Page 106 of The Lost Girls of Willowbrook

Sage couldn’t hold back any longer. She let out a sob and threw her arms around her father’s neck. “Oh, Daddy,” she cried.

He hugged her back, holding her tight and burying his face in her hair. When he started to weep, all the emotions she’d held inside for so long released in a flood of tears—the longing ache for his presence in her life, the grief over losing her mother and sister, the yearning for a parent who cared, the terror and heartache she’d experienced over the past weeks. Even the guilt thatherfather had shown up to save her in the end, unlike the thousands of poor children in Willowbrook who would never be so lucky. Her heart felt like it was about to burst from the magnitude of it all.

CHAPTER 27

April 13, 1972

It was a beautiful spring day, and the cemetery was vibrant with color; the grass a deep green, the yellow daffodils and red tulips swaying in the slight breeze. The distant ocean was sapphire and ice blue, waves curling against the shore like slippery lace. Rosemary would have loved it. She would have pointed out the different colors and shapes, and would have lifted her eyes toward the sun, smiling and drinking it all in.

Sage stood over her sister’s grave, one arm hooked over her father’s elbow, the other cupped by her stepmother Cathy’s gentle hand. They’d had to wait to bury Rosemary until the ground thawed and the media circus surrounding everything that had happened in Willowbrook eased up. But now, finally, the funeral was over and they had time to begin stitching their lives together. Sage would have more time to get to know her father again and learn about her new stepmother, and they would have time to know her.

She wiped the moisture from her eyes. “I hope Rosemary is looking down on us and knows how much I loved her,” she said.

“Of course she does,” her father said. “And she knows how much I loved her too.”

Cathy murmured in agreement, then went quiet again.

Sage only nodded, grateful Cathy wasn’t going to try to comfort her. Her grief was as deep as it had been the first time she’d lost Rosemary—maybe even more so, now that Sage knew how much her sister had suffered in the last six years of her life. Even with her father by her side, the heaviness in her heart felt like a lonely ache, a silent wound that no one would ever understand. Unless they saw Willowbrook with their own eyes, they’d never know how awful the last years of Rosemary’s life had been. “I tried to save you,” she whispered under her breath. “But I was too late.”

The only thing that gave her comfort was knowing that Rosemary was no longer suffering and she would never be gone, not as long as Sage and her father remembered her. And Sage had made a decision. From now on she would never think of her sister living through hell inside Willowbrook again. Instead, she would hear her laughter in the ocean waves and the breeze through the trees. She’d be reminded of her smile when the sun sparkled on the snow, and she’d hear her voice in the singing birds.

“We can come back and plant flowers if you’d like,” Cathy said quietly.

“Rosemary would love that,” Sage said. “Thank you.”

Her father bent down and put his hand on the fresh dirt. “We love you, baby girl,” he said, then stood and wiped his eyes.

Loss settled deep in Sage’s chest, at the same time as her love for her father swelled. He had always called his daughters miracles, the loves of his life, and she knew it was true, even when she hadn’t known where he was or why he never called. What mattered was that he was here now, and his heart was broken too. Maybe they could mend their broken hearts together.

CHAPTER 28

March 1987

Saturday

Sipping her morning coffee, Sage stood at the window of her family’s Brooklyn apartment, watching the people in short-sleeved shirts walking and riding bicycles on the sidewalk below. By some miracle, spring-like weather had come early to the city, bringing with it a cloudless blue sky, and she’d pushed the window open wide to let in the fresh air. Opening the windows was nothing new, of course—she did it for a few minutes every day, no matter the weather—but today she was grateful that the air was finally warm enough to leave them open longer, despite the fact that winter was surely not over.

In the fifteen years since she’d escaped Willowbrook, her need for fresh air had only intensified, along with her desire to clean. Her husband, Elliot, sometimes joked that she had obsessive-compulsive disorder, but her obsessions had little to do with real OCD. Willowbrook had gotten inside her in a terrible way, and it didn’t take much to transport her back to those horrible days—the smell of sour milk, a gas station bathroom, a slight whiff of garbage. So she cleaned. A lot. She burned scented candles and opened windows and never went a day without perfume. Considering everything she’d experienced, she was lucky to have come through it all with only those quirks.

The nice weather also meant they could sit outside at her father’s house later this evening, when she and her family went there to celebrate her stepmother Cathy’s birthday. Which reminded her, she needed to pick up a present on the way there. Between taking her sons and daughter to sports practices and piano lessons, her job at the foster care office, and finding group homes for the remaining residents of Willowbrook, she hadn’t had a chance to go shopping all week. And there was no way she’d show up without a present, not when she owed Cathy so much—for everything from helping her get through the rest of high school to her belief that Sage could make it into and excel at college. Her father had helped too, of course—he had been the rock and safety net she needed—but it was Cathy who had bolstered her confidence and reminded her that the three of them were in it together. The first few years had been the hardest, between the nightmares, getting used to a new school, grieving her sister a second time, and testifying in court about Eddie and the horrors of Willowbrook. But her father and Cathy had been with her through all of it, and thanks to them, she learned what it felt like to have a real family.

She took her coffee over to the couch and sat down. For now, shopping would have to wait. Her husband, bless his soul, had taken the kids roller-skating in the park so she could have the morning to herself. She opened theNew York Timesand spread it out over the coffee table, scanning the headlines for the two articles she hoped to find. When she found the first one buried in section B on page 3, she read it before cutting it out to put in her scrapbook.

State and Families Reach Final Accord over Willowbrook

March 3rd, 1987

A Federal judge in Brooklyn has approved a final settlement involving reforms in conditions at a state center for the mentally retarded that were first sought in 1972 and ordered in 1975.

The agreement, signed by District Judge John Bartels, confirms that by the end of the year the state will close the 60-year-old center, which gained national notoriety as the Willowbrook State School and is now known as the Staten Island Developmental Center.

State officials said yesterday that they have been making progress in moving patients out of Willowbrook, where wards once jammed far beyond capacity now hold only 130 patients.

The new agreement calls for those patients to be moved to group homes with fewer than 16 beds. The state also promised to place about 1,200 other patients who once lived at Willowbrook in smaller institutions by 1992. The 1,200 are now living in other large state-operated developmental centers.

The state will not pay any monetary damages to the families of former Willowbrook patients. The state will also establish a special office to look after the rights of former Willowbrook patients who do not have family or guardians to represent them.

In the 1970s, more than 6,000 patients were crowded into Willowbrook’s antiquated wards, which were infested with vermin. When parents sued the state over the conditions, Judge Bartels ruled that Willowbrook was overcrowded and inhumane. In 1975, the state and the families agreed to a consent decree under which Willowbrook’s population was to be trimmed to 250 patients.

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