Love, Joy, Feminism
A Review Series of Anonymous Tip, by Michael Farris
Pp. 99-105
Gwen got off work at three and scrambled to get home, change clothes and get down to the Fifth Avenue Medical Building to Dr. McGuire’s office by five. Her friend, Bonnie, had agreed to switch shifts for the day. Just before she was ready to leave, her phone rang.
It was Peter, of course. He lets her know that the judge has given permission for Casey to be seen by Dr. Schram, the psychologist Peter picked out, and that the appointment has been scheduled for Friday at 10:00. Farris tells us that Gwen was “still not terribly pleased with putting her little girl through so many exams,” and then Farris gives us this dialogue:
Peter continued, “And you get to take her to the exam. But you have to be escorted.”
“Why do I have to be escorted?” Gwen demanded.
I feel like at this point my response would be more along the lines of an excited “Really?! You mean I’ll get to see her?” but hey, I’m not Gwen.
“The prosecutor was afraid that you would run away with her,” Peter replied.
“It’s not something I haven’t thought about, but I would never do it—at least I would probably never do it.”
“Don’t tell me things like that,” Peter replied.
“Who’s the escort, one of the witches?”
“No, just a friendly ghost,” Peter countered with a laugh. “It’s me. The judge was in a hurry and I didn’t want to get embroiled in a big argument with the prosecutor on every little detail, so I quickly volunteered since I knew the judge would trust me to guarantee that you wouldn’t run with Casey. I promised him that either I or one of my staff would stay with you the whole time.”
Honestly, I’m still confused as to why Gwen is taking Casey to the psychologist at all. Casey’s foster mother already took her to see the psychologist Donna picked out, and I’m not sure why the same thing wouldn’t happen here as well. I’m also not sure whether it’s realistic that a judge would trust a lawyer to escort his client to something like this, although I suppose it is true that Peter would lose his career if he helped Gwen run. Regardless, we get to see once again that Gwen really and truly is considering taking Casey and running—and that she’s still calling Donna and Rita witches.
“Ok, OK,” Gwen replied, finally understanding that she was going to spend a few precious moments with her daughter.
I suppose it simply took some time to sink in?
Anyway, Peter arranges for Gwen to meet him at his office at 9:15 and then Gwen asks if they can do lunch after the appointment, but Peter says no, they have to get Casey back to the foster home right away.
“This is so unreal! I can’t take my own daughter to McDonald’s without upsetting some judge. I can’t drive her alone! I can’t see her alone! Ooh, it makes me mad!”
Gwen’s not happy, not happy at all, but Peter tells her he thinks they’re going to win the hearing on Tuesday, so it’s only for a few more days. He says he’s excited about what he learned when talking to the police officer, and that he learned something he thinks will “really help us on Tuesday,” but when Gwen asks what he learned he tells her “it will take too long to explain” and shoos her off to her appointment with Dr. McGuire. The jury is out on whether Peter will explain his finding to Gwen later or leave her in the dark.
As she sat in the waiting room, Gwen couldn’t help thinking that her Casey doll had sat in these chairs waiting for her turn with Dr. Randall McGuire. She would see her tomorrow. And hold her. And kiss her. And never let her go. Thoughts of running away crowded her mind as she contemplated the fact that she would have to turn Casey back over to the foster parents sometime before noon. Her daydream became more vivid as she imagined Peter, Casey, and herself driving in that white Explorer north for a couple of hours and escaping over the Canadian border. The border guards would just think that we were a typical happy family, Gwen thought, She came back to reality quickly, knowing that this semi-stranger would never do such a thing. And when it came right down to it, she didn’t think she would do it either—even on her own. But she was beginning to have doubts.
Gwen has now been without Casey for two days. You know what? I once went to a conference that involved me being away from my two children for nine days, and I survived. Although, that really is unfair of me, because I chose to go on that trip, and I get that being forcibly prevented from seeing your child would feel worse than voluntarily being away from your child. Still, Gwen’s scheming of ways to take Casey and run over a week-long separation seems a bit over the top.
Anyway, Dr. McGuire’s secretary calls for Gwen—“Mrs. Landis”—and she heads in to see him. This is, as you may remember, the psychologist who has been bribed by child protective services to give a bad report about Gwen.
McGuire was a sharp dresser in his late forties. Double-breasted blue blazer, windowpane pants, and a bold yellow tie with geometric patterns. His hair was stylishly long, greying, and was tightly held in place with substantial quantities of mousse.
I’m going to skip the discussion of the room’s layout—a blue-green and rose decorating scheme with abstract art on the walls—and summarize the conversation rather than quoting it at length. McGuire’s interview with Gwen takes up a full three pages, which is perhaps surprising given that his interview with Casey took up one very short paragraph.
Farris tells us that Dr. McGuire had a “disarming charm” that quickly put Gwen at ease. To be specific, he told Gwen that “the court system may be adversarial, but I’m not” and that he was just “here to ask some questions” and “write a report.” Perhaps if Peter had explained to Gwen why they needed the second psychologist, she would have been a bit more wary, but no, that would be asking too much!
Gwen tells Dr. McGuire that she’s twenty-nine, that she works in surgery, and that she has lived in Spokane her entire life. “I grew up near North Central High School through most of my childhood, but my family moved to the South Hill when I was in ninth grade,” she explains. “I graduated from Lewis & Clark High School.”
Gwen goes on to say that she has two older sisters, which is surprising, frankly, because the book has at this point only mentioned one sister, and then only in Gwen’s daydreams about running. She tells Dr. McGuire that she and her siblings are “very close,” in the present tense, which is even more surprising given that you would expect someone who is “very close” to her sisters to call them on the phone and tell them about what she’s going through, but she does not appear to have done so. Frankly, if it weren’t for this one mention and that one musing about running to her sister’s house after absconding with Casey, I would have put money on Gwen being an only child based on Farris’s portrayal.
Anyway, Gwen tells McGuire that she had a “very happy” childhood, and when he asks if she was abused as a child, she tells him that she was not, and that her parents “were very good to me.” “That’s wonderful,” McGuire responds. Farris tells us hat McGuire totally disarmed Gwen. “If I ever have a problem maybe I’ll come see this guy,” Gwen muses.
When McGuire asks about her divorce, Gwen’s tone changes. McGuire asks if the way Gordon treated her caused her “any bitterness” toward him, and Gwen responds in the affirmative. “At times are these feelings of bitterness pretty strong, like when you might be feeling lonely, or discouraged, or kind of abandoned?” McGuire asks. Gwen again responds in the affirmative—“I think that’s right”—and Farris tells us that she was appreciative of how “sympathetic” McGuire was to her situation.
Next McGuire asks Gwen about the way she disciplines Casey.
“Well, basically I try to train Casey the way my parents trained me. I try my best to explain to her what the rules are and what I expect her to do. If she breaks a rule once, I sit down and explain it to her again to make sure she understands. But if she violates my standards again, I take disciplinary action after sitting her down and explaining that such behavior is simply not allowed.”
“Seems pretty thorough. What kind of discipline do you administer?”
“It depends on what she did wrong. Normally, I try to match the discipline to the behavior. If she makes a mess, I make her clean up the mess in question, plus do one or two other cleaning activities. Sometimes, I make her go to her room. I’ll take away dessert for one or two days. Just a variety of things.”
“And what about spanking?” the psychologist asked, still looking and writing on his pad.
“I do spank Casey. Basically in situations where I don’t think other measures will work well. For flagrant disobedience, I will spank her.”
“How?”
“I use a wooden spoon. I don’t want her to associate my hand with pain.”
“How many strokes?”
“Usually one. Sometimes two. Never more than three.”
“Were you spanked as a child?”
“Yes, and I think I turned out pretty good, don’t you?”
“Well, it would seem so, Mrs. Landis, it would seem so,” McGuire said with a friendly laugh.
Gwen’s parenting sounds so punitive. I mean when Casey makes a mess, she doesn’t just have to clean it up, she also has to do additional chores. That’s going beyond natural consequences in order to punish. Further, some readers have pointed out that a study that I wrote about months ago found that parents vastly underestimate the amount that they spank, including both frequency and severity. This may be Gwen’s perception of how she parents, but has she ever thought to consider Casey’s?
Regardless, Gwen’s description of her discipline methods falls fully on the sunny side of the law. Hitting a child with a wooden spoon is perfectly legal. Her description also falls squarely within the popular conception of acceptable parenting, at least for the 1990s, which is what Farris is banking on to garner sympathy from his readers.
McGuire has Gwen take an MMPI, which he describes as “an assessment tool” and “a standard personality inventory.” Gwen finishes in thirty minutes and heads home, thinking to herself that everything was going so well they would surely win on Tuesday. After she left, McGuire “flipped on his notebook computer” to write his report, starting with the conclusion:
Gwen Landis is not a child abuser by choice. She is a victim. A victim of parents who exercised the sam form of corporal punishment she has now inflicted on her child. A victim of a divorce where she experiences understandable feelings of bitterness because of a husband who has abandoned her and her child. At times these feelings of bitterness are overwhelming. One can express great sympathy for Gwen Landis considering all that she has been through in her life.
But her victimization cannot shield us from the present realities. Her child cannot become yet another victim through this cycle of abuse, bitterness, and abandonment. We have to break that cycle.
The best course of action to break this cycle in the life of Gwen and Casey is to keep the child in foster care for up to six months. During this period of time a course of intensive psychological counseling is likely to produce dramatically improved understanding by Gwen of her need to break the cycles of victimization. In the end, we can reunite this family with a wholeness which has been missing perhaps for generations.
And then there’s this:
“A masterpiece,” McGuire said aloud when he finished. “A bloomin’ masterpiece. They underpaid me for this one,” he cackled.
I’m having trouble getting past how unrealistic I find Dr. McGuire, but I’ll try, because there are some points here that really need to be made.
On the back of the book, Farris wrote this:
And the most shocking part of all is, it really could happen to anyone!
If Farris wanted to present this story that could happen “to anyone,” he would have been better off leaving out the bribery and over-the-top corruption. He could have made this book much more powerful by focusing on the ways good intentions held by good people can go wrong. Or he could have had the psychologist object to Gwen’s spanking and parenting patterns, but without the bribery. But a cackling psychologist who takes bribes? That feels much more like the subject of a book than the subject of real life.
Still, there is one real-life fear that Farris does tap into in this section, and probably successfully—the concern that psychologists can read anything they want into what someone tells them, and effortlessly spin an evaluation of this sort. I mean, I understand that there are standards for how psychologists practice, but I feel like there is a popular fear—especially among evangelicals—that psychology is more hot air than cold stone, and that is what Farris is tapping into here. It didn’t matter what Gwen said, he suggests, Dr. McGuire could spin it however he wanted.
Of course, the addition of the bribe lessens the impact, because McGuire goes into the interview already intending to spin it. Perhaps it would have felt more realistic and less frightening if Dr. McGuire had had some sort of underlying bias against Gwen, perhaps because of her religion or her occupation, etc.? I’m not sure.
Regardless, with this episode, we have reached the end of Thursday.
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