Caitlin dropped to her knees, and began scooping up the papers. She certainly hadn’t intended for her mother to see them. Why the hell did she have to fall asleep in the wing chair?
“I asked you a question.” The first lady bent over and snatched up another printout. She read what Caitlin had highlighted. “Some cults believe that sexual desires are the work of the devil, and that castration is the only way to achieve true wisdom. What the hell is this crap?”
“School report,” she grunted, stabbing at the piles of papers. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep out here. I don’t know what happened.”
Julie Prescott gave her daughter the once-over. At length she shook her head and made for her bedroom. “Take a quick shower and dress. I want you in the dining room in twenty minutes. You are not going to be late for school again.”
Caitlin grabbed the iPad. There were no new texts or emails since 10:20 the previous night, nor was there anything from Wendy Adams or Lisa Wong. She sighed, shoved the stack of papers under her arm and padded into the West Bedroom to take a shower.
Caitlin rushed to Lisa Wong’s classroom at a quarter to eight. The head of her Secret Service detail, Agent Jim McManus, followed her up the stairs, but kept a respectable distance. She found Mr. Jakes, the mathematics department chair and Mrs. Harper, one of Sidwell’s notoriously grumpy permanent subs, rummaging through Wong’s desk.
Jakes looked up and nodded to the first daughter. “Ms. Wong is absent today, Caitlin.”
The first daughter realized Jakes knew that she and Wong were friends, and often met for coffee just before first period.
“Absent? What do you mean?” asked the first daughter.
Jakes shrugged and twirled his moustache. “Absent. Sick. Not feeling well. Whatever you want to call it. She sent me an email last night around midnight, but I didn’t see it until I got up this morning. Unfortunately, there were no lesson plans included in the email.” He turned his attention back to Wong’s desk. “As usual.” He yanked open another drawer, then regarded Mrs. Harper. “Maybe the lesson plans are in her laptop.”
“Did the email say anything else?” Caitlin wanted to know.
Mrs. Harper exhaled and shot the first daughter a disgusted, just run along to class look.
Can it, lady. Stay out of it.
Jakes turned back to Caitlin. “She said she felt ill right after dinner, about six-thirty. Went to bed and didn’t wake up until midnight. That’s when she sent the email.”
That’s impossible, Caitlin thought. We were talking on the iPad until just before ten. She wasn’t sick at all, and she most certainly wasn’t asleep.
“Something I can help you with, Hon?” asked Jakes. “If you don’t mind, I need to find these lesson plans.”
Catlin toyed with the idea of telling Jakes she’d spoken with Lisa Wong on the iPad the night before, but turned to leave instead. “No. No, I don’t think so.”
Chapter 13 Sidwell Friends Washington D.C. 11:25 AM
Caitlin called Wong but got no answer. She tried to FaceTime her on the iPad, but came up empty. First and second hours were a blur, as the first daughter sat and fretted about Wong. Third hour was about to begin. Caitlin busied herself by signing a few Vogues in the back of the classroom. Finally Brent Tessler, the Advanced Placement Psychology teacher, strode through the door, plopping his worn leather bag down on his desk. The students scattered to their seats. Agent Jim McManus, took his usual place in the back of the classroom. He rotated the classroom detail with three other agents.
Tessler took a sip of coffee and surveyed the class. “Alright, let’s get started,” he growled, pacing the front of the classroom. “Who can tick off the various ego defense mechanisms we discussed yesterday?” He glanced about, then settled on a student seated to his far right. “Go, David.”
The student cleared his throat. “There’s denial, Intellectualization, Projection, Reaction Formation and Sublimation.”
Tessler set his coffee down. “Not bad. Okay, story time. There was this tough Irish priest who worked for the Archdiocese of Washington. Name was Father Mulcahy. He was a pastor at various parishes. Mulcahy even served as a school principal for over twenty years, then retired in 2006 after forty-six years of ministry. He eventually returned to Ireland, and died in 2010. Ten months ago, this guy who is now fifty-three, hired an attorney and went after the archdiocese, claiming Mulcahy had abused him forty years ago when he was an altar boy.”
“No surprise there,” someone quipped.
Tessler held up his hand. “Not so fast. The plaintiff claimed he had absolutely no recollection of what had happened until just ten months ago.”
“What set him off?” one student wanted to know.
“He said he went to mass at his boyhood parish one Sunday. The memories of abuse rushed back to him in a torrent.” A hand shot up. “Yes,” said the teacher.
“What did he mean by abuse?”
“He claimed Mulcahy would force him to strip down to his underwear and socks, and then get dressed with what vestments were on-hand in the sacristy. He also claimed that Mulcahy told him dirty stories, and revealed sordid, sexual details about parishioners’ confessions.”
“So, he filed a lawsuit?” asked another student.
“Oh, yes. A 7.5 million dollar lawsuit, to be exact.”
Caitlin Prescott felt queasiness in the pit of her stomach, but did her best to ignore it. “What’s the point? Mulcahy’s deceased,” she said.
“Very much so,” added Tessler. He frowned. “Are you feeling okay? You look a bit off.”
“I’m fine,” insisted the first daughter. “What bothers me,” she continued, “is that Mulcahy can’t defend himself.”
Tessler nodded. “And there are no witnesses. Moreover, nobody else ever filed so much as one complaint against Mulcahy in his five decades of service to the Church.” The teacher finished off his coffee with one, big gulp. “Let’s just assume the plaintiff was abused as a twelve and thirteen-year-old altar server. What do we make of him forgetting about the sordid events until the visit to his boyhood church forty years later? What would this be called?”
Several hands went up. Tessler selected a girl towards the back of the room.
“Repression.”
“And what can you tell us about repression?”
The girl thought for a moment. “I guess it’s when someone has such horrible or offensive thoughts that the mind blocks those thoughts from the conscious mind.”
“Relate that to abuse, and the claims by this man.”
Caitlin’s queasy stomach was not going away. It was intensifying. She was now sweating and her hands felt cold and clammy.
The girl in back said, “After what happened in the sacristy, the boy’s mind couldn’t handle the horrifying nature of the abuse. Fortunately, his mind was resourceful enough to protect itself from the offensive thoughts.”
“Where did the thoughts go?” asked the teacher. “They have to go somewhere.”
“They went to the unconscious.”
The first daughter thought she heard the boy next to her whisper, “Are you okay?”
She rubbed her eyes. “Yeah. No. I don’t know.”
“Seriously, you look like you’re going to be sick.”
Going to be sick?