All the Things We Never Knew

by Sheila Hamilton

  The living room was lovingly cared for, looking as if a woman might have placed the rugs, hung paintings, and lined the bookshelves with dozens of worn hardbacks. The reading chair in the corner looked like an antique, with long, dark cherry arms and a tattered cushion. I could hang out here, I thought to myself.

  In the dining room, a long table was the sole piece of furniture, one of the most stunning tables I’d ever seen, with room for ten. “I made this table from Brazilian hardwood,” David said. The seams of the hardwood table fit together perfectly. It was shined and sealed, with a vase of large lilies placed in the center. We moved through the dining room into a bright kitchen with white tile and floor-to-ceiling deck doors that looked out on a hardwood deck and garden. David slipped through the door. “Come on out here, meet Sunny-Side Up and Tex-Mex.”

  David raised chickens! The red coop looked like it had been created precisely for the corner of his garden. This little fact about my new boyfriend thrilled me no end. “The city actually gives out permits for a certain number of coops in the city,” he said.

  Through the chicken coop wire I saw two chickens, one with orange feathers, the other with brown and white markings.

  David opened one of the pens and held up a beautiful brown egg. “Now, that’s organic.”

  He talked to the chickens through the wire as if they were his children, speaking sweetly to them. “Don’t get nervous, girls. Bad for the eggs.” I couldn’t help loving the contrast; this big, six-foot-four man gently stroking his chickens’ egos. “You ready for the best eggs in Portland?” he said after gathering several more eggs in his T-shirt.

  I was famished from the bike ride. “Absolutely!”

  I sat on the back deck sunning myself while David puttered in the kitchen. Beyond the chicken coop, David had planted a huge garden, with raised beds sprouting starter plants for tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and herbs. The back of his garden was lined with sunflowers. It was so peaceful here. I let the sun sink into my bones. Portland’s long rainy season could leave me feeling so sun deprived; it felt good to let the weekend heat sink deep. David’s cherry trees and rose bushes were thriving. The sound of Leonard Cohen played softly through the windows. I felt punch-drunk, cared for, and connected. I closed my eyes and dozed.

  When I woke up, David was coming through the door holding a tray filled with food.

  “Your eggs are ready, Madame.” David presented the tray of fresh eggs, toast, and a strong cup of coffee, just the way I like it, made in a French press.

  He served the meal with small Italian salt and pepper shakers and a white linen napkin. “I love eggs for dinner,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

  “So are you,” he replied, setting the tray down beside me. It was the first overtly affectionate thing David had ever said to me. He was not loose with his words. He touched my arm, and a current moved through me. He watched me without flinching. I wished I hadn’t just finished a sweaty bike ride.

  “I’ve never heard you say anything like that before.”

  “Yeah,” David said, poking his eggs with a piece of the toast. “I’m not much of a romantic.”

  I started to disagree but then thought better of it. He wasn’t a romantic in the way that other men were, offering trips or jewelry as a showing of their affection. But he was completely authentic. David was his own person, and he appreciated me and my ambition. He wasn’t the richest man in the world, or the CEO of a major corporation. He told me he hadn’t bothered to finish his college education in Montreal, a fact that would later make much more sense. But despite the lack of a degree, he was by far the most intelligent and sensitive man I’d ever met, and the most mysterious. I had the uncanny sense that I already knew him, though, and that his serious, contemplative side could be very good for me.

  I leaned over to kiss him. He did not rush me, or hurry me. His lips were full, a sweetheart shape that met my own naturally. I was ready to put down roots with someone. This tender gardener had won me over.

  We spent most of our weekends together after that: hiking, skiing, mountain biking. Finally, I was with someone who loved the outdoors as much as I did. We traveled whenever we could both get away. We spent many of our summer weekends in the gulches, arches, and peaks of Canyonlands, hiking and bouldering, then cooling off in the local rivers and lakes. The red rock was millions of years old, as grand as any setting I’d ever known. I wanted David to love it as much as I did, and from the smile that settled on his face in the desert, I could tell he was enthralled.

  One night in Capitol Reef National Park—three hours from my childhood home near Salt Lake City—we stayed up to watch a particularly active lightning storm. The strikes could have been miles away, but every time one hit the ground, it electrified the room with bright light and an energy that spooked me. The house where we stayed was owned by a college friend, a geologist who had bought land in the Torrey area before it became unaffordable.

  Just as the sky thickened with dark, brooding storm clouds, David threw a jacket over me and said, “Come on, we can’t miss this!”

  We both ran barefoot into the storm, a wild, chaotic wind and rain that drenched us in minutes. He drew me in close, held out his left arm, and snapped a photograph of us while the dawn broke and a bolt streaked the sky behind us. Our eyes still held the excitement of those strikes, living so close to something so beautiful. And so dangerous.

  EARLY TREATMENT

  The National Institute of Mental Health reports that “unlike most disabling physical diseases, mental illness begins very early in life. Half of all lifetime cases begin by age fourteen; three-quarters have begun by age twenty-four. Thus, mental disorders are really the chronic diseases of the young. For example, anxiety disorders often begin in late childhood, mood disorders in late adolescence, and substance abuse in the early twenties. Unlike heart disease or most cancers, young people with mental disorders suffer disability when they are in the prime of life, when they would normally be the most productive.”

  The study quoted above found that in the United States, mental disorders are quite common: 26 percent of the general population reported that they had had symptoms sufficient for diagnosing a mental disorder during the past twelve months. However, many of these cases are mild or will resolve without formal intervention.

  According to David’s doctors, his presentation of bipolar disorder was unusual because he had compensated for his illness for most of his adult life without psychiatric medication, counseling, and/or hospitalization.

  David’s sister, a psychologist, said David had informally reported periods of depression in his teens, twenties, and thirties. He experienced significant impairment in his forties, affecting his mood, anxiety level, and ability to sleep. Untreated psychiatric disorders can lead to more frequent and more severe episodes and are more likely to become resistant to treatment.

  The Early Assessment and Support Alliance (EASA) project has shown unequivocally that early intervention in mental illness works. EASA supports youth ages twelve to twenty-five years old and offers a holistic approach to psychosis. The two-year intervention includes community education and outreach; intensive multilevel treatment that includes medical care, mental health care, occupational therapy, and vocational support; and strong support to keep young people independent, in school, and tied to employment.

  Tamara Sale is Oregon’s EASA program development director. “The current system of mental health care in most places in the United States is broken,” she says, “forcing people into long-term crises and government disability by not providing access to services or evidence-based practices. . . . The approach we have taken has been a fundamental cultural shift. Now, there is greater awareness in the community about being proactive and persistent with psychosis intervention.”

  A case study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says that the EASA program “has reduced hospitalizations for psychosis, helped young people maintain critical family and social support, and helped keep them in school
.” “If a young person starts to develop psychosis in Oregon,” says Sale, “there is someplace to turn.” According to the case study, a person who is hospitalized for an acute psychotic episode is at heightened risk for another episode and typically faces a longer recovery process. Sale adds, “If you can identify people before they’ve lost contact with reality, it is much easier to keep them on track.”

  Chapter Three

  David’s upbringing against the backdrop of the Canadian Rockies fascinated me. His father had been a fighter pilot for the Royal Air Force, a forester in the Canadian Rockies, and a Harvard business school grad and business executive. So when David asked me if I’d like to travel with him to meet his parents, I didn’t hesitate. We’d known one another just three months, but this was crucial intelligence; I wanted to see what he was like with his parents.

  “What should I wear?” I asked, thinking I already knew the answer. “Something nice, a dress, or a skirt?”

  David laughed. “No, please, no. Let’s drive up. Bring a swimsuit and some shorts. There’s such good swimming along the way.”

  Just as David had promised, we’d driven in Old Yella, talking and listening to a dozen new CDs I’d brought for the trip. We stopped for a dip in the Columbia River and again just south of the Canadian border. David loved the water, and he seemed to have internal GPS for finding the best swimming and fishing holes. He looked more at home in a canoe than in a car. I watched him drive as he hummed along to Fleetwood Mac, and I thought, I could do this forever.

  We arrived in Victoria, British Columbia, just after dinner. My hair was tangled from the ferry ride, and the long, hot drive had left a kind of humid stickiness on the backs of my legs. The ranch home they’d bought was modest, on a half acre of manicured lawn, lined with dozens of magnolia trees and rose bushes. This was a part of the world that literally oozed the benefits of good soil, ample rain, and just the right amount of sunshine.

  David’s mother met us on the front steps and shook my hand warmly. “Well, your legs go on forever, don’t they?” she said, smiling.

  “It’s really nice to meet you,” I said. Seeing Alice in her proper white slacks, silk tank top, and sensible flats, I wished I’d trusted my own instincts about what to wear when you meet someone’s parents for the first time. A printed red-and-white scarf was tied Jackie O–style on her head, and she wore no makeup. She was stunningly beautiful, even in her mid-sixties.

  David’s father came to the door and smiled a grin so contagious I couldn’t help but chuckle—So that’s where David’s charm comes from, I thought. “Shee-laa,” he cooed. “I’ve heard so much about you.” Lew’s blue eyes twinkled in the summer light; his skin was moist and thick, with few lines, even though he was deeply tanned. He had a full head of thick silver hair, the color many older people try to replicate in the salon after they’ve given up on blonde or black or auburn. His short-sleeved shirt looked casual enough, but a fiery red ascot peeked out at the top of his neckline, throwing the whole look off. Wow, what a character.

  “Come in, come in,” Lew said. “You must be parched. What can I get you?”

  We settled in the living room, designed with the most basic of pieces: a couch, two chairs, a nice Persian rug, a couple of lamps, a coffee table, and a bookcase. No nonsense. Alice stirred iced tea in the kitchen while we chatted. They’d moved all over the world, Lew said. This last move was from Italy to Victoria, B.C., the midway point between Portland and Montreal. I tried to calculate mileage as a reason for settling down somewhere; it seemed as good as the next.

  “David says you are a journalist. What newspaper do you write for?” Lew asked.

  “Oh, I don’t write for newspapers anymore,” I said. “I’m in television.”

  “Mm.” Lew’s look turned. “There is nothing as valuable as the printed word, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “Agreed,” I said, trying to cheer him back to the jovial point where we’d begun upon our arrival. “But television is about writing, too.” I started to explain my belief that the best stories married strong writing with powerful imagery. He stopped me midway through my sentence.

  “Television is a scourge on our society,” he said bluntly.

  I recoiled. David looked amused by the exchange; he’d warned me his dad was moody, charming, and complicated. I’d seen all of it in the course of twenty minutes.

  “I think I’ll freshen up,” I said. “David, would you show me where we’ll be staying?”

  Alice interrupted, standing and blocking my route to the hallway. “David will stay in here,” she said politely, pointing to a small den with a foldout bed. “And you can take the guest room.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” I blushed.

  I surveyed the guest room Alice showed me. A Bible lay on the bookstand with a proper reading light and a bookmark midway through the pages. The single bed was covered with a lace bedspread, something my grandmother would have approved of. A portrait of Jesus hung above a chest of drawers, his face flooded with light and grace, his long hair cresting at the top of a white gown. He looked beautiful, I thought—and like Jim Morrison.

  David had never mentioned that his parents were so religious. He called himself “a screwed-up Catholic schoolboy” when we talked of his private education and the mind-numbingly long Sunday services. I had followed the lead of my parents who, while deeply spiritual, had never really attached to the religion that dominated our state, Mormonism. I unfolded my clothes and placed them carefully in a chest of drawers. The top drawer had been cleared for my things.

  The isolation and strict order in the house made me feel unsteady. My own family, however flawed, would have broken out a round of beer or a bottle of wine by now. Someone would be telling an inappropriate joke. And there would be laughter, lots of it.

  I came back into the living room to find Alice darning a pair of socks—who does that?—and Lew reading the newspaper, a pair of reading glasses balanced on the crook of his nose. Alice was built similarly to David’s sisters, whom I would meet later. They were all tall and lithe with beautiful bone structure. Her nimble fingers worked quickly, and only once did she reach for her reading glasses, when she was re-threading the needle. I watched this scene and found myself drawn to her deliberately attentive pace, the old-fashioned rituals of caring for house and home. Every move Alice made was purposeful; on her way to return Lew’s socks to his drawer, she stooped to pick up the ads that had fallen from the newspaper, straightened a table lamp, and ran her finger across the piano. I could learn a thing or two about how to run a household from this woman, I thought to myself.

  I’d never really learned how to nurture a household and longed for a proper role model; my mother’s own domesticity alternated between manic bursts of activity and sheer neglect. I relied on my closest friends for instructions on how to cook a roast, scrub properly underneath a toilet seat, or bring order to a file cabinet. I tried desperately, often failing, to keep a few plants alive.

  I followed Alice into the kitchen when she announced she was going to make dinner. When she opened the fridge, it appeared almost bare, the white light shining brightly on just a few items. But she methodically pulled together the ingredients for a lemon rosemary chicken roast, orange vinaigrette-glazed beets, and a delicious rice salad.

  “You look like you’ve worked as a chef,” I said, admiring the rapid chop-chop of the knife and the exact size of the tiny red and orange pepper slices.

  She softened, whispering, confiding in me. “I was a horrible cook when I married Lew. I couldn’t boil water. We both agreed lessons were in order.” She laughed at the memory.

  “When I first moved to Portland, my best friend would come over and prepare the dinners I would serve,” I admitted. “She’d leave it all in a pan for me, with cooking instructions. David has benefited greatly from the skills of my talented girlfriend.” I chuckled, more relaxed now. “Now, David is really appreciative of anything I make. Never criticize the cook, right?”


  A look of amusement crossed her face, but then just as quickly her eyes changed, as if she was realizing the impact of another woman cooking for her only son. She reached for a bunch of parsley in the fridge. “Ahh, David,” she mused. “How he loves to eat.”

  I helped her slice and dice as she told me stories of David, stories that made me fall even deeper in love with her son—the heartache of his cleft palate, the multiple surgeries he endured until it was barely noticeable. She told me of his tender nature, “by far, the most sensitive,” and how, as a boy, David had been eager to win a paper route, rising at dawn to make his deliveries.

  “When it came to collecting,” she said, amused by the memory, “he was paralyzed. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why that boy couldn’t ask people for money.”

  Denial and mental illness are easy bedfellows, and in that first meeting and many others, David’s family gave no indication of a family history of mental illness. I would eventually learn David’s family history through his sister, a psychologist, and his medical documents, crucial pieces to a puzzle I’d tried to fit together for more than a decade. But that night, I helped Alice move the food methodically from the kitchen into the dining room, accepting it all as normal—We all have our quirks, I thought. Lew and David had been reading the entire time, an oddity given that in my upbringing, the men pitched in with household work.

  I caught Lew studying me intently, sizing me up as a potential mate for his only son. His eyes were gazing past his newspaper, and I felt myself being examined, in an almost clinical way, the thickness of my skin, the health of the cuticles on my fingernails, the strength and straightness of my teeth. He smiled when he realized he’d been caught doing a once-over. The charming smile was back. “So, Sheeee-lah,” the Cheshire Cat said, “tell me about yourself.”