She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [69]
Yet, this time Tracey’s expectation of abandonment wasn’t destined to come true. As Celeste had with Craig, Harald, and Jimmy, she had thrown Tracey away. What Tracey didn’t know was that as Celeste had with the men in her life, she intended to reel her back in. Days after Tracey’s discharge, Celeste, too, left Timberlawn for the day program.
“I was in my motel room when someone knocked,” Tracey says. “I opened it, and Celeste was there. She walked inside and kissed me. She apologized and asked me to forgive her. Celeste closed the door, and we sat on the bed together. I asked her if she was sure, and she said she was. Then we consummated the relationship.”
Chapter
9
As April passed, Tracey’s time at Timberlawn drew to a close. Her insurance was running out and she had to return to Austin. Days before she was scheduled to leave Dallas, she found a new therapist, Barbara Grant, a middle-age, kindly faced woman with graying hair. Milholland seemed pleased with the progress she was making, but Tracey was apprehensive at the prospect of reclaiming her life. Not only was she worried about relapsing, but she feared the repercussions of leaving her new lover. The relationship, as she saw it, was as brittle and volatile as Celeste, whose moods surged and subsided as quickly as a changing breeze. Tracey thought the reason lay with Celeste’s unfamiliarity with a gay relationship. “I thought she was conflicted,” she says. “But I never felt like I was forcing her to have sex. With the separation looming, she was even more passionate, saying she didn’t want me to go.”
There was, however, a recurring issue with their sex life. “I could feel Celeste pull back before orgasm,” says Tracey. “I worried about that. I wanted her to enjoy it. She said she felt guilty about enjoying any type of sex, because of her abuse.” Understanding as only someone who has suffered such abuse as a child can, Tracey held Celeste as she sobbed, crying over what she described as the horrible violation of her childhood.
As sympathetic as she was, however, this was an issue on which Tracey wouldn’t bend. “I wasn’t interested in a platonic friendship,” she says. “If we were lovers, I expected it to include sex.” At times, when Celeste rebuffed her advances, Tracey grew angry, threatening to cut off the affair. When she did, Celeste apologized and pledged her love. Losing Tracey would send her into a spiral, Celeste said, since she counted on their relationship to keep her alive. “I loved Celeste,” Tracey says. “I didn’t want her to die.”
As Tracey got ready to leave for Austin, Celeste checked back into the day program. She told her therapist, Bernard Gotway, that she hadn’t been able to sleep. When he saw her, Gotway wrote in his notes: “Patient presents rather superficial and avoidant, saying that the anxiety is manageable. She is irritable and focusing on extraneous issues.”
“Structure your days at home,” Milholland told Tracey that same day. After a phone conference with the owners at BookPeople, Tracey was near panic at the prospect of returning to work. She feared she’d be unable to maintain her tentative hold on calm in the outside world. The voice was quiet and her medications seemed to be working better than they had, but she still suffered tremors and fits of anxiety. Would her meds keep the voice still? Although she hadn’t told her counselors, she was drinking again.
“Work, walk your dog,” the therapist said. “Don’t give yourself free time to panic.”
The next day, armed with prescriptions for lithium, Wellbutrin, Neurotin, and other drugs, she said good-bye to Celeste. She was going home to Austin. “We didn’t know how much we’d see each other,” Tracey says. “We were both worried.”
In Austin, Steve tried to keep the twins’ home lives stable, watching over them, checking to make sure they did their homework. He looked into colleges, visiting one or two, and resurrected a tradition from the years he raised his first brood: Wednesday hamburger nights. One night a week they were allowed to bring friends