Meeting at Midnight

My administrative assistant thrust the phone into my hand. “Someone wants to speak to you. Says it’s urgent. About your niece.”

“My niece?” I mumbled to myself. It was 3:30 already. Lots to get done before going home to pack my bags for the State Board meeting in Portland tomorrow.

“This is Kathryn. How can I help you?” I hoped this would be quick.

The woman identified herself as Dr. Ella Craven, a family therapist from Portland. “Your niece, Chloe, is here beside me. She needs your help.”

“Chloe?” I asked. Ray and I had our first visit to her home in the coastal range only three weeks ago. Dread washed over me.

After we left her home that day, I wondered aloud to my husband, “Do you sense something is wrong between Chloe and Rick? How she cowered in the doorway when he railed at her for forgetting to let the dog out of the barn? Minutes after confiding to us that she was pregnant!”

The therapist interrupted my thoughts. “Your niece needs your help now. She says you’re her only relative in the area. She fled her house early this morning after her husband threw a punch at her that went through the kitchen wall instead. Her two young children were still asleep in their beds when she left. She insists on going back to get them as soon as possible. I told her she can’t return there by herself.”

Cradling the phone to my ear, my face grew sweaty. I realized I was being catapulted into the vortex of a drama that began years ago.

“I understand,” I said firmly, leaving no room for her to doubt my resolve. “Of course, I’ll help my niece any way I can. I’ll drive to Portland this evening. Going there anyway for my Board meeting at Portland State tomorrow morning.”

The therapist breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you. You understand that this is a spousal abuse situation and your niece needs a safe place.”

“I understand,” I reassured her again before asking to speak with Chloe. In fact, I realized how utterly unprepared I was for this situation.

Chloe’s voice quivered. “Auntie! I’m so sorry about this.”

“Don’t worry, honey,” I said. “I’ll go straight home and pack my bags. Shouldn’t take very long. I should be able to head north by about five. Where can we meet?”

We agreed on Shari’s Restaurant, west of Portland, on Highway 26 to the coast. After hanging up, my Chancellor’s Office colleagues warned me not to go to Chloe’s house without police escort.

“You never know. Her husband might have a gun,” someone said.

I called Chloe back and asked her to contact the Columbia County Sheriff’s Office during my drive up.

On my two-hour drive from Eugene to Portland, I mulled over the scene at Chloe’s house last month. Ray and I had been equally mystified by what we had witnessed in Chloe’s living room as we were saying our good-byes.

“Her behavior sure doesn’t match the Chloe I remember,” I said minutes later as Ray drove our car over the long gravel driveway past the rain-battered old barn. I was referring to the Chloe who had visited my brother in Santa Fe every summer until she’d turned eighteen, per the custody arrangement between her parents. The Chloe who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind. The Chloe who refused to take her father’s advice about not dating older men. The Chloe who had inherited her grandfather’s photographic memory, her mother’s business smarts, and her father’s legal mind. The Chloe whose ravishing good looks and propensity for sexual antics helped set her on a troubled path in her early teens, years before her marriage to Rick.  

During her teenage years, I’d caught glimpses of her every summer during her visits to her father in Santa Fe, but only once in Tampa where she and her younger brother, Steven, lived with their mother, Sadie, during the school year. Our visit coincided with Sadie’s recent divorce from her second husband.

Chloe was a rebellious teen during that visit who enjoyed taunting young men with close-up views of her voluptuous breasts tucked inside low-cut tops and didn’t miss an opportunity to brush her thick mane of curly auburn hair by them in a come-hither way. Her mother fawned over her, exchanging raunchy jokes, treating Chloe more like her girlfriend than her daughter. I was taken aback when Chloe joined her mother in putting down her younger brother.

When I arrived at Shari’s around eight, Chloe was on the phone outside the restaurant giving the Sheriff’s Office dispatcher background details on her and her husband. Chloe assured him Rick didn’t use guns—there were none in their home. I was relieved at that news though I kept quiet.

The dispatcher advised her to wait at the restaurant while the Deputy Sheriff finished a couple of emergency dispatch calls that had come in earlier. “When he calls you, he’ll take off from St. Helens and you can take off from the restaurant. Drive times to your home in Vernonia should be about thirty minutes from either location.”

After we settled into a booth at Shari’s to await the call, ordering and reordering small dishes of marionberry cobbler and hot coffee to pass the time, Chloe poured out her life story.

She told me how she had met her husband, Rick. How her mother had set her up on double dates with her new boyfriend’s younger brother months after her divorce. Chloe was fifteen.

“Did you tell your dad about that?” I asked in disbelief.

“No. Never did,” she replied plain as day.

“We’d go to the movie and get a burger and shake afterwards. Rick is ten years older than me. His brother, Johnny, was in his thirties. I was impressed that Rick was working for a local tech company as a programmer, so he always had money, and he didn’t have to do homework at night or take exams either. He drove a convertible—perfect for drive-in movie dates with mom and Johnny. Rick was more sophisticated than high school boys, and he liked that I could keep up with his dirty jokes.” She grinned at the memory.

That’s the niece I remembered: quick-witted, bawdy like her mother, and too smart for her own good.

Chloe’s next story rattled me even more. She told me how her mother had booted her and her brother out of the house when she moved into a small apartment across town after the divorce.

“Mom had rented a one-bedroom apartment close to her office and there wasn’t enough room for all three of us, so she arranged for me to move in with Rick and his brother in their two-bedroom condo and announced that Steven would move to Miami with our stepdad. It wasn’t long before I moved from the sofa bed in the condo living room to Rick’s bedroom.”

I must have blanched because Chloe reached across the table and patted my hand. “I know this stuff sounds crazy, Auntie, but I was happy then. Rick drove me to and from my high school everyday, and we sometimes stopped by Mom’s office to visit after school.” She capped it by bragging how she had graduated with honors a year-and-a-half later.

  We talked about how Chloe had come to live in Santa Fe with her dad about a year after she’d started college in Florida. “I left Rick without saying a word. I wanted to get away from him and I knew he’d try to stop me, so I stuffed my backpack and flew to Albuquerque on a ticket from Dad.”

When Rick showed up at her father’s house a couple of weeks later, her dad was furious. “He’s way too old for you,” he warned. “He’s a stalker! Can’t you see that, honey?”

Chloe shrugged her shoulders as if reliving the moment when she had snuggled in her father’s lap like a little girl, taking in his advice as if it were solid gold, but days later taking off for Denver with Rick in his VW van, loaded with clothes, pots and pans, and sleeping bags.

“I knew he was going to keep tracking me down wherever I went, and I didn’t want to keep fighting with him about it.”

After the two were living together in Denver, Chloe discovered she was pregnant with Max, her first child. Still determined to complete college, she registered for classes and graduated with a baccalaureate in Anthropology from the University of Colorado three years later. “At least I got my degree,” she declared. “But when I crossed the auditorium stage to accept my diploma, my growing belly was stretching my gown!” Pregnant with Annie, Chloe and Rick got married at a Justice of the Peace in Denver and began making plans to move to Oregon where they could afford to buy their first home. She dreamed of having a horse on a large country lot on the outskirts of Portland, but he insisted on the coastal range.

As the evening wore on, I asked Chloe what instigated her flight to the therapist earlier that day. She thrust her hands into the air in frustration. “When I became pregnant again this spring, I realized how bored I was with being a housewife. I needed to do something beyond just being barefoot and pregnant.” She laughed. 

“One night after dinner, I proposed starting an in-home bakery. Cookies would be my specialty. I’d gotten kudos from neighbors about my homemade cookies when they stopped by for visits. I told Rick I could continue to stay at home with the children and have a business at the same time. A real entrepreneur!”

Chloe paused. Her face suddenly darkened. “But when I asked Rick if I could buy some commercial equipment for our kitchen, he refused. Said he already earned a good wage for our family—no need for me to start a business. I relented for awhile. But I grew depressed. I pleaded with him to allow me to talk with a counselor. I’d researched the Portland Yellow Pages and found one with good credentials. But Rick was furious. Yelled at me whenever I brought it up.”

She shrugged her shoulders in dismay.         

“I finally scheduled an appointment without telling him and planned to drive to Portland on a Thursday when he was off work so he could watch the children.” She stopped talking. I knew the rest of the story.

Around eleven o’clock, Chloe blurted, “Why hasn’t the Deputy Sheriff called? He can’t have that many incidents to deal with on a Thursday night!”

She was getting more agitated as midnight approached. Worried about the children–four-year-old Daniel and Annie, sixteen months. “I’m sure Rick won’t hurt them, Auntie. He never has. He only wants to hurt me, not them.”

I squeezed her hand hard in solidarity before changing the subject.

“Hey, there’s something you can do while we’re waiting,” I said, inspired. I handed her a spiral notebook and a pen from my briefcase. “Why don’t you make a list of all the items you want to get out of your home when we arrive. It’s likely to be after midnight, and I don’t want to spend any extra time around your angry husband, even with a Sheriff’s escort.”

I pictured her sprawling two-story house on the steep hillside above the town, children’s toys and clothes scattered in every room.

“Okay, Auntie,” Chloe said, eager to get started. She flashed me a smile for the first time that night.

“Why don’t you organize it by room and by floor? We can divide and conquer that way.” We agreed that everything must fit inside her family van.

At last, about 11:30, Chloe got the call. “I’m ready to leave St. Helens now,” he said. “When you get into town, look for me in the Sheriff’s car on First Street, next to a city police car. We’ll drive up the hill together to your house.”

My pulse quickened. I got into my Subaru and followed Chloe’s van all the way into Vernonia. The town felt deserted. The only stoplight kept changing colors without any cross traffic. We pulled up behind the two police vehicles parked side-by-side just beyond the stoplight.

The Deputy Sheriff was all business. He surprised us with his revised plan. “We’ll go first to your home without you, Ma’am. We want to make sure your husband is there and that your children are safe. When we’re satisfied everything is okay, we’ll call you to come up.”

We waited together in her van for almost an hour, holding hands and exchanging silly stories punctured by our nervous laughter. Finally, at one o’clock in the morning, the ring jarred us. I heard the deputy’s distinctive voice, “Your children are safe, Ma’am. Sound asleep in their beds. You can drive on up now.” I dissolved into tears. We had agreed that having the children safe was all that mattered. I reached across the seat and gave Chloe a deep hug.  

As we drove through the open gate on the long gravel driveway to Chloe’s house, the policeman stepped forward and warned us to stay in our car. Rick soon emerged at the front door in handcuffs, the Deputy Sheriff by his side. We watched in disbelief as the Deputy walked Rick to his patrol car and shut the door. We soon learned they were going to book Rick into the county jail for the night.

“He can only be released if someone posts bond for him,” the Deputy said.  Chloe speculated that his sister would probably help him.

“If that happens, Ma’am, the earliest he could get back here would be sometime late tomorrow.” He also assured Chloe that she had every right to stay in her own home with her children if she wished.

But Chloe was resolute. “No way, Auntie,” she whispered.

We flew through the rooms, gathering everything on her master list before loading them into Chloe’s van. At about three o’clock, after getting a couple of last-minute items not on Chloe’s list, a weary Chloe signaled she was ready to get her two children from their beds. We trekked upstairs together, sharing a sensibility about the full import of this moment, this departure from their family home with children so young they probably wouldn’t remember it. We each carried our precious pajama-clad cargo downstairs and tucked them into their car seats in the van, careful not to wake them.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said, fearing Rick’s return at any moment. As we headed down the long driveway in our separate vehicles, I stopped and hoisted the chain to close the gate behind us.  I looked back at the darkened house lighted only by a sky of stars, and upslope at the brooding blackness of dense evergreens, feeling the ghost of Rick’s menacing presence. I yearned to get to the main highway fourteen miles from the town.

Our caravan reached the stop sign at the bottom of the hill in two-to-three minutes. My pulse matched my increasing speed as we left the town behind. I was startled when Chloe’s van slowed and pulled to a stop on the narrow shoulder. She ran to my car window. “Auntie. I forgot the baby’s stroller!”

My heart stopped. “We can’t go back, honey. We can get a stroller in Portland. It’ll be okay!”

But Chloe insisted we return. Retrieving that stroller suddenly consumed her. “It won’t take long, Auntie. I know exactly where it is.”

I relented, and our return trip took only a few minutes, though it felt like an hour of pure hell as I pictured Rick pulling up the driveway alongside us. But we succeeded in our final nighttime raid and left town again shortly before four o’clock, arriving in Portland at dawn.

We unloaded Chloe’s van and brought the children into our two-bedroom condo, our Portland pied-a-terre, as the early morning daylight suffused the city streets. I called my boss and warned him I’d be late to the Board meeting but would report on the capital budget as planned. After a fitful three hours of sleep, I tripped over baby paraphernalia and children’s toys as I left for the meeting. Max was wide awake, pulling toys out of a giant pillowcase as fast as his little hands could grab them while his mother and baby sister slept nearby. I smiled to myself. They’re going to be okay. So is Chloe. It’ll take some time, but they’re going to have a better life now.