In Hawaii, again “off-map” at David’s insistence, we circled a weedy, scrappy patch of the island for three hours, until I was so tired and pissed off we didn’t speak for two days.
On another day, after a long mountain bike ride, we bolted from the hot confines of his truck to take a dip in the Columbia River. We came back to find his truck, our bikes, and my luggage stolen. He’d left the keys in the ignition.
At the time, I reasoned that David had more than his share of bad luck because he lived larger than most people. No risk, no reward. David’s nature was that he would go to the end of the road and inevitably want to go further, like an Alice in his own wonderland. Truthfully, I too was curious about what was on the other side. I craved the intensity David yearned for during those wild explorations, and his moods, when high, were contagious. Holding onto the high of euphoria was impossible, and it made our inevitable fall that much harder. Two weeks later, back home from Salt Lake, I was driving home from the television station to have my dinner break with David and Sophie. A heavy rain turned to slush on the windshield, and then, just as quickly, into fat, sloppy snowflakes. Rushing home for dinner was my way of trying to hold things together—not because I feared losing David so much, but because I didn’t want Sophie to lose David. Would he stay in her life if we divorced? I could not say yes for certain. I couldn’t accurately plot the course of David’s day, let alone what might happen if we divorced. There was still so much about him I didn’t understand.
I sat with the engine running in the driveway, watching the wipers wash over the flakes one, two, three times. We were doing better since the affair—weren’t we? The wipers thumped a steady beat to Fleetwood Mac, something from the Mirage album, the one with the album cover of Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie sandwiching Lindsey Buckingham, both women attempting to capture something that was already gone. The music sounded tired, as if the band was going through the motions. I clicked the radio off and went in through the side door.
David was standing at the front door looking out on the falling snow. I set my briefcase on the kitchen counter and came from behind to hug his big back. I truly wanted to make it work.
“Hi, sweetheart,” I said. “Where’s Sophie?”
“She’s asleep,” he mumbled, staring straight ahead into the darkness. “I put her to bed early.”
I checked my watch. “But it’s only six thirty. I really wanted to see her.”
He stared out the window, not acknowledging me. “She was cranky.”
I weighed my options. If I told him how important it was to keep Sophie up so that I could see her before bedtime, I’d have another fight on my hands. He was defensive about everything these days, especially Sophie’s care. “Isn’t it gorgeous?” I said instead, looking out at the snow.
“What?” he turned abruptly, revealing a pen and paper in his hand. “What’s gorgeous? I can’t see anything gorgeous because I can’t hear myself THINK in this house. I can’t sit down in this house and read a book. I can’t even bear to look out the window because all I see and all I hear are those GODDAMN CARS!” His voice rose to a pitch that scared me. The blood vessels in his neck bulged, and his eyes darted to the window. There were no cars outside.
I was stunned. I began to speak and then stopped myself, not knowing how to gauge this level of anger. I’d seen David upset before, but never like this, never about something so bizarre. We were a block away from a busy street. This was a side street, not a busy boulevard! It was a total overreaction, reminding me of something else that had changed recently. He had a heightened hypersensitivity to sound, to bright lights, to smells, to clothing that wasn’t organic cotton.
“What do you mean, the cars?” I pointed toward the street. “I don’t know what you mean—David, are you okay?”
He pointed his pen to his yellow pad. “This, these cars! I’ve counted every car that has come along in the last two hours. Twenty-seven cars! Twenty-seven fucking cars, with their bright lights and fucking loud engines racing to their fucking homes going forty miles per hour. I can’t THINK!”
His face was red and splotchy, and he smelled of sweat. Two hours. For two hours, he’d worked himself into a frenzy over traffic.
“If it bothers you, we can move,” I said softly. “Again.” Even as I said it, I didn’t totally mean it. But it seemed crucial to calm him down. Three moves, two years of marriage. When we first married, we’d both sold our homes, mine a quaint Victorian, and his beautiful bungalow, to buy a larger home together in Laurelhurst, one of the most coveted neighborhoods in Portland. But it was too loud, he said, too disruptive to his sleep. Now this one was wrong, too, the house I loved most, with its plantation-style roof and a sweeping deck that opened onto a beautiful garden, with an apartment below for friends and family who visited. The house was wrong? No. A surge of defiance rose up through me.
“This is not about the cars, David. It is not about the neighborhood. This is about you. You need help.”
He dropped his pen and paper on the hardwood floor. “Fuck you,” he said, coldly. “What I need is a beer.” I watched him stomp out the door and through the slush.
You need a coat, I thought instinctively, and then I caught my own reaction, protecting him even as he abandoned me, again. I stood at the doorway, frozen, unable to speak or move.
The next morning, David rolled over lazily and cradled me in his arms, as if nothing had happened. I felt my back stiffen against him. I’d brought Sophie into bed with me that night, so exhausted I’d hoped lying with her, rather than rising every time she cried, might make us both happier. My body lived in two worlds: the harmony I felt with Sophie, and the growing disconnect I felt with David.
As I cradled her, I felt a longing for David, the other half of us.
“Look, I’ve been a jerk lately,” he whispered. “I’m really sorry.” He curled his arm around both Sophie and me. “I am so grateful to you for bringing me Sophie. I have never loved anyone or anything as much in my life. I will try harder for us.” He moved into me breathing, our two bodies connected by this third life, this amazing force between us. His lips touched my spine, soft kisses down the arch of my back, my arms.
My throat tightened as I turned to kiss him back.
In the months that passed, David moved in and out of our marriage as if it were a pair of jeans he could wear or put at the back of his closet. Weeks would go by when David was fine, joyful even at the prospect of spending time at home, gardening, or remodeling a bathroom or kitchen. We made love, ate our meals together, and called one another several times during the day. “I’m just thinking of how lucky I am,” he said one day. “And how lost I’d be without my family.”
Each time it got better, I thought, Okay, we’ve made it. We’re past the tough part. I hung onto those moments of connection, building a case for staying the way Sophie built a pyramid of colored wooden blocks. She was patient, positioning each block so carefully her eyes never left the structure, even as she reached for her next block. It was only when she was smugly satisfied with her work that she swung her arm through the pyramid, crashing it to the ground.
David’s sense of self-destruction seemed just as impulsive. A phone call or conversation could set him off, his anxiety building to a point that it twisted his face into a new position. A dark, foreboding sense surrounded him, physically and emotionally. He walked around with a hunch, burdened by this mysterious weight, a weight I could neither tap nor explore.
My life could be so much worse, I rationalized. I love my job. I love this house. Our daughter is healthy. I should be grateful. I look back on those years, wondering along with everyone else how I stayed for so long. The only answers I can come up with involve my own stubborn sense of optimism and my cowardice. I believed David during the good times, when he told me his family was the most important thing he’d ever had. And given what I now know about how difficult it is to cope with the destructive and alienating thoughts of bipolar illness, I’m in awe of David’s ca
pacity for holding his life together as long as he did. I was coping, too, during those difficult years, so that Sophie might grow up in a household with the one man who would always love her unconditionally.
FOR CAREGIVERS
The symptoms of unipolar and bipolar depression are such that caregivers can feel enormous frustration in attempting to support a person who seems uninvested in recovery. Many family members report loved ones sleeping as much as twenty hours a day, refusing to participate in household chores, and canceling social engagements. People with mental illness may stop attending to their own grooming, causing frustration and embarrassment for other family members.
More than forty million women are the primary caregivers for a sick person, very often the man they married. In The Caregiving Wife’s Handbook, Dr. Diane Denholm advises caregivers to avoid assuming roles and jobs because someone else thinks we should and to realize that sacrificing yourself completely will not make the sick person well. Also, Denholm advises that the caregiver should never accept abusive or dangerous behavior.
During the acute phase of David’s mental health breakdown, loved ones and friends would often call to ask how he was doing. Very few people recognized the emotional and physical toll I was under as I cared for our daughter, kept a household afloat on one income, and managed the emotional heartbreak of witnessing David’s deteriorating physical and mental health. I am most grateful for the friends who did not judge, but who listened.
The mental health of the caregiver is also at risk during the time of acute care. Denholm advises taking care of yourself first, by eating well, exercising, and arranging assistance in order to get needed sleep. Denholm says if you become depressed, feel excessively guilty or angry, or fear becoming abusive, it is time to step away from your role, if only temporarily.
Chapter Five
May 21, 1998. Sophie’s cry didn’t sound right. It was too distressed, too high-pitched. She woke me from a superficial sleep. The clock said two o’clock; that meant I’d been dozing for roughly two hours after finishing my shift at the TV station. I grabbed my robe from the foot of the bed and ran to the nursery.
Sophie’s skin was hot to my touch; she was running a high fever, burning up through her pajamas. Her skin was flushed, her face swollen and lips dry from dehydration. Damn it, I thought to myself. This had happened before with Sophie, and I knew what it meant: another trip to the emergency room.
I went back to the bedroom and dressed in the dark, quickly pulling on a pair of jeans and a zip-up hoodie. David stirred in the bed. “She’s sick, D. I’m taking her in.”
He wiped his eyes, groaning. “Ugh, not again. Want me to come with you?”
“That’s okay.” I gathered my purse and cell phone. “One of us should sleep.” I swaddled Sophie in a blanket, trying to remember how many ear infections she’d had this year. Three times her fever had spiked up above 102, the point at which her doctor said she needed to be seen. These days I could tell how serious it was just by feeling her skin.
Sophie was just short of her second birthday, and the ear specialist had warned us that her Eustachian tubes were still horizontal—the liquid in her ears didn’t drain properly. If the infections persisted, he wanted to perform surgery to put in artificial tubes.
I tucked her in her car seat and drove through the night to the Legacy Emmanuel Emergency Room in North Portland. The pediatric waiting room was full of mothers just like me who looked worried, pensive, and haggard.
Three hours later, I drove home with Sophie’s fever under control and a bag of pink bubblegum antibiotics by my side. The neighborhood stirred with the beginning of a new day. I made it home, exhausted, daunted. I let the car idle in the driveway, trying to gather the strength to carry Sophie inside.
The infections had started once we put Sophie in day care. David said he needed more uninterrupted time to see clients and architects, so for two hours a day, Sophie went to a neighborhood day care near our home. I wasn’t worried at the time—I knew day care could be good for children. But now, with her susceptibility to infections, it felt dangerous every time we dropped her off. Maybe I should be the one to quit. I’d asked David about it once, telling him I’d be willing to take a break from my career to raise Sophie. He argued that I would miss my work, and we needed the money. Now, as I climbed the stairs to the house carrying Sophie in her car seat, my muscles ached.
David was getting out of the shower. He looked radiant, as if the sleep and the water had washed away anything troublesome in his life. His hair was wet, but tousled, as if he’d shaken it partly dry. A white towel was wrapped at his waist; his long legs looked strong and steady. Something inside me stirred for him, but the weight of the car seat, and Sophie’s illness, stood between us. “Is she going to be okay?” he asked.
“She’ll be fine.” I answered. “We’re back to the bubblegum routine.”
He sighed and dropped his towel to find his clothes. His back was muscled from going to the gym at night after work; his skin was smooth and tanned from swimming at the lake. Even though my ears were beginning to ring and my eyes felt dry and bloodshot, something shifted inside me—I wanted desperately to pull him to the bed with me right then, to make our lives better again, for the three of us.
“I’m late,” he said. “Let me put her to bed so you can rest.” He took Sophie from me, tenderly kissing her on the forehead. “My poor, sweet baby,” he whispered. I could hear the safety lock going up on her crib, the lights going off. I waited in bed, hoping he might return.
“See you this afternoon,” he yelled from downstairs. “I won’t be late.”
The phone startled me. I’d drifted off, dreaming of waiting rooms filled with dozens of screaming sick babies. My assignment editor was on the other end. “We need you to pack a bag,” he said. “There’s been a massacre at Thurston High in Springfield.”
I struggled to make sense of where I was, what was happening, why my assignment editor was calling me in the morning when I wasn’t due at work for several more hours. The clock said 9:00 a.m. He rattled off more information, businesslike, uninterested in whether I was prepared to take notes.
“Nels,” I interrupted, “Sophie is really, really sick. I need to stay close to home.” I heard shouting in the background, the sound of television feeds, and computers rat-a-tap-tapping out the breaking news. On any other day, I would have loved the adrenalin rush. This morning, with my head banging and my body operating on so little sleep, I dreaded the idea that there was more chaos in the world to report on.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Sheila,” Nels said, “but we need our senior reporters there now. An hour ago. Really. Get here as soon as you can.”
I started to interrupt.
“And bring an overnight bag,” he said. “The networks want live shots for the eastern feed.”
Five minutes later, I was punching in David’s number on the phone. “David,” I said on the voicemail, “I’ve got to go to Springfield. Call me immediately; it’s an emergency.”
Sophie woke up, crying again, as I tried to track David down. I phoned him several times over as I hurriedly threw things in an overnight bag—my makeup, my hair curlers, the obscene amenities of television news that struck me as strangely out of place, given I was headed to a murder scene. When David phoned back, I breathlessly relayed the information to him.
“I’ve got to go to work now, David. I’m already late. Can you help?”
“Bring her to my job on Forty-second,” he said. “And don’t worry. I’ve got it handled.”
“But she shouldn’t be out of the house,” I argued. “You need to be home with her.”
David’s voice stiffened. “Look—she’s my responsibility now, right?”
I hung up, my heart beating wildly, my mind racing with horrible what-ifs. What if her fever worsened; what if she starts vomiting? Would he know what to do? I showered quickly, loaded a diaper bag with Tylenol and diapers and anything I could think of that might comfort her, an
d held her tight before loading her into her car seat.
David’s job site was just a few blocks away. I checked my watch. Twenty-five minutes had already passed since my assignment editor called.
I pulled up outside a beautiful old Tudor that David was doubling in size for his clients. His pickup, along with his workers’ trucks, were all parked in front of the home. I double-parked so I wouldn’t have to walk several blocks with Sophie’s things. She whimpered as soon as I took her from the calm of her car seat. The sound of saws and hammers, a radio blasting in the background as the men worked, and the dust of remodel greeted me at the door. I normally loved seeing David in his natural surroundings, but now, holding Sophie—who clutched her favorite stuffed animal, Bear—I felt miserable.
“Hi, Sheila,” one of David’s longtime contractors said, nodding my way as he balanced himself on the two-by-fours that made up the addition.
I offered a fake smile back. “Is David here?”
David appeared from the back of the house, holding his cell phone to his ear. He motioned for me to hand Sophie to him. I wanted him to hang up, to give him all the instructions, everything he’d need to know to care for her, really care for her. He shrugged his shoulders as if he couldn’t get off the phone.
I waited stubbornly until he finally hung up, exasperated.
“Here’s the Tylenol, here’s Bear, there’s a few things in the bag you’ll need . . .” I started down the list of what I thought were important instructions.
“I’ve got it handled,” he yelled above the noise, holding his arms out for Sophie. Her face was still splotchy, and her eyes darted around with nervousness from the loud sounds.
“Mama, Mama,” she cried when I handed her off. Bear dropped to the dusty floor. I reached for it, but David stopped me.
“Go, go, will you? I’ve got it handled.” His phone rang again.
I couldn’t move. The noise, and the conflict inside me, made me dizzy, discombobulated. David looked distracted, annoyed by the interference. I squinted to keep the tears back. All I wanted to do was take her back from him and drive far, far away, to a place we could both rest. My cell phone rang. David widened his eyes and turned his chin, as if to say, “GO.” I picked up Bear, wiped him off on my suit, and tried to hand him back to Sophie, who arched her back and tried to push away from David.
All the Things We Never Knew Page 6