Or maybe she had no choice.
Many years later, looking through the school records, I learned that in March 1970, right before our departure for Steubenville, the school nurse, Mrs. McNulty, had reported seeing my mother and me at the local A&P supermarket. Earlier that same day, my mother had called the school to say I was too sick for tutoring. If this was the case, why was I out at the supermarket? Mrs. McNulty wanted to know. Soon after, the principal filed a petition for neglect against my mother on behalf of the school.
“The mother of said child, although financially able to do so, has failed and neglected to provide said child with education,” the petition states.
Although my father is named in the petition, my mother is the person “legally responsible” for my well-being, as if my father couldn’t be expected to have any responsibility in the matter whatsoever.
My mother most likely had to leave Steubenville because she was due to appear in court.
* * *
SOON AFTER FILING the petition against my mother, the school mysteriously dropped the case. Nothing in the school records confirms what happened next. Years later, I contacted the Family Court of Suffolk County to see if they had any documents pertaining to my case. They referred me to Child Protective Services, who explained that the petition was never submitted to the court, and therefore they didn’t have any records on file.
My guess is that Dr. Farley finally convinced the school that I was legitimately sick, because it was around this same time that I was diagnosed with rheumatic fever.
In many ways, rheumatic fever was the perfect illness to explain away my ailments. Symptoms of the disease can be slight or even nonexistent, but left untreated, rheumatic fever can be dangerous and even fatal. In 1970, when I was diagnosed, the primary treatment was bed rest. Dr. Farley explained that I had to build up my strength slowly, as one attack might easily follow another, and the illness can linger, even after the symptoms have disappeared.
My mother now had a legitimate reason for me to stay at home on bed rest and to cancel my home tutoring appointments.
On my school report from June of that year, there is a string of handwritten question marks and then an arrow pointing to the words “absent most of year.” The records state that my fifth-grade teacher was Mr. Traverse, but I have no recollection of him whatsoever; I was in attendance for only five days the entire year.
Dr. Farley also prescribed penicillin for the rheumatic fever, which I took on and off for the next two years. I kept taking Congespirin for my repeated colds and infections. When I had sore throats, my mother gave me penicillin for strep. I remember she kept the pill bottles on the glass shelves behind her bathroom mirror, taking them out, then crushing the pills in applesauce for me—I hated to swallow them whole.
It was around this age that I remember going to the bathroom, wiping, and seeing blood on the toilet tissue. I remember screaming for my mother. I was hysterical. I was convinced this was the internal bleeding my mother was always talking about. Or maybe I had cancer. My mother came running, but when I showed her the blood, for once, she was calm and composed. She explained to me that I had just gotten my first period. I was going to have this once a month now. She showed me how to place the pad in my underwear to keep myself clean. I had been so isolated that I had no idea this was something I should expect to happen to me. I remember the relief. This was normal.
* * *
MY SISTERS LEFT home as soon as they could. Robin was the first to go. She was only sixteen, but she’d already been running away and asserting her independence from my parents for years. She had pretty much dropped out of school in tenth grade. In the years 1968 to 1969, her school records show she was present in school only seventeen days. Even though she showed up now and then, she had essentially lost interest, and my parents had given up on her. In the spring of 1971, she set out on her own. She briefly worked as a barmaid, a secretary, and a dime store clerk in Westbury at first, not far from our home. Not long after Robin left, Jill moved out, too, heading to junior college in Newport, Rhode Island.
That same spring, Sherman Fairchild passed away. Sherman left my father a considerable amount of money, as well as an education fund for my sisters and me. But life on Long Island would never be the same for my father. He had lost his best friend and his social life next door. He fell into a depression and now stayed home most of the time.
With both my sisters gone, I was alone with my parents in the Dream House. I became the small sun around which my mother obsessively revolved.
This was the period when her behavior became more and more difficult to understand, even for an eleven-year-old child. One night, I remember, she came into my bedroom very late. In my room I had posters of cats and kittens, my favorite animals, tacked to the walls.
That night, I woke up to find my mother tearing down the cat posters from the walls.
I begged her to stop. “Why are you doing this?” I pleaded.
My mother was pulling at the pictures with her fingernails.
She told me that she could hear knocking in the walls; that she needed to make sure we were safe.
My treasured posters lay in tatters on the floor.
After she left, I cried
