Another Crisis

Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief, than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.
-- Marcus Antonius

Tuesday, January 8, 2002
Two years ago: Christmas Tree Bonfire
Three years ago: Party at Earl's Place
Four years ago: Reunion

Jack's daughter A--- showed up after midnight this morning, crying and screaming and wanting to be let in. I think she was out there for twenty minutes or so before I woke up. "Yeah, you're the victim, Father! Let me in, dammit! I'm fucking cold! Please, just let me in." and so on. Jack did well, talking to her in a quiet tone.

The police turned up (I bet a neighbor called, and I approve), and of course she calmed down in front of them. Jack told them about the hearing she was scheduled for in Olympia this morning, and established with her that he would let her come in and sleep if she agreed to go with him in the morning. We knew the hearing was scheduled for nine thirty in the morning, so that meant getting up around seven to get there in time.

I put a flannel sheet on the futon, and got the comforter from the basement that she'd used before when she slept on the couch, in December. Honestly, I didn't want her stinking up the down comforters we use as lap robes in the living room with the smell of cigarettes. She was asleep quickly, her pile of random crap on the floor. Jack stayed on the loveseat for a while and I went back to bed. I was too tense to just drop right off, though, so I read for a while from one of the romance novels I'd grabbed from the racks at the library.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *    *

I'd set the alarm for six o'clock. I went downstairs and warned Jack's younger daughter H---- that her sister was upstairs, and that she should be sure to take her housekey with her when she left for school. I laid awake until seven, then woke Jack up. He went out to the living room to wake up A-----.

She immediately started screaming and yelling again. "Shut up! Leave me alone! I'm sick! I have a headache! I need to call the court and get the hearing delayed! Fuck you! Leave me alone!" She refused to get ready to drive to Olympia, so Jack told her she needed to leave -- she wasn't living up to what she'd agreed to last night. She got dressed (if she could get dressed, why not go to the hearing?) and grabbed a few things and left, yelling all the way.

Egad, I get the shudders just thinking about all this.

We had quiet the rest of the day. She didn't come back again, though Jack half expected it. Because of her not appearing at her hearing, there may be a warrant out on her in Thurston County.