The Girl Behind the Door Page 13

  But I did none of those things.

  We’d had knock-down, drag-out fights since Casey was in grade school and they never ended in a catastrophe like this. She’d usually stomp off to her room. There were no clues that weekend that could have shed light on how she’d shifted so suddenly from “infuriated at Dad” to suicidal.

  Some people suspected that drugs had played a role in Casey’s suicide, but Erika and I had doubts. Despite our numerous busts, we’d never seen her out-of-control stoned or drunk, and she’d never been to rehab. She wasn’t on any prescription medication at the time and wasn’t out partying Monday night. Early Tuesday morning, she managed to drive the Saab to the bridge. The last video images captured her smoking a cigarette and jogging out onto the pedestrian walkway—not exactly the kind of behavior I’d associate with someone high on drugs. She easily climbed over that four-foot railing and, according to the police report, stood for ten to fifteen seconds before stepping off to her death. What could have gone through her mind in those crucial seconds before she made that fatal choice?

  Casey’s friends were as shell-shocked as we were. After her memorial service at St. Stephen’s Church in Belvedere, an event that drew an overflow crowd, there was a reception in the parish hall. It was an awkward affair, with other parents struggling for words. It seemed we’d become separated by a glass wall. Was it pity, empathy, judgment, or terror that was in their faces? We couldn’t tell. Perhaps the suicide of a child was just too toxic for people to handle. It raised the horrifying specter of contagion.

  As the adults drifted away, Casey’s friends circled around us. The collateral damage from her death was etched into their faces. They seemed to be looking for something from us. Perhaps they wanted to talk.

  “Do you guys know anything about why she did it?” I asked.

  They shook their heads and mumbled a collective “No.”

  Why would she have kept her closest friends in the dark? “I don’t get it. She was so close to freedom. I thought that’s what she wanted.”

  Everyone stared at the floor until her friend Julian spoke. “I don’t think that Casey had any intention of going to Bennington.”

  Erika and I exchanged startled glances. “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “It’s hard to explain,” he said. “I think she just wanted to prove to herself and everyone else that she could get in.”

  Julian made an interesting point. But why would someone get what they wanted and then throw it all away?

  After the memorial, we learned that Casey had chatted online late that Monday night with two childhood friends, Carly and Maryse.

  Casey and Carly, both procrastinators, commiserated about deadlines for school projects they hadn’t yet started. Later, Casey and Maryse griped about how much they hated school and about getting together over February break.

  It began as a typical late-night talk that took an unusual turn. Casey talked about how lucky they were to live in Marin and then asked Maryse if she believed in reincarnation, claiming that she would probably be reincarnated into something really shitty. Within six hours of that conversation, Casey was dead.

  I searched for more clues on her laptop, a hand-me-down gift from Erika and me for her sixteenth birthday. Most of the documents were homework assignments—an essay about a boy named Andrew titled “Andrew Is a Boring Fuck,” some research articles she had pulled off the Web for A.P. History, a report on a book about the Depression that she had borrowed from me, the paper on the Eiffel Tower I edited for her that she claimed to have deleted, then ripped up and pieced back together. Almost no personal things, such as diaries, letters, or photographs. It was as if she’d made sure to eliminate anything that could have helped us understand what she was thinking, removing every trace of her emotional life.

  I used one of her friends’ passwords to get onto her Facebook page. Feeling like a voyeur reading what I wasn’t supposed to see, I looked at her profile:

  About Me: Acts paradoxically; hugs trees; could out-sarcastic you. Casey had a jagged wit. She was the master of the bitter jibe or cutting remark in a very Seinfeld-esque kind of way.

  Interested in: Men. Since she was in middle school, we’d suspected that she’d never had a boyfriend nor, to our knowledge, any sexual encounter beyond maybe a kiss. It seemed so unusual for such a beautiful girl.

  Religious Views: Atheist without the negative connotations. In Casey’s mind, there was no God watching over her.

  I was stunned to find dozens of pictures of Casey in the Photos section that I’d never seen. There was Casey hamming it up, dancing, smoking, and drinking beer at a party we weren’t supposed to know about. In another photo, she sat in a lush meadow wearing a sleeveless black slip dress and flip-flops, the deep green of the tall grass around her standing in stark contrast to her blond hair and pale skin.

  One series of pictures showed her walking through graffiti-covered cement batteries from World War II in the Marin Headlands. They reminded me of the abandoned buildings and cemeteries my friends and I sought for quirky photo shoots when we were her age.

  There were photographs of Casey dressed in a short-sleeved dark purple dress and worn, untied Keds walking pensively around an abandoned construction site for some gaudy mansion in Belvedere. In the distance, the red towers of the Golden Gate Bridge were visible.

  On her Facebook wall, she and her friends talked about homework, weekend plans, people they hated, their despicable parents, along with some reefer and random trash talk.

  Duuude, fuck me and my busy shittyness, where do you want to go to lunch on Thursday?

  Your comments to Julian are way sketch.

  Yo, Niggah, wanna chill tonight?

  I hit the Wall-to-Wall feature so I could read Casey’s responses to her friends’ posts:

  I don’t get along with my mother at ALL. We are the same or opposites. I can’t decide. I’d often thought the source of their friction was the fact that both were so much alike—stubborn and argumentative.

  On the 26th my parents will be gone. Dude you should come over here and smoke cigarettes. That was her reference to the overnight trip Erika and I took out of town after Christmas when she asked permission for “a few” friends to come over.

  I might get kicked out of the house when I turn 18 ’cause my crying bothers my parents a lot. Did her friends even know about her tantrums?

  A tip from her friend Roxanne led to another secret online destination, a social networking site predating Facebook where we found heartbreaking journal posts dating back to 2005, when Casey was fourteen.

  February 2005: My body is sort of a benign tumor. I believe that is why I’m so terrified of relationships.

  April 2007: I never let anyone get too close. I want someone to fix me, to hold me, tell me they love me with all my imperfections. I’m hopelessly flawed.

  October 2007, just four months before her suicide: I’ve been failing for five years now. Five fucking years. Good job Casey, good fucking job. What should I put on my college application? “Extremely adept at killing myself slowly?”

  Casey had spat venom at us many times in fits of rage. But they were the remarks of a petulant teenager who wanted to rattle her parents. These online journal posts were private. They chilled me as I read them.

  There was still more.

  Erika kept Casey’s iPhone close by so she could listen to her voice on the mailbox greeting: “Please leave your message for . . . Quasey.”

  On Valentine’s Day, two weeks after Casey died, we picked in silence at a plate of unheated pasta in the kitchen, left behind by well-wishers, when Casey’s phone hummed. Erika grabbed it, trembling as she looked at the screen. There was a text string from a girl named Rose.

  Casey are you there?

  Casey are you all right?

  Casey, what’s going on? Isabel and I are starting to worry about you.

  “I’m going to text her back.” Erika punched at the screen with her thumbs. “I don’t know who sh
e is, but she obviously doesn’t know what happened.”

  Within seconds the phone erupted with a gangster-rap ringtone. Erika picked it up. “Hello?”

  Her expression turned from curious to somber. She put her hand to her mouth and abruptly left the kitchen. After a half hour she returned to place the phone back on the countertop. Her face was ashen, as if she was in shock.

  I spoke up. “Honey, what happened?”

  Erika explained. Rose was at a boarding school in Michigan and had met Casey through another online message board when they were both in middle school. They talked openly and anonymously about depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, cutting, and suicidal thoughts. They’d connected regularly with a circle of girls from as far away as Texas, Pennsylvania, the U.K., Norway, and Brazil.

  According to Rose, many of them were estranged from their parents, lonely and misunderstood, often self-destructive. It was in the safety of this online forum that Casey opened up about her own battles with demons and despair.

  We learned that she’d driven the Saab to the Golden Gate Bridge late on January 27, the Sunday night before she died, apparently intent on jumping.

  Listening to Erika’s words, I felt as though I’d been smashed in the face by a two-by-four. My throat tightened as the story unfolded. Images of how it might have played out consumed me.

  I pictured her parking the Saab in the Dillingham parking lot on the southbound side of the Highway 101 approach, taking the rickety wooden stairs to the pedestrian walkway under the bridge so that she could get to the northbound side facing views of the city and the bay.

  Even late on a Sunday night she would have heard the br-brapp, br-brapp drone of traffic hitting the ribbed joints of the roadbed overhead. Then she would have climbed the stairs to the parking lot at Vista Point where the tourist buses stopped and maybe lit up a Camel Light, just as she did the following Tuesday morning. Then she would have headed for the pedestrian walkway that led onto the bridge.

  A cautionary poster attached to the gate reads:

  SEE SOMETHING? SAY SOMETHING!

  A blue sign mounted over a yellow call box announces:

  CRISIS COUNSELING. THERE IS HOPE. MAKE THE CALL. THE CONSEQUENCES OF JUMPING FROM THIS BRIDGE ARE FATAL AND TRAGIC!

  But it wasn’t the warning signs that stopped her. The six-and-a-half-foot gate to the walkway had automatically closed and locked at nine o’clock that night; it would reopen again at five o’clock the next morning. So Casey returned to the Saab and drove home.

  Stunned, I asked Erika, “How did Rose know this?”

  “She said that Casey reported the whole thing on the message board after she came home.” She held up Casey’s iPhone with the message from Rose for me to see.

  I had a really bad scare last night. It was so close between life and death.

  I’m not sure if I made the right decision. I’m just so tired of life and everything in it.

  I hope I never even think of doing such a thing again.

  :| :| :|

  I stared at the words as if they’d been written by a stranger.

  I’d always thought that if someone was bent on taking his or her life, nothing would stop them. But I’ve since learned that suicide is often impulsive—a transient urge. Once the impulse passed and the victim had an opportunity to reconsider, the chances were good that he or she wouldn’t try again.

  But Casey did try again. Less than thirty-six hours after she’d sent that text she went back. Her jump—her despair—had not been impulsive. There was something deeper.

  TWENTY

  Three years later I remained haunted, just drifting through life. I lost my job when my division at Wells Fargo Bank was axed in the 2009 financial meltdown, but I didn’t care about work or anything else anymore. I threw myself into writing Casey’s story even though I’d never written a book before. In the spring of 2011, I sat in Dr. Palmer’s office. I wanted to know what he’d learned in his sessions with Casey.

  He was cordial but professionally detached, almost robotic. It was as if we were talking about any other patient rather than a dead child. I asked him what he remembered about Casey, anything that stood out. He flipped through his notes to jog his memory, as four years had passed since he’d seen her. Then his face brightened.

  “I was impressed that she was a very bright kid with a piercing intelligence.”

  I nodded at his unexpectedly favorable opinion. A piercing intelligence.

  He checked his notes again. “I remember asking her about her life when she was nine.”

  He explained that, in his experience, these were often a child’s golden years, before the challenges and pressures of middle school and high school.

  “She said that she was pretty happy then. She had a lot of friends, played soccer and video games, and she said she even had vivid dreams.” He paused, studying his notepad. “She told me that was a pretty good time.”

  My mood lifted at the image of Casey sitting where I was, telling this bearded, professorial type about the good times in her life. It was gratifying to hear that we did something right. Life wasn’t always miserable for her.

  “That’s nice to hear,” I said. “What did she have to say about her high school years?”

  “She talked about being irritable a lot of the time and she often had trouble sleeping.” Perhaps noticing the concerned look on my face, he added, “She didn’t like being irritable or angry, and she didn’t necessarily blame it on you and Erika.”

  That was a pleasant surprise. “Really? She said that?” I asked. “I thought everything was our fault.”

  “She was actually quite unhappy that there was so much friction in her relationship with you.” Dr. Palmer looked up from his pad. “She didn’t like losing control of herself and she was even shocked by her own behavior sometimes.”

  I looked down at the floor, searching for another question as Dr. Palmer flipped back and forth through his notepad.

  “I did ask her several times if she had any suicidal thoughts and she swore she didn’t.” He also reported that she’d insisted that she’d never used drugs, cut herself, or purged. I allowed myself a smirk. Casey was not about to divulge anything to an authority figure such as a parent or a shrink. I wondered if Dr. Palmer believed her denials or chose to avoid confrontation, but I said nothing.

  “I’m afraid that’s about all I’ve got,” he said. We sat for a minute until he asked, “So how are you doing?”

  His clinical demeanor remained unchanged. He was pleasant enough but I didn’t sense an opening to spill my guts, so I swallowed the lump rising in my throat and mumbled, “Not very well,” without elaborating. This wasn’t a therapy session and he wasn’t offering a salve for the pain. Nonetheless, our short meeting yielded some important information about how Casey saw herself and how she might’ve felt about her relationship with Erika and me. If only she’d had a bit more patience, Dr. Palmer might have found that magic pill she so desperately needed.

  The following week, Erika and I met in Dianne’s office. We sat across from her in the same oversize black leather chairs that seemed so comfortable years earlier when we’d first met. But this time there was an awkward tension between us.

  I leaned forward so that I was at eye level with her. “You were Casey’s last therapist. What did you see in her? What did you talk about?”

  She prefaced her remarks with an outline of her therapy style—getting to know the patient, gaining their trust and connecting as a precondition to doing the work. She emphasized that in her forty years of practice, the overwhelming majority of her young patients had thoroughly embraced her. Then she drew a sharp distinction with Casey, describing her as bright and bored, but also exhibiting behavior typical of someone into drugs—sardonic, sarcastic, and disdainful of authority figures.

  As I listened I couldn’t help but think that this could have described any teenager, and I was irritated at her attempt to single out Casey from her other patients as if she were
some kind of bad apple.

  Erika and I exchanged scornful glances. I searched for a way to redirect the conversation. Dianne had mentioned something a while back about Casey’s infancy, but I couldn’t remember the term she’d used. In my foggy state my thought bubble vanished before I could decipher it. “Did you ever talk to her about her infancy or any memories she might’ve had about the orphanage?”

  “Well, when I asked her to go to ‘that place,’ she’d scream at me.”

  None of this was helpful, so I tried yet another track. “Dianne, why do you think Casey jumped?”

  She stiffened. “It was the drugs.”

  I was weary over her incessant drumbeat about drugs and spoke up. “I disagree, Dianne.”

  Casey was hardly a meth addict. Her drug use wasn’t much different from that of many Marin County teenagers acting out or, in her case, a teenager trying to escape intolerable feelings. Unfortunately, Marin’s rock ’n’ roll hot tub legacy was well known, infecting younger generations with a blasé attitude toward underage drinking and weed. Wild parties at absent parents’ homes had been regularly written about in the local press. I didn’t excuse or minimize teenage drug use as something entirely benign, but for her therapist to say that it drove her to suicide struck me as an attitude straight out of the 1930s movie Reefer Madness.

  Lots of people who did drugs didn’t kill themselves.

  Apparently taken aback by my challenge, Dianne said, “Well, they weren’t helpful. They may have confused her and distorted her ability to make rational decisions.”

  We sat in awkward silence until Dianne continued. “I think she saw me only as a doorway to medication.”

  I bristled at the picture Dianne painted of Casey, even in death, as some kind of crazed drug addict, but kept quiet. Erika broke the tension with some small talk until I glanced at my watch and announced that we should be on our way. “Thanks so much for your time, Dianne. This has been really helpful.”