by Steve Lopez
“Do you know who this is?” I ask Caroline.
“Mathaniel,” she says shyly, a bit overwhelmed by the ensemble, but very much impressed with the yellow bandanna.
“Are you going to play your violin?” she asks as he carefully sets his instruments on the dark wood of the living room floor.
There’s no bashfulness on Nathaniel’s part. He quickly makes himself at home, acting like an eccentric and gabby uncle who’s dropped by after a long absence. He doesn’t show quite as much interest in Caroline as I expected, but as an obnoxiously proud dad, I feel that way about everybody. In Nathaniel’s case, though, I suppose I’m beginning to think of him as extended family. Having him here seems natural and overdue. He sets his instruments on the floor of the living room, along with his music stand, his sheet music and a weighted contraption he uses to keep the pin of his cello from sliding on the floor. He sees Alison’s piano in the corner of the room, bolts over and bangs out a little jazz riff.
“I didn’t know you ever played much piano,” I say.
“Oh, I don’t play piano, really. That was a little thing I worked out one day at Juilliard and it knocked them out. I don’t even know what it was. Did you like it? Really? I just jumped right in and gave it that little vamp. Whoooa! They liked it at Juilliard, or they said they did, anyway. They seemed to like it. Of course, I wasn’t a piano man at Juilliard, where you had some of the really talented youngsters from all over the world. Unbelievably talented young maestros from China, Japan, Europe, of course. I don’t even know where. A lot of the Yo-Yo Ma type people. Now there was a youngster who was off the charts with talent, like a bird type of performer, out of LaGuardia, JFK, the New York City airports at that time, big birds flying in and out from all over the world, Canada, United States of America.”
I’m so accustomed to this kind of rambling that I barely notice the jumble. There’s often a thread in there somewhere, it seems to me, or at least a semi-logical association. But when I catch Alison’s eye, I know what she’s thinking. In Nathaniel’s high-anxiety monologue, she hears her brother’s voice—the brother she thinks might be bipolar, though he’s never been diagnosed as such. She remembers the years of anguish following the change that occurred in his teens, his behavior alternately manic and sullen. I know Alison loves me for loving Nathaniel, and through me she cares about him, too. But I see in her eyes on Easter Sunday that she is afraid of what I’m in for—what all of us are in for. Don’t worry, I want to tell her. He’s doing fine and he’s getting better. Trust me.
Nathaniel flutters about our living room and kitchen, yammering as he sets up to play. Caroline, who is used to holding court and being the only one in the house privileged to talk nonstop, looks like a child who fears she might not get the first piece of cake at her own party. When Nathaniel begins playing Saint-Saëns, Caroline stops and stares at him and his cello. She saw him play once before, near the tunnel, but now the music is in her house and she can hear it and feel it coming up through the floorboards. She’s mesmerized, at least for a minute, and I envy Nathaniel’s ability all the more. His music has warmed the house and captured my daughter’s attention.
Nathaniel stays on his high through breakfast and gratefully examines the goodies in the Easter basket we fixed for him (chocolate treats, nuts, socks and toothpaste). He unexpectedly throws out a few words in French and before I can ask what he’s saying he sings a line of Italian opera. I tell Alison she should hear his Shakespearean delivery. Nathaniel happily obliges, and it’s as if the Prince of Denmark has joined us for breakfast, punctuating his soliloquy with a fork. “To die, to sleep, To sleep—perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.”
The transformation of this man who jumped back in fear at our first meeting is dizzying. At the moment he’s entirely unguarded and free, reveling in his own resurrection. He seems to be savoring the day, the food, the company. “Look at this child,” he says, taking in Caroline as if her existence is an act of divinity. “I can’t believe that you can create a little person like that. I’d like to start a family, too. I don’t know if that’s even possible.”
He’s looking at me, waiting for a response. I look across the table at Alison, whose expression tells me I’m on my own. I don’t really know what to say. It’s heartbreaking to hear him express what he’s missed in life, and just as tragic for him to trust that it might still be within reach.
“Of course it is,” I say. “You’re only two years older than I am. But you’re busy enough with other things for now, don’t you think?”
We head out back after our meal. I want him to feel a fresh breeze blow in from the lake and across the redwood deck that sits on top of my garage, with a view of eighty-year-old houses hugging the canyon, the Griffith Observatory and Hollywood sign in the western distance. It’s hard not to feel a touch of guilt. Look at what I have here in this enclave of million-dollar homes, five miles from the squalor and hard limits of Skid Row. Look at my wife, and my daughter, and my health. But for all his longing about a family of his own, and despite what might have been, Nathaniel seems free of self-pity for now.
“Words do not express thoughts very well,” he says, quoting Hermann Hesse as he readies for a concert under sunny skies while Caroline spins circles around him on her tricycle. I call Jennifer in Atlanta and hand him the phone.
“Happy Easter to you, too,” Nathaniel says giddily, telling his sister he can see the Hollywood sign across the hills and canyons. He is radiant, and happier than I’ve ever seen him. A neighbor looks down curiously from a nearby balcony at my guest with the yellow crime scene bandanna. Nathaniel says to his sister: “I’m with Mr. Lopez and Mrs. Lopez and little Caroline. I can see the Hollywood sign, Jennifer. I never knew Los Angeles could be so beautiful.”
24
Adam Crane of the Los Angeles Philharmonic is thrilled at the news of Nathaniel’s move indoors and other signs of progress, and he makes a standing offer for him to attend concerts at Disney Hall. Is Nathaniel up for it? I wonder. He’s a different man than the one who attended the rehearsal six months earlier. Either that, or I’m simply more comfortable around him. I do know that any mention of Disney Hall launches him into a reverie, and it happens again when I ask if he’d like to see a chamber music performance.
“I would like that very much,” he says.
“You understand it would be a concert this time, not a rehearsal?”
No problem, he says. The concerns he had six months ago, about being in a crowd and feeling out of place, are gone. His only issue, he tells me, is the program, explaining that Serenade in D major, Op. 8, Piano Trio No. 3 in C minor, Op. 1, No. 3, and String Quartet No. 5 in A major, Op. 18, No. 5, are not among Beethoven’s more celebrated works, nor will we see the entire orchestra “in its full complement.”
Don’t worry, I tell him. We have a standing invitation to attend concerts, and this may well be the first of many.
Once again, Crane greets us in the lobby and gives Nathaniel VIP treatment, escorting us to our seats and waging another lively discussion about the program. Nathaniel’s clothes are neater and cleaner this time, his grooming more meticulous. He sits quietly for two hours, perfectly at ease, with an occasional rhythm tap on his leg or a “bravo.”
Less than a month later, we return to see the Philharmonic perform Beethoven’s Fifth and Eighth Symphonies. Nathaniel calls me a few days before the concert to ask if he can bring along a woman named Pam, whom he met while she was working on a documentary about Skid Row musicians. Sure, I tell him, although I’m not sure what his interest in her might be. She’s just a friend, he says. I take Alison, too, and the four of us have a lovely Sunday afternoon at Disney Hall. Crane escorts us to the same section where we sat the last time, and Nathaniel is in a particularly good mood. I’m wondering if it’s because Pam is here. She’s a bright and attractive woman several years younger than Natha
niel, and I feel just the slightest tug of concern. I remember his comment at my house about wanting to start his own family, and wonder if he has feelings for Pam that will only hurt him in the end.
Crane excuses himself just before the program begins, telling us he’s filling in as the announcer for the day. Nathaniel spots Peter Snyder and Ben Hong onstage and says each of their names quietly, smiling happily. Then we hear Crane’s voice, and Nathaniel says his name, too. The last thing Crane says over the PA system is that the concert is being recorded, and he asks that all applause be held until the room returns to quiet after each piece. More than two thousand people hear this request, and only one will ignore it. At the end of the Eighth Symphony, a single patron has been stirred to a level of uncontrollable passion. He scoots up in his seat as the last note is struck, and before the sound subsides completely, he unleashes a lone “Bravo!”
Nathaniel.
If Nathaniel’s mind plays tricks on him, so, too, does mine. I make myself believe anything is possible. Moments like those at Easter and at Disney Hall reveal a man who is charming, witty and full of passion. The growth on the upside of his potential is so great, I deceive myself into thinking that his darker moments will diminish as he continues to get better. I suppose there’s a degree of selfishness involved. Not only do I genuinely want him to get better but I want to be able to say that I helped make it happen. Yes, there’s ego involved, as much as I’d like to believe otherwise, and my sacrifices would make more sense if a happy ending were taking shape. So when people ask me how Nathaniel is doing, I don’t tell them that he’s still writing on the walls of his apartment, occasionally scratching out a swastika or saying that smokers should be put to death. I don’t tell them that on some days he sprinkles talcum powder on his face and calls himself Mr. White, or that he occasionally uses a brassiere as a scarf and has no explanation as to why, nor any acknowledgment as to how odd it appears. My motive, in part, is to protect him and to defend his dignity. When people ask how he’s doing, I’m more inclined to tell them that Disney Hall patrons were straining during intermission to hear the erudite observations of my sophisticated friend Nathaniel, who has a way to go but is coming along nicely. Maybe another of my deceptions is thinking I have the constitution and patience to work in the mental health field full-time. Alison was right about me in that regard, and though I haven’t given up entirely on the idea of a career change, and have even talked to the head of a nonprofit organization about a possible job, I’ve decided to stick with the column for now.
One day in the Lamp courtyard, a client puts my limitations as an amateur social worker in perspective when he offers both a reality check and a critique.
“When are you going to write the real story about your friend Nathaniel?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the way he treats people around here.”
“And what do you mean by that?”
“The names he has for people. He’s got a mouth on him. If you’re not black you’re a white bitch. That kind of thing.”
I’ve learned it’s not uncommon for people with schizophrenia to be hyperreligious or hyper-race-conscious. But I didn’t realize Nathaniel had descended into daily confrontations with fellow clients at Lamp.
“We do have some issues,” Stuart Robinson says when I ask what’s going on.
It usually begins with someone violating the supreme commandments in Nathaniel’s nonnegotiable code of human conduct—thou shalt not smoke cigarettes, and thou shalt not flick the butts. In his mind, the guilty deserve nothing less than an eternity in hell, roasting in fields of smoldering ash. The man of the arts who was so eloquent at my house and in the company of world-class musicians calls the offenders niggers, white bitches and fags, and if they don’t like it he stands his ground with clenched fists, ready to back up his convictions.
Is it possible that I barely know Nathaniel, that my perspective is blurred by both my own selfish desires and the fact that he is usually on his best behavior in my presence? The more I visit, the more I catch glimpses of this darker Nathaniel.
“That’s the kind of niggerly behavior that gives all of us a bad name,” he tells me one day when two black clients, both of them smoking, have a belligerent argument about which one owes the other a dollar. Nathaniel’s rage rises as theirs does, as if he’s feeding on it. “Yeah, get another dollar and go buy some more cigarettes and take those drugs that are killing the women and children of Los Angeles. White plague, bubonic plague, sickle-cell anemia. You’re killing yourselves and you’re killing me!”
I try to calm him but he says this has got to stop. These people shouldn’t be allowed in here and something’s got to be done about it. I tell him I’ll talk to Stuart Robinson and he tells me I better tell someone else, too, because Stuart Robinson “isn’t man enough to do his job.”
He’s just having a bad day, I tell myself, though I know it’s more than that. The man who came to my house exists in full, and I suspect he’ll resurface. But this Nathaniel is as real as the other, and he now seems to be spending as much time courting trouble as he used to spend playing cello and violin. This is what Mollie Lowery was talking about when she warned me that recovery is not linear. Sometimes it’s a step forward, sometimes it’s a step back, and sometimes you can’t tell the difference. Solutions create new problems. Nathaniel has become part of a community, but it puts him into daily conflict with others. He’s got an apartment, but he has begun upsetting neighbors and management by drawing on the walls inside and out.
What do I do now?
Six months after the mayor of Los Angeles put Skid Row on his fix-it list, the Midnight Mission plays host to a busload of public officials, including President Bush’s homeless czar, celebrating the release of a ten-year plan to end homelessness in Los Angeles County. The plan doesn’t look bad on paper, as far as it goes, although any government plan that aims to end any monumental social problem is doomed to fail. To end homelessness, the county supervisors would have to end poverty, fix the schools, build several dozen Lamps, provide health insurance to those without, solve the affordable-housing crisis and develop a living-wage economy, none of which is in this plan. The key feature of the $100 million proposal is a call for five regional centers to handle the county’s estimated ninety thousand homeless, but even that is a long shot, because there isn’t a single community that wants to host anything resembling Skid Row. Philip Mangano, President Bush’s point man, takes the microphone to proclaim that the suffering of so many people is a disgrace, and L.A. county supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky agrees that the time is right for change. “We’ve got some momentum politically to do something about this, we’ve got some money to attach to that political momentum, and it may be an opportunity that will not pass our way again in our political lifetimes.”
I’m listening, but I’m not entirely in the room. This meeting has brought out a caravan of TV news trucks in part because of the Skid Row coverage by my colleagues and Nathaniel’s story, but he’s already getting the kind of help the public officials are talking about, and I’m not sure how much good it will do him in the long run. It took me a year to lure him inside, and now he’s in the Lamp courtyard a half block from this meeting place, creating yet another disturbance for all I know. As the meeting proceeds, I get handshakes and whispered notes of gratitude from Skid Row providers who thank me for helping bring attention to their plight. I feel awkward and unworthy, and out of the corner of my eye I see someone else approach. But this guy has no intention of congratulating me.
It’s a downtown resident I’ve seen before, and I’ve heard that he is among the critics who think my only interest in Skid Row is personal glory.
“How much?” he keeps asking.
Several heads turn and I feel the blood fill my face. I’m half embarrassed and half enraged.
How much money am I making for exploiting Skid Row? he continues. How much for exploiting Nathaniel? He hears I’m writing a book about it all.
How much will I give Nathaniel?
My pulse quickens and my ears burn. All I can hear is “How much? How much? How much?”
I ignore him until I no longer can, finally leaning down to this shaggy-haired man, who is a head shorter than I.
“It’s none of your business,” I tell him.
He keeps at it, and I know I should ignore him or leave. But I feel, insanely, as if I have to respond, so I lead him into the hallway. We’re followed by a Midnight Mission employee and two senior officers who are at the meeting with the county sheriff. They’ve seen something in my eyes that worries them.
Through gritted teeth, I tell my tormentor that my book and my relationship with Nathaniel are none of his business, and I don’t appreciate his putting on a sideshow at a public meeting. But saying this doesn’t begin to calm me; it only pushes me further out of control. A voice in my head tells me to back off, but I can’t. Is this how a person feels before a coronary? I’m trembling now, my jowls quivering as I tap his shoulder with a finger. All that stops me from losing it and doing something really stupid is the thought of what a story it would make if I’m hauled away a twitching mess, perhaps in a straitjacket, from a meeting about the horrors of Skid Row.
“This is none of your business!” I tell him one last time, as if it will mean anything. He’s already gotten the best of me. I withdraw and return to the meeting out of breath. At the first sign that it’s about to break up, I head for the exit.
Everything I’ve written about Nathaniel is extremely personal, and yet I’ve shared it with thousands of readers. Have I exploited him? Is it possible for me to keep writing about him without doing so? I’ve asked myself the question before, and the answer remains the same. I’m telling the story of his courage, his challenge and his humanity, and I believe there’s a benefit to him, to me and to the public. If I’m overly sensitive to criticism, it’s because I’m frustrated by my own limitations, and because I don’t know whether, in the end, I’ll have had as big an impact on Nathaniel’s life as he will have had on mine.