Trapped

By Estelle H. Rauch

“Trapped” is a complex psychological story about Kay, who as a young woman escaping her troubled family, makes impulsive destructive choices, as well as establishing success in her legal career.

Kay’s chronic distrust of others, and her unrealistic dreams of a different life story propel her into an isolated, ultimately dangerous existence. During her escapist journey, Kay literally travels from California to New York, from Florida to Argentina, to Brazil, and a return to New York.

The NYPD plays an important role in this story, as do Kay’s abandoned family, a husband and three teenage children, whom we get to know over time.

The writer has had prior professional involvement with the Nassau County ( Long Island, NY) Bar Association, and via her work with psychotherapy patients, with the Nassau County Police Department.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781532097416

Estelle H. Rauch

Estelle H Rauch, a retired psychotherapist, was published in her field before writing fiction. She hosts a writers’ group in her Naples, Florida home during winters, while spending summers at Chautauqua Institution, New York. Mrs. Rauch joined their Literary Arts program, where she will present her second novel, “Sally’s Dreams.” The author’s novels, “Failure to Thrive” and “Sally’s Dreams” highlight male and female families and lovers negotiating challenging life events. Readers follow these individuals as they journey from painful failure to healthier choices; their dramas include involvement with the police and the courts. Optimistic futures are projected as possible outcomes in both stories.

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Copyright © 2020 Estelle H. Rauch.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-9740-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-9741-6 (e)

iUniverse rev. date: 03/06/2020

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Prologue

CHAPTER 1

T he L.A.P.D’s capture of a brown bear foraging in a North Hollywood backyard, and the animal’s explosive, remunerative popularity on Twitter leading to his subsequent transfer to a rescue facility, mesmerized me. I identify with that bear, running, but captured.

Evan responded, chuckling: You’re nowhere near as powerful.

You mean I’m huge but helpless? - this whispered by me as he sauntered toward the loo.

Almost six months ago, nauseated and listless for days, I skipped work to see my internist. She asked, Have you considered the likelihood that you’re pregnant, Kay? That was the last thought I had entertained.

There were three fighting for space in my body: twin boys and a girl. Evan threw up at my GYN’s announcement. Then he asked, begged and implored; reduce ’til there’s one. Asking him, Which two would you like us to murder? he was silent. On that occasion, we drove home without speaking. I did not admit to my own anxiety at the prospect of motherhood.

From that day until the night before the births, Evan and I avoided any and all sensitive topics. He worked longer hours. I had to leave my job by the fifth month, welcoming long retreats into slumber. On that last night, he arrived home early, so I was convinced he had something important to tell me. Do you want a divorce? You can have one, if you wish. His untouched frozen chicken dinner speaking for him, Evan left the table. You hate me, I whispered. Just don’t hate them. Why are you still with me?"

Turning to face me, he replied, Because I love you.

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I married the wrong man as a naïve college kid; for the past ten years I have struggled to fight my urge to flee. The question I had so long ago asked Evan, why are you still with me, is mine to ask myself.

My old friends, many still living hardscrabble existences in or near the rundown public housing development I had grown up in, were envious, thus avoided me. New friends – are they truly friends? They share our lifestyle: tennis, golf and dinners at the club; shopping Beverly Hills and Fifth Avenue; attending functions at the children’s private schools; having a husband on Boards of Directors where the only prerequisite for membership is how much money we (he) gave; and we travel to gorgeous resorts around the world, accompanied by other like families. Shivering at my own thoughts, the woman I have becomes is flooded with spiraling anxiety.

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Kay, svelte in a black bikini, lounging on her pool deck, is considering just how much time has elapsed since she finished her last Bloody Mary. Her rule: one every other hour, and each with only one shot. This approach allows her to assume a sober state at Dana’s return home from school at 3:30. How much she drinks and the why of it produces a horrifying insight at times: I’m becoming just like my father.

The boys don’t get dropped off from baseball practice ’til 5, so Kay has labeled this hour and a half on Tuesdays as girl time. In reality, ten year-old Dana retreats to her room, where she plays video games or talks to the friends she had just left. Kay is conscious of how relieved she is that her daughter entertains herself, though she publicly expresses disappointment that Dana avoids her. Kay has thought more than once: I’m deserving an Academy Award for the actress I’ve become. As such, she has fleeting awareness that she no longer knows what she truly thinks or feels.

Benjamin and Cooper, she believes, belong to daddy, and she is quite content to let that be. Evan is ever present in the boys’ young lives, with sports their common language. He taught them tennis from the time they could walk so by now both boys easily trounce their mother. Over Kay’s screaming, futile objection, their hero dad had begun teaching them ‘gun safety’ at the range not far from their Hollywood Hills home.

Dana receives little private time with her dad, who regularly expresses admiration for his daughter’s excellent grades and used to call her my doll. Only after Dana screamed, I hate you and I’m not a doll! did Evan get the girl’s message. He has of late tried to be more involved in her life.

Had Kay been more attuned to her daughter, she might have realized how profoundly hurt the youngster is. But in her cocoon, only last Thursday Kay neglected to pick Dana up after ballet class, and managed a pitiful lie when the instructor called. Reporting false car trouble, Kay was `asked why she hadn’t called the school. She was ashamed of herself, realizing that Mrs. Barr knew she was lying. It didn’t occur to Kay that the issue was not about her being caught lying; making her daughter that much more convinced she was forgettable was devastating to the child.

That same evening, more conscious than usual of her truth, a sober Kay pulled herself away from the piano to suggest a trial separation: Neither of us is happy, Evan; that’s unlikely to change anytime soon. His response, We have three children. Mature adults make it work. Why won’t you try?

She started to walk away, feeling he was right, relieved that she could escape so easily. Something stopped her short. For the briefest moment she felt solid, able to distance from the self-hate that permeates her life at home. Telling herself, ‘I’m not a terrible person, just a very unhappy one,’ Kay demanded that they face their truth: We’re both unhappy; you run away in work and with the boys, and I run with booze and music. Do you truly believe we are offering these kids a great example of a loving home?

It was Evan’s turn to run and hide. Listen, there’s nothing worse than a broken home. Didn’t you read that research report? It’s a disaster for teenagers. They never really recover.

CHAPTER 2

K ay, there’s a man on the phone saying he has your wallet. You didn’t tell me it was gone.

I didn’t know, mom.

Hi, are you Kay Jones? My name is Evan, Evan Anders. Look, I found your wallet near the hospital. I can’t leave here, doing an overnight, but if you can pick it up, well, it’s yours…

So that’s how Kay met Evan. She was 19 to his 29, she finishing her second-year at L.A. Community College, he Chief Resident in radiology at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Their first meeting involved a quick exchange of the wallet, then Evan’s offer of coffee in the doctors’ lounge. That might have been the end of it.

Months later, Evan, distracted as always, bumped his cart into Kay’s while navigating the narrow aisles of Trader Joe’s near closing time.

Hey, I’m sorry. Then he realizes who she is. You’re Kay Jones. Remember me…Evan Anders. The young girl looks unsure. After all, he had been in a white coat and in a hospital. Now attired in jeans and a Vail sweatshirt, hair longer than during his residency and sporting a mustache to make him look older, Evan had to fill in more details. I’m the guy who found your wallet. We had coffee afterward.

Ah, yes. Sorry. I was absorbed in figuring out how I’m to get home with all this stuff when I didn’t bring my cart.

Evan drove her home. Her mom was asleep, her dad, absent as usual on a Friday night, hanging out with his pals at O’Donnell’s Pub. Kay felt obliged to offer Evan a coke and some homemade coffee cake, which he drank and ate only because he wanted to prolong his time with her.

Kay is a beauty. She had escaped her mom’s wide hips and her father’s big nose and short stature. She is 5'7 and model slim, with an oval face most noticeable for her huge deep blue/green eyes. Her clothes are nondescript: shabby, badly fitting jeans, a jean shirt, and a spanking new UCLA sweatshirt tied around her neck. She is proud of the sweatshirt, having just been accepted into that prestigious university, which she will attend after finishing her second year at community college in just six weeks. Because Evan appears to hang on her every word, she tells him all this, adding, I will be the first one in my family to graduate college."

He does not correct her grammar, but thinks, ‘Graduate from college.’ He also knows she’s much too young for him. But he stays. And stays. After a while, he wonders when – if – Mr. Jones will come home. Later, he forces himself to say goodnight, inquiring as to whether she is dating anyone seriously, asking if it’s …OK to call. I’m out of residency, in a new practice working crazy hours. Sometimes I’m not sure when I’m free.

She agrees, having no idea just what ‘residency’ is, imagining it has something to do with changing where he’s living. She gets that he now has an important job as a doctor. That required a lot of education, which she admires. She is shocked – make that in awe – when he says he’d like to take her to Emilio’s, a restaurant that she just read about in the L.A. Times. Her second thought: what to wear to such a place? She decided to buy something special for the occasion.

On the appointed night, a woman with a smooth voice introducing herself as ‘Dr. Anders’ secretary’ calls to say The doctor needs to change the dinner reservation to 8:30. Is that all right with you?

Six weeks and fifteen dates later Evan proposed to Kay. She had been trying to figure out how to break up with him since date twelve. So she was shocked, unprepared for his proposal. Why was she unable to turn him down? He was nice-looking, smart and attentive, also generous. Telling her best friend, I’m not attracted to him except maybe as a friend. But I don’t want to hurt him. It never occurred to her that she could be hurting herself.

She told Evan that she was too young to marry, that she wanted to finish college and be a college girl. She had not had that life in community college, what with working thirty hours a week, attending classes and studying, plus babysitting on weekends. Now she has a scholarship, so she wants to have fun. But Evan talks and talks. And her parents – well, especially her daddy – they tell her she’s crazy to turn down a doctor. You’ll be a rich lady, gal, her daddy tells her. Mom is silent, whatever her private thoughts. The older woman believes her daughter passed her in smarts years ago, so why would she think to give Kay any advice? And her friends, well they were jealous.

While Evan’s parents are polite to Kay, she is savvy enough to recognize that they were not pleased at their doctor son’s choice.

Kay did go to UCLA and did not have to work at all. She did not join any clubs on campus, thus made few new friends. She studied in the library except for weekends because those were reserved for her husband.

When she graduated magna cum laude, Evan was proud of her; he was not at all pleased when she announced her intent to begin law school.

You know I love politics. When I’m a lawyer, I’m gonna work on issues I care about.

What’s more important than starting a family, Kay? Their first serious argument ensued. Years later, when Kay looked back on her life with Evan, the mature woman she had become recognized that was the exact time when she should have left him. But of course, she didn’t. Such a thought had not then occurred to her. And Evan reluctantly gave in, agreeing to pay for law school. He stopped pressuring her about kids, remarking, On your timetable I’m headed for 40 before becoming a dad.

What they did instead was buy a four-bedroom, five-bath house with a pool, in the Hollywood Hills close to where he had grown up. This was Evan’s idea, and became his pride and joy.

How’s this color for the dining room? This inquiry from Evan received a blank silence from Kay. Then, You choose, Evan, I don’t know anything about decorating. He gave up in frustration when Kay failed to turn up at a meeting with a famous designer hired to help them furnish the place.

Soon afterward, they travelled to Carmel with his dad to purchase two English Spaniel puppies, (which necessitated having a trainer come to the house weekly, since neither Evan nor Kay had ever had a dog.) Their best times together was when taking the pups to the doggie park overlooking the valley; the proud owners giggled at their ‘kids’ racing the much larger dogs, and both enjoyed chatting with other owners. Kay had more interest in learning the different dog breeds than she had in selecting coverlets and drapes for their master bedroom suite.

Come on Evan, let’s take Senator and Olivia for a run every morning before we shower. He wasn’t about to shift gears and get up before 6am, so the energetic young woman ran alone with her puppies. She researched their food and had the vet teach her how to brush their teeth. To her mother-in-law’s inquiry, Why not have a baby, Kay? You’re sure to make a terrific mom if your investment in those dogs is any predictor, Kay didn’t respond.

The Anders entertained couples Evan brought into their lives, where one or both were physicians, all much older than Kay. Evan arranged for food and drink; a busy Kay spent much of her time at the law library or volunteering at the local Democratic Club.

During the second Christmas in their home, Kay invited some of her fellow law students, two young women and a gay guy she admired. This mix did not work. She understood why the three left the party early, and thus didn’t repeat that mistake.

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"You wanted to be a