Endless Love

by Scott Spencer

  After Volkshill, it was a relief to be back at the hospital. The symptoms I’d been accumulating in prison gradually receded, but I was always in anticipation of their return. Sometimes in the middle of the night I would wake for no apparent reason and not know exactly where I was, and this momentary confusion would frighten me into believing that everything was falling apart again. And then talking to Dr. Clark—trying to be open now, believing I needed help—I’d sometimes burst into sobs that had no obvious relationship to what we were discussing and these sobs seemed to fill the sails of my turmoil and send me as far from shore as I was during the worst days at Volkshill. At first, Dr. Clark encouraged my crying, but I would be so affectless and withdrawn afterward that before long he did his best to intervene. He disapproved of drug therapy but he put me on Lithium. I always had a bad taste in my mouth and I began taking two-hour naps in the middle of the afternoon, but my moods leveled out and I was glad for that.

  Whereas my first stay had passed with my anonymity virtually intact, the second time around virtually everyone knew my name. I wasn’t one of those natural leaders and no one looked to me as the vanguard in the eternal struggle between patients and staff—which of course existed even in a genteel asylum. I was liked because I was older, knew the ropes, and because I was given more responsibility than others were. When new patients checked in, it was I who gave them the second-day tour around Rockville. I was like a failed career officer, soft and toothless, with a yarn or two and a shoulder to cry on. I couldn’t fail to notice that whenever someone really was at odds with the Rockville staff, they turned on me as well.

  I learned how to use a Super-8 movie camera and a simple editing machine, and before long I was the all but official filmmaking instructor. We did the ordinary, expected things: movies of people jumping up and down, zoom shots, slow motion, Keystone Kop parodies. I co-scripted a twenty-minute movie we called The Attack of the Gigantic Mommy, in which we photographed a patient named Sally Walsh from below a glass table, where she stood surrounded by tiny trees and cows, such as decorate the domain of a Lionel. I’m sure it was terribly therapeutic for all involved. Also to my credit: when Mitzi Pappas freaked out on some LSD her eyebrowy brother smuggled in to her, it was against me she huddled for comfort; when Myron Friedman stood perched on the verge of suicide (or, more likely, compound fracture), it was me who got him off the fourth-floor ledge with the slogan: “Myron, on my hands and knees I beg you to get your skinny white ass inside!”; and when dreamy Michael Massey failed to return from a group outing into Wyon, Dr. Clark appointed me a member of the five-man search party even though I was still strictly forbidden to leave the Rockville grounds, and it was I who found Michael, staring into his hands in the back yard of a boarded-up house.

  On June 3, 1974, a letter arrived for me, and it was from Jade. It was given to me by Dr. Clark after a session in his office. “I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “It came yesterday and I read it. I gave myself a night to decide whether or not to give it to you and—well, here it is.”

  Dear David,

  I’m still in Stoughton, but not in school and not living at Gertrude anymore. Except to move my things out, I haven’t been back to the old house since the day. I live on the second floor of that little green and white house near the North Stoughton post office. It’s a little too large for one person but it gives me all the privacy I need. I suspect you may raise your eyebrows, but I’ve learned some meditation techniques. Keith learned them from a guy he works with and we all share the same mantra, which is the words you say to yourself when you are beginning your meditation. It’s marvelous how fifteen or twenty minutes of sitting and breathing can make you feel so renewed. Now that I’m a College Graduate, I am using my expensive education by working as a salesgirl at Stoughton Stoneware. It’s a wonderful job in some ways because I think their stuff is so great—I’ve got enough “seconds” to make a service for forty-eight—but it’s exhausting being on my feet all day and putting up with customers, many of whom treat me as if I were their personal servant.

  I’ve been going to Boston a lot in my spare time. It started when I signed up for this course in psycho-drama, which was pretty strange to begin with! Twenty strangers from twenty separate private lives in this old former warehouse near some North End wharf, acting out our deepest feelings. Or trying to, anyhow. For me it combined a longtime interest in theater and in the newer modes of psychotherapy, two fields of study I’ve never had a chance to explore as much as I would have liked to. I must say, at the end of the course I was left with more of an interest in theater than in therapy, but then Ira Woods (the teacher in the psycho-drama course) would say that’s because I shy from the implications of psycho-drama and what it revealed about my “deepest feelings.” Maybe I am running away from myself, but I’ve signed up for two theater courses—one here at Stoughton in theatrical design, which the college is letting me take (without credit) free of charge, and the other in beginning acting, in Boston, taught by this absolute marvelous madman named Rudyard Lewis.

  It’s been very good for me to shift my center a little toward Boston. It’s not New York, but at least it’s more of the “real world” than Stoughton and the best thing about Boston is I’ve met a lot of good people and have made myself a few actual, bona fide, dyed-in-the-wool friends. Mostly theater people, which I guess is limited because they’re all pretty crazy, but I’ve met a lot of people from outside the theater too. Everything from an absolutely great and beautiful woman from Senegal who works in a health food store to a fifty-three-year-old corporation lawyer who lives all alone in a fantasy penthouse, reads people’s astrological charts, and knows all there is to know about the Comèdie Française.

  I got a terrific reaction on my thesis, by the way, and I’ve always wanted to thank you for that because you did a lot of the work. Some people who’ve read it have been trying to encourage me to have it published, but I think I’ll leave that particular limelight to Ann. I don’t see who’d publish it anyhow, but it certainly is a boost to the old ego to have someone say that it could be.

  Ann’s publishing ventures are starting to pick up. The New Yorker bought three stories from her, all in one day. I don’t know when they’ll appear, but whenever it is I probably will decide not to read them. As I said to her recently, I’d like to see her face before I study her masks. At least one publisher has written her and asked if she was working on a novel and he hadn’t even read her stories yet. He’d just heard about them from someone who works at The New Yorker. I’m sure Ann is on her way to success. I wonder how it will affect her. I think when Ann was a proper young New York girl she fully expected the world to beat a path to her doorstep, but college and finding out how her father used the United States Foundling Homes as a source of his own personal enrichment and then marrying such a strange fellow as Hugh and getting saddled with a family, all of it combined to make her forget her girlish dreams. But I have a feeling that success will make Ann young again. She also seems to have a serious relationship in the offing with this guy who sells paper to printers. I was my usual outraged self when she first told me about him, largely because they met through one of those “personal” ads you see in the back of some magazines. It seemed very degrading and dangerous, but strange things have a way of working for Ann. I have to admire her gutsiness—I’d be afraid to even meet someone like that, just a box number and three sentences describing how lonely and eligible he is. But Ann’s used to it. She seems pretty happy with this new guy. They’re planning a trip to Europe—by boat, since the guy is terrified of airplanes. I haven’t met him yet; I figure if he lasts six months, I’ll look him over.

  Keith is eternally himself. He’s been as steady as a rock for me this year, always there when I need him. He and I got totally involved in redoing his old farmhouse—with the money from Pap’s insurance, Keith bought the place he’s been renting up till now. I spent ten days on my hands and knees doing nothing but scrubbing the old wooden floorboards. Talk
about occupational therapy! By the time I discovered those dark walnut floors were really bright pumpkin pine, my mind was as empty as a cup. Keith’s been such a good brother and a good friend, it’s been great rediscovering him. He’s smart, funny, and wise as an owl, and the most loyal man on earth.

  Sammy continues on his march toward the presidency. He’s a freshman at Harvard now and the scourge of the Yard, I’m sure. He is so devastatingly handsome. A Greek Orthodox priest has fallen in love with him! It’s getting a little difficult figuring out just what Sammy believes in at this point. I think he’s getting too educated to believe in Universal Justice; now he talks about a Decent Chance for a Decent Life and it sounds all right but rather politician-y, too. He’s doing super well in school and modeling at Jordan Marsh in his spare time, to the tune of thirty-five dollars an hour! Last week I saw a picture of him in the Boston Globe. He was in a dark corduroy suit and had the preppiest grin this side of Groton. Sammy is the only Butterfield who has to cope with temptation. The rest of us can only be what we are and our choices are not only narrow but tend to be singular. There are no forks in our road, no momentous decisions. But Sammy can do anything. He can be a revolutionary, a liberal Democrat, a preppy, a student, a monk, a heel, and no matter what he does he’ll get applause. I suppose I do envy him, but his life has been such a constant series of choices. I don’t know if I could really stand it. He’s over- optioned, as Ann says.

  I’ve had this letter on my desk and in my purse and on the kitchen table and just about everywhere I go for the past week. I don’t know how personal to make it. Knowing you and keeping myself open to experience whatever it is that happens when we’re together has meant, among other things, that everything we say turns out to be intimate. I know that I’ll never stop thinking of you. I’ve tried to but now I don’t even try. You are my past and I’ve come to realize that it’s better to have a frightening, upsetting, largely unhappy past than to have no past at all. But that’s silly, too, isn’t it? Who cannot have a past? Even amnesiacs stare at paintings. If it was only grief I think it would be easier. I wish I could mourn for us simply and cleanly. But knowing that you are locked away, even though you’re not in jail and are back in that good hospital, and knowing it was me calling the Stoughton police that put you there. It’s so complicated and my feelings are so divided against themselves. It’s like finding the black and white markers for your Go set mixed into the same messy pile: by the time you have them sorted, you don’t feel like playing the game.

  Do you remember the night we went out to dinner after I spent the day with Susan Henry? I told you about what she said, how I used you to act out all the aggressions I had toward my family. Now with Hugh gone and knowing you lured him into the traffic as he walked around Fifth Avenue with his new girl, I can’t help thinking: in a way I would have wanted to do that, too. It’s very hard sometimes for me not to think of myself as the worst kind of monster. It makes it difficult for me to get close to anyone. Only Keith, because he accepts anything and everything about me. Sometimes I can be in the middle of doing something and I’ll have an image of you being dragged off that morning by the police and I’ll think it should have been me. Just as I was a part of you when we made love, I was a part of you when you caused my family so much harm. When we made love we seduced each other, but when it came time to strike out at my family, I’m afraid it was I who seduced you. I don’t want to hurt you or confuse you by saying this. But maybe knowing my feelings will help you locate your own and maybe that will help you go back into the world again, where I sincerely believe you belong.

  I know we will probably never see each other again. I look at loving you as living outside the law and I never want to do that again. I’ve lost a part of my nerve and it’s just as well because that kind of recklessness only leaves room for itself. Everything else is blown away. We could never have a life. It seems so strange to tell you, but I still believe in our love and still love you. Yet I’ve put it aside, truly and forever, and will never see you again.

  I had no more mail from Jade for the next year. I didn’t write back to her, save for a pictureless postcard thanking her for writing to me. I didn’t write to Ann and I did my best not to think of any of them, which meant I tried not to think of them all day long. The only visitors I received were Arthur and Rose, but they no longer came as regularly as before. As I felt their visits becoming more infrequent, I asked them only to come once a month, and that made everything a lot easier for all of us.

  I remained on Lithium, there was no talk of making me an outpatient, but my progress was good. Sometimes I thought I had merely adjusted to my situation, become so familiar with the longing and disorientation that I didn’t notice it in the same way. Other times I was absolutely sure I was getting better. But, if someone were to have asked me what that meant—my getting better—I don’t know what I could have answered. My goals were very modest: I wanted to get through the days without the crunch of emotion. In a strange and gradual way, I was adjusting to the life of a madman.

  And then one day what was left of the bottom dropped out. It was February 1, 1976, and my parents had braved a blizzard to come out for their visit. Arthur wore a black Russian fur hat and when he took it off and shook out the snow, I saw he had lost nearly all of the hair in the center of his skull and the long hair on the sides had turned dull silver: he looked nicely distinguished, like a delegate at an international conference of trade unionists. He had lost bulk; his cheekbones showed now and though he wore his plaid wool shirt buttoned at the top, it hung loosely around his throat. Rose looked positively ravishing. The cold had painted her cheeks a dark raspy pink and the nervousness of the day enlarged her eyes. She wore fashionable leather boots, a gray skirt, and a turtleneck sweater; she smoked a cigarette in an Aqua-filter and exhaled the smoke in a long smooth upward stream that pierced the sunlight like a spear.

  “I bet you thought we wouldn’t make it,” said Arthur, embracing me.

  Rose stood at the window, looking out at the weather, probably wondering if the storm would perversely institutionalize her for the night. Now, when one of my parents spoke, the other looked away and gave no evidence of listening, the way people do when a foreign language is being spoken.

  “You know what I was thinking about today?” I began, when we’d settled in. “My first day at Hyde Park High. You guys took me shopping at Polk Brothers a week before and I insisted on buying a pair of red pants. They were sort of like jeans, but not really. Like khaki, but red. No one wore red trousers; I’d never even seen a pair. I thought you were both being very easygoing, letting me buy them. And when I chose them to wear for my first day at school neither of you said a word—I remember I was a little worried, thinking you might stop me. But God, did I suffer for wearing them.” I laughed; Rose and Arthur looked uneasy, like two claustrophobes in an elevator. They’d come to speak of other things and I’m sure they thought it wasn’t a Good Sign that I was talking about my first day in high school. “I was stuck with a reputation. I was the boy with the red pants for the entire year, though I never wore those fucking pants again. And I was thinking today how a little thing like that can temper your whole life, how it can tilt the way people see you and how that influences the way you see yourself, how it circumscribes the arc of your behavior. It’s amazing you let me go to school with those pants on. Maybe you thought it was something boys my age commonly wore? Was that it?” I looked at Rose.

  “I have no idea,” she said. “I don’t remember what you wore on your first day of high school.”

  “Well, I do,” I said, with a small, defeated grin. “Red pants. Redder than any apple. Much, much redder than blood.”

  “We have some news about Jade Butterfield,” Rose said.

  “What is it?” I said. My anxiety was instant and total. I sat with my legs a few inches apart, my hands on my knees, leaning forward. I heard the wind and, from somewhere, a radio: it was the Kinks singing “Lola.”

  “You have to
realize it’s for the best, though I’m sure you do,” said Arthur. Had he thought my mother had already told me, or did he want to skip over the announcement and go straight to the consolation?

  “What’s happened to her?” I said. I’d never felt so insubstantial; only words separated me from immeasurable sorrow. She’s been in an accident. She’s dying. She’s dead. It would end my life.

  “Nothing’s happened to her,” said Rose. “Except that she’s found herself a husband.”

  “We got an announcement in the mail,” Arthur said. “I don’t know who sent it. It wasn’t signed.”

  “Do you have it? Give it to me.”

  “I forgot it,” said Rose. “It doesn’t say anything. She’s marrying a Frenchman. We couldn’t decide if he was French or American.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I told you. We didn’t bring it. It was just a very simple card. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cheaper-looking wedding announcement in my whole life. Not that nice old-fashioned fancy print most people use.”

  I felt the beginnings of relief that nothing had happened to Jade but the comfort was devastated as soon as it appeared.

  Rose was continuing: “All it said was Mr. and Mrs. Denis Edelman blah blah blah the marriage of their son François to Jade Butterfield. Then the name of some synagogue in Paris, France.”

  “When?”

  “A month ago,” said Arthur. “On January fourth.”

  “And you’ve known?”

  “We just got the card a few days ago,” Arthur said.

  “I don’t even know who sent it,” Rose said. “But I thought you should know anyhow.”