The Beginning

Chapter One - "Heart Wide Open ~ Journey of a Lover"

It was a busy, early summer Saturday afternoon at McDonald’s and it had taken a long time to get our hamburgers. As we sat down, seven-year-old Michael said he liked lots of pickles. I looked at the long line.
“You can have the pickles off my hamburger,” I offered, making the transfer with my fingers.
Marlynn shot from her chair, face flushed and eyes snapping. “I can’t believe you would endanger my son like that. Don’t you know the germs are everywhere? We’re leaving right now.”
She gathered his Happy Meal and their things and stormed out, looking back over her shoulder with a final, heart-breaking glare. Marlynn was getting much worse.
The next day, I got a phone call from her. Tentative at first, and then firm, certain she was making the right decision. “You tried to kill Michael yesterday. You are the one person I thought I could still trust. Luckily, he doesn’t seem sick yet. You can’t see him, us, anymore.” There was a rare finality, an assurance in her voice that made me wince.
“Marlynn, honey, this is not rational thinking,” I said. “Please get in touch with the therapist you were seeing. I’ll go with you, if you want me to.”
“No, I just need to stay away from people, and especially you.” She hung up the phone with a bang, and I sat there thinking about what I should do.
About a year prior to this, Marlynn had started remembering a brutal sexual attack by her father’s father, which occurred when she was four years old. She recalled nearly bleeding to death, and the women in the house taking care of her.
At first, she tried to work through it with a therapist, but the horror of it, the nightmares, the difficulty she had believing that it had happened blew her out of therapy. She tried to pretend that she had not remembered. We talked about it some, me always urging her to get back into therapy, get into a support group, find all the help she could. One day she looked at me and asked, “Do you think I’ll go crazy because I know now that this happened to me?”
“Of course not, Marlynn,” I said. “You are the strongest woman I’ve ever known. You can survive anything. But you need to find help, OK?” She would never agree.
Now, as I gently returned the phone to its place, I realized that if she was going to choose to isolate, there was not much that I could do about it. Michael’s birthday in October came and went. So did Christmas. The cards and gifts I sent were not returned, but not acknowledged either. I routinely called her apartment, always getting my old answering machine, that I had given her, with Michael’s sweet voice on the tape. I would leave loving, pleading messages for her to call me, that I loved them, missed them, and wanted us to be in each other’s lives. She never returned one call.
In October of ‘96, as I was driving away from a grocery store near her place, I saw them walking out the front door. Michael, having just had his ninth birthday, reached Marlynn’s shoulder in height. They looked great, dressed sort of chic-grunge, both with caps turned backwards and baggy shorts. I stopped right in front of them. Michael’s face lit up and he grabbed for the back door handle. Marlynn pulled his hand back. “Let me give you a ride home. It’s so good to see you,” I called through the open window of the passenger side.
“No, we want to walk, we’re getting our exercise,” she said, pulling Michael close, her arm around his shoulders.
“Well, how are you? How is school? Are you still living at Travis Park?”
She shrugged and grinned her old grin. “I have one more class to get my degree. I’ve been looking for work.” I had been watching in the rear view mirror as a car was approaching. I was blocking the drive in front of the store.
“Marlynn, please call me,” I said. “Here’s my card. I’ve moved since we talked.” I looked her in the eye for a moment. “I love you both very much. Please call.” She shrugged again, and I had to drive on. That was the last time I saw them.
The holiday season seemed long and tedious. I thought of them often, putting their Christmas gifts in the mail. I called a few times, but gave up on leaving messages, since they were never returned. I hoped Michael might answer the phone sometime, but he never did. Sometime in early January, I drove by her apartment, seeing that her car was there. I thought about knocking on the door, but it seemed too intrusive. Maybe she’s just working through some things and will get in touch when she’s ready, I thought, deciding not to go to the door.
On February 3rd I was in my bedroom, trying to get enthused about my wardrobe, matching skirts and tops in different combinations, experimenting with scarves. I’d turned on the local 6:00 news -- something I hardly ever do -- for background noise. I had just pulled out a beautiful orange scarf that had been a long-ago birthday gift from Marlynn, when I caught a word or two on TV about a woman who had stabbed her nine-year-old son and herself to death. How could someone stab herself? I wondered as I watched the film clip. The shot was of the outside of the apartment and, with growing alarm, I realized it looked like Marlynn’s apartment. They gave the name of the complex, and it was Travis Park. They gave the ages of the mother and son, which matched Marlynn and Michael’s ages. Names were not given, “pending notification of next-of-kin.” The story ended.
The scarf slid from my hand as I moved to the phone in the office. My mantra, my prayer, started: “Let it not be them, please, God, let it not be them.” I felt like I was on auto-pilot, moving underwater. I remember thinking, this is what it must feel like to be in shock.
I dialed 911. Speaking slowly, I said, “This is not an emergency, but I need to know the name of the woman that murdered her son and killed herself. Their bodies were found this morning, and I think it’s my cousins.”
“We do not have that information available, as it is still pending notification of next-of-kin. Let me connect you with homicide,” her formal, brisk voice offered. I waited through a series of clicks, my heart pounding. A mechanical voice came on to inform me that no one was available to take my call, inviting me to leave a message so someone could call me back.
I slammed the phone down before the tone sounded and tried to think. Where would the bodies have been taken? I picked up the phone book and found the number for the Travis County Medical Examiner’s office and dialed. Another mechanical voice. As I gently returned the receiver, I realized I was going to have to drive over there. I dialed my good friend, Jan’s number. She wasn’t home from work, yet, and I left a message for her, saying I’d seen the newscast and was on my way over to Marlynn’s. I felt like I needed contact, support from somewhere, if it really was them.
As I slowly drove through the neighborhoods between Marlynn’s apartment and mine, I remembered a neighborhood ‘cop shop’ in a small corner shopping center. I parked outside the darkened plate glass window and swung open the heavy door. A line of desks along one wall had several uniformed officers sitting behind them. I approached the first desk and repeated the query I had made to the 911 operator, twenty minutes earlier. A female officer spoke up and gave me about the same response. “We don’t have that information, pending notification of next-of-kin,” she said as if she said this phrase many times a day.
“What if I’m next of kin?” I asked, barely holding back my anger.
“Then you can call homicide in the morning and they’ll help you.”
I felt like asking her if she could just go home and go to sleep if she believed members of her family were dead, but I decided I didn’t need to be a smartass. I turned on my heel and left.
I continued my drive, slowly, carefully (please God, let it not be them), pulling into the parking space next to Marlynn’s car. It seemed a hopeful sign that her car was there. Wouldn’t it have been impounded or something? I rounded the corner of the laundry room, and there was the yellow crime scene tape, and a bright orange form sealing the door. Marlynn’s door. I felt my knees give way and I sat down hard on the sidewalk.
My mind filled with images of Michael. His bright eyes and sweet disposition, his precious big smile. And always near him was his mother, looking at him with adoration and such incredible love. He was her life. How could she have done this? What darkness had descended upon her, to cause her to take their lives? I realized, sitting on that cold sidewalk, that I would never have answers, that there would be no simple explanation, ever, and I would live with this event for the rest of my life, always wondering how it could have happened, what went so terribly wrong, and what I could have, should have, done to prevent its happening.
Eventually, I got up off the sidewalk and stumbled to a neighbor’s open door. A sweet Hispanic woman with many kids underfoot offered me the phone, and the operator at 911 gave me a back line at the medical examiner’s office this time. I was told that one of the doctors who had attended the autopsy would be able to call me back within an hour. I also called Jan and this time she was home. I asked her to come in and be with me and she said she was on her way.
The woman gave me a big hug as I left. Her grandsons had played with Michael. For the first time I thought about how this would affect the people in the apartment complex and at Michael’s school. I couldn’t let myself think too much about that right now. I drove back home as carefully as I had driven over. My prayer changed to “Please, God, give me the strength to get through this.” I knew that my life would never be the same.
(c) Jade Beaty All Rights Reserved 2006