It was approximately five p.m. All of a sudden, Nancy came running in to tell me Phillip had been arrested. I was in shock. At first I thought she was joking, but then I saw the worry on her face. I told her to calm down, everything would be fine. Phillip always said if anything ever happened that we just needed to get a lawyer, so I told her we should look in the Yellow Pages for a lawyer and a bail bondsman. I told her that Phillip would use his one phone call to call us and he would tell us what to do. I didn’t want to alarm the girls and scare them. I had plenty of practice keeping calm and unaffected on the outside when on the inside I felt anything but calm.
Nancy and I told the girls and they were scared. They had no idea why he had been arrested. None of us did at that point. Throughout the years, the girls and I grew up knowing Phillip was on parole for hurting a woman, was sent to prison for many years, and that the parole agents that came to the house were there to supervise him. And that it was our job to keep the fact that we lived there a secret from the parole agents. So they knew that much. I had been hearing all about his prison experience for years from Phillip.
A few hours later, as we were all sitting in the house trying to be calm and just wait for his call, in walks Phillip and his parole agent through the back porch door. We were stunned and relieved. Phillip was always the one with all the answers and we didn’t know what to do without him. Nancy ran to Phillip and put her arms around him while shedding tears of stress and relief; the girls and I watched from the living room as his parole agent uncuffs him, instructs him to report the next morning to the Concord parole office, and leaves. After many hours of holding it together, I finally lost it and started to cry. It probably looked to everyone like I was relieved to have him back, but the truth is on the inside I felt like they were tears of anger. Yes, I was angry! Angry at everything. Angry at the parole agent for taking him and then not taking him. Angry at Phillip for not doing anything to prevent all of this. We relied on him, and I guess in that instant it became clear how much we relied on him and it didn’t really look like he cared. It was all about the angels this and the angels that. What about us? It was always the same old thing with him.
On some level I wonder how he possibly could have come back. Perhaps it was true no one remembered me. I know it only fed Phillip’s delusions that he was somehow above the law. Phillip believed that all the coincidences surrounding him from his kidnapping of me and getting away with it to present-day things like his parole officers’ inability to hold him for anything were not just mere coincidence, but the work of the angels. His theory was that before he took me, he was developing the ability to hear the angels and that in order to shut him up they allowed him to get away with taking me and thus keep him occupied and out of their realm. He thought there was no other way he would have possibly gotten away with his kidnapping that day save for them. I had always believed in the good of angels and this only further confused me. Was Phillip truly special and in the eyes of God worthy of protecting? Or merely making this whole story up to give himself an excuse? What about me? Wasn’t I worth anything, or was I merely an object to use?
For the most part, we were all relieved and went to bed thinking it was over. The next morning as I was still sleeping in my tent, Phillip comes out and tells me through the tent window that I need to get dressed because we are all going down to the parole office this morning. He said he was tired of this harassment from the authorities and wanted them to see that everything was okay so he could continue with his “project/mission.” I was scared. I didn’t know what to say. I got dressed and came inside to find the girls dressed and ready, too. Before we left the property, Phillip had me type up a letter for a lawyer that was based in Concord. He wanted to leave it with him on our way to the parole office, letting him know that his project was moving forward. He added that he would need this particular lawyer’s services shortly. Pat was still asleep, so Phillip thought she would be okay until we got back. I asked him what I should say when we get to the parole office. He said to say that I’m the girls’ mother and that I gave him permission to have them with him and that, yes, I was aware that he was a sex offender. If asked anything else, he said I should ask for a lawyer and say no more. We all got in the car and he could see I was
