Twisted Triangle (41 page)

She’s never had to worry about Lindsey doing drugs or getting into trouble. If Margo ever questioned Lindsey’s after-school activities, Lindsey would gently remind her mother, “Mom, I’m the good kid, remember?”

Margo’s father died in December 2000, and her mother followed in February 2003.

Soon afterward, Margo dreamed that her mother was lying next to her on the pillow, smiling, happy, and peaceful. When Margo woke up, it occurred to her that her father was probably somewhere in between here and Heaven, unable to get to that peaceful place. She was certain that he was waiting for his children to forgive him for the way he’d treated them.

“He’d never asked for that forgiveness, but I felt we needed to give it,” she said.

Margo talked to both of her sisters, separately, about her dream and the need to forgive their father for his abusive behavior toward them and their mother. Jackie, who shared with Margo that he had groped her in bed too, said she was probably on target. Letta just nodded and said, “You may be right.”

Allison was alarmed to see some cuts on Lindsey’s upper arm in 2003.

“What’s that?” Allison asked. “Did you do this to yourself?” “Yes,” Lindsay said, then started crying.

Allison asked Lindsey what prompted the cutting, but Lindsey wouldn’t elaborate. Lindsey didn’t want to tell her sister that it was Allison herself. Allison, feeling protective, told her little sister that she had to stop, or it would only get worse. She continued to check Lindsey’s arm periodically and was relieved that there were no more cuts.

“I knew I wasn’t going to hurt myself, but with her, she’s not unstable or anything, she’s just very emotional,” Allison said later. “And that made me worry a little more.”

Lindsey later said that she’d cut herself after getting into a fight with Allison for inviting her friends over to smoke pot. This was the second and final time that she’d cut herself— on the left arm and leg— because she found that it helped only temporarily. She felt guilty and even worse afterward, so she stopped, worrying that this would become an addictive cycle.

In 2004, Lindsey asked Margo if she could see a therapist for some problems dealing with a close friend at school.

Margo was immediately concerned because Lindsey had expressed self-destructive thoughts shortly after they’d moved to the Bay Area.

“Are you having feelings like you want to hurt yourself?” Margo asked.

“No,” Lindsey said.

“Have you ever cut yourself?” Margo asked, bracing for the answer.

Lindsey said yes, and explained that Allison had already talked to her about it.

Knowing that Allison had done the same thing, this shocking development made Margo feel even more guilty that she hadn’t given her daughters enough care and support.

“They had been through a tremendous trauma, and I had obviously overlooked something,” she said later. “I didn’t do it right.”

When Gene was first incarcerated, he sent letters to the girls through a social worker, who forwarded them to Margo via a private P.O. box she’d rented in Woodbridge. But when the social worker retired in early 2004, the courts didn’t appoint another one because Allison and Lindsey were teenagers by then, so Gene had no way to reach them.

About a year went by before Gene started sending the letters to Margo’s offi at UC Berkeley. Then, several months later, he sent them directly to the house she’d purchased in July 2006, saying a friend had done some research to fi out where they lived.

Seventeen-year-old Lindsey took particular umbrage at this, viewing it as an invasion of their privacy. Gene’s move seemed like one big head game to her, so she began returning his letters to him, unopened.

“I just didn’t want to deal with his crap anymore,” she later said. “It’s, like, he doesn’t know me. What could he say that would interest me?”

Gene responded by leaving the return address off his letters.

The last letter Lindsey remembers reading was one addressed to her and Allison; Gene had enclosed an article contending that girls with absent fathers were statistically more likely to lose their virginity early and get pregnant.

“He still tries to, like, parent,” Lindsey said.

Eventually Gene got the message and stopped writing letters to Lindsey for the most part, although he continued to send her Christmas and birthday cards with money orders enclosed.

At fi Margo always opened Gene’s letters and read them before giving them to the girls, but when Allison and Lindsey stopped wanting to read them, Margo decided simply to leave them unopened, regardless of what money orders they might contain. Allison still reads some of her father’s letters and cashes the money orders.

Although Gene kept talking about his diabetes, Lindsey said she didn’t believe that he really had the disease.

“I want him to stop writing, but I don’t want to communicate with him to tell him that. . . . He’s lost the right to have any place in my life. He tried to kill my mom; he was emotionally abusive to me and my sister. . . . He was a jackass as a father. I don’t have any real happy memories involving him.”

Gene seems to be well aware of her anger. In November 2002, he wrote to her regarding the TV shows about his case that had been airing, saying he hoped that they didn’t upset her and her sis-ter too much, or cause them any further embarrassment or trouble at school.

“I know you were very, very angry, disappointed, mad
etc.
at me for causing you so much pain and complications in your young life,” he wrote. “Anger and being mad are normal behavioral responses. What I want to tell you is that it is okay to be mad and angry with me. I also want to tell you I hope you vent this anger at me, towards me, and not others around you.”

Saying he’d discussed this issue with counselors over the years, he suggested that Lindsey try writing letters to deal with her

emotions. “It’s not healthy to stay mad and angry for such a long time.... I’ve had a hard time letting go of my anger, frustration and disappointment over a lot of things also. It’s not easy to do.”

Lindsey grew up plagued with health problems, shyness, and social awkwardness. Big-boned like her father, she too has fought to keep her weight down.

She was diagnosed with dyslexia in the second grade after the teachers figured out that she was failing because she couldn’t read. “I still can’t spell. I’m okay at math. But I’m really good at and

do like English,” she said recently.

Lindsey started coming out of her shell after she got involved in theater at school in 2003, when she worked on the stage crew for a production called
Yippie Skippy, There’s a Monkey in My Pants
, becoming incensed when the teachers wanted to shut down the performance because it included profanity and content they thought was racist and otherwise inappropriate.

In spring 2004, she made the swim team; in 2005, she joined the
Cougar
, the high school newspaper, as a writer. The following year she became the arts and entertainment editor and worked as a lifeguard.

She was accepted by the Building with Books program, which entailed spending two weeks building a schoolhouse in Nicaragua in summer 2005. Although she’d grown up thinking she wanted to work with animals, after the Nicaragua trip she switched her focus to helping people and ultimately decided she wanted to work toward a nursing degree at Cal State University, Chico.

Lindsey, who has spent much of her life in therapy, was still seeing a counselor regularly in summer 2007, mostly to deal with stress. Allison, who has seen nearly a dozen therapists, said they haven’t helped her a whole lot.

Unlike Allison, Lindsey hasn’t dated much. As of summer 2007, she’d only gone out with two boys, one whom she liked quite a bit and the other who liked her quite a bit. Neither worked out.

She and Allison aren’t all that close these days. Allison thinks that Lindsey is a “very ‘good girl,’ ” and Lindsey thinks that Allison is not sensitive enough to other people’s feelings.

Even so, Lindsey said, “I know she still cares about me.” That is certainly true. Although the two sisters have very different personalities, interests, and lifestyles, Allison said, “I love her to death.”

After she stopped using meth, Allison tried to get her life back on track, but her former high school turned her away, say-ing she would do better at an alternative high school. She took auto shop classes for several semesters at the College of Alameda while attending the alternative school, with an eye on a career as a mechanic. After graduating at seventeen, she went to Diablo Valley, a junior college, for one semester.

She has always liked to read. In fact, Patricia Cornwell is still one of her favorite authors.

Allison started dating Chris Sugg in December 2003 and found out she was pregnant in May 2006. She moved into an apartment with Chris in October. At the time, Allison was working at Trader Joe’s grocery store, and was contemplating a visit to see Gene in prison with her new baby. “I’m just really curious to see his reaction,” she said.

While Allison was still pregnant, Margo said, “I’m trying to step back and let her do what she needs to do. I told her I’ll buy the crib, but I can’t do it all, and I shouldn’t. I don’t think she has a clue how she’s going to support this kid, but it’ll happen.”

Allison had her baby, Serena, on January 1, 2007. She was a healthy six pounds, eleven ounces. That summer, Allison was back working at Trader Joe’s and happily raising her baby with Chris.

Asked if she had any interest in going into law enforcement, Allison replied, “Never.” She has no interest in returning to college, but said she hoped to get into real estate someday.

She has also reconsidered and decided against taking Serena to visit her father in prison. “I don’t want to put my daughter in that type of situation—to be used against me, my mother,” she said.

People have repeated to Margo the old adage, that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. She jokes that she wants to kill them for saying it, but she knows it’s true.

“I know I can get through anything. I know that I have gone through a unique set of circumstances, to be at this position in my life for a reason. I feel powerful in the sense that I know nothing’s going to break me. Yet, at the same time, I know that I’m capable of being hurt. It’s one of the lessons we have being on this earth that you get to feel these things.”

“When I pray, I thank God for the experiences that have made me who I am. Without them, I wouldn’t be who I am, so the bad makes the good even sweeter.”

These experiences have also helped her see what’s really important in life: her kids, her freedom, and the opportunity to help other people.

Back in 2002, when Allison was so troubled, Margo didn’t know if they’d ever be close again. But more recently, Allison has commented several times that she knows how bad her life would have been if Gene had killed Margo. In the birthday card that she gave Margo in 2006, she wrote, “You’ve sacrifi so much for us.”

“To know that she’s capable now of understanding some of what I went through makes me feel complete,” Margo says today.

Sometimes Margo thinks the reason she lived through all that trauma with Gene was to save her children from being raised by him. “They now have the freedom to be who they want. Allison is still fl around, but I see her going in the right direction. Lindsey just needs to build her self-confi

Although her life as Gene’s wife and as a mother has been challenging at times, Margo says she’s done her best to protect and care for her children. She thinks that they’ve turned out pretty well.

“I raised my daughters to have a mind of their own and speak up. It’s been painful, but I’m very, very proud of my kids.”

It wasn’t until 2002, when she was forty-eight, that Margo found a woman she sees as her other half, someone with whom she has a soulful bond and believes she’ll be with for the rest of her life.

They shook hands when they first met, and both felt an immediate connection, a familiar, comfortable feeling as if they’d known each other for a long time.

“It was as if our lives came together for a reason,” said Margo, who turned fifty-four in 2007.