The Girl Behind the Door (11 page)

This wasn't the father I wanted to be, despised by my own child. I just wanted to be a normal dad with a normal child, whatever “normal” was. I loved her but didn't know if she loved me.

Later that night, I wrote her a note in a move toward détente.

Dear Casey. Sorry I lost my temper. You know how much I love you. Love, Dad
.

I affixed my smiley face at the end, went to her room, and tried the door, but it was locked. So I slipped the note underneath.

By eleven o'clock I was lying in bed, watching the local news. Erika was asleep but I wanted to stay awake for
Saturday Night Live
. Jack Black was hosting and Neil Young was the musical guest. Our bedroom was dark except for the flitting TV. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure standing in the doorway, silent like a ghost. It was Casey.

“Hi, honey.” I was happy to see her. Maybe she wanted to talk.

She'd composed herself. “You know, you never just talk to me,” she said. “You have no idea who I am.”

My heart sank. I was desperate to reach her. What did she mean, I had no idea who she was?
Casey, who are you? Tell me. What am I doing wrong?

“Honey, you won't let me in. You know how much we love you.” Maybe that was a crack in her armor, a chance to connect. “Casey, please sit down for a sec.” But she was like a frightened deer wary of human contact and turned away. My words didn't come fast enough.

She was gone.

What if I'd found the right words, calmed her down and coaxed her into talking with me? Perhaps she would have peeled back her suit of armor and revealed a bit more, shared with me who she really was, fighting, crying, and screaming on the other side of that battered door, the one that I was never allowed to open, someone just a foot away.

She could have told me that I was foolish to try to love her, an abandoned piece of human wreckage. Was that what she wanted to say? Was she terrified to tell me for fear that she'd be abandoned again? But there was no amount of hate she could spew at me to drive me away. I'd never let that happen. Even when she used the weapon “You're not my real parents,” my response was “Tough. You're stuck with us and we're not going anywhere.”

If only I could have convinced her that Erika and I loved her unconditionally. Our fights were just reactions to her outbursts, not her. We just needed her to help us help her.

C
asey and I passed through Sacramento on I-80 heading north toward Lake Tahoe. It was February 2006—Presidents' Day weekend—and we'd planned to go skiing for a few days in Squaw Valley over her winter break.

Vacations together had become increasingly rare, as Casey, a soon-to-be sixteen-year-old, preferred the company of her friends. She hated being seen with us in public, sometimes going to extremes to avoid being spotted by her friends. She'd slump down in the car or insist we walk ten paces behind her at the mall, as if she were in a witness-protection program.

We took advantage of this trip to Tahoe to be together while we still had a chance. Unfortunately, just before leaving, Erika came down with the flu, and it looked as though the trip would be off. But to my amazement, Casey insisted that she still wanted to go alone with me. I was flattered but also worried that we'd run out of things to talk about. Erika had no such problem and could always be counted on to fill awkward dead air with conversation.

On the road I felt comfortable with long stretches of Zen-like, meditative silence. Casey sat in the passenger seat next to me wearing one of her favorite outfits—a tomato-colored, quilt-patterned hoodie, her ripped jeans, and a rose-colored T-shirt with the label FCUK from the French Connection U.K. store in New York. She loved the edgy wordplay and the connection to New York, where she hoped to live someday. Her beat-up Converse All Stars lay in a heap on the floor, my prerequisite for allowing her to use the dashboard as a footrest while she listened to her iPod.

Since our last major blowup, Erika and I had done nothing to follow up on our threat of therapy over Casey's schoolwork. There had been no discussion of Erika's suspicion about cutting and purging. Sometimes our fights with Casey were like boxing matches where we retreated, bloodied, to our corners after a particularly bruising round.

It was easy to be lulled back into complacency on the good days and put off the uncomfortable responsibilities of parenting. Our failure to take action and our tendency to postpone threats of consequence hung over me like a dank cloak.

In the heat of her profanity-laced rages, I sometimes forgot that there was so much good between us, the “normalness” that we craved. When she was three, Casey danced around our living room in Simsbury insisting that she'd marry me and we'd name our child Casey. At seven—when being together with Dad was a treat rather than a burden—Erika dolled her up in a little black dress, purple stockings, party shoes, and a dab of lipstick and mascara so that we could go to the Father-Daughter dance together. At thirteen, we went on an early-morning walking marathon through lower Manhattan searching for a coveted pocketbook she'd found on the Internet. That same year, she blew my mind by giving me an expensive watch for Christmas (with a little help from Mom), and I began to understand her attitude toward gift giving. If you were going to give, give big, otherwise don't bother.

I will never part with that watch.

“Hey, Dad.” Casey unplugged one of her earbuds and shook out her hair. “How long till we get there?”

“Umm, probably an hour or two, depending on traffic.”

She groaned and looked out the window. “Man, this place is pretty cutty, Dad,” she said, referring to the procession of malls and subdivisions that lined the freeway north of Sacramento.

“Yep.” I smiled at her Marin County teen vernacular.

We continued north into the Sierra foothills, past Auburn, Colfax, Yuba Gap. By Kingvale we saw snow on either side of the freeway. I took a risk.

“Sooo . . . are there any boys at school you're interested in?” She shot me a look of disgust, her mouth ajar, as if she were about to vomit. “Dad, I can't believe you asked me that! I have more important things in my life right now!”

It was hard for me to believe that boys weren't tripping over themselves for her, but I was biased. I had a pretty good idea which boys she thought were cute, like Nathaniel, Dylan, her friend Emily's brother David, even our minister's son Steven. She spent a lot of time with her friends Julian and Max, but they seemed platonic. In fact, all of her relationships with boys seemed platonic.

Perhaps sensing my thoughts, Casey said, “You know, I'm not
gay
, Dad, if that's what you're thinking.” I glanced at her, a bit surprised by her statement. “And by the way, don't think I'm going to get married and have kids, because I'm not. I hate kids.”

I stifled a laugh. “I just want you to be happy, sweetie. You know that.”

We were silent again, drifting back into our thoughts. I was pretty sure she hadn't been sexual with anyone. But that wasn't unusual. Most of her girlfriends hung out in a pack. We suspected that some of them were sexually active, some not. Casey seemed to put intimacy of any sort at arm's length. I didn't care whether she was straight or gay. I just didn't want her to live her life alone and I feared that her tendency to push people away could leave her stranded.

At Donner Summit the snow was well over the roof of the car. It felt like we were driving through a freezing white corridor of fifteen-foot-high snow walls. We stopped at Truckee for a snack and a quick bathroom break, then made the last leg of the trip to Tahoe City.

I had whiffed on the boyfriend thing, but while I had her captive I took another risk. “Honey, have you ever thought about your birth mother?”

I was hit with another look of revulsion. “Dad, why would you even ask me that?” she muttered while shaking her head.

“I don't know. I was just wondering if you'd ever want to talk about it.”

“With
you
?” She cranked up her iPod until I could hear the rap beats exploding from her earbuds. It was one of my few, timid exploratory missions into her biological past—a reality check. And of course my inquiry was met with her usual slap-down.

It was nearly four o'clock when we checked into our room at the Travelodge, a budget chain in Tahoe City—two queen beds, desk, table and chairs, cheap prints on the wall, cable TV, coffeemaker with bad coffee, bathroom. Nothing fancy, but clean, comfortable, and functional. It looked perfect to me. Casey practically choked as she gave me her verdict. “
Ahg!
This place is
janky
.” She threw her bag on the bed closest to the bathroom. “Dad, why do we have to share a room?”

“We're here to ski, not to hang out in our room all day. Besides, a room in Squaw Village costs over twice as much as this place.”

“Caroline and Ian's dad has a condo at Squaw.”

“Well, first, they're up here all season long, and second, they obviously have a rich and generous dad,” I said with a drip of sarcasm.

“Da-
ad
. Stop it.” She hated it when I made the slightest negative remark about her friends, even in jest.

It had actually been a good day. I loved being with Casey when she was happy, and looked forward to a day of skiing as I drifted off to sleep while she watched
Project Runway
.

The next morning, we joined the procession of mud-splattered traffic inching its way from Tahoe City to Squaw Valley; it took a half hour to drive the five miles and park, but I still had plenty of time to get Casey to her snowboarding lesson. We took the gondola to High Camp and found the meeting spot for the snowboarders. Casey noticed some other boys her age and shooed me away. I was to pretend not to know her until instructed otherwise. We were to meet an hour later when the lesson was over.

I made my way over to the Siberian Express quad lift and joined a group of three, listening as they talked to one another about the weather and trail conditions. Looking down at the skiers and snowboarders gliding silently forty feet below us, I fantasized about Casey and me racing down the slopes, Casey swaying back and forth on her snowboard with me in hot pursuit. It would be so gratifying to see her enjoy something she felt she'd mastered, and it would do wonders for her self-esteem.

At the appointed time, we met in front of the High Camp outdoor restaurant. She sat outside in the snow with one boot buckled into the snowboard, looking disheartened. I slid up next to her.

“Hey. How was it?” She poked at the snow and shrugged. Maybe she was just tired.

“Do you want to ski a bit? I'd love to see what you learned.” She remained silent.

“You wanna go inside and get something?”

“Yeah, whatever.” She pulled herself up and unbuckled her boot.

We got hot chocolate inside and sat by the window. I tried to get her to talk but she was unresponsive. It seemed the snowboarding lesson didn't go as she'd hoped, and I knew better than to press her into a conversation. She wanted to be left alone. But now we had a problem. How would we make the two-thousand-foot descent from the mountain?

I tried again, gently. “Honey, if you're tired, we don't have to stay.”

She stared at her hot chocolate. “What about you? You want to ski.”

She was right. It was a gorgeous day and I hated to waste the opportunity, not to mention the money I'd spent. If I had some fun while she waited for me, perhaps she'd learn a valuable lesson that the world didn't revolve around her. But I couldn't enjoy myself knowing that she was miserable. I gave in.

“I don't care. I can go. Maybe we should take the gondola down.”

She looked at me, rolling her eyes. “That's lame, Dad.” Taking the gondola would've meant losing face. She was too proud for that. She was determined to get down on her own steam. Maybe she'd get a second wind that'd boost her spirits. It was impossible to coax a smile out of her.

We finished our hot chocolate, went back outside, and buckled ourselves into our gear. Normally, the three-mile trip to the base of the mountain would've taken about twenty minutes, most of it a gentle descent, but there were a couple of steep, tricky areas.

We pushed off from the restaurant, and I let Casey go ahead of me. She wobbled slowly for about ten feet before falling backward and sitting down in the snow. As I pulled up beside her she shot me an accusatory look of resentment, as if this was entirely my fault.

I extended my hand. “Want some help?” She ignored me, pulled herself up, found her balance, and coasted slowly for another twenty-five feet before stopping at a flat straightaway. I stopped next to her. “Wow, honey, that was great!”

We made it to the base after an agonizingly slow hour and a half, punctuated by crying and cursing fits. Several times Casey threatened to abandon the board and spend the night on the mountain before I coaxed her back on.