I wish I could say with certainty that this is not my fault. I have thought about it many times, but I know I could not have been quicker to react, nor do I believe I could have known what should have been done in the moment. You, my readers, will have to be my judge.
Just two days ago, Pamela’s brothers Evan and Eric overheard William talking to Pamela. They were excited and demanded to be allowed to speak to Pamela themselves. The following conversation was joyful and tearful, and it encouraged William and Pamela to begin making real plans to meet with one another. All this would have been wonderful, but as I was preparing to write about it to you yesterday, I was called back to Pamela’s presence with all urgency, for the boys had told their mother about the exchange and she was not pleased.
When I arrived, Pamela was on the phone with her mother, and anger radiated out from her, filling the entire apartment. There were tears in her eyes, but I am not sure she even knew they were there; her entire spirit, it seemed, was focused into her voice, the strength and sharpness of her words.
“I’m not going behind your back, Mother!” she shrieked. “Dad reached out to me! More to the point, I wouldn’t have to go behind your back if you would fucking get over yourself and talk to me!”
“Don’t you speak to me that way!” Angela’s response was shrill and furious from the phone. I took an instant to send a hasty message to Danit, asking her to send someone to Angela and calm her anger while I attempted the same with her daughter.
“I spent years trying to talk to you the way you wanted, Mom, and where the hell did it get me? So yes, I will fucking speak to you however I like.”
“You ungrateful—” Thankfully, Angela broke off, gasping as if her rage made her breathless. “I cannot believe you. You always were overly sensitive, but I never thought that you could be this thoughtless and selfish.”
“What are you talking about?” Pamela demanded, throwing her hands up in frustration.
“Your father is willing to forgive you for what you said—he reaches out to you—and you still hold yourself off as if you were the one wronged here!”
“First you were mad at me for talking to Dad, and now you are mad that I’m staying away? You’re the ones who cut me off, Mom!”
“We never cut you off! We weren’t the ones who pulled away, Pamela! Your brothers—”
“Don’t you dare bring my brothers into this!” Pamela screamed, her face going red. Alarmed, I put my wing around her, trying to whisper calmness into her, but she threw me off, her anger so strong that it entirely rejected my touch. I have never had that happen to me before, and I don’t mind admitting that it frightened me.
On the other end of the line, Angela’s voice went soft and very cold. “Isn’t that the source of all of this? You never thought that we gave you enough attention in comparison with them—”
“No, Mom! You never gave me enough attention, period!” Pamela paced across the floor, gesturing wildly. “I understand that you have to take care of the boys, and I don’t want to be your first priority, but I want to sometimes be a priority! Mom, you chose their baseball practice instead of being on time to my college graduation.”
“Are you really still upset about that?”
“Yes! That and so many other things that have made me feel like I’m not part of this family. But when I try to say something about how I feel, you dismiss me for being too sensitive. My feelings are valid, and you should try to understand them.”
“And what about my feelings, Pamela?” Angela demanded. “How do you think I feel knowing that you have been talking to your father for weeks, but you never even bothered to give me a call?”
“What about you, Mom? How do you think I feel, knowing that for weeks Dad has been trying to talk to me when you haven’t even cared?”
“I didn’t know!”
“But as soon as you did your first reaction was to call and yell at me for it! How is this a bad thing, Mom? What are you afraid of? That I might convince Dad that I’ve been right all along? Because I am!”
“Oh, really? Tell me, did you ever apologize to your father for what you said?”
Pamela opened her mouth, but once again I put my wing around her, and this time some of my calmness penetrated to her. Still stiff, but with reason in her voice again, she said, “I know I shouldn’t have said what I said, Mom, but Dad shouldn’t have said what he said either. He should have known that kind of stuff bothers me—”
“So it’s his fault? It’s his fault that you insulted him and the rest of your family in a public place?”
Just like that, calmness was gone. “But it wasn’t just then, Mom! It was all the time, and I thought I made it clear to you all that I didn’t agree with his politics.”
“And that’s more important than family?”
“No, but family should respect each other’s beliefs—”
“You took the words right out of my mouth.” There was smugness in Angela’s voice, and Pamela’s took on an edge of desperation.
“But it goes both ways, Mom! And I never got any respect, you just told me that I was young, that I didn’t understand—”
“You don’t understand, and you certainly are still a child if you’re still behaving in this way.”
It came clear to me in that moment that Angela wasn’t listening to what Pamela was saying, not really. She was letting her anger and her fear and her pride speak, placing her own opinions as a wall between herself and her daughter. I wished that I had gone to her, rather than to Pamela, but it was too late.
“Once you’ve apologized for your words and your actions, you will be welcome in this house,” Angela said. “Until then, do not contact me or my family again.” And she broke the connection.
Pamela stood motionless, the phone still pressed to her ear. Then she crumpled to the floor, covering her face with her hands. She was certainly aware of the tears now.
It took me more than an hour to comfort her out of her hysterics, and then another hour to calm her from her renewed anger. I could not help but be a bit frustrated by the loss of progress—all this time working with her and William, rebuilding the relationship, only now to be faced with starting all over again. I am beginning to wonder if it is worth the endeavor.
Whatever I decide, though, Pamela will need my near-constant support in the coming days. I will write again when my course of action—or rather, our course of action, mine and Pamela’s—is decided.