Addison never got caught, and so she never had to come clean about that day at Green Hall. But I was so relieved she’d lived through it, I couldn’t get up the energy to be angry about it. So I never punished her.
In the video, her body looks as close to free as I imagine my girl ever got. But for years, I had a recurring nightmare where I saw Addison smashing from twenty feet onto a marble floor. I saw her broken neck and her twisted limbs. Over and over I woke up in a sweat from this terrible dream.
And of course, in the end, she did die in a fall. It was as if my maternal instinct knew bits and pieces of her fate already.
ROY STONE: People make too much about Green Hall. Want to know what I said to Maureen? Addison was on something. Meth? Ecstasy? Stoned? Hard to say. But I’d bet every gold filling in my mouth that she was high as a kite.
The O’Hare home, Dartmouth, Massachusetts, courtesy of Nancy O’Hare.
MAUREEN STONE: Addison’s father wasn’t around enough to see the real Addison. “Kids will be kids,” he’d say. As if that meant anything. And when Roy was watching, he only saw what he wanted. Green Hall wasn’t even the worst of it. The real darkness fell the next year—the summer before eleventh grade.
MADDY MEYERS: The way I see it, Addison’s serious problems started on North Lyn. In July our moms always liked to go to our grandparents’ house, which is actually outside Bristol proper, up in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Not much fun. The whole time we’re out there, Mom and Aunt Maureen turn into these teenager versions of themselves. Mousy, obedient Irish Catholic daughters.
Addison and I got along better there than we did anywhere else. We would talk about how spineless our moms could turn in that house. How they made us obey all the O’Hare house rules, no questions asked. “Get up, it’s time for mass! Make your bed with hospital corners! Finish your plate; children are starving in India!”
Gran and Pops didn’t push Addison too hard. She had an ease with them, like she didn’t mind spending an afternoon bird-watching with Pops or learning how to make a homemade pastry crust with Gran. She was a natural at one-on-one. Sometimes I think it’s what made her good at doing people’s portraits. Her attentiveness, you know? So if she didn’t finish her broccoli, they were softer her, they’d look the other way.
That summer, Charlie was up in New Hampshire at an all-boys’ camp, Camp Winnipsaukee. And my older sister, Morgan, was an au pair in Nantucket. So it was just us in the country, bored and relying on our moms to drive us places, not knowing anybody. Addison and I shared our mothers’ old room. Twin beds with lumpy mattresses that felt like you were sleeping on a pile of socks.
Starting the very first night, she couldn’t sleep. “Gimme your iPad,” she’d say, because she didn’t have her own.
Sometimes she’d get nightmares, and she’d squeeze into bed with me. Her skinny arms would be wrapped around me, tight as locking pliers. I kind of liked it. It meant we were still close, cousins-close, and if she needed to squeeze up to me to get sleep, I let her. It meant she needed me.
Then one night it was different. She shook me awake—so hard her nails were biting my skin, and her voice was hissing.
“Maddy, listen, listen! Can you hear it, too? Can you hear them? Can you hear the people in the wall?”
I snapped on the lamp. I heard nothing. I told her she was freaking me out.
“Come on! Can’t you hear it, Maddy?” she kept asking. “I’m listening through time! I’m hearing conversation leftovers from dead people.”
“Stop it! Stop scaring me! There’s nobody in the wall, Addison!” I shoved her away.
She started pacing. “Miss Cal is having soft-boiled eggs for lunch, and Douglas, he’s going into town later to fetch his boots; they were being re-soled. Ida wants him to bring her back a bag of butterscotch and some new paintbrushes.”
I thought it was some prank she was playing. “Shut up!” I told her. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
But she didn’t stop. She kept on telling me what she could hear through the wall, repeating conversations she swore were real.
Eventually I got it. These voices were real. To her.
JENNIFER O’HARE MEYERS: My sister called in a shrink.
I said, “Connect with somebody, do something. Do whatever it takes, Maureen. But don’t do this alone, and don’t get Roy involved. First he’ll say everyone’s overreacting. Then he’ll gripe about the medical bills.” That was my advice.
DR. EVELYN TUTTNAUER: I took on Addison’s case immediately. I became her primary psychiatrist. I’d been referred through Maureen Stone’s general physician, Dr. Fergis, who contacted me in mid-July. He told me his patient, Maureen, was agitated about her sixteen-year-old daughter. According to his patient, Addison Stone was having chronic auditory hallucinations; she believed she could hear voices through the walls of her grandparents’ house.
With no medical history, I assumed that the young woman wasn’t delusional but was just acting out. Sometimes patients, young patients especially, invent voices or outside forces as a means to express their own desires or needs. It’s hard to say, “Pay attention to me.” It’s easier to invent some monkey business that forces people to pay attention. And I knew her home life was troubled.
I Skyped briefly with Addison. In spite of her exhausted and disheveled appearance, she didn’t strike me as someone suffering from any particular neurological disorder. My hunch was that she’d internalized some resentment for her brother, who she told me was having lots of fun at his sleepaway camp. This resentment was manifesting as a pseudo-hallucinatory syndrome. I noted after the Skype call that even in her bedraggled state, Addison Stone was charismatic and engaging, and that our call could have been a kind of inventive “notice me” performance.
Still, I advised Maureen and her husband to keep strict watch over their daughter. I advised Addison to take vitamins, and I prescribed a gentle sleep aid. We scheduled a doctor’s visit at the end of July in my office in Providence.
Of course if we’d met in person, I’d probably have recommended in-patient treatment combined with a course of antipsychotic medication. Unfortunately, I’m not psychic. I don’t regard myself as culpable for what happened in the ensuing weeks. One Skype session is not enough. If Addison’s mother was truly in a red-alarm state of worry, she should have brought Addison right to me.
MADDY MEYERS: She was like a ghoul. She was listening at walls nonstop, keeping lights on all night. Addison had spent her whole life frightening me, but this was different. Because this time, she was frightened, too. But after the doctor said Addison was making up voices because she was jealous of Charlie—which made no sense—our moms treated it all like a prank, like what she’d done at Green Hall.