When she left the hospital, Lori was still contrite, still apologetic, still giving every sign that she realized what she had done had been wrong.
“I just flipped out, Daddy,” she said. “I won't do it again.”
Nancy and I tried to reassure her. We didn't want to put any more pressure on her than we had to. So we brought her back home to Scarsdale for a few days. I called her boss at the insurance company and explained that she had been taken ill, and would like a leave of absence for a while, but that she would definitely be back at work soon. He was very nice about it. Lori was a productive salesperson, he said. They would be happy to have her back whenever she was ready.
But Lori's problems didn't go away.
Although she returned to her apartment, she didn't seem willing or able to go back to work. And she began to seem alternately more agitated and more depressed. Sometimes she seemed nearly frantic, at other times she seemed nearly rigidly, profoundly down. Her appearance began to change too. She had once been meticulous about her grooming, and, while she never shared Nancy's love of ultra-feminine things and high fashion, she was always nicely dressed, with attractive clothes, and nattering haircuts. Now she was more slovenly. Her clothes seemed like she had slept in them. Her hair, once shiny and bouncy, stuck together in oily strands, looking as if she hadn't washed it in weeks.
Lori Winters had moved out, so Nancy went down to the city often to check on our Lori. She began to report to me with growing dismay the increasing disorder of Lori's apartment, and her agitation. It was hard to be in the same room with her sometimes, she was so stirred up, pacing back and forth, pulling on one cigarette after another until the room was filled with the foul smoke.
In the meantime, she had stopped seeing her psychiatrist. Shortly after she was released from the hospital, we got a call from him. Lori's problems were more serious than he was prepared to handle, he told us. Lori needed more help than he could give, so he was recommending that we find another doctor. He was saying that Lori was really sick—much sicker than we had thought at first. But I couldn't hear him. I didn't want to hear him.
Partly it was my love for Lori that blinded me: I didn't want to see what was happening before my eyes. My daughter Lori was pretty and smart and talented. She was a model student and a model teenager. Everyone loved her. She was supposed to go to college, meet a wonderful man, get married, have children and live a long and happy life. I couldn't accept anything that got in the way of that picture.
But partly it was my own professional background, my training in psychology, that—rather than helping me—made it almost impossible for me to face what was happening. Back when I studied psychology in the 1950s, there was only one cause for all mental illnesses, even the most severe: a faulty upbringing. Everything was tied to the way you were raised. There were different schools of thought, of course. Some practitioners followed a Freudian model where understanding the id, the ego and the superego gave the answer to everything. Some followed Jung, with his emphasis on unconscious myths. But everyone believed that it was early life experiences that were behind mental disorders. A patient with serious mental problems had been subject at an early age to unacceptable pressures, to confusing messages, or to some destructive behavior on the part of the parents.
If Lori were really sick, my training told me, then I was to blame. I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it. So I refused to believe that Lori was really sick.
Nonetheless, Nancy and I were both ready to try anything that would help our little girl. When her psychiatrist suggested that rather than psychotherapy we try drug therapy, we were more than willing to listen. There was a man in New York, a Dr. Nathan Kline, who was experimenting in the field of psychopharmacology. He had established quite a reputation already for treating young people's psychological problems with drugs. There was even a whole clinic named after him. After reading some clippings that described all the good he was doing for young people like our daughter, we sent Lori over to his clinic on the east side of Manhattan.
After several weeks of treatment it seemed to me that Lori was much better. Her depressions didn't seem as severe, and she seemed much calmer. She seemed more in control, more relaxed. I thought the drug therapy was doing her good. Nancy disagreed.
“Marvin, that's not Lori,” she said to me one night. “That's not who Lori is. Look at her eyes. She's just drugged, she's in a stupor. He's giving her way too much medicine. She's taking ten or twenty pills a day.”
I knew he was giving her medicine, but I didn't know what it was, or how much she was taking, or why he was giving it to her. To resolve the argument, I told Nancy I'd go see Dr. Kline in his office, which wasn't far from my own office in midtown. I called and made an appointment.
But when I arrived at the clinic, I did more talking than asking questions. Dr. Kline was a pleasant man in his fifties with a beard. His office was full of impressive African art. His whole setup, in fact, was impressive. He was clearly well regarded for his work. I spent my time in his office thanking him for the help he had given Lori. He seemed glad to hear my comments.
But then the phone rang again.
It was New York Hospital calling. Lori was in the emergency room. Again. Once again she had tried to commit suicide. Once again they wanted to admit her to a psychiatric unit. This time Nancy was too terrified to come with me. So I asked our older son, Mark, who was home for the summer from college in New Orleans.
Mark and I didn't talk much in the car on the way down. I was too consumed with my own thoughts. It was mid-June, just three months after she had come out of Bellevue, and here she was in a hospital again. What was going wrong? What was happening to my daughter?
When we got to the emergency room, it was like a repeat of the time before, only this time it was much worse. She apparently had had an appointment with Dr. Kline in the afternoon. En route to his office, she had swallowed a handful of Ativan, the tranquilizer that Dr. Kline was prescribing for her, and then walked thirty blocks to the office. When she arrived she was incoherent and rambling so the nurses didn't even wait for her appointment. They felt she had taken an intentional overdose in a suicide attempt. They called an ambulance right away to take her to New York Hospital, just a few blocks away.
Again, by the time I arrived Lori had had her stomach pumped. Again she was contrite.
“I wasn't trying to kill myself, Daddy, really I wasn't,” she cried. “I was just feeling hyper and I took that stuff to calm down.” She seemed in a partial stupor. I left Mark with Lori while I went out to discuss the situation with the doctors. They already knew her history at Bellevue. I was trying to convince them that what Lori was saying was true: She wasn't trying to kill herself, but just trying to calm down.
But when I returned to Lori's bedside, I found Mark white and stunned.
“Dad, she's cursing me out,” the stricken twenty-year-old told me. “She's telling me to get the hell out of here, that she hates me, that she's always hated me.” Mark idolized Lori, from the time they were kids. He looked shocked. “She's been trying to take off her clothes and leave, Dad. I've been having to hold her down.”
And just at that moment she tried to do it again. She was lying in a hospital bed, dressed only in a cotton gown open at the back. When she saw me enter the room, she began to shout. “There's nothing wrong with me. I'm not sick. I'm not staying here.” And then, just as if her brother and I were not in the room, she began to take off her gown.
That was when I finally realized her problems were serious. Lori was the most modest of girls, shy and private. When she was well, she would never ever have considered disrobing before me or her brother. But now, shrieking and yelling, she was preparing to walk—naked and without shoes—into the pouring rain outside the hospital.
I have always tried to stay in control. It is simply part of my nature. But that night at New York Hospital, I lost it. I pleaded with her. I begged her. I did everything I could to try to get her to sign herself into the
hospital. Over the next hour Mark and I struggled to get her back into her clothes, and tried to calm her down. I tried to reason with her. Then I tried to threaten her. She was hostile. She was unmoving.
“I'm not sick, Daddy. I want to go home. I want to get out of here.”
I tried to get her to see the reality of the situation. Matters had spiraled out of our hands. If she didn't sign herself in, chances were good they would commit her involuntarily.
“If you sign yourself in,” I told her, “you will stay in control of the situation. You will be able to sign yourself back out when you want. If you don't, they can force you to stay.”
Still, I kept giving her a hopeful picture, one that I myself was aching to believe. The Payne Whitney Clinic of New York Hospital, where she was to be sent, was a well-known acute-care facility. That was where people were sent with short-term psychiatric problems. It never occurred to me that people left such short-term care facilities and went on to long-term hospitals. I simply thought she would go in, get some rest, and leave.
“It will only be for a few days, Lori,” I told her.
Lori trusted me. Lori had always trusted me. So after about an hour, tired and tearful, she capitulated. The paperwork had already been prepared. She signed it. She looked very small and very helpless as they wheeled her away to be transferred to the psychiatric unit.
In the car on the way home, I knew that Mark was hurting. He hadn't been able to understand what was happening to his sister and was frightened and shocked by the night's events. But I couldn't find anything in myself to comfort him. I was too caught up in the battle raging within my own mind. Lori's problems were only temporary, I kept saying to myself. It was just an acute problem that was going to be over quickly. She would snap out of it in the hospital and be home soon.
But then the dark thoughts I had been trying to hide began pummeling at my hopeful barricade: It's all your fault, I thought. Lori is very sick, and you caused it. You weren't affectionate enough. You didn't pay enough attention to her. You pushed her too hard. You were too demanding. It's you who have caused her problems. You. You. You. My mind reeled over Lori's entire childhood, looking for answers.
What had I done? What had I done?
New York Hospital is a white, cold-looking building overlooking Manhattan's East River. Because it is perched right atop the FDR Drive where cars zoom down the east side of the city, I must have driven by it hundreds of times in my life, and never given it a second look. This time, when Nancy and I drove together to the Payne Whitney Clinic at New York Hospital, I looked closely. I knew that behind one of those dark, anonymous windows was Lori.
The hospital had made some attempt at cheer: There was a small rotunda containing a pleasant garden with scarlet maples and a scraggly tulip or two in front of the main entrance. But from the moment we entered the hospital, it was clear that this was no ordinary place where ordinary people came to get well. This was a locked-door psychiatric facility. The people inside couldn't just walk on out. And we couldn't just walk on in. After taking the elevator up to Lori's floor, we buzzed and waited to be scrutinized through a window in the door and admitted.
I didn't know what to expect. After her first suicide attempt, at least she had seemed fairly normal. Apologetic, yes, and afraid that we would be angry. But we had talked things over coherently, and she had explained herself. What would she be like this time?
As it turned out, it was worse than anything I could have imagined. We were admitted to a corridor filled with blank-faced people, muttering strange things to themselves, or knitting jittery patterns in the air with restless fingers, or pacing or rocking incessantly in their chairs. And there, in a visiting room, where thousands of devastated parents must have looked with horror on thousands of distraught children, I saw my daughter. But it was not my daughter. The Lori I knew was gone. And in her place was a stranger, a person who seemed to be living only partly in this world, and partly in some faraway world of her own making. There were no more apologies, no more pleas to let her out. The illness had captured her, and was part of her.
We hugged her, and talked briefly of home, of her brothers, of how much we loved her and how much we hoped she would be better soon. But the things we said weren't registering. She was preoccupied with thoughts that seemed to perplex and amaze her both at the same time.
She leaned over, and in a hushed, confidential tone, whispered to me.
“I know you aren't going to believe this, Daddy, but I can fly.”
“What?” The hairs in my arm stood out. I wasn't sure I had heard her correctly, but I was afraid that I had.
“I can fly. Really, Daddy. I can.”
It was not a boast, or a challenge. She herself, I could see, found this state of affairs incredible. She was very soft-spoken and focused, deliberate and serious.
“Why don't you show me, Lori.”
She scanned the hallway until she spotted a nearby sofa. She climbed up on the pillows. I saw the soft cushions of the sofa sink under her weight. She stood up straight, with a deliberate, almost practiced motion, and then spread her arms as if ready to take flight. She looked down, first at her feet and then at the floor. And then she paused.
“It's not high enough. I can't fly from here.” She looked around her. “If you could take me to that window there, I could show you. I can fly.”
And she believed it. There was no doubt about it. If we had taken her to an open window, she would have plunged, arms outstretched in flight, to the ground.
We didn't know what to say, so we changed the subject, and left the hospital soon afterward. As we left, her words rang in my ears. “I can fly, Daddy. I can fly.”
6
Payne Whitney Clinic, New York City, June 1982
MEDICAL RECORDS
6/17/82 Primary Therapist Note
Patient describes her day of admission as one where she heard voices. “I was afraid I would take my hammer and smash my apartment.”
6/17/82 Nursing Note
At 8 p m patient had episode of severe auditory hallucinations coupled with intense psychomotor agitation: She was writhing, forcefully grimacing, holding her hands to her ears, shaking her feet repeatedly, and seemed nearly oblivious to external stimuli. This episode lasted about ten minutes. After it subsided she was initially guarded about what had happened, but later did admit to auditory hallucinations, to feeling ashamed and hopeless about the hallucinations, and to feeling that she must “fight” the voices when they occur, and that discussing them makes them more difficult to “fight.”
6/21/82 Nursing Note
Patient appeared quite preoccupied and angry earlier this morning. Patient refused to discuss what was the matter and stated she was fine! She stated she knows what to tell the doctors in order to let them discharge her. She wants very much to leave Payne Whitney Clinic and was able to say her parents brought her here and that was the only reason she remains here.
6/23/82 Primary Therapist Note
Patient remains agitated and intermittently actively hallucinating. It became clearly evident in discussion how tormented she is by these voices and how hard she is fighting to resist their commands. Much of her treatment resistance appears to stem from fear of the repercussions of revealing these hallucinations to staff. “They'll kill me if I tell.”
7
Steven Schiller Scarsdale, New York, July 1982
I was sixteen years old when Lori was committed for the first time. When my parents told me what they had done, I lost it. I stood there in the kitchen, my hands shaking with rage.
“You're wrong!” I shouted at my parents. “You're wrong! This is no way to treat one of your kids.”
My father sat at the butcher block table. My mother was nervously fluttering through the kitchen, compulsively arranging and rearranging her kitchen that was already spotless.
“Steven,” my father began, “Lori is sick.” There was a pause. “We are doing what is best for her …”
“Sure
you're doing what's best for her,” I said sarcastically. “You just don't know how to handle her. You're doing what's best for you.”
“We're trying to get help for her,” my mother began.
“You're trying to sweep her under the carpet,” I shouted. There was another long silence. There wasn't anything left to say. I started crying.
I really believed they were trying to sweep her away. At my age, everything looked black and white. There was right and there was wrong, and putting Lori in the hospital was wrong. This seemed like typical stupid Scarsdale stuff. I knew how people around here hushed up divorces, and kids on drugs, and jobs lost and other unpleasant things. To me, putting Lori in a psychiatric hospital was just like that. It was something that had to be whispered about.
“Let's put her where we can't see her, so we don't have to confront this every single day,” I mocked. “Let's put her where no one else can see her, where no one else will know she has problems.”
To be honest, I didn't really have any idea what was wrong with Lori. Because I am six and a half years younger than her, I was still just a kid when she began having difficulties in college. My parents didn't seem to understand much of Lori's problems. What they did understand, they weren't passing on to me. I was only vaguely aware of talk of Lori having troubles in school.
And when Lori graduated and moved back to New York, all I heard was more talk, again vague, about her seeing a doctor. Even her suicide attempt a few months before didn't really register. I was lying in bed at night when I heard the phone ring. There was the scuffle of someone dressing, and then my father poked his head in my bedroom door.
The Quiet Room Page 6
