She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [62]
The next day in Menninger, Tracey wrote in her diary: “Celeste is back at St. David’s. She tried to kill herself.” Tracey would later say that she knew so quickly because Celeste called once or twice a day. But by then Tracey was battling her own wars. Compared to St. David’s, Menninger seemed a bleak place that aggravated her depression. “It was just a bad match,” she says. “I wanted out.”
In Austin, Celeste was quickly released from St. David’s. At her first meeting with Hauser after the suicide attempt, she told the physician she believed she needed inpatient therapy and asked about Menninger. She failed to mention that she had a relationship with a woman already there. By then Steve, too, had apparently come to the conclusion that the only hope for Celeste was an intensive program where she could work through her problems. Despite all she’d put him through, he hadn’t given up on her.
That night on the phone, Tracey explained how much she hated Menninger. She described it as depressing, cold, and unfriendly. If not Menninger, they would need another alternative. Celeste brought up a posh Houston clinic, but Tracey had been there in the eighties, when she first quit drinking, and she didn’t want to return. Then Celeste told her about Timberlawn, a clinic Steve had found outside Dallas. Tracey had heard of the facility and knew it had a good reputation.
“Celeste and I made a pact; I’d transfer to Timberlawn and she’d join me there,” says Tracey. “If all went well, we’d be able to share a room.”
Weeks earlier, Tracey and Celeste had been strangers, but by mid-March 1999 their lives were melding. On March 14, Celeste sent Tracey a card. The front bore a rising sun and the note: “You’re in my thoughts.” Inside, in her fluid half printing, half writing style, Celeste scrawled a note: “It’s hard to think of something to write because I speak with you so often. My hopes are to see you soon and explore our friendship! You are in my thoughts and please take care of yourself. Love, Celeste.”
In the days that followed, Tracey made arrangements to transfer to Timberlawn. Finally, on March 19, Celeste went to her Austin travel agent’s office and purchased two e-tickets between Kansas City and Dallas for Tracey and an attendant from Menninger, charging them on her credit card. Considered a suicide risk, Tracey wasn’t allowed to travel alone.
Arriving at Timberlawn buoyed Tracey’s spirits. While Menninger felt oppressive, Timberlawn’s parklike campus— a white Georgian colonial main building surrounded by satellite centers—gave her a sense of peace. Founded in 1917, the hospital began at a time when the chronically mentally ill were being released from prisons to long-term treatment centers. Eighty years earlier the stately white building had been a half day’s buggy ride outside of downtown Dallas. By the time Tracey arrived, the city had grown up around it. Timberlawn had a national reputation for its post-traumatic stress disorder program. Begun after World War II to treat vets, it catered to patients suffering from all forms of PTSD, including the trauma of early childhood abuse.
“I’ve had issues since childhood that have manifested into substance abuse,” Tracey told her admitting counselor on March 20, 1999. The diagnosis she brought with her from Menninger listed PTSD and bipolar disorder, in which moods swung rapidly from euphoria to depression. “Before St. David’s, I was playing Russian roulette for five nights straight,” she said. She then added that her problems had started in 1998, when she’d begun drinking again. Tracey described her clash with Reginald Breaux, the man she’d picked up at the convenience store. Instead of relating the incident as an accident, she said, “I tried to run him over with a car.”
As she listened, the counselor assessed the exhausted, frightened patient before her. On the admission forms, she noted that Tracey was neatly dressed, a cooperative woman with above average intelligence. She wrote: “Patient reports mother verbally assaulted her and her brothers and father …Patient