CHAPTER ELEVEN
I
DEBATING DECISIONS
The cold drizzle of the rain splattered on the windshield of the 1981 Dodge Aries that belonged to Megan Moxley. The occupants of that particular vehicle were engaged in a fairly heated debate regarding the ethics of the use of hypnosis in child psychology. The argument didn’t appear to work in favor of the person seeking the hypnosis.
“But Mom!” Tuesday protested, trying to recall the exact wording that Doctor Frederiksen had so eloquently put it into. “Television and movies have given hypnosis a bad name, it’s perfectly safe!”
“Where did you hear that garbage?” Megan asked, annoyed at the length of the conversation that had already gone on for far too long.
“Doctor Frederiksen says…” Tuesday said optimistically, but was cut off by her mother.
“I don’t trust Doctor Freddlefaddle!” Megan shot back, thinking about what could happen if he messed up her only daughter. “What if this guy butchers your brain and makes things worse?” Tuesday couldn’t deny that she didn’t yet fully trust Doctor Frederiksen either, but she wasn’t in any position to tell her mother otherwise.
Tuesday groaned and rolled her eyes as far back into her head as far as membranes or muscles would allow. Megan gave her a very stern and serious look, the one that said she was the alpha dog. Really, all Tuesday wanted was her mother to understand what an anchor her problem was, dragging her entire quality of life down to the murky depths of an icy, cold sea of despair. Tuesday put her best confident smile on, hoping to get her mother to agree with her.
“Mom, he’s a pro!” Tuesday stressed, “He knows what he’s doing, okay? Geez, just chill out for a while, won’t you?”
“Some guy wants to scramble my child’s brain and you’re asking me to be rational?” Megan countered, refusing to budge on the issue. “I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself into.”
Tuesday had nothing to say to this. She started thinking about Jason, and what ideas he would come up with. He seemed to have a way out of everything, and she wished that just a little of that would rub off on her. Scratching her head, thousands of ideas and possibilities raced through her mind. Then it hit her.
“You were the one who told me that I had to see this guy!” Tuesday began. “I didn’t want to do this, and you made me do it. Have you changed your mind?”
“No, I haven’t changed my mind.” Megan replied. “I said that before I knew that this guy was going to destroy my daughter’s mind. Big difference.”
Tuesday groaned again. “Mom, it’s going to be alright.” She begged, imploring her to change her mind on the subject. “Would you please just trust me for once and please sign the papers?
Megan was speechless; she refused to give an answer straightaway, shifting her focus between the road and her daughter, back and forth. Tuesday had always been a very persistent child when she was in search of an answer. Always inquisitive, Megan knew that Tuesday was going to grow up to be much more intelligent than she ever was. She would continuously pester her mother about the how’s and why’s of the inner workings of everything. There were times Megan had recalled that Tuesday was a real buzzkill, kids have a way of messing up even the best laid plans.
“Please?” Tuesday pleaded, and tried to put on her best cute face in a last-ditch effort to persuade her mother to sign the papers. “Please, please, please, please, PLEASE!
Megan knew if she didn’t at least allude to an agreement, her daughter would never shut up. “Okay, okay. We’ll see.” Megan conceded. “I just don’t want to make this any worse than it already is.”
“Mom, I believe this guy can solve my problem.” Tuesday said, looking her mother in the eye, and placing special emphasis on the word believe. “He isn’t taking it away; he’s just going to show me a different way to deal with it. You’ve got to let me try this!”
“We’ll see, honey.” Megan said. “We’ll see.”
This elicited yet another groan from Tuesday, as the car moved down the rainy roads, toward their home.
II
WAKE UP SCREAMING
The silence of the darkened night was shattered by Tuesday, who awoke from another nightmare, thrashing around so violently in her sleep that he had fallen from her bed to the floor. Her feet were flailing so out of control that she had backhanded the side of her dresser.
In a flash, Megan had flown into the room, flicking on the light switch, and wrapping herself around her daughter in an effort to fully wake and calm her. Tuesday was hyperventilating and found it difficult to slow down her breathing, the only thing between breaths was screams. Megan suddenly experienced something she hadn’t felt before, a genuine concern for her daughter’s wellbeing, and a deep confusion settled over her about what she should be doing to comfort Tuesday. All she could think to do was to continue to hold her. Thinking back to the previous week, her thoughts of holding her were of restraint, not of comfort. Before, Megan could only think of herself, get her daughter back to sleep so she could continue with her own activities. Something had awoken inside of her, a fire and a passion that she hadn’t previously known. Had she truly been missing out on this for fourteen years of Tuesday’s life? How could she have been so blind? Without realizing it, tears began streaming down her face, tears filled with years of regret. She was so busy burying her pain that she was causing her own daughter pain. All the highs she was looking for weren’t nearly as joyful as what she had experienced in that moment. She had promised Tuesday she would clean up her life back at the hospital, now it seemed like she really wanted to fulfill that promise and have something of true meaning in her life.
Tuesday’s breathing and movement had begun to slow down, giving Megan an opportunity to reach up onto the bed to grab Winston for her.
Megan had remembered the day she bought that raggedy bear for her. Tuesday hadn’t known the truth of the matter at the time; she would have been too young to understand it anyway. She was hopeful that Tuesday would never discover the true nature of that journey. Megan had taken a job smuggling drugs hidden in a spare tire from Southern California back to Washington State. It was a very hot summer, which made the trip feel much longer than it really was. The people she was working for chose her because she was a fresh face with a fresh vehicle, and had a good chance of success. Megan hadn’t known it at the time, but the street value of the drugs was worth much more than the value of all the houses on the block she lived on.
Megan couldn’t get a sitter for Tuesday for a few days, not that she could have afforded to pay for one anyway. So she brought Tuesday along, and they had a little adventure. Megan had always assumed that Tuesday was too young to remember most of the journey, and it was usually addressed by Tuesday as “Remember that time we got Winston?”
Megan practically despised Winston. She didn’t hate the bear itself, just what it represented. While on their journey, Tuesday was complaining about being thirsty so they stopped at a truck stop. She didn’t have enough money for everything she was getting, and so she had sold herself to a truck driver at the stop, who paid her more than enough for her services. All that she could think about was how awful that truck driver was, but how much he paid her made up for the disappointing performance he had provided. When Megan had finished with that, she went to the public restroom to get herself back in some semblance of order. On her way out of the store, Megan spotted a teddy bear, and thought that the bear would occupy her daughter’s time for the remaining duration of the trip. She also purchased some snacks, some sodas and a pack of cigarettes. For the first time in her life, Megan considered how reckless that behavior was. She had left her daughter in the car, with the windows down for about an hour. She had parked the car next to the truck driver’s rig, but it was still incredibly careless of her. She was certain that if she thought back over the years, that there were likely to be hundreds of careless incidents during her days and nights of drug fueled prost
itution.
Selling herself to men wasn’t particularly a big deal to Megan, not so long as she was high. She felt that she had already experienced the worst that men could do to her short of killing her. Men had in fact tried to kill her, throwing her in a ravine to die. And they had failed at that, so beyond the painful memory of it, there wasn’t much else men could do to her. Her personal philosophy was she might as well make some money doing something she loved to do, and had become spectacularly good at it. Men didn’t seem too turned off by her scarred appearance, and they didn’t mind giving her money to receive her pleasures. She met much of her clientele while working at Tuck’s Diner, many of them were truck drivers doing long haul and out on the road constantly. She hadn’t cared if they were single, or if they were married or whatever, if they were willing to pay her, and use protection, she was down for it. The money she earned helped to feed her habits, pay the bills, and put food in Tuesday’s belly. As mothers go, Megan thought she wasn’t the worst out there; she did what it took to keep a roof over her daughter’s head. She wasn’t usually abusive to her daughter unless punishment had called for it; she had always done what it took to care for her.
The thought that had just occurred to her was that she hadn’t cared. She had become so disconnected from her daughter that she hadn’t really built a relationship with her, and that had bothered Megan in a way that it never had before. It was the first time she had realized there was a difference in caring for somebody and caring about somebody, and she wanted to do whatever it took to change that. While she had cared for Tuesday’s needs, she hadn’t really nurtured her the way she should have. Tuesday had still come up in an impressive manner, she was smarter than most kids of her age, but her situation made her much more independent than other kids. Megan had wondered if she had been more hands on with her daughter, would Tuesday still have been the person that she was. Megan knew she couldn’t change the past with Tuesday, but all she could do was to create a better future for her.
Megan had to work hard to pay for her bills and her habits. On top of working at Tuck’s Diner at the truck stop on the freeway, she had taken a variety of questionable jobs from the local drug dealers, including thefts, assaults, and smuggling to finance her drug habits from a local drug cartel who had called themselves The Blackbirds. How would she settle her balance with them? She knew they wouldn’t accept a resignation from her so easily, that she still owed them plenty of work that they would require of her. And one couldn’t walk away so easily, as The Blackbirds were constantly paranoid of somebody spilling their secrets. She thought about it, and knew that she and Tuesday would need protection of some kind. Her thoughts briefly shifted to Douglas Downe, could she go down that road again? They had been on and off for a few years, though she couldn’t bring herself to force a relationship with him for protection. It would always end the same way between them, but perhaps now that she was sober, that could change things dramatically. It was something to keep in the back of her mind.
Megan’s attention turned back to Tuesday, as she had calmed much more, and had turned around in her mother’s arms, and was hugging her tightly. “Mommy…” Tuesday sobbed, “I just can’t do this anymore… I just can’t.”
Megan felt her awakening becoming complete as she held her daughter, her tears soaking Megan’s nightshirt. Tuesday’s happiness was suddenly more important to her than anything else in the world and for Megan; it was like seeing the sun rise for the first time, feeling the tingle of its warmth on her skin. Megan felt as if she had stepped out of the darkness for the first time in many years. She knew there was only one way to get Tuesday out of this, she had to sign the forms and let her do the hypnosis therapy. She had come to realize her daughter’s point of view, and so she took a deep breath and made her proclamation.
“Okay, honey.” Megan said with a deep compassion she hadn’t felt before. “I’ll sign the forms. You can do the therapy.”
Tuesday wiped the tears from her eyes and looked up at her mother, still choking back the tears, “Really?” she asked, “Do you mean it?”
Megan nodded her head in approval, “Yes, baby.” She answered. “But if things start going wrong, I’m pulling the plug.”
Megan stood up and helped her daughter back into bed, and then laid there next to her until the both passed back out, holding one another for the rest of the night.
ACT II
LESSONS FOR LIFE