03.She.Wanted.It.All.2005 (15 page)

When Tracey read Celeste’s letter, she was deeply touched. Yet, she disagreed with her characterization of her relationship with Steve. If Steve was as Celeste described him, he was at fault. They argued, Tracey contending that around Steve, Celeste made herself powerless. “Well, screw
you,” Celeste said. “I don’t need this at all.” For days they didn’t talk. When they did, Celeste told Tracey: “Let’s just be friends.”

Despondent, Tracey agreed. Then, days later, Celeste kissed her on the mouth. “I forgive you,” she said.

On Fridays the twins drove the three and a half hours from Austin to Dallas. As soon as they arrived, Celeste put them to work. She ordered them to buy things, to smuggle banned goods onto the unit: razors, a cell phone, even cigarette lighters. More than once the items were later discovered, leading to arguments between the patients. “It was awful,” says Jennifer. “Here we were smuggling in razors to a unit where people were suicidal.”

One week the girls left Austin late, and Celeste was furious when they arrived. She ordered them to go to a convenience store. She had a cigarette order from the other patients and wanted a carton for each charged to her credit card. For Easter she sent them to Wal-Mart for baskets and candy eggs. They spent that night making fifteen baskets for Celeste to give the other patients. The next day they handed them out in the day room, and the patients with multiple personalities responded by acting like small children.

For all the complaining she did about the clinic, Celeste seemed to be having fun at Timberlawn. Often Kristina longed to be at a place like that, where she could rest. Between school and commuting to Dallas to do their mother’s bidding, both the girls were exhausted. The one time Jennifer and Kristina told their mother that they didn’t want to run her errands, that they’d spent hours driving to see her and didn’t want to be shuttled off, Celeste cursed at them, saying they didn’t understand all she’d been through, what it was like to have been abused as a child.

“You don’t love me!” she screamed, sending shivers through them both.

After they left, Celeste changed her visitor list. They weren’t allowed to return for nearly two weeks.

At home, Justin and Jennifer worried about Kristina, who’d lost twenty pounds and was down to a size two since her mother’s hospitalization. “We’d be eating dinner with Steve and everyone would be laughing, then the phone would ring,” says Justin. “Kristina would pick it up and it would be Celeste. When she hung up, Kristina was crying.”

Kristina was struggling with a confluence of emotions. She worried about her mother, and yet since childhood, she’d had dreams of a life with a different family, one where she’d be happy and not burdened by her mother’s constant demands.

Yet, as ever, Kristina was devoted to Celeste. When Steve made disparaging remarks about her, Kristina lashed out at him. They argued, and he blustered at her, perhaps taking out on the daughter all the frustration he felt toward his wife. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kristina said. She stormed out the door. When Kristina called, Celeste told her to stay at Jimmy’s house until things cooled down.

For his part, Steve told few people where Celeste was; he said she was visiting friends. During the week, he often flew up for counseling sessions with Celeste and her psychologist, Bernard Gotway, a plump, gray-haired, bespectacled man; and her psychiatrist, Howard Miller, a short, quiet man with dark glasses and penchant for brightly colored suspenders. On weekends Steve arrived on Saturday, as the twins were driving home, and then left again on Sunday nights. Gotway and Miller noted on Celeste’s chart that she did well during Steve’s visits, as they discussed the problems with their marriage. But after he left, Celeste complained bitterly to Tracey. “She told me Steve smothered her.
Just seeing him made her feel like killing herself,” says Tracey. “And there he was, showing up, involved in her therapy. How could she get better?”

When Steve visited, Tracey carefully watched the man whose very existence she’d grown to believe threatened her lover’s life. He appeared as Celeste described him, big and boorish. Only once did they exchange words, and it unleashed a storm from Celeste. That day, Celeste argued with an attendant who wouldn’t allow her and Steve to go to the lobby together. Steve turned to Tracey and said, “She has a hard time following rules.”

Shocked that he’d said something to her, Tracey nodded, replying, “Yes, I’m afraid she does.”

Later, Steve told Celeste what Tracey had said. Livid, Celeste tracked Tracey down on the smoking porch and screamed, “Why don’t you mind your own fucking business!”

“Fine,” Tracey replied, but inside she felt like something was waning. Later that day she wrote in her journal, “I
have lost my infatuation” and “MIND YOUR OWN FUCKING BUSINESS!!! Stay out of Celeste’s shit.”
Then she scratched it out. The next day Celeste kissed her as if nothing had happened.

The days ground on, some better than others. Both the women were heavily medicated, everything from pills for depression, to anxiety, to ones to help them sleep. Over the weeks, Celeste threatened to sign herself out, and Tracey begged her to stay. Later, Tracey would say that their relationship progressed in surges: “We’d be close one day, and the next we were hardly talking.”

While many noticed the unusually close relationship between the two women, it was Celeste’s psychiatrist, Dr. Miller, who seemed troubled by it. More than once he brought it up to Tracey, asking her to explain their bond.

In Celeste’s journal, during one group session, they wrote each other notes:

TRACEY
: “I
told Dr. Miller that I have no sexual interest in you. So, I lied. But you should, too. He said as long as we follow the guidelines for touching (physical contact) & respect the room rules, there shouldn’t be any problem. He had no problem with our being close as long as it doesn’t interfere with our therapy. He says trauma abuse patients are prone to making impulsive, life-altering decisions while in treatment.”

CELESTE
: “Did
he bring it up—or did you?”

TRACEY
: “Me—
he asked if there were other issues & I told him I was really pissed off about the report from the night nurses
[about the backrub incident].
By the way, I absolutely do have a sexual interest in you—He asked if we had a special relationship—he defined that as a relationship with more to it than other random patients—I said yes—He said that is not a problem. They don’t discourage this unless it gets in the way therapeutically. We just need to go outpatient.”

Celeste ended by writing:
“Quick!”

Timberlawn’s outpatient program was waiting for them at the end of their inpatient stay, when they’d spend days at the clinic for therapy, then be free to do as they wished in the evenings. Tracey and Celeste already had plans. Steve had rented a room, number 103 at the Sumner Suites, across from the clinic, for $69 a night, for him and the twins to use while in Dallas and for Celeste to stay in when she graduated to the day program. There, Tracey and Celeste could explore their sexual relationship without fear of discovery. “Celeste told me she’d never been with a woman,” says Tracey. “She said she didn’t like sex with men and couldn’t have orgasms. She wanted me to teach her.”

At Timberlawn, Celeste and Tracey clutched together often, so much so that therapists noted it on their charts. Their journals were filled with affirmations:
“Believe in Ourselves! I am worthwhile! I am loved! I don’t deserve all this self-hate. This self-blame. Helplessness becomes powerlessness. Be willing!”

Tracey wrote: “I
want love …I want to be held …I want a safe attachment to someone.”

Yet, for weeks, Tracey made little progress, suicidal thoughts slipping in and out of her consciousness. Milholland pegged the stumbling block as her inability to place the blame for the abuse on her mother, not herself. It wasn’t until a session in early April that the therapist felt she was making headway.

“Sometimes I think about going to hell to find my mother,” Tracey told her that day. “When I find her, I hand over all the responsibility for what happened to her. I say, ‘This was your fault, not mine. I was only a child. You were the adult.’”

“What do you worry about?” the therapist asked.

“I worry that I won’t be able to leave, that I’ll be stuck in hell forever with my mother,” she answered, crying.

By early April, Tracey’s insurance money was drying up, and she faced discharge to Timberlawn’s day program. Her meds were still giving her problems. At times her speech was slurred and she appeared to be drunk. Yet, Milholland assessed the risk of her committing suicide as having decreased from a ten, on a ten-point scale, to a six. “I’m not free-falling to suicide anymore,” she told the therapist. Tracey didn’t say why, but much of her new peace centered on her relationship with Celeste, which, at the time, she says, was flourishing. She did, however, tell Milholland that
they planned to room together again, off-campus, during the outpatient program.

“What’s your relationship like?” the therapist asked.

“Just friends,” Tracey answered.

Days later in Celeste’s therapy, Dr. Miller questioned the wisdom of such a plan.
“Patient offended at being confronted on friendship with homosexual peer,”
he wrote in her chart. He advised Celeste that rooming with Tracey during outpatient sessions wasn’t a good idea. As he saw it, Tracey was too possessive.

Tracey would later say that Celeste told her something very different that night—not that Dr. Miller questioned the wisdom of their plan, but that the clinic staff contacted Steve and made him aware of their friendship. “He doesn’t want us to be roommates,” she said. “He has money and power. You’ll see. He’ll get what he wants.”

Frightened that she was losing the woman she’d made the linchpin of her recovery, Tracey panicked. The next days, she waited anxiously, hoping Celeste was wrong.

Two days later Miller brought up Celeste’s discharge plans again and urged her to break off the friendship with Tracey.
“Counseled against rooming with peers when discharged. Discussed boundaries, caring but saying no,”
he wrote on her chart. It was decided Celeste would break off the entanglement with Tracey, but the clinic would help.

The following morning Tracey was called in for a meeting with Celeste and Melissa Caldwell, the art therapist. During the session, Celeste told her that she didn’t want to room with her during outpatient treatment. Tracey was devastated.

That afternoon with Susan Milholland, Tracey bared her heart.

“Where did you see this relationship with Celeste going?” Milholland asked.

“My dream was only to have an affair with her,” Tracey said. “Right now, I want to drink a bottle of beer, break the bottle, and kill myself with the glass.”

As they talked, Tracey admitted she was reenacting an old pattern, falling in love with a straight married woman. Eventually, Tracey did something to end the relationships, drinking or acting out. “I force them to leave me,” she told Milholland.

In her journal the next day, April 7, Tracey wrote:

“Celeste has decided to leave me. She had a meeting with her doctor and has already been moved to her new room. She will not room with me, and she will say only that I am too pushy. She wants to take the relationship one day at a time, but I can see she will not be interested in me. I believe that she is strongly attracted to me, and it has a whole tremendous lot of confusion for her.”

In a session with Milholland, Tracey grumbled, “Her husband did this. He has money and influence and he wants me away from Celeste.” The therapist disagreed, saying Steve wasn’t behind Celeste’s change of plans, but Tracey didn’t believe her. Then Tracey said something that forced Milholland to take her very seriously: “My problems would all be solved if a certain person met an untimely death.”

“Are you referring to Celeste’s husband?” Milholland asked.

“I’m not homicidal now. I never have been,” Tracey said.

Still, Milholland worried. Despite Tracey laughing it off as a joke, Milholland judged the statement a threat. She argued with Tracey, telling her Steve wasn’t involved, but she couldn’t shake her conviction. “I believed Celeste, and that’s what she’d told me,” says Tracey.

Frightened by Tracey’s comment, Milholland called a meeting to inform the staff, including Dr. Miller. It was decided that the two women would be separated, and Tracey
was immediately transferred out of the PTSD unit and into the adult program, for the chronically mentally ill. There, she felt as if she were back in Menninger, surrounded by shuffling, empty shells. By the next day Tracey had worked the transfer over in her mind, until she saw it as further proof of her lack of self-worth.

In between sessions, Tracey pulled Celeste to the side. “If you just want friendship without any sexual overtones, that’s all right with me,” she said.

“Sure,” Celeste said.

But later Tracey wrote in her journal:
“Was Celeste just saying that because Celeste didn’t want to say no?”

The rest of the day, Tracey interpreted the actions of patients and staff at the clinic as if they were conspiring to keep Celeste from her. She watched Celeste through a glass door that separated the units and saw her with Steve. Tracey thought Celeste appeared sad, and she wondered if she missed her. “I
think it must be about losing me. But if it hurts that bad, why does she want to stay away?”
she wrote.

The next day, Tracey checked out of the inpatient program and into room 213 of the Red Roof Inn, across the street, to attend day sessions. Tormented by Celeste’s absence and unable to stabilize her medications, on the pages of her journal she chastised herself for enmeshing herself with Celeste and squandering the time at Timberlawn. She vowed to use the final weeks to straighten out her life, and wrote in her journal:
“Dr. Montgomery wants me to realize that I am carved from the same stone as my mother …obviously my mother was very emotional & delusional. How am I delusional? I believe people will always leave me. I have known loneliness and sadness since I was a baby; I know how to live and thrive with these feelings. Turn my recognition into strength.”