Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [58]
Whitney was open and flexible while Evelyn was quiet and cautious. She grimaced when I asked why they were in my office. “Sam insisted. He’s fed up with our fighting. He’s worried about both of us, but particularly Whitney. She doesn’t want to go to school.”
Whitney said, “I wanted to come. I asked Mom a year ago if we could see a therapist, but she said it cost too much.”
Evelyn said, “I don’t think it will help, but I’m willing to try. I promised Sam.”
First I talked with Evelyn, who told me that she had had trouble with Whitney since the day she was born. She had a difficult labor and suffered a major postpartum depression. Immediately after Whitney’s birth, she made Sam promise no more children. Evelyn had been a shy, well-behaved girl and Whitney was boisterous and outgoing. From the moment of her birth, Whitney had stolen the show.
Evelyn clearly resented Sam’s relationship with Whitney. “He thinks she walks on water. He doesn’t see her sneakiness and self-centered-ness. She’s got him snowed.”
I asked about Evelyn’s relationship with Sam. She said it was good when he was around. Sam ran an international business and spent lots of time abroad. Evelyn felt they would get along fine if it weren’t for Whitney. They fought about her constantly. Evelyn felt he spoiled her, and Sam felt Evelyn was cold and uncaring.
As Evelyn talked, I was impressed by how lonely she was. If she had any affection for her daughter, I could not find it. She had no close friends and seemed utterly dependent on Sam for companionship and support. And Sam was a scarce commodity. She was devoted to him and resented that his devotion was divided between her and Whitney.
Evelyn said, “Sam doesn’t know Whitney like I do. She drinks and she’s had sex. I wasn’t raised that way. I was a virgin when I married.”
I asked about her relationship with Whitney. Evelyn said, “She’s mouthy. I never, ever yelled at my mother. I don’t want her to touch me or talk to me. I’m counting the days until she moves out.”
In fact, Whitney was pretty well behaved for the nineties. She worked part-time at a sporting-goods store, and until recently she was an honor roll student. She was on student council and active in the Young Republicans. She was sexually involved with her boyfriend of a year, but she’d been honest with her parents about this. She’d made her own arrangements for birth control pills.
I suspected that Evelyn’s antipathy came from deep within herself—perhaps from her own unsatisfied needs for love or her disappointment that Whitney was not a replica of herself. Evelyn wasn’t able to change with the times and appreciate that Whitney lived in a different world from the one she inhabited as a girl. She seemed stuck on the idea that things should stay the same.
When I met with Whitney alone, she was surprisingly positive about her mother. She clearly respected her mother’s talents—as a homemaker, an expert on grooming and a seamstress. She yearned for more connection and less competition between them, but she was baffled about how to make that happen. She said, “I can’t be someone I’m not just to please her.”
Whitney felt closer to her father, who she knew loved her. But he was gone so much, and when he was home he had to be careful not to side with Whitney. She said, “Mom notices who Dad hugs first. She tells him stories so he’ll be angry with me.
“Mom calls me a slut because I’ve had sex,” Whitney said. “Nothing I do is right for her. She gives me the silent treatment, and sometimes I can’t even figure out what she’s mad about.”
She began to cry as we talked. “I need Mom. Things happen that I wish I could tell her, but I’m afraid to.”
I asked for an example. “Right now, I’m being bugged by these guys in the parking lot after school. They gawk at me and call me names, and one of them tried to pull my blouse off. If I told Mom, she’d say it was my own fault, that I deserve what I get. That’s one reason I hate school