She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [61]
“I thought you didn’t marry him for the money,” Tracey replied.
“I didn’t, but he’ll never let me go until he’s dead,” she said. “If he dies, at least I’ll be a rich woman. And if that doesn’t happen, I’m just going to kill myself. At least if I kill myself, I’ll be some trouble for him.”
Pain was something Tracey understood. On Sunday, March 14, she wrote:
“I think that my left arm goes numb as a response to bad memories. I’ve noticed two times that were associated with some kind of Mickey behavior. Once when a girl on our unit wailed and another time when I noticed a cigarette burning in an ashtray, a long cigarette just left there to burn down. I wonder if she shook me by my arms—I seem to remember she did that often, or at least when I was little, but I can’t bring it up clearly.
“MY SHAME AND MY SELF-BLAME BLOCK ME FROM MY GOOD SELF.”
Despite the insights, Tracey’s future remained uncertain. Jane told her about the Menninger Clinic, a renowned treatment center outside Topeka, Kansas. They accepted her, and two weeks after arriving at St. David’s, on March 6, Tracey was released into Pat’s care. Before she left, Celeste kissed her good-bye and promised to convince Steve to send her to Menninger as well. “The plan was that we would be roommates, free to explore the relationship,” says Tracey.
On the plane to Kansas City she was heavily medicated and talked little. At one point she turned to Pat and asked, “Do you think this is the right thing for me?”
“Yes,” Pat told her. “It is.”
But when they drove up to the clinic, Pat grew worried. The facility reminded her of the haunted hotel in the old Jack Nicholson movie The Shining. In a rural setting, the hospital looked dreary and depressing. Inside, patients shuffled down the halls. “It felt foreboding,” she says. “I hated leaving Tracey there.”
By then Celeste had left St. David’s and returned home to Steve and the girls. Her mood seemed little improved by her time away, and she and Steve argued bitterly. “She didn’t want to be there,” says Jennifer.
With the girls, she initiated the “Rule,” an edict that banned them from being gone from the house at the same time. “We had to make sure one of us was home every evening and on weekends,” says Kristina. “Celeste didn’t want to be alone with Steve.”
On March 8, two days after Tracey checked into Menninger, Celeste met with her psychiatrist, Dr. Michele Hauser, a prim and perfectly coiffed woman with dark brown, chin-length hair. A graduate of Tufts University Medical School, Hauser had served her residency at Atlanta’s esteemed Emory University. After assessing Celeste, Hauser diagnosed her as narcissistic and histrionic and agreed with a former diagnosis that Celeste displayed a cluster of personality disorders.
Two days later Celeste returned to Hauser for another appointment. “I’m afraid Steve will commit me and divorce me,” she told her doctor, crying. Unsaid was that if that happened, she would be left with nothing beyond her half share of the houses and personal property. There would be no big settlement and no alimony.
That night, Kristina found Celeste in a stupor. She hurriedly called 911, fearing her mother had downed a handful of pills. Again, for the second time in a month, an ambulance pulled in front of the Toro Canyon house. At midnight, after her stomach was pumped, Celeste was again checked into St. David’s. Once there, she shrieked that she wanted the nurses to call Dr. Hauser. She screamed at Kristina, and then, at 1:30 A.M., announced, “I’m going to shower now. That’s just the kind