by Jessie Close
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I dedicate this book to my three children, Calen, Sander, and Mattie, my mother, Moo, my father, Pop, and my siblings, Tina, Glennie, Sandy, and Tambu—and, especially, to all those who live with mental illness.
She is not an ordinary or “run-of-the-mill” human being…
—from an analysis of my handwriting when I was seventeen
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This memoir is, obviously, about my life. But my life is filled with people: family people and friends people and other people. So this memoir isn’t about me alone.
Some of my memories will inevitably not jibe with other people’s memories, especially those of my children. We don’t operate on horizontal lines, but as a family we function on wildly divergent lines, sometimes crisscrossing, sometimes running parallel, always aware of each other.
Since becoming an advocate for mental health I have realized that the face I present to the world is not always the face that reflects me; I have learned how to hide my discomfort. I have learned to push on no matter what, if I have to, and I have learned how to step back and take care of myself when I can.
PROLOGUE
“Kill yourself! Kill yourself! Kill yourself!”
I couldn’t stop the voice. It was stuck in my skull like a bad song, playing over and over and over again.
“Kill yourself! Kill yourself! Kill yourself!”
Those commands were being screamed at me by the Creature. It was pure evil. It was in my head, just behind my left ear. It was terrifying. Worse, it would not stop screaming.
“Kill yourself! Kill yourself!”
The Creature was relentless, 24-7.
I had to silence it. I had to kill the Creature, and there was only one way to do that. I would have to kill myself.
I’d already thought about different ways to commit suicide. I think most people who consider it put a lot of thought into the best way to end their lives. I knew a handgun would be the quickest, but I’d also considered getting stumbling drunk and lying down in the creek that flowed near my house in the Montana foothills. If I did this during the winter, I would freeze to death. Pills and booze were another possibility. I’d imagined myself driving my truck to Meadow Lake or Hyalite Reservoir or Sureshot Lake, armed with a bottle of muscle relaxers and a fifth of vodka. I’d sit on an inflated inner tube, paddle so far away from shore that I couldn’t possibly swim back, and begin gulping down pills with swigs of booze. When I began feeling them kick in, I would slide into the cold water. In that inebriated state, it would be impossible for me to climb back on to a slippery tube or even hang on to it.
I’d drown. The Creature would finally shut up.
I’d thought about each method in intimate detail, going over each scenario repeatedly, carefully refining each step. I could see myself raising a pistol to my mouth and squeezing the trigger, leaning into a shotgun and squeezing the trigger, lowering myself into the freezing stream in the winter, or floating dead in the lake. Each time I conjured one of those images, it seemed less frightening. Even comforting. Until I’d reached the point where the idea of killing myself seemed inevitable.
“Kill yourself! Kill yourself! Kill yourself!”
“SHUT UP! I’m thinking about it!” I silently screamed back.
“Kill yourself! Kill yourself! Kill yourself!”
When will the Creature stop?
My thirteen-year-old daughter, Mattie, had no idea the Creature was tormenting me. Mattie was a beautiful girl with curly long blond hair and a sweet face. Would she understand why I’d killed myself? I couldn’t tell her about the Creature. She wouldn’t understand. I also was afraid. I didn’t want to risk making the Creature even angrier.
Mattie had just walked to the main house to say good-bye to her grandparents. I was waiting outside near a two-bedroom guesthouse on their property a few miles outside Big Piney, Wyoming, a town of about six hundred people. Big Piney is a ranching community, and the number of cows, horses, and dogs is much greater than the number of humans. Mom and Dad—Bill and Bettine Close—lived on a ten-acre plot, much of it sagebrush and tiny cacti growing in sandy soil. The Wyoming Range runs north to south, the Wind River Range runs east to west, and both ranges lie far away from the treeless high desert that is Big Piney. I love these wide open spaces. There is room to breathe.
Mattie and I had come to visit my parents and my two older sisters, Tina and Glenn. Tina is an artist who lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Glenn is Glenn Close, the actress, who’d flown to Wyoming for a short break after doing voice work for a Disney movie. To others, Glenn is a Hollywood icon. Glamorous. Brilliant. To me, she is simply Glennie, my big sis.
As I waited for Mattie to return, the Creature began yelling so loudly in my head that I simply couldn’t take it anymore.
Everyone in the Close family knew I could be moody and unpredictable. In the previous eight years, I had bought and sold twelve houses in and around Bozeman, Montana, where Mattie and I lived. My siblings thought I was irresponsible, but they didn’t say it out loud. I’d never married Mattie’s father, nor had he asked me. I had burned through another love affair after him, gotten married, divorced, and then had a common-law marriage with my fifth husband. I justified the husbands by saying I could count them on just one hand. But I’d also left dozens of other lovers in my wake. All of them had eventually run from me. Some afraid. Others angry. Still others with broken hearts.
Over the years my family came to expect a recurring pattern of behavior on my part; a seemingly random acquisition of new husbands, homes, and cars.
Sometimes Mattie enjoyed it when I was filled with manic energy. I remember waking her up one morning and driving to the Target store in Bozeman. “Take whatever you want,” I declared. “Let’s fill up the cart!” We raced up and down the aisles, grabbing clothes from racks and stuffing dolls and other toys into a shopping cart. When I was manic, I was the fun and exciting mom! I remember watching Mattie as we filled the car that day with our purchases. Her eyes were sparkling and she was smiling and I felt really wonderful. Sometimes mania felt good, but recently it had grown so intense and so demanding that I couldn’t keep up with it. The racing thoughts. The intense feeling of having to do something, anything. And worst of all now, the voice.
The Creature’s voice.
Even when mania felt good, it was never worth the awful depressions that followed. Mattie never smiled during those dark periods. I would curl into a fetal position on our living room couch and be unable to even stand up—to say nothing of leaving the house. Even when we ran out of food. Literally. My bills would pile up unopened. The phone would go unanswered. I just wouldn’t care, couldn’t care—about anything.
“Kill yourself! Kill yourself!”
I was exhausted. It wasn’t the fatigue that came after a tough physical workout at the health club that I’d joined impulsively, during a frantic self-improvement moment. Nor was it the restlessness that came after a night of tossing and turning because I couldn’t go to sleep. This was more of a debilitating feeling of abiding sadness. I had hit rock bottom. I had sunk into my dark place—where the Creature reigned and where I knew I’d either have to obey his command or have him taunt me forever.
My life was a mess—and it showed. As a child, I’d had an angelic face, piercing eyes, and a mischievous smile. In my late teens I’d been approached and asked to pose for a national men’s magazine. My husband at the time turned them down. But that was when my mental illness was just beginning to kick in, before I turned to booze and drugs and men to quiet my mind. Now, at age fifty, my face looked tired, my eyes seemed hollow, and I couldn’t remember the last time that a carefree smile had crossed my lips. I looked like the haggard, suffering woman I had become.
What had happened to me?
I didn’t have a job. I was a recovering alcoholic. My heart was breaking because my older son, Calen, whom I loved dearly, had been diagnosed with a severe mental illness, schizoaffective disorder, which had led to his being hospitalized for two long years.
I felt responsible for his suffering. After all, it was partly my blood flowing through his veins, and I suspected it was my own tainted genes that had sparked his disorder. A psychiatrist had diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, but the medications he prescribed were ineffectual. That was what was behind my swinging moods. It was behind the Creature.
“Kill yourself! Kill yourself!”
My sister Glenn was still inside the guesthouse. It was only a few steps away from me, but by the time I reached its door, I felt as if I had walked miles. I turned the knob, opened it, and stepped in.
Glennie was standing inside. She looked at my face and asked, “Are you all right?”
“I can’t stop thinking about killing myself,” I whispered, feeling deeply ashamed.
My big sister, six years my senior, wrapped her arms around me. I felt safe, but it didn’t last. The Creature became angry. The Creature began yelling louder and louder.
“Kill yourself! Kill yourself!”
I told myself: Hang on. Hang on. Glennie will help you. She will find a way to silence the Creature. Together we will find a way to make living worthwhile again.
PART ONE
NOT YOUR NORMAL CHILDHOOD
I learned at a very early age that being loved was synonymous with being left: that it was a painful thing to love me, and to love.
—from my private journal
CHAPTER ONE
My story begins with an Irish setter named Paddy.
I’m starting with a dog story because canines have played and continue to play an important role in my life and the lives of all us Closes. I own four dogs. My mother, Bettine Moore Close, has three; my oldest sister, Tina, has three; and my brother, Alexander, whom everyone calls Sandy, has two. Glenn starred in the movies 101 Dalmatians and 102 Dalmatians as Cruella De Vil, an evil socialite who wants to slaughter puppies for their spotted fur, but Glenn is a dog lover also, with two terrier mixes. My father, William Taliaferro Close, better known as Bill or Doc—or T-Pop to us—was a dog lover all his life. When he died in January of 2009 he left two dogs, which brought my mom’s count up to five. By my count, that’s sixteen dogs between us—without adding the ones owned by our six children.
I know why I love dogs. They love me back. They make me feel secure. I love the silly things they do, and I love it that they love me no matter what mood I’m in. Love and security are not what I always felt growing up.
But Paddy, the Irish setter—he was responsible for bringing my parents together. Their families were actually neighbors, but the children didn’t meet until they were teenagers. My mother’s parents, Charles Arthur and Elizabeth Hyde Moore, owned a farm in Greenwich, Connecticut. My dad’s parents, Edward Bennett and Elizabeth Taliaferro Close, lived about two miles away. My parents didn’t meet until they were sixteen, because after World War I the Closes moved to France, where Edward managed the American Hospital of Paris, a facility opened in 1906, when Paris had been a magnet for American intellectuals, writers, poets, and artists.
Granny Close returned with my father and his twin brother to the United States in 1938 because it seemed inevitable that Hitler was going to invade and conquer France. The fourteen-year-old twins were sent to boarding school at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, when they returned. My mother’s only sibling, Johnny, also attended St. Paul’s but was an upperclassman when the Close twins arrived. The first time my dad saw my mother was when she came to visit Johnny and he spotted her in the chapel. He glanced up at the visitors’ gallery, saw Mom, and knew in his heart that she was “the most beautiful girl” he’d ever seen. But he didn’t dare speak to her, and she would know nothing about his feelings until much later.
Around 1940, Granddad Close also left Paris, and Grandmother Moore decided to host a party to welcome the entire Close family back to Greenwich. She called my mom, Bettine, and Johnny into the parlor and announced that she wanted them to host a party for the Close twins.
“It would be nice if you introduced them to your teenage friends,” my grandmother said, “since they don’t know anyone here in Greenwich.”
The idea of throwing a party for two teenage boys whom no one really knew didn’t excite my mom or uncle, but Grandmother Moore didn’t give them much choice. Under her watchful eye, a dinner was arranged for William Taliaferro (Billy) Close and his twin, Edward Bennett Close Jr. (Teddy). My father and his twin had been born six minutes apart on June 7, 1924—Teddy first, which is why he was the twin named after their father.
Judging from family photographs, my father was exceedingly handsome. He had strong features that reflected his English and Scottish ancestry. My mother was beautiful. She was tall and slender, with dark auburn hair and a full mouth. The party had just started when Paddy, the Irish setter, came trotting across the lawn clutching a terrified bunny in its jaws. Because Paddy was a trained hunting dog, his soft mouth allowed him to carry the rabbit without puncturing its skin or breaking any bones.
As soon as my mother and father spotted Paddy, they rushed down the steps to rescue the bunny. My father suggested the two of them carry the shaking creature to a stone wall at the end of the lawn and release it on the other side, away from Paddy.
It was during that rescue mission that my parents began talking and realized that they liked each other. As soon as my dad got back from freeing the bunny, he rushed to find Teddy.
“Miss Bettine Moore is off-limits,” he declared.
The twins had a pact. If either was interested in dating a girl and was the first to announce it, the other would stay clear of her.
My dad was so enthralled with my mom that he asked her to go to a movie with him after the party ended. She agreed, and it was during that movie, when others were trying to shush them, that my father told her he was going to become a doctor.
Much later in their lives, my father would write his autobiography, A Doctor’s Life: Unique Stories, and he would explain that he’d decided to become a doctor when he was only seven years old, while touring the American Hospital. He wrote:
The head nurse, Miss Compte, took my hand and led me on a tour… She had brown eyes and a comforting smile, and her starched white apron rustled when she walked.
My stomach was tight with anticipation as we stepped out of the elevator onto the surgical floor. Two large doors swung open and tall figures wearing white hats and long white gowns emerged, smiled at us, and walked down the immaculate corridor.
I caught the whiff of ether and clean linen. Miss Compte eased the door open just enough for me to peek through. Two gowned figures leaned over a stretcher outside one of the operating rooms… Those rooms were used by some of the surgical giants of Europe… The surgical gowns, caps, and masks were like mystical robes of high priests, and the rubber gloves suggested exploring fingers capable of delicate maneuvers. But more than anything else the sound of starched linen and the faint smell of ether stimulated my imagination.
Downstairs in my father’s [hospital administration] office, I told his secretary that I would be a surgeon when I grew up, and if I wasn’t smart enough to be a surgeon, I’d be a hospital administrator like my father. She thought that was cute, bu
t I was serious. I wanted desperately to be part of that mysterious world, to share in the prestige of being called “Doctor,” and to wear the proud uniform of a surgeon.
Mom was impressed. She wanted to become a nurse, but she wasn’t interested in living a mundane life. Mom read at least two books per week, and she wanted to work in some exotic overseas location and have adventures like those of the heroines whose stories she devoured.
Bettine and Billy met at 5:00 a.m. the next day to go horseback riding. They paid as much attention to the swarms of mosquitoes buzzing around them as they did the moviegoers who had tried to keep them from talking. They were instantly in love. My mom still mourns the fact that she lost the little wooden ring my dad gave her when they were sixteen and became secretly engaged.
When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, my parents’ college plans changed. Dad told his father, “I’m leaving Harvard, marrying Bettine, and joining the Army Air Corps.” My mother left Jokake School, a boarding school in Tempe, Arizona, to marry Dad before he was shipped overseas.
Bill and Bettine, both eighteen, were wed February 6, 1943. The ceremony was held at Mooreland, where my mom wore a “white faille silk gown, with a marquisette yoke, and long tulle veil fastened to a Juliet cap of silk,” according to the newspaper. “She carried freesia and gardenias.”
When my parents married, there was no option for a woman but to take her husband’s name. The same was true of my grandparents. Grandmother Moore was a Hyde before she married Charles Arthur Moore. It’s the Hydes and the Moores, both on my mother’s side, where I believe the seeds that would later germinate into my own and my son’s mental illnesses can be found.
CHAPTER TWO
The end of the nineteenth century was America’s Gilded Age of opulence, when great family fortunes were made and mansions that rivaled European castles were built. Mrs. William B. (Caroline) Astor ruled New York’s high society, and with help from a confidant she compiled the so-called Four Hundred—a secret list of who mattered and who didn’t in New York society. How was that number reached? It was the maximum number of guests that could fit inside Mrs. Astor’s private ballroom.