THE Seattle Weekly put John William on its cover: a mugshot, post-arrest, in Seaside, 1974, in which he looks like Charles Manson with a lower hairline. Stamped across John William’s face, in a font eliciting a Bureau of Prisons stencil, is THE WORLD SUCKS, and underneath, much smaller, THE HERMIT, SANS PROZAC. The Weekly’s reporter, it’s quickly apparent, views the “interlude at Reed” as the crux of the matter (“Not that Reed is Granola University, because its curriculum is as conservative as any in the country—you don’t graduate from this school without reading prodigiously from a lot of tried and true Greeks and Romans”) and there dug up a former mental-health counselor named Gayle Griffin, who’d seen John William for “symptoms of anxiety and for the evaluation and treatment of a stress-related psychological disorder.” John William had come to see her with “pain behind his eyeballs, sleeplessness, palpitations, weight loss, incessant weeping, and generalized hysteria.” (These symptoms came on the heels of John William’s estrangement from Cindy Houghton, but he seems not to have divulged this crisis of amour to Griffin, who, absent this information, speculates that his malady stemmed from “a well-advanced oedipalism, with extreme hostility toward authority figures and with delusions of grandeur.”) Griffin had Valium in her repertoire—other Reed students used it, and she knew a doctor who would prescribe—but she couldn’t convince her patient of its efficacy. Engaging John William in talk therapy, she’d noted “an unusually keen intelligence coupled with a striking degree of megalomania.” The Weekly quotes liberally from her psychiatric reports: “Patient exhibits symptoms of intellectual obsessiveness…drives counseling toward the theater of ideas and away from psychological investigation…highly prone to emotiveness…Arrives on time for sessions but without shoes…Patient queries me about contact with parents; I’m repetitively asked to assure him of the privacy of our proceedings…Patient shows concern for the integrity and security of his counseling files…Patient is an only child with subsequent egocentrism and exhibits difficulty neutralizing aggression toward parents…I am now experiencing a well-developed and highly negative transference…Patient has apparently left Reed College 3/12/75.”
The Weekly also dug up Reed professors of the era—Marvin Leedy in philosophy and Howard Jaffe in religion and humanities—who stressed that John William, despite his strangeness, was an excellent student. The Weekly’s focus, though, was on a Ronald Metzger, decribed in its pages as “a roving professor and ecopsychologist now retired and living near Arcata, California,” who remembered John William as “a highly politicized radical and, just briefly, a personal friend.” Metzger had taught at Sierra and Skidmore before Reed, and at Humboldt State afterward; in his photo for the Weekly (caption: “Metzger at Vulture Valley Hojo”) he appears as a robust and handsome man of seventy with a rich crop of silver hair, a silver goatee, and a prominently strong neck showing at the throat of his chambray shirt; he looks earthy, tousled, sun-burnished, and agrarian. “We hung out,” Metzger told the Weekly. “John William had read my books and was eager to talk ecology. And talk we did, which I enjoyed.” (The books Meztger refers to, according to the Weekly, are Entropy and the Post-Industrial State—“an accessible critique of modernity”—Cosmology and Ecology—“musings on transcendence, animism, and mythos”—and Mind, Soul, and Nature—“Metzger’s argument for ecopsychology.”) Metzger also reported getting postcards from John William in ’75 and ’76 (they were signed, in the absurdist vein John William employed when he was feeling comically effusive, “Mother Enitharmon,” “Zosimos the Panopolitan,” “Moloch’s Pawn,” and “Simon Magus”). “I question the questioning of his sanity,” says Metzger. “To me, he was simply passionate about the right things. He had a valid critique of the world and made it. If that’s insanity, something’s wrong. Personally, I think there’s something wrong. With the world and not with John William.”
I ASKED LUCY HATCH-MYERS for Ginnie’s contact information. I tried the number Lucy gave me, got voice messaging, and, after three days, heard back from a Bill Worthington. He asked me to imagine a family tree. On one side is Ginnie’s father, Cyrus Worthington, and on the other is Cyrus’ brother, Stanford. I was to draw a line straight down from Stanford and insert the name of Stanford’s son, Stanford, Jr., and under that, of his grandson, Stanford III, and under that, the name of the guy I was talking to, Bill Worthington—“in other words, and I know it’s complicated, I’m the grandson of Ginnie’s first cousin.”
Bill Worthington’s tone, I thought, was more condescending than it needed to be. He spoke the way John William once spoke: as if he deserved to be listened to by definition. I said, “Grandson of Ginnie’s first cousin,” and he answered, “It’s a hassle to explain. All those Stans. Anyway, I’m returning your call.”
I said I thought I’d called Ginnie. Bill said I had. He said he had power of attorney on behalf of “Aunt Ginnie,” which meant he managed her affairs, since Ginnie had Alzheimer’s. “She’s eighty-five,” he explained. “We think it must be Alzheimer’s. I didn’t catch it from the message—tell me your name.”
“Neil Countryman.”
There was the pause I’d come to expect in recent weeks when I said that. I’d learned how to fill it. I said I was sorry to hear about Ginnie. I mentioned having seen her in good health at a poetry reading, and that I remembered her as lucid and vibrant at her gallery. I said, “Alzheimer’s is very hard on families.”
“Is it, now.”
He was being uncivil, so I said, “None of this was my doing, you know.”
“I don’t know that.”
“I didn’t call to argue.”
“Of course not. You’re rich.”
I said I wanted to see Ginnie. “Ginnie doesn’t know a knife from a fork,” Bill replied. “She can’t meet with you. No way.”
“It’s more for me than for her,” I said.
“Exactly,” Bill answered, and hung up.
I CALLED BLEDSOE. They advertised in the Yellow Pages as “Seattle’s Oldest and Finest Investigative Agency, with 43 years of service and results.” The next day, an investigator called to say that Ginnie was in Room 11 in “the dementia ward” at Harbor House, on Harbor Drive, in West Seattle. I asked what he meant by “dementia ward” and he answered, without sympathy, “The basement.” Dementia ward in a basement—it sounded medieval. But as it turned out, Harbor House had a wide view of Puget Sound, which on the summer afternoon I went to see Ginnie was sun-addled, shimmering, and stippled with sailboats. The institutional grounds, though small, were parklike, with some relatively tall Douglas firs and a grove of wind-bent alders. In the lobby, through tall windows, I saw a container ship pass closely by—the Korea Maru, forty-eight thousand tons—negotiating the last leg of its pan-Pacific trade voyage and looking pestered by pleasure craft. All this not far from Alki Point, where the twenty-two members of the Denny Party, including Ginnie’s great-grandfather, went ashore to found Seattle.
I gave them the truth—I was a friend of Ginnie’s son and wanted to visit her. I was pointed toward an elevator and told to push the “B” button. A number of residents basked in the wide hall, some in wheelchairs, some with walkers, some with canes, some in slippers. They made me feel more interesting than I was. Gawked at, I thought I could smell pablum. Mostly what I saw was my own possible fate, which left me defensive. In the elevator, going down, I heard the silence of doom.
An odd elevator arrival. I’d expected a reception, a greeting, a waiting area, or someone in charge, but instead the door opened on the sort of lonely cul-de-sac that makes a person think twice. Was I on the wrong floor? Maybe I’d used a service elevator in error. I appeared to be nowhere. But after scouting around two corners, I gained confidence. Room 1: Ruth Middleton. Room 2: Elizabeth Blair. At Room 3 I said “Hi” to Margaret Casey. She was parked in her doorway, monitoring the foot traffic, which at this point was me.
Virginia Worthington wasn’t in Room 11, but her door was open, so I could see the cot she slept on, and her televi
sion—which at the moment showed static—and I peeked into her private bath, which had a wheelchair-accessible shower and a floor drain. Since this was a daylight basement, she had windows, but they looked onto a service road at approximately the level of a truck’s axle. Ginnie’s room had none of the accoutrements of retirement—no books, knitting needles, crochet hooks, etc.—and that made me wonder what she did all day. There wasn’t even soap in the bathroom.
Farther along the hall was what I think is called a “station,” and here, at a long counter, sat a black woman in an orderly’s uniform—it looked like green crepe paper—and arrayed around her, leaning on the counter or standing nearby, were other orderlies, also black, also looking as if they were wearing crepe paper, and surrounding these orderlies were about two dozen old white people. They were variously immobile, and, as with the people upstairs, their interest in my presence seemed inordinate and, I have to add, in some cases aggressive. I was spoken to and yelled at. One woman, as if reciting a mantra, reeled off her name, her son’s name, and his phone number. I was also thought to be a doctor.
Ginnie was eating with a walker beside her in a dining area named for a donor. She was alone, and mostly bones now—bones and the garish makeup of a tart—and her hair had been cropped and moussed. No more chignon, leather pants, or bolero jacket; no more glorious art; no more fine poetry. Now she had a bib, and when I sat down across from her she looked up from her macaroni and steamed carrots and said, “You.”
“Me.”
“They told me you left.”
“Who told you that?”
“I thought you were at school.”
“Which school did they tell you?”
“He went to Barnard.”
“Who went to Barnard?”
“Guy Benedetti,” answered Ginnie.
I put my elbows on the table and leaned on them, toward her. “Mrs. Barry,” I said. “I’m Neil Countryman, John William’s friend.”
“I know who you are.”
“I knew him in high school.”
“At Barnard he had herpes.”
“I knew him in the seventies.”
“It was Broadway and West End.”
“I knew him in Seattle thirty years ago.”
An orderly checked on Ginnie. I said we were fine. Ginnie said, “She’s Ethiopian. Her parents live in Gondar.”
She ate for a while. Then she said, “Don’t you dare think I’m stupid.”
“No.”
“Or let me give you the Freudian retort. It was forever the queen’s gambit declined, make a note of it. Or the trapper trapped. Or thrust and counterthrust. It was very much the naked queen’s defense. Why don’t you cruelly repeat that?”
She opened wide her mouth, so that I would see the carrot mush inside. There was a quality of flagrant insult to this. I waited until she was done with that, and then I said, “What I came to say is that I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t have seduced me.”
“I really hope you understand that I’m sorry.”
“Satyr.”
“I should have said something, Mrs. Barry. A long time ago.”
She lifted her fork as if to strike me with it. As my friend the classicist had observed: quintessential harridan. It occurred to me that she might live for a long time, that her breath didn’t want to leave her lungs, and that she was afraid.
She said, “Dr. Spock encouraged bedtime reading.”
“Do you understand me?”
“Your generation is awful,” she sneered. “You used to call me your Seattle box-house baby. Don’t you remember that?”
“That wasn’t me.”
“Let’s not pretend.”
I gave up. She ate some macaroni. She said, “You remind me of an egret. A perfect egret. You have a pointed breastbone. I ought to trim your wings.”
“Anyway,” I said, “I apologize. I should have told you.”
“You should have paid,” she said.
I took Robert Leventhal’s Chronic Obsessions from a bag at my feet and turned it toward her so she could read the title and look at the line drawing, on the cover, of a woman’s naked, headless torso. “I brought you this,” I said. “It’s a gift.”
Ginnie put her fork down and, turning her head to one side, touched her hair lightly. I said, “‘Alki, 1851.’ On the wall of your study. In Laurelhurst.”
“Don’t you dare think I’m stupid.”
“I don’t,” I said. “But I thought you might like to have this copy, in case you don’t have one anymore.”
“You’re a shadow,” hissed Ginnie. “You’re his shadow. Get out.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, one more time.
Some very credible people believe that everything important happens to you before you’re six years old, but who knows? There are things lost to history with no eyewitnesses, and there are also the unjustly accused. To put this another way, Chronic Obsessions might not mean anything, and Rand might be lying. Or maybe the truth is that truth is too complicated. If I extrapolate from myself, there’s a lot of deceit in the world without a beginning, middle, or end. The way it really works, a lot of the time, is that you suffer from the weight of what happened, from what you said and did, so you lie as therapy. Now the story you make up starts to take up space otherwise reserved for reality. For phenomena you substitute epiphenomena. Skew becomes ascendant. The secondary becomes primary. When it’s time to confess, you don’t know what you’re saying. Are you telling the truth, or do you confuse your lies with reality? The question is comical. The answer is lost in the maelstroms of consciousness. It’s even possible to pretend, eventually, that the question wasn’t asked. You’ve been kidding yourself about yourself for so long, you’re someone else. Your you is just a fragile fabrication. Every morning, you have to wake up, assemble this busy, dissembling monster, and get him or her on his or her feet again for another round of fantasy. Is this what some sutras by Buddhists are about? Maybe. The book-length bromides on mental health? At times. The biographies on politicians? Take Nixon or Clinton. Anyway, I don’t know anything about Rand or Ginnie. I don’t know if anyone tried to strangle John William. I don’t really know who tormented whom, or why, or if anyone was even tormented at all. I don’t even know much about myself. I only know that Ginnie protested with Chronic Obsessions pressed against her bibbed chest. Then she kicked me out. That was it for me at Harbor House. As I was walking away, she said to my back, “If only you knew the first thing about torment! I was born in the wrong place and time! I was trapped!”
JAMIE AND I TURNED IN the ’92 Civic and bought a hybrid, which we recently took to the Canadian Okanagan—the Napa of the North that Wiley and Erin told us about. We walked, swam, biked, sunned, tasted wines, ate well, bought pottery, and watched the sun go down, and though all of this was fun, none of it made us happy. We both wanted something else that was unnamable. It might be forever unnamable. In this regard, money changes nothing, which Jamie and I knew before we had it.
When I think about John William now, I think about someone who followed through, and then I’m glad not to have followed through, to still be breathing, to still be here with people, to still be walking in the mountains, and to still be uncertain—even with all this cash on hand—in a way I seem to have no choice about. I’m a hypocrite, of course, and I live with that, but I live.
TODAY I WENT to a used-book store on Admiral Way. It’s crammed, because its owner recently closed a second shop, in Greenwood, and consolidated the collections. Half the titles are in boxes, and these boxes are everywhere, one on top of the next, which frustrates me, since I can’t look into them. Still, one thing I like about having money is that I feel looser in a used-book store. I’ll buy a title just so I can look at it more closely before giving it away. For example, I recently bought Cocktail Shakers, Lava Lamps, and Tupperware for $6.98. I wouldn’t have done that before. Too much of an indulgence. In fact, I’m now struggling with a tendency to collect. It’s been liberat
ed by money. I bought a first-edition hardcover, in good condition, of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s Baby and Child Care for $39.98, which is absurd. Why did I need to have it? I’ve been looking at it lately, though, since Spock was influential. His points of wisdom and advice are numbered 1 through 805:
1. You know more than you think you do.
2. Parents Are Human—They have needs.
3. Some children are a lot more difficult than others.
4. At best, there’s a lot of hard work and deprivation.
5. Needless self-sacrifice sours everybody.
6. Parents should expect something from their children.
7. Parents are bound to get cross.
And so on, to the final line of the book, which is “It’s not the words but the music that counts.”
My purchases are piling up now. Literary Hills of San Francisco. The Rights of Hospital Patients. Jesus and the Lost Goddess. The Travels of Lao Ts’an. Poems by Ko Un. The Drama of the Gifted Child. Boeing in Peace and War. Taking Stock: A True Tale of Seattle’s Investment Community. Back issues of The Mountaineer. Back issues of Popular Mechanics. They all wait for me, and I’ll never get to most of them. I read somewhere recently that there are at least thirty-two million different books in the world, and that most are out of print. The ones that aren’t are read by a very small percentage of the world’s population. Most people have never heard of most authors, much less read them. Golden ages of literature have come and gone without our knowing anything about them today. Forgive me for teaching—it’s so hard to stop. It’s just that I hear, sometimes, about a writer achieving immortality. Shakespeare, for example, who wrote, “Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.”
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