Farewell

 

Marilyn Horan

Word count:  4500

Farewell

            On Monday, October 12, David Tarloff, a 41 year-old former mental patient, will stand trial for the brutal murder of Dr. Kathryn Faughey, my therapist of seventeen years.  Over the last thirty months, his trial has been scheduled, postponed, rescheduled, and then postponed again while psychiatrists evaluated Mr. Tarloff’s mental competence.  The latest diagnosis is that he is competent to stand trial—a judgment I have trouble squaring with the terrible chain of events that began two and a half years ago when I received the shocking news of Kathryn’s murder.                       

            I was in my office at the Brooklyn high school where I worked as assistant principal when the phone rang.

            “Marilyn,” my husband Frank said, “Honey, please stay calm.  I think the psychotherapist who was murdered last night is Kathryn.”

            “What are you talking about?” 

            “The therapist on the Upper East Side.  I’m sorry, but I’m almost sure it’s Kathryn.”

            “What do you mean?” I said in a voice that bordered on a shriek.

Frank said, “Kathryn.  Kathryn Faughey. I think she is the one who they’re talking about on the television. It’s her building—York and 79th.  There are cops and detectives all over the place. They say it’s a female psychotherapist and, Marilyn, she’s been stabbed to death.  It’s horrible.  I wanted to tell you before you saw it on television.  I didn’t want you to be shocked.” 

            “I’m supposed to see her tonight,” I said.  A reflex thought flashed through my mind:  During my session with Kathryn that night I would tell her all about the murder, since I always told her everything that happened during my day.

            I shuddered as if an Arctic blast had passed over me. “Please help me, Frank.  Help me,” I said crying.  “Please come here and take me home.”

            “I can’t right now.  We’re in the middle of a seminar way out in Queens College,” he said.  “Why don’t you go home and when I finish my presentation to the teachers, I’ll meet you there.”

            I ran into the Social Studies office. Eight teachers, all friends and colleagues, were sitting and standing around, during their lunch break.  Through my sobs I asked them to turn on the TV, and there it was on the news. “My friend,” I said.  “My friend has been murdered.  That’s my friend they’re talking about on the news reports.  She’s been murdered.  She’s been knifed to death.” 

            Three female teachers rushed to hug me, while others offered me a seat or a glass of water.  I gulped down air, praying that I didn’t have a panic attack or a complete breakdown in front of the teachers.  As their supervisor, I was supposed to be cool in the face of an emergency.           

            With the help of my best friend at the school, who was working toward a PhD in psychology, I managed to calm down.  Keeping a tight rein on my feelings, I got my car from the school parking lot and drove home, through streets turned hazardous with ice from the blizzard the day before.

                        But when I got to my house, I was too terrified to go inside.  All I could do was wait in my car until Frank came home.  I couldn’t stop thinking about who could have killed Kathryn.  There was the former English teacher I had referred to her after he’d threatened suicide—a prelude to a complete psychotic break.  After seeing him once or twice, Kathryn warned me not to let him come back to the school, because he had called her one night, using filthy language and threatening to kill her.  Now I feared that the teacher, having butchered Kathryn, was lying in wait to kill me.  He could be in my backyard, my garage, my house.  I sat in the car for more than an hour, phoning Frank every ten minutes to find out how close he was to home.  The relief I felt when Frank finally got to our place was incredible.  He escorted me into the house, his arm around my shoulder.  The moment we got inside we turned on the television and for hours we watched the news bulletins about Kathryn, my intimate for almost two decades. I still couldn’t believe she was dead.

                         I watched as the police carried out the leather chair I had sat in for all those years, now wrapped in plastic to preserve the evidence.  I listened as the news reporters on the scene and in the studio repeated over and over that Kathryn was “hacked” to death, that the murderer had used and bent several knives on her body, that even the cleaver he used to kill her was warped from the sheer force of his assault on her skull and bones.  I saw the Venetian blinds of her office, as familiar to me as my own, now bent and broken.  I heard about the blood splattered on every surface, about the “fierce battle” that had been fought, about Kathryn’s screams, about her office-partner in the room next to hers, a psychiatrist, named Dr. Shinbach, who had rushed in to help her and who was himself gravely injured by the killer.  I watched the security tape of the suspect being admitted by the doorman, wheeling behind him a suitcase that was filled with the murder weapons, women’s clothing, and adult diapers.  I saw the body bag being carried out and put into the coroner’s van. An image arose in my mind of Kathryn’s savaged corpse under that black plastic and I tried to replace it with an image of the Kathryn I knew, smiling and beautiful.  I took a Valium, and then an Ambien, then another of each, and fell into a deep sleep.

            The next morning, I woke groggy and disoriented.  I called my brother to tell him and his response was, “Holy God!” followed by, “You were seeing a therapist for seventeen years?”  My sister in North Carolina was sympathetic and her instinct to “help” went into overdrive.  Without asking my permission she called the police precinct where the murder occurred, gave them my name, address, and phone number, and reported my suspicions about the English teacher. As a result, for the next two days, I got phone calls from detectives asking me about Kathryn and about the teacher who had threatened her.  Ultimately, the teacher was cleared.  Though I was not happy about my sister’s breaching my confidentiality, I was excited about the chance to help the police find the madman.  I found several pictures of Kathryn on the Internet, mostly at guitar camp, and scrutinized the faces around hers to see if I could match one with the grainy image of the murderer in the security tape.

             I stayed home from work the next day, and immersed myself in the coverage of the crime on television and in the newspapers.  The news reports were focused on a man in Pennsylvania with whom Kathryn had exchanged emails on the night of her death.  But aware that the police usually investigate family members first, I began to suspect Kathryn’s husband.  I had never met him.  I hadn’t even known if she was married, but The New York Daily News reported that in 2003 Kathryn had filed for divorce from her husband, although she later withdrew her suit.

            After my husband went to work, I was a nervous wreck.  I jumped at every sound, at times afraid even to walk downstairs if I was upstairs and walk upstairs if I was downstairs, or open the bathroom door once I’d closed it.  I regretted not having drapes or shutters on every window or door of my multi-windowed Victorian house, fearful that people could look in and see me at all times. I encouraged my dogs to bark at any sound, by whispering in an excited voice, “Who’s that?  Who’s there”?  Reacting to my tenseness they became hyper-vigilant, pricking up their ears and barking at the slightest sound.

            Feeling overwhelmed and terrified, unable to calm myself, I called a psychiatric nurse practitioner I knew, to get the name of a therapist I could see immediately.  She offered me her tearful condolences and recommended a person in Brooklyn Heights.  I went to see the new therapist that night, parked my car, and had difficulty walking the half block toward her office.  Terrified of every pedestrian I passed, I stayed as close as possible to the buildings, limiting my vulnerability.

            As I entered the psychologist’s apartment, her Shih Tzu jumped on me, and the therapist’s husband, who was cooking dinner, greeted me. The therapist herself, with her braided and mussed gray hair, striped socks, Birkenstock slippers, oversized blouse and pants, led me to a small room, presumably her at-home office, where she proceeded to sit in a chair, put her feet up on an ottoman, drink her tea, and allow her dog to pester me.  She reprimanded the animal half-heartedly, and I wanted to scream that I really couldn’t handle the annoyance at this time.  I was crying and jumpy, and was put off, angered even, by her casual attitude.  I was accustomed to Kathryn’s extremely formal manner, professional office, and polished appearance.  This new analyst offered to use a technique called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) that would help me resolve symptoms resulting from the traumatic experience of the murder.  This seemed “new agey” and foolish, and I refused.  She might as well have pulled out a pocket watch and said, “You are now getting sleepy.”  I sobbed through the session, as she sipped from her cup, and I left convinced that I had truly lost the best psychotherapist in the world.

            My first session with Kathryn had taken place on February 4, 1991, a week before my fortieth birthday and two weeks after my second ectopic pregnancy.  I had gotten her name from Resolve, an infertility organization.  My grief must have been obvious in my posture—I would have curled up on her couch if she’d had one.  My clothes were crumpled and my face was bloated from crying.  Kathryn was gentle and listened as I poured out my anguish at losing a child.  I told her of sitting in the gynecologist’s office a week before while he’d shown my husband and me a video of the laparoscopic surgery in which a miniature motorized scalpel chopped up the tiny embryo, which formed a small bump in my fallopian tube.  I told her how proud the doctor had been of his surgical skill and how puzzled he seemed when I had burst into tears.  Even when I explained that I couldn’t stand to see what could have been my child being scissored to death, the doctor cheerily replied, “At least we know you can get pregnant.” 

            Kathryn agreed that the physician was insensitive, at best, cruel at worst.  Immediately, I felt I had an ally, a caretaker, a wise counselor. She said that I had returned to work too soon, that I needed time to heal, to take care of myself. She wrote a letter to the gynecologist convincing him to sign my leave of absence application.  The two months I stayed were crucial to my recovery.  This was the first of many painful episodes that Kathryn guided me through by encouraging me to pay closer attention to my emotional needs.           

            In retrospect, seventeen years with a psychotherapist does seem like a long time, a Woody Allen joke.  Yet, there were breaks in my therapy, sometimes for as long as six months. Once when I came back after a few months, Kathryn suggested that I see her every other week, and that I view our sessions like going to the gym—a regular exercise that would keep me on an even keel. And so, Kathryn became closer to me than anyone else in my life, except my husband.  My sister lives far away and we are somewhat estranged, and the same is true for my brother.  According to medical literature a successful therapist can play the role of “the good mother” and Kathryn was certainly that, in sharp contrast to my own mother whose credo seemed to be:  “Enough about you.  Let’s talk about me.” 

            As the youngest of three children I am gregarious, but I’m not really that close to my friends because most of them are involved with their children and grandchildren and I often feel left out, especially on holidays. Kathryn had no children either and that deepened my bond with her.  She knew how I felt.  She suggested alternate activities for the holidays and helped me develop the confidence to host holiday parties myself, instead of feeling isolated and sorry for myself amid the seasonal festivities.

              Kathryn helped Frank and me deal with our very different approaches to emotional communication.  I come from a family whose every feeling was not only freely expressed, but always accompanied by crying, screaming, cursing, pounding the table, punching a wall, overturning the dinner table a couple of times, and once, even swinging a gallon of paint, splattering the walls and ceiling of the room with the indelible marks, in bubble-gum pink, of a temper tantrum.  Frank and his family were refugees to the U.S. from a Displaced Person’s Camp in Austria.  They lost everything they owned during World War II.  Leaving behind close family members, they spent ten days in March 1952 on a troop ship to get here. In America they had to learn a new language while finding places to live and work.  They never raised their voices or displayed anger.  Frank’s easy-going manner and imperturbability attracted me to him.  His attitude toward life was the opposite of my family’s. As our relationship went on, however, I sometimes felt he was too laid back and I wanted more responsiveness.  Kathryn acknowledged my frustration, and led me to recognize that no one person could fulfill my every need. I had to admit that Frank’s equanimity countered my anxiety.

             Kathryn also helped me navigate through my professional life. She taught me methods to calm myself, such as deep breathing, reading with intention, meditation, and exercise. She suggested ways to stop difficult colleagues from corroding my ego and peace of mind.  Eventually she helped me decide to retire after 31 exhausting and frustrating years in the New York City Department of Education.  And with great skill and tact she helped me let go of a beloved, but manipulative drug-addicted nephew whose bail and rehab bills I had paid on and off for ten years.

            When my mother was dying, Kathryn introduced me to “Choice in Dying” and it helped me to take her off life support and convince my brother and sister to agree. She suffered with me through a promising adoption that turned ugly at the last moment.  A young woman in Kentucky with whom I had a daily conversation for seven months during her pregnancy agreed to let us adopt her unborn child. Frank and I had visited her and accompanied to the doctor where we watched our son-to-be on the sonogram.  We had already named the child Nathaniel, had bought him clothes and baby essentials, and informed all our families and friends that we would soon be parents.  We kept a copy of his sonogram on the refrigerator, gazing at it with wonder and joy.  Two days before the birth, a lawyer called and told us that the birth mother had decided to give the child to another couple--his clients.  We found out later that this other couple, with the aid of this unethical attorney, had offered the mother $20,000 for the child and she accepted.  Kathryn was visibly shaken by this devastating turn of events.  She encouraged Frank and me to have a ceremony in our yard during which we set fire to the sonogram and said good-bye to Nathaniel.  The act of burning the picture, during which we wept and hugged, provided a sense of finality--a primitive and palpable ritual of exorcising our dream child.           

            Kathryn even took thought for my future, encouraging me to plan for my life alone should Frank die.  I had no doubt that, aside from our professional relationship, she loved me—dare I say it?—like a mother.  Two nights after her murder I composed a seven-page list of advice she had given me over the years, in hopes of keeping her alive in spirit:  Keep the end goal in sight and don’t be thrown off by small obstacles; avoid people who were negative or who demanded too much of me emotionally; plan social activities well ahead of the weekend so that I could keep a forward momentum going and not get bored; accept that people, including myself, were fallible, but still worthy of love, explore the artistic side of life to counter the tedium of my middle-management position in civil service.

            As much as I loved her in return, I was fully aware that she was not perfect. She was especially touchy about any personal questions.  When I asked if she had children, she said, “No, I have no living children.”  Her reaction to this probing question made it clear we weren’t going to be buddies, although I fantasized about that possibility—lunch, a movie, a museum visit—with more excitement than I would have about a possible lover.  Several times, especially during my last year with her, a year during which I stopped drinking entirely, lost fifty pounds, and decided to retire, she would almost fall asleep while I was talking.  I told my husband that I was going to say to her, “Maybe I’ll come back another time after you’ve had a nap.”  In truth, I felt “cured” since my problems were so boring that they lulled my own shrink into a semi-conscious state.

            As anxious as I was about attending Kathryn’s wake and funeral two days after the murder, I actually looked forward to learning more about the woman who had known my deepest secrets, but about whom I knew practically nothing.  I met Kathryn’s sisters and brothers and husband. One of her sisters held my extended hand in both of hers, and her resemblance to Kathryn made my eyes well up. Pictures were displayed of Kathryn as a child and young woman, and as a bride. Still reeling from the horror of her death, I was somewhat comforted to see her as a joyous young newlywed. Her husband was tall and well groomed, intellectual-looking with a slight tremor in his hands.  He welcomed all visitors with a smile, a hearty handshake, and an eagerness to talk.  He bantered with a group of people from Kathryn’s guitar group. When I introduced myself to him, he said, “Wow.  You’re one of the old ones.  I know from doing the banking and seeing your name on the checks.  Not that Kathryn ever told me about you,” he reassured me.  He told me that now that Kathryn was gone he didn’t know how he would remember to take his medication since she set up his pills each day and reminded him to take them.  I felt ashamed of ever having suspected him of murdering her.

             He asked if there were any questions I had about Kathryn that he could answer and I said I wanted to know her birthday.  He told me.  I realized much later that there was an element of jealousy in my feeling toward him, her siblings, her nieces and nephews, and her other patients. I was a small part of her existence while she was a huge part of mine. The reality was that the snow-globe world Kathryn and I lived in for fifty minutes every other week was gone. I would never again inhabit that safe and comforting microcosm in which I was special—the only person she was interested in.

            At the Mass the next day Kathryn’s best friend, a nun, walked arm in arm with Kathryn’s husband up to the front of the church.  The nun, smiling throughout, gave a speech about Kathryn’s contributions to the world culminating in, “Well done, Kathryn!” Everyone applauded. The nun’s unquestioning faith that Kathryn wasn’t dead, but in another place, comforted me.  For the first time in years, I experienced a scintilla of belief in an afterlife.

            But after the funeral I found myself growing angry with Kathryn.  I had once seen her crossing the street from her apartment to her office and I had been surprised as I watched her wrap her trench coat around her and gingerly step into the street, looking hesitant and wary.   As a former high school basketball player who openly disdained the “girly-girls” who screamed and covered their faces when a ball came at them, I was disappointed to see Kathryn seem so tentative and unassertive.  I wanted her to be as fit physically as I felt her to be emotionally.           

            This feeling of disappointment came back strongly when I imagined over and over what had happened to her that terrible night.  And the more I thought about it, the angrier I became. I kept asking myself why she didn’t throw her laptop at him, why she didn’t pick up the damned table or lamp and smash him with it, why she didn’t kick him in the crotch, break his nose, throw every book on her shelves at him, her murderer.  Why didn’t she have a panic button, a guard dog, a gun, a taser?  Why did she let him in?  Why was she working so late?  Why was she so naïve, so unguarded, so stupid? Why couldn’t she have been as tough and resourceful when physically threatened as I imagined I would have been?

            And how could someone so perceptive about people not immediately recognize the madman for what he was?  Why would she let a stranger, especially one dragging a heavy suitcase, into her office? The newspapers reported that she spent twenty minutes with David Tarloff before she was attacked. I wanted to know what they talked about.  What was she thinking?

            Her violent end begat violence in me.  I played and replayed images of me barging into the room in time to save Kathryn from the murderer and busting him over the head with a typewriter, or swinging a crowbar at his legs, or smashing his head with a brick.  If I had been there I would have killed this bastard, I thought, and then I started feeling guilty that I hadn’t been able to help Kathryn.  At the same time the thought that I could have been in that waiting room with the murderer froze me with fear.  And so, I skidded back and forth, back and forth between heroic revenge fantasies and abject terror.

            Once David Tarloff was arrested in Queens, my feelings began to change yet again.  I, along with many others, had assumed that a disgruntled patient had killed Kathryn.  When it was revealed that the murderer was a psychotic off his medication, who didn’t even know Kathryn, I felt strangely relieved.  I’m not sure whey it was comforting to learn that Mr. Tarloff had come to Kathryn’s office building that night to rob her office neighbor Dr. Shinbach, the shrink who had had him institutionalized years before.  He had been arrested just three weeks earlier for assaulting a security officer in his mother’s nursing home when the guard refused to let him sleep in the same bed as his mother.  With the money he stole from Dr. Shinbach, Mr. Tarloff planned to free his mother from the nursing home and take her to Hawaii.  That explained the women’s clothes and the adult diapers in his suitcase. Harming Kathryn was not part of his plan.

            I found it hard to be angry at a man who was so delusional, a man whose heartbroken and sorrowful father and brother, apologized to the Faughey family, saying that they had spent decades trying to get Mr. Tarloff permanently institutionalized, only to see him released time and again from psychiatric hospitals.  This left me to ponder what was worse—having a beloved friend murdered in such a grisly manner, or having a son who was capable of doing such an appalling thing.  Their agony was even greater than mine.

                        Besides the grief that I am still experiencing, my fear of being attacked has grown even stronger.  Before I answer the door at home I reach for a weapon—a screwdriver, a wrench, a knife—anything dangerous-looking to hold in my hand.  I am easily startled by waiters who come up behind me to pour coffee, or people who open a door quickly, or strangers who seem to be walking straight at me on the street.  My husband calls ahead to warn me that he is coming up the stairs, because if he doesn’t, I jump and scream at the sight of him.  Whenever I take a shower I lock the bathroom door even if I know Frank is the only other person in the house. I find it hard to fall asleep at night, and often feel depressed about living in a world in which such random violence can occur.

            I have a new therapist. When I walk down the hallway to her office, I am always wary of the possibility that someone is coming up from the basement to murder me.  If, when sitting in her office, I hear a noise outside the door, I jump. The therapist once assured me that the door was locked, only to discover that it had been open all the time.  My new therapist, Catherine, and I have spent hours talking about Kathryn.   She is kind, empathetic, and supportive. Her own sorrow concerning Kathryn, whom she did not know personally, touched me.  Catherine told me the entire psychotherapeutic community was frightened and saddened by the murder of one of their own. We have picked up therapy from where I left off with Kathryn to my satisfaction and relief.            

            Kathryn will never be far from my mind.  When I see a tall redheaded woman, for an exciting split second I imagine it’s Kathryn, and then I am brought back to the truth.  What makes all this even harder is that I feel on some level unentitled to my grief.  People expect you to mourn a life partner or a close relative or an old friend.  But, except for my husband and my current therapist, there is no one who knows the depth of my mourning for the loss of my dear counselor. This is my own private bereavement, and it seems to go on and on without end.

            I will be attending the trial of David Tarloff because I hope to gain closure on Kathryn’s death by witnessing the testimony of the man who killed her. I want to look into his face and listen to his voice and try, for the hundredth time, to understand what happened that terrible night and why.