Unhinged

  “No,” I say with a mixture of revulsion and awe.

  Mark spends another full hour cleaning every square inch of my studio apartment, and he even shampoos my hideous shag carpeting until it reveals its true color as lime green, not baby-vomit green.

  “Well, Anna?” Mark asks, pulling out a clipboard loaded with order forms. “How many can I put you down for?”

  “Mark, you know I can’t afford one of these. I’m just here to critique your sales pitch, and truth be told, you did great.”

  Mark does a double-take, then balls up his fists. I can actually see him fight to stifle a fit of rage, can see the waves of barely-contained anger undulate up and out across his torso and into his quivering arms. But he does it. He takes a deep breath, smiles, and his near-outburst evaporates without a trace.

  Seeing this, I am both surprised and proud. Is it really possible for my brother to function in normal society without erupting into violent, delusion-fueled insanity at any moment? If what I’ve just witnessed is any example, it certainly seems so.

  “I know you can’t afford one, Anna.” Mark speaks carefully, enunciating the vowels and consonants with the slow precision of someone learning to speak English for the first time. “That was just part of the sales pitch, is all. They taught us to say that. I was just practicing, is all.”

  “I know you were, Mark. And you did a good job. I wish there was something I could do to afford your vacuum cleaners, but I just can’t right now. I’m sure you’ll sell a lot of vacuums to other people, though.”

  “Thanks. But there is something you can do for me,” he says. “It will really help me out. You see, I need to buy some nice suits. I can’t sell vacuum cleaners in anything but suits, and they even stipulate what kind of suit you can wear out on sales calls, your accessories, that kind of stuff. Corporate policy, and all that. But I can only afford to buy part of what I need. Do you think you could lend me some money to help me get the clothes and accessories I need to start working? I’ll pay you back out of my first paycheck.”

  A red flag goes up immediately in my brain. After all the stunts I’ve seen Mark pull over the years, I know better than to entrust him with money, even a short-term loan—especially considering the budgeting gymnastics I have to do every month to cover rent, utilities, food, and school expenses on the meager earnings I get as a work-study desk clerk on campus. But I still can’t deny the marked change in him. This time, it seems that Mark just might have found something he can do well and that he obviously enjoys, something that very well might earn him a good, steady living. As corny as it might seem, I really believe that selling vacuum cleaners door to door just might be the means by which my brother saves himself from himself. He’s so vivacious, so full of light and optimism, I can’t help but be carried away by it right alongside him.

  “All right, Mark, I’ll tell you what. Rather than me giving you the cash, why don’t you and me go to the store together with a list of the things the company says you have to wear for sales calls. We’ll buy them together. I’ll keep the receipts, and you can pay me back from your first paycheck. I can’t afford to spend more than a hundred bucks, though, and you’ll need to pay me back no later than the first of the month so I can afford to make rent. Will that be okay?”

  Mark hesitates, then nods. Clearly, he expected me just to fork over the cash, but with his newfound ability to control his temper, he bites the bullet and settles for what I offer.

  Mark drives us to a nearby Sears department store in the beat-up, half-rusted-out Honda Civic he bought a year ago with some leftover student loan money. We make a beeline for the men’s department, where Mark immediately begins pulling white Oxford shirts off a rack. “I’ll need a bunch of these,” he says, breathless as a society housewife on a Rodeo Drive shopping binge. “And these too.” He grabs six or seven pairs of black wool-poly-blend slacks off another rack, then he makes for the necktie section.

  “Mark, I’m not buying you all of this,” I call after him. “Just pick out one or two outfits, enough to get you started.” He ignores me and grabs a handful of plain black silk ties from a rack and adds them to his pile. He pulls two or three black polyester suit jackets off a clearance rack without bothering to check their size, then he waltzes up to the checkout counter, where he drops the whole pile in front of a stunned clerk.

  “We’ll take all this,” he says proudly.

  “No, we won’t,” I contradict, trying hard to keep my voice steady.

  The clerk glances from me, to Mark, then back to me. “Are you going to buy this stuff or not?” she asks.

  “He’s going to try some of it on first,” I reply, already more embarrassed than I’ve ever been with Mark in public. “Aren’t you, Mark?”

  Mark grabs up the pile of clothes again and skulks off toward the fitting rooms. The fitting-room attendant will only allow him to bring in four items, forcing him to narrow down his selection. Instead of putting the unwanted clothes on the rack provided for the purpose, though, he simply tosses them on the counter in front of the exasperated attendant, an elderly woman wearing thick glasses on a chain. She stares at both of us with contempt through her purple-tinted, concave lenses, sighs, and shakes her head.

  After a few minutes behind the fitting room’s louvered doors, Mark finally emerges with two sets of shirts and pants, one jacket, and two ties that satisfy him. I inspect the price tags and after totaling them in my head find that I can only afford to pay for one jacket, one pair of slacks, two shirts and one tie and still stay under my hundred-dollar budget. “I’m only paying for these,” I tell him, and set the approved items on the counter in front of the bewildered checkout clerk. “If you want more than this, pay for it yourself.”

  The clerk totals up the bill. It turns out the suit jacket has an additional at-register markdown, shaving about $10.00 off the total. It all adds up to $89.99.

  “You still owe me ten bucks,” Mark hisses as I pay the clerk.

  I snatch up the shopping bags in a fury. I already regret what I’ve done for Mark, who’s fast slipping back into the prototypical entitlement-and-manipulation behavior I recognize from our childhood. “I don’t owe you anything,” I snap. “This is a loan, remember?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” he mumbles. He stops short, seems to collect himself. “Sorry. I really do appreciate what you’re doing, sis. Seriously.” Then he envelops me in a huge bear hug.

  Mark hasn’t hugged me since we were little kids. My hardened heart melts immediately—as I’m sure Mark wants it to.

  “There’s just one more little, eensy-weensy thing that I need for my job,” Mark whispers as he releases me from the bear hug. “We need to go to the bedding department for it.”

  “The bedding department? Excuse me?”

  Mark doesn’t answer. He’s already taken off for the escalator.

  By the time I catch up with him, Mark is pulling oddly packaged, suspender-like contraptions off a rack. “What the hell are those?” I ask. “And why do you need them to sell vacuum cleaners?”

  “They’re linen clips,” Mark explains as he loads his arms with Sears’ entire stock of the springy-looking things. “They’re designed for keeping sheets in place on mattresses. But they’re great for clipping pants cuffs closed too. I need to clip my pants cuffs closed on sales calls so my legs don’t get sucked into the vacuum.”

  I blink. Clipping pants cuffs with linen appliances to prevent a grown man’s body from being sucked into a vacuum cleaner sounds a lot more like something my brother’s schizophrenic brain would conjure up than any corporate policy. I glance at one of the clips’ price tags; to my shock, I see that they cost $12.00 each. “I really don’t think you need these to sell vacuum cleaners,” I snap. I take the pile of elastic springs out of Mark’s arms and start putting them back on the rack.

  He reacts immediately. “I have to have at least two of these,” he shrieks, and grabs my arm to stop me from putting them back on the rack. “Have to. So I don’t ge
t sucked in. I don’t want to get sucked in, Anna. Please don’t let me get sucked in.”

  Mark stares me down with a look of such deep, primal horror that I cave.

  Without another word, I snatch two linen clips off the rack, take them to the counter, and pay for them. I feel dirty inside doing it, but the power of Mark’s persuasion is just too great to resist. Buying those two stupid elastic gadgets puts me way over budget, and I’m not even sure that Mark won’t try to fleece me for more.

  In less than twenty minutes, I’ve blown almost two weeks’ part-time student pay on clothes and pants cuffs for my brother to wear for a shady door-to-door sales job he has yet to receive a single paycheck for. And all at once, the realization that I’ll probably never see a cent of that money again leaves me icy-cold.

  How could I be so stupid? How could I have let this happen, knowing all that I do about Mark and his wild schemes? The answer is simple. Mark has a disease, and sometimes that disease—schizophrenia—is a lot more powerful than any one person, however smart or street-savvy. It’s like a steamroller, flattening everyone and everything in its path, including its victims, who become mere vessels for its outward destruction. The only thing that keeps me from slapping him across the face right in the middle of the Sears bedding department is the knowledge that the person grifting me for two weeks’ pay isn’t really my brother—it’s the overload of serotonin and dopamine in his brain that does it, not him. And sometimes I’m as powerless to fight the force of that chemical imbalance as he is. He can’t even be relied upon to take his prescribed antipsychotic meds with any regularity, so how can I possibly expect him to behave like a normal, responsible person? So I cave. The pity I feel for him makes it impossible not to.

  It’s this very same knowledge that even today makes me reluctant to judge any person (or family) for enabling a family member’s mental illness. Often, it’s impossible not to—the illness doesn’t just afflict the afflicted, it afflicts everyone the afflicted knows and loves too.

  Mark only ends up selling vacuum cleaners for about a week. Apparently selling is hard work, and hard work has never been something Mark has been capable of. The idea of schlepping heavy chrome vacuums into little old ladies’ homes and grifting them with usurious installment plans twelve hours a day doesn’t sit well with Mark’s body or mind, and he quits within a few days. And since he doesn’t complete at least two full weeks of door-to-door selling, the terms of his sales contract require he forfeit all pay.

  It’s the outcome I should have expected. Still, it stings. Especially when the end of the month comes and I’m a hundred-odd bucks short of making my bills.

  In desperation, I call my father and explain what happened.

  There’s a long pause on the phone as my father ponders Mark’s latest gaffe. Dad clears his throat several times, something I know he does whenever he’s angry.

  Finally, he speaks. “So, how much are you out?”

  “About a hundred twenty-five,” I reply.

  “Well, it could have been a lot worse, I suppose. Do you have enough to tide you over this month?”

  “Not really. I put in for some more hours over at the dorm but I won’t get paid for them for another two weeks. Rent’s due, plus electric, and I need to buy a few more books for my Indian History class—”

  Dad clears his throat again. “I’ll wire you a hundred-fifty tomorrow. The full amount Mark took from you, plus an extra twenty-five for your trouble. Don’t worry about paying me back—I’ll go after Mark for it myself. Just don’t give your brother any more money, or buy him anything, ever. No matter what he tells you. Got it?”

  “Yeah, got it.”

  Dad hangs up. I only wonder why he doesn’t follow his own advice when it comes to Mark. But I know better than to say that aloud.

  This experience is my first glimpse into Mark’s ongoing fascination with multilevel marketing, get-rich-quick schemes, pyramid scams, and all things shady and slick. But it won’t be the last.

  Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. That aphorism fits Mark’s fascination with pyramid scams perfectly. Year in, year out, Mark involves himself in scams and schemes that are different in name only, each time expecting that the latest commission-driven, upfront-initial-investment sales system he’s discovered will lead to the riches and Easy Street life he so craves. And year in, year out, all Mark gets out of those schemes are lost initial investments, dashed hopes, and alienated friends and family.

  There are insurance schemes, and a couple more boiler-room outfits that hire Mark to “sell” nonexistent gutters and aluminum siding over the phone. None of them ever pay Mark a dime, even when he puts in hours and hours of cold-calling and product selling.

  And then there’s a dodgy investment-products sales scheme run by a major banking institution. Even if it looks legit on the surface, it’s basically a pyramid scheme that relies heavily on cult-like indoctrination methods for its salespeople and sales directors. New recruits are first made to recruit friends and family to become the scheme’s clients. Those friends and family are then encouraged (if not outright bullied) into shifting their entire savings and investment portfolios over to complete control and management by the company, whose investment products are targeted at lower- and middle-class people without substantial financial knowledge and are structured in a way that transfers most of their investment returns into the pockets of salespeople.

  Mark gets involved with this latest scheme shortly after he returns from his brief stint in the Army. I’ve spent the past year working as a research reports editor at a major Chicago financial institution, where I have to pass the Series 7 and 63 exams required for stockbroker licensing, so I’m hardly a neophyte when it came to asset management—at least in theory. That doesn’t deter Mark from hard-selling me when I come home to Evansville for Christmas 1999, however.

  Mark grabs me by the arm at Memaw Jones’s buffet table and pulls me aside. “Anna, you really need to roll your IRA and 401k into my new company’s products.”

  I yank free of his grip. “I don’t really need to do anything with my money right now, Mark. Least of all give you control of it.” Given his track record, I might as well just hand my life savings over to the Mafia and hope for the best.

  Mark sighs, balls his fists, folds his arms across his chest in his now-trademark gesture of impudent offense. “I’ll have you know that Dad came to an investment-product presentation with me, and he was very impressed. He says it’s great I’m getting into financial services.”

  I sigh. With two ex-wives, five kids by three different women, and spendthrift habits himself, our father isn’t exactly the picture of sound financial advice. And Dad has always had a bit of a blind spot where Mark is concerned, anyway—even his current wife thinks so. But I don’t remark on this. Instead I just narrow my eyes at him and say, “I think you should stop this get-rich-quick crap and get a real job. I’ve read up a bit on this company you’re with, you know. It’s basically a pyramid scheme. Haven’t you learned your lesson on those yet?”

  “It is not a pyramid scheme. I’ll show you everything—”

  “Tell me something, Mark. Mom says you’ve been doing this investment-sales stuff for what, six months now? Six months, and you haven’t actually been paid anything yet. Isn’t that right?”

  “Well, technically that’s true, but I have to make my manager’s quotas first—”

  I laugh. “So basically, whatever commissions you earn go to your manager, and you get nothing.”

  “Well, for now I’m just an unpaid apprentice, so I’m doing the sales for training purposes only, but later on I’ll be making a lot—”

  “You know Mark, I’m pretty sure that’s called slave labor, and it’s illegal. Why don’t you buy a clue already and just get a real job like everybody else?” I turn on my heel and walk away.

  It’s easy to see now why Mark would fall for the
se schemes over and over, even though it was hard to understand and accept at the time. What’s harder is understanding why my family members fall for them over and over again too, and provide Mark with free rent, food, and utilities until the latest scam “gets him on his feet” (as my mother does time and time again), sinking money into his schemes until he “just gets a break” (as my father, grandparents, and even I do more than once). Tough love is hard, I guess, but I’m not sure the alternative does anyone any favors.

  There has been a fair bit of research into the psychology of people who repeatedly fall victim to cults, scams, and pyramid schemes. Sociologists and psychologists who have studied religious cults, multilevel-marketing scams, and the like have consistently found that these organizations not only tend to attract persons with schizophrenia or schizotypal personality disorder as their members (or “victims,” as the case may be), but the leaders of these organizations are quite often schizophrenic personalities too.[8] Like breeds like, in other words.

  As susceptible as Mark and his schizophrenic brain are to get-rich-quick schemes, Mark also craves something else: stability. And not only stability, but the complete surrender of all adult responsibility to a governing body that will feed him, clothe him, meet his every need, and even make every life and career decision for him. I suppose that’s why about a year after Mark drops out of college, he decides to join the Army.

  There’s only one problem. Mark’s status as a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic makes him ineligible to enlist.

  It’s 1998. Mark moved out of his on-campus apartment and into my mother’s basement about six months ago. He has the part-time social work job at QCB, which he couples with the occasional non-paying pyramid-scheme job. But despite that modest income, he isn’t contributing anything financially to my mother’s household, while continuing to consume massive amounts of food, soda pop, and electricity (he keeps his personal computer and stereo equipment running constantly), and running up enormous long-distance telephone bills (he spends long hours on the phone calling his old college friends, who by then have largely graduated, gotten real jobs, and scattered across the country).