Nancy called out, “He just needs to run off a little steam. We’ll be right there.”
Sylvia had the lunch bags from Wendy’s in her hand. “No problem. We’ll go in so the lunch doesn’t get cold.” She went straight to Steve’s pill tray in the dining room and saw the flaps were up—he’d taken his morning dose. The tray and pill containers took up one end of the dining room table so they settled in at the opposite end. Sylvia went to get plates from the kitchen.
“We don’t need plates, do we?” Lisa asked. “Mom usually uses paper ones anyhow.”
“Uh, sure, I guess so. If you want paper plates, I think we have them.”
“Naw, don’t go to any trouble on our account. We’ll just eat out of the wrappers.” Lisa picked at her fries, then gestured toward a sorority photograph of Sylvia that hung framed on the wall at the end of the dining room—bare shouldered, the same broad smile, bangs sweeping across her forehead, and classic, straight auburn hair that hung chin length, tucked behind her ears.
“Eons ago, in college.” Sylvia made a mental note to ask Steve what pictures he might want on the walls—any of him were noticeably absent. When their brother Scott had become an international model ten years ago, their mother hung him all over the house. She cut pictures out of magazines and taped them on curtains, doors, and mirrors, and if she was able to get a glossy, she had it blown up and framed. Scott had told her he was embarrassed. No matter how many times each of them tried to tell their mom, she scoffed at the idea that this might make Steve feel even more invisible and worse about his life. After she died, Sylvia, Scott and their dad took them all down.
“You don’t look that different except your hair has blond highlights now,” Lisa said.
Sylvia said she appreciated the compliment and thought how her life had turned out nothing like she would’ve imagined back then: love affair, divorce, financial ruin, single parent for twelve years. Her twenty-two-year-old son was a drug addict. She didn’t even know where he was right now. But of course, Lisa knew none of this. “I’ll probably be hiding the gray until the day I die.”
“Weren’t you a queen or something?”
Sylvia grabbed a couple of placemats and handed one to Lisa. “Homecoming, in high school.”
“And Uncle Adam had a crush on you, but you didn’t know he did?”
“That’s what he says. I’m a year older, so I didn’t pay much attention—only into upper classmen, you know.” Sylvia and Adam became reacquainted after attending a multi-class high school reunion, her twenty-fourth. They fell in love and after a three-year, long distance relationship, they decided to marry. But Sylvia had to relocate, leaving her precious Oregon to move to Los Angeles where Adam lived. It was a difficult decision since her son, Trevor, was still in high school and her daughter, Alice, was in college at Oregon State. Then tragedy struck. Several weeks before the wedding, Sylvia’s ex-husband, Tom, her kids’ dad, was killed in an automobile accident. The excruciating turmoil of her children’s pain (and her own) threw doubt on their plans to move forward with the marriage. Sometimes Sylvia felt like she was paying the price for following her heart instead of her head, a lesson she thought she’d learned from her torrid love affair almost twenty years ago. Except Adam was truly a kind-hearted, loving, generous man.
Sammy came running into the dining room. Steve brought up the rear.
“Look who I found!” Nancy announced, extending her arm toward Steve.
“I wasn’t lost,” Steve said. He bent down to pet the dog, “Here, Sammy.” Sammy’s bug-eyes fixed on him, tongue hanging to the side of his mouth, all out of breath. “Good dog. Good Sammy,” he said quietly, stroking his back. Sammy slipped out from under Steve’s hand and reached his paws up on Lisa’s leg, begging. Steve abruptly stood up like he forgot something. “I’m sorry,” he reached his hand out, struggling to remember her name. “You must be Nancy’s daughter.”
Lisa quickly wiped her hands on a paper napkin and shook his. “Yes, I’m Lisa. Nice to meet you, Steve. You sure have a nice home here.”
“Thanks, I think so,” he said. “Been here all my life and hope to keep it that way. That is, if my sister lets me.” He shot a half smile at Sylvia. “Nancy and I can probably work it out.”
“We sure will,” Nancy said. “This is your home and I’ll take care of whatever needs to be done here. I’ll even cook for you!”
“Sounds like a good deal to me,” Steve said.
“You might change your mind after you’ve tasted her cooking.” Lisa’s wisecrack meant no harm. There was no way she’d know that one of Steve’s biggest worries was feeling like he had to eat someone else’s cooking when he didn’t like it, that it might make him sick. Always a picky eater, he avoided eating at friends’ houses when he was little, and he ate only Rice Krispies on family trips.
Nancy and Lisa went back and forth awhile, poking fun, razzing each other. Steve shifted his weight uncomfortably several times, from one foot to the other, looking at Nancy then Lisa as he tried to follow their banter. His shoulders slumped visibly. The exchange was becoming tiresome for Sylvia, too, and she wondered if they really understood the therapist’s recommendation to keep the chatter to a minimum.
“You don’t have to cook for me,” he said quickly. “Dad never did.”
“I’m kidding. Mom can cook anything out of a box,” Lisa laughed at her own joke.
Steve looked puzzled. “Out of a box?”
“Potatoes au gratin, macaroni and cheese, Hamburger Helper—”
“Hamburger Helper? I love the, what’s it called . . . ” He looked down at the floor for several seconds. “Stroganoff. That’s it.”
Sylvia could see that he was trying hard to keep up and instinctively started to put her hand on his arm but pulled back, remembering he was usually uncomfortable with touch. She turned to face him instead. “How about I give Nancy a list of your favorite meals, like spaghetti with meat sauce, chili, Shepherd’s pie, and some of Mom’s recipes?”
With a sigh and a nod, Steve’s relief was apparent. “That’d be great, Sylvia.” He started to head toward the stairs. “I’ll leave you guys, so you can eat.”
“I brought you a burger and fries, too,” Sylvia said.
Steve brightened, “In that case, don’t mind if I do.” He stood by his sister while she dug in the bag for his meal.
“Why don’t you pull up a chair, roommate?” Nancy offered.
“I think I’ll just go eat upstairs.” Conversation during a meal was often difficult for Steve. He might worry that his mouth was full when asked a question then chew too fast so he could say something to be polite. Sometimes he choked trying to get the words out before he’d finished his mouthful. Besides, he’d probably never be able to follow the conversation. Women seemed to talk at the same time. Steve looked sheepish, “But I’ll come back down when I’m finished.” He escaped to his room.
Lisa commented on Steve’s kind manner and how glad she was to know that her mom could live here and that Dr. Rita was so helpful and close by. “I know I haven’t been around him much, but Steve acts pretty normal to me. And he seemed fine with Sammy. What really happens if he doesn’t take his medication?”
Sylvia thought it best not to mention his occasional angry outbursts when he leaned into your face with fearful, darting eyes as he turned his head to the right and left as if searching for someone who might sneak up behind him. When he raised his voice, refusing to do whatever was asked of him—like dump his ashtrays teaming with cigarette butts, or make his bed, or pick up his clothes piled three-feet high on the floor. Upstairs, he might rant at no one in particular or at the committee in his head. If his fears got the better of him, he might curl up in a ball in bed, hiding under the covers, saying, “They’re after me.” She decided to tell them the truth, just not all of it.
“If he misses his meds, he becomes more reclusive and won’t talk to anybody. Or he’ll talk about God and the Bible and say God talks to him. He’ll hear voices more often and more s
trongly. He says he doesn’t hear them at all anymore, since he’s afraid his psychiatrist will put him in a psych ward if he tells the truth, but the meds don’t get rid of the voices completely, they just subside.” She explained that he still has running conversations by himself—as if he’s talking on the phone. “Without the meds, he can appear lost or in a daze. Because there’s so much going on in his head, he can barely decipher what you might be saying to him, especially if he’s in a group. This is probably why he keeps to himself so much.” Dr. Rita had told Sylvia that he doesn’t trust that he’ll understand what’s being said or, even worse, that he can speak clearly enough to make himself understood.
“How did this happen to him?” Nancy asked.
“We don’t know—doctors don’t know what causes it. Like I said, he seemed fine all through childhood, but he did stutter until he was four or five,” Sylvia chuckled. “I was the only one who could understand him. Also his hair fell out in patches when he was in second grade. The doctor said it was nerves, so my parents switched teachers and it went away. Other than that, he was always well liked, a good athlete, and, by high school, a huge track star. He was even voted prom king.” Sylvia told them how scholarship offers poured in at first, but his test scores were low and his grades average. “When all but one of the offers went away, it crushed him. Steve started saying how dumb he was. He took the one remaining offer from nearby Kent State University, and, after one year, he transferred to Ohio State and Big Ten track. By the time he was twenty, it became obvious that he needed serious professional help.”
“Adam knew him in high school and said he was such a great guy— funny, sweet, and so handsome,” Nancy said.
“Do you have a picture of him from then?” Lisa asked. “There’s hundreds upstairs in the attic, but I have one I carry.” Sylvia got her wallet and took out the small high school yearbook photo of Steve, when he was healthy and happy and a hunk. She wanted to hold a reminder of him during better times, to put positive energy around him rather than hopelessness, which was what the whole family felt when he had his first psychotic break.
In the fall of 1969, Steve had told his Mom, Vivian, and his Dad, Matt, that he didn’t want to return to school for the winter quarter. They saw that he’d been struggling and agreed. They took him to a psychiatrist for evaluation but nothing concrete came of it—he just needed a break, they were told. Then the track coach at Ohio State came all the way from Columbus, a two-and-a-half-hour drive, to encourage him to return. The enticements were tempting: a reduced course load, a friend from the track team for a roommate, and assisting a physical education teacher in an elementary school. His parents let him decide, and Steve went back to school. He managed to continue through summer school, even holding down a part-time job delivering Coca-Cola. The truck driver was a religious fanatic, preaching gospel and the sins of any form of non-church related entertainment. When Steve came home, he was unrecognizable. He ran around the house, up and down the stairs, ranting “He won’t save me.” When his mom asked who, he kept running, repeating, “Jesus, Jesus won’t save me.”
Steve spent thirty days in a psychiatric ward in a hospital in Cleveland, but there was no clear diagnosis, just the loosely held term, “nervous breakdown,” commonly acknowledged as a short-lived condition, a one-time occurrence. The psychiatrist had prescribed an antidepressant and simply said that, due to his anxiety, “Steve hasn’t learned how to live.” He was sent home to gradually resume a normal life. Steve said all he remembered about the hospital was that his dad had tricked him into going and he never understood why. The slipping mind often has no tools to recall the events or odd behaviors that others witness, and Steve had been shocked to learn that a simple doctor visit was never the intention. To him it was a setup—his father had just left him there.
Within several months of his return home, Steve had taken a messenger job at a local bank. He drove a company vehicle to deliver bank documents to other branches. After three months, he quit, telling his parents, “I hate living in a car.” He said he should go back to college to get a degree, but he didn’t know what he wanted to be. A physical education teacher? A coach? He figured he wasn’t smart enough to be anything else, and apparently, to him, those options didn’t seem respectable enough. They weren’t “professions.” Still, Steve wanted to give it the ol’ college try. His parents went along with him, and he enrolled in two courses at the local university.
Steve would sit for hours at his desk upstairs, staring at the pages of his college textbooks, the hundreds of words, but they became jumbled on the page and didn’t make sense. He read and reread the same paragraphs over and over. Soon, the words started moving then leaping off the page, hitting him in the face. He had to keep the books closed to protect himself. Sometimes he could hear the muffled voices of the words telling him to open the book and let them out. He put a pillow over his head but still heard them. He struggled to keep up with what they were saying, to formulate answers to their questions, but they were relentless and never gave him enough time to respond. He couldn’t sleep for the voices, so he went to the basement and played his record albums over and over—Jim Morrison, The Doors, Little Richard, or James Taylor—to try to drown them out. He started singing along and discovered that if he sang loudly enough, he could keep them at bay. When his parents couldn’t take the nightlong music marathons anymore and told him he had to stop, Steve became angry, insisting, “God made me a rock star. I have to do what He says!”
The “nervous breakdown” had lasted over a year, and Steve was much worse. Matt had read about a mega-vitamin theory that was attracting attention in the mental health (if not the medical) community as a way to restore a chemical imbalance in the brain. Simply put, the theory held that an overproduction of adrenaline caused a “distorted perception of reality.” As a chemical engineer, Matt had an educated grasp of the scientific language and now a potential formula: cut down on adrenaline production to remove the distortion.
Steve and his dad had traveled to Princeton where testing could be done to evaluate the mega-vitamin doses. They returned home with a bag full of vitamins, and Steve willingly took some twenty vitamins a day for several weeks. He became extremely gaunt, weak, and, finally, couldn’t keep food down. He dry-heaved to the point where he needed to be hospitalized.
Schizophrenia was the ultimate diagnosis, and the search for institutions began. The Meninger Clinic in Kansas, one of the most renowned, treated schizophrenia through talk therapy without medication, an approach later considered ineffective. Steve’s parents had determined that it was too far away. Harding Institute in Columbus, Ohio, was considered one of the top three in the nation, and was, of course, much closer to home. By this time, Steve had lapsed into catatonia. He stared, never spoke, and moved only with guidance and an encouraging word. After two and a half years at Harding, his improvement was remarkable—a major rebound. Although fragile, it seemed that Steve was back. The medical staff had recommended he stay longer, but the insurance had run out. At three thousand dollars a month, Steve’s parents couldn’t afford to keep him there.
He moved into an apartment in Columbus with a roommate from Harding, with supposed out-patient treatment through the institution. The roommate drank alcohol, became unruly, and then disappeared. Unable to reach Steve on the phone, his parents became concerned. They drove to the apartment only to find Steve curled up in bed, his pill vials full, and his dwelling a bug-infested rat’s nest. They cleaned for several days, moved out his furniture and his clothing, paid the remaining month’s rent, lost the security deposit, and took Steve home once again. There he gained weight, grew a beard, chain-smoked, and walked for hours through the safe haven of their quiet lake community, head down, mumbling to himself. The handsome, engaging, lean, athletic wonder had become the local madman, the center of hushed gossip. What could’ve happened to him? He seemed normal growing up. Probably drugs. His parents must’ve pressured him. Maybe he’s dangerous and should be locked up. Best t
o stay out of his way.
Matt and Vivian had kept the diagnosis to themselves. They were initially ashamed and guilt ridden, certain they had caused it, until the psychiatrists assured them otherwise. But how could anyone else, even their friends, understand? Schizophrenia—derived from the Greek schizein, to split, and phren, mind—had become misleadingly popularized as “split personality,” usually imagined as a version of a horrifying Jekyll and Hyde. Though Steve’s parents learned there is no category or phenomenon in psychiatry called split personality, try telling that to your next-door neighbor. If there is any “splitting,” it’s within one single personality where the individual’s thoughts, feelings, and emotions are seriously and confusingly disconnected from each other in a random chaos. Schizophrenic individuals, far from having split or multiple personalities, actually have a great struggle maintaining the coherence and integrity of even a single self. This knowledge, however, would not necessarily be reassuring to the neighborhood, which had surely witnessed his ranting and raving in the driveway or a police car taking him away. And Steve always looked angry—his appearance alone would make anyone wary.
Fifteen years, in and out of various institutions, were a muddled array of potential cures through shock treatments, strict dietary regimens (no sugar or carbohydrates, which he craved, and lots of vegetables, which he never liked), medication changes, and more attempts at apartment living or halfway houses (short-term stays since he’d eventually just walk home). His parents had become involved in the county chapter of AMI, Alliance for the Mentally Ill, attending the weekly support group, and discovered that some parents were coping with a combination of mental illness and drug addiction or alcoholism. This “dual diagnosis” was rather common—a problematic, “chicken or egg” situation. How to determine which came first was a common dilemma.
“Tough love” was the catch phrase, which some parents in the support group tried to tell Vivian. “You’ve got to stop enabling him. Make him take his meds, get a job, and kick him out of the house. That’s the only way he’ll ever stand on his own two feet.” But she would have none of it. Head high, chin thrust forward, she’d retort, “My son’s not a drug addict. He knows he can always come home.” And, of course, he did.
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