The Girl Behind the Door (8 page)

“Get away from me!” she screamed. “Why did you make me come here? I hate you!” The crowd closed in. Tessa was in tears. I got on my knees to talk to her, almost in a whisper. “C'mon, honey. You need to get up. Please? It's okay. Let's just go home. You'll be all right.” Casey slowly picked herself up, batting my hand away with a scowl, too proud to accept help as she hobbled off the ice. She must have been humiliated and angry at herself for making such a scene, and jealous that Tessa had mastered what she couldn't.

After dropping Tessa off, we pulled into our driveway. Casey sat buckled into her seat sulking, ignoring us. Erika and I got out of the car and walked up to the front door. Erika stepped inside while I stood at the front door waiting for her.

“C'mon, honey. C'mon inside.” I stood a minute longer, watching her, but she wouldn't look at me. I knew if I went back to get her she'd just wave me off.

“Okay, I'm going inside.”

Moments later, Erika and I stood in the kitchen, silent, deflated. We heard a faint sound coming from Casey's bedroom. She'd apparently snuck into the house and gone straight to her room, where she sobbed quietly. We tiptoed up to the door and peeked in.

She lay facedown on her bed with her red parka on, her face buried in her sheets, her silky hair a knotted mess. I watched from the door as Erika sat next to her on the bed. She tried to rub her back, but Casey put her arm up to keep her mother from touching her.

“Honey, what's wrong?” Erika asked.

Casey just stared past her.

“Can I get you something?”

Casey shook her head.

“Do you want us to leave you alone?”

She nodded.

“Okay, sweetie pie. Then let me take your jacket.”

Casey let Erika pull the red parka off and didn't protest when Erika rubbed her back for a minute. She kissed her on the head and we backed out of the room.

I mouthed the words
I love you
and blew her a kiss. She looked stonily ahead, patting around with her arm until it found her pillow and pulled it to her face. We shut her door behind us and the sobbing started again as she cried herself to sleep.

She seemed to have a never-ending reservoir of tears.

Birthdays were events that Erika and I had come to dread and prayed we'd get through without an eruption. Casey often couldn't decide whether she wanted a birthday party, even though we suspected that she secretly wanted one, but it couldn't be a surprise. She hated surprises. Perhaps on some level she felt undeserving of the attention, or was looking for a way to punish us for not loving her enough, or both. It seemed that everyone had to work extra-hard to prove their love to her.

For Christmas, once Casey had decided on her wish list—an ordeal in itself given her penchant for procrastination and indecisiveness—it had to be followed precisely. Any deviations were met with a long face and remarks such as “I didn't ask for this” or “Why didn't you get me that?” followed by trips back to the mall to exchange the offending item for cash. Not only had we failed to teach her the value of appreciation, but our attempts to make her happy on special occasions had come to nothing.

As time went on, parenting Casey often felt like breaking a wild stallion. They instinctively protect their space and dominate their handlers. Sometimes they have limited patience, lash out and bite. Only the most experienced handlers can train them. There is no single method of training that works, because every stallion is different. In each case, handlers have to project confidence and speak with authority to gain the stallion's respect. They have to be careful not to agitate or provoke it, as its natural fight-or-flight instinct could kick in, and stallions fight. In the 1998 movie
The Horse Whisperer
, Robert Redford starred as a trainer with a remarkable gift for understanding horses.

I wish I'd had a gift for understanding my own daughter. As infuriating as her behavior was, we had no reference point to determine if this was normal, because we had no other children. Instead we'd allowed our child to manipulate us into giving her whatever she wanted in order to avert her tears. It had to be us. We were incompetent parents.

We searched for answers or, in their absence, reassurance. Casey's first pediatrician in Simsbury, Dr. Johnston, took a special interest in her, amazed at how she'd developed so rapidly into a lively, energetic toddler. We discussed Casey's eating and sleeping habits, how she played with other kids, how she handled transitions, and whether she followed directions. In each case, she was right in the normal range for her age.

We described the tantrums. Dr. Johnston empathized with us but couldn't see any signs of trouble. Casey would grow out of it. “Three-year-olds are still trying to get a handle on their emotions and are easily frustrated,” she said, “and Casey was a preemie. They tend to be hypersensitive.” I embraced Dr. Johnston's prognosis—of course Casey was fine; she'd grow out of this. She was just a strong-willed child. The subject of her abandonment and adoption was never discussed.

After our move to California, we talked to our neighborhood friend Sharon, a psychologist with a Ph.D. from Berkeley. Casey had been friends with her two kids, Ian and Caroline, since kindergarten. Ian had been adopted at birth before Sharon became pregnant with Caroline.

When I asked Sharon for her secret to good parenting, she burst out laughing. “You don't see my kids when they're at home. That's when they're at their worst. Ian can be a nightmare. He has these howling fits when he doesn't get his way.” But for all the parents who assured us that their little angels were just monsters in disguise, others took a hard line.

“You shouldn't spoil her.”

“Be tougher with her. You have to set boundaries and stick to them.”

“You'll only encourage her tantrums if you come to her rescue.”

Of course we'd tried time-outs and had withheld privileges such as playdates, video games, and TV. Simple chores, like making her bed and setting the table, were rewarded with gold stars on the refrigerator and treats, but this was equally unsuccessful. Disciplinary measures that worked so well with most children often pitched Casey into a fit that we feared the whole neighborhood could hear. To keep the ear-piercing decibels down, we'd cave in under the guise of
“We'll give you another chance.”
The last thing we needed was a neighbor hearing the commotion from our house and calling Child Protective Services.

Erika and I tried to talk to her when she was calm, asking her why she got so angry and upset over things, what made her cry, how she felt about herself. But she'd have none of it. She felt like she was under attack, ordering us out of her room so she could be alone.

Feeling like miserable failures, Erika and I turned on each other. We came from very different parenting models. Erika's immigrant parents had always been strict and controlling, like their parents, whereas mine were fairly laid-back, like Ward and June Cleaver. Erika accused me of being too easy on Casey while I felt that Erika needed to give her a longer leash. She believed firmly—and rightly so—that we needed a united front in complete alignment against such a willful child, and she was ever watchful for any threat to the alliance.

While Casey was still in grade school, we talked to more parents, read more parenting books, taped and dissected words of wisdom from Dr. Phil. The consensus was that Casey was just a bit higher strung than the average kid, not that unusual for a girl. If we found her behavior unacceptable we just had to lay down the law with her. Eventually she'd come around.

The staff psychologist at Casey's school, Dr. Klein, repeated what we'd already heard from her teachers—good student, well-behaved, played nicely with other kids, thoughtful but sometimes a bit pushy. That was a good thing. It meant she stood up for herself. She'd never had even the mildest disciplinary citation.

We talked about Casey's early years in the orphanage, but had so little data to go on that there was no way to know what, if anything, harmful she could've inherited from her birth parents. As with our meeting years earlier with Dr. Johnston, our conference with Dr. Klein yielded little more than reassurances that lots of kids that age had coping problems; she'd grow out of it. But she didn't.

We tried therapy. In most families, it would have been ridiculous to take an eight-year-old to a shrink, but not in Marin County, where lots of kids had therapists. We thought that therapy would be a safe place where Casey might open up. Perhaps a professional would have some success drawing her out where we'd failed so miserably.

We met with a child psychologist, Dr. Darnell. She was a pleasant, soft-spoken woman in her thirties—so quiet, in fact, that she seemed almost timid. Casey could be rough around the edges when she felt threatened, so we hoped that she wouldn't make mincemeat out of Dr. Darnell.

We set up a schedule for them to meet once a week after school. But after every therapy session, Casey would come home in a churlish mood, tramp off to her room, slam the door, and dissolve into screaming fits. Dr. Darnell was “lame” and a waste of her time. They played Monopoly rather than talked and had failed to make any meaningful connection. It was difficult for us to deal with the ugly aftermath of each session. Erika and I met with Dr. Darnell for some insight over Casey's sessions, but they yielded nothing of value. Monopoly was probably not the best tool to understand our child. Between Casey's tearful pleas and belligerent protests, she ground us down, so we discontinued the sessions with Dr. Darnell.

Our break from therapy lasted less than a year. During that time much had changed in our lives. I had another new job. We'd moved from a rental to a dilapidated house the size of a shoe box we bought in the town of Tiburon, a financial stretch but an easy commute for me just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. And after years of stalling for time, we caved in to Casey's incessant begging for a companion, adding a new member to our family. His name was Igor, a handsome, skinny, brindled English racing hound known as a whippet. They are famously gentle, sensitive, and quiet; the perfect therapy dog. Casey was in love. A family, a new job, a home, and a skinny little dog.

Things seemed to fall into place, but not quite.

C
asey had discovered a talent for writing in middle school, and I encouraged and praised her work at every opportunity. Writing was her true calling and our way to connect, just the two of us. She had a gift for vivid imagery and depth of thought well beyond her years. As she got older, her self-image became more fragile. Writing would help boost her self-confidence. One poem she'd written in eighth grade she titled “Ode to the Orange”:

Tangy, succulent juices

drip

off my lips

as I plunge into the first bite.

It has a party

in my mouth.

But for all of her talent, Casey was a hypersensitive perfectionist. When she tried something that didn't go just right, she'd react as if her world had come to an end. She became more introverted and could no longer be coaxed onto the stage as she could in musical theater when she was younger. Shyness and self-doubt weren't unusual among preteen girls, but it complicated our attempts to introduce her to new things that could have interested her—musical instruments, chess, modern dance.

As protective as she was about her writing, she trusted me to read and edit. It was a delicate balance to be her mentor without offending her and risk turning her away from her gift or from me. I didn't want her to give up on things so easily.

Late one evening when Casey was thirteen, she was struggling with an English assignment. As I lay in bed drifting off to a
Frontline
story on PBS about Saddam Hussein and WMDs, she shuffled into our bedroom in her UGG boots, Igor trotting behind. She inched up to the bed and shoved a wrinkled mass of paper at me as though it were toxic waste. “Can you read this? I know it totally sucks.”