This time at Thanksgiving, however, she seemed like a different person. She was lethargic, and goal-less and aimless. Her weight was up, her skin was broken out, and her lips were all shriveled up. Her attitude toward me had changed too. Before, she had seemed depressed, but still accessible. I may not have liked what she was saying, but at least I could talk with her. Now she was refusing to talk, withdrawing completely, acting hostile.
But it was the realization that while she was in the hospital she had been mutilating herself that really got to me. Finally I understood. What she was going through and what I had gone through were not the same thing at all.
I had done a zillion things growing up to call attention to myself. Once I had even gone to school with Band-Aids all over me, hoping to be asked what was the matter. But underneath, nothing was the matter. Hurting myself had never been an option. For all my cavalier feelings about suicide the first time I heard she had tried, I always thought about it in the abstract. I couldn't really imagine people hurting themselves on purpose.
And then I got it: Lori was different, really different. There was something really wrong with her. In some ways the realization made everything much easier. I could take her illness seriously now. She wasn't just a kid like me going through some rough times. I could feel the sympathy and shock that my own disbelief had shielded me from before.
But in some ways it made everything much harder. It turned my world upside-down. The perfect Lori I had worshipped since I was a child was gone. In her place was someone I didn't know and didn't understand.
At that Thanksgiving dinner, my father did his usual thing, going around the table, asking each one of us what we had to be thankful for. When his own turn came he grew very emotional. We were family, he said, and family was all there was. We were lucky we had each other, he said, and we all had to stick together through good times and bad.
Lori had been a terrific big sister to me. She was always there when I was having problems. She helped me with my school-work, and listened to my woes. When I felt out of it in high school, and Mom and Dad were reassuring me with platitudes, it was Lori who consoled me. I couldn't face this new, odd, ill person.
When my turn came I mumbled the right thing, about how glad I was to have my sister home, and that she was feeling better. It wasn't what I wanted to say. It was what I was expected to say. What I wanted to say was: I can't take this. Get me out of here.
20
Lori Futura House, White Plains, New York, December 1986–April 1987
Things began to fall apart. My lungs were screaming for air. The Voices were screaming to be released. My control was becoming harder and harder to maintain.
Soon I began hearing the call of cocaine again. One of the first things I did was try to find Raymond. I found him, but something had changed while I was in the hospital. Raymond had never wanted to have anything to do with my illness. While I was in the hospital he never visited me, never even tried to contact me. Now that I was out and living in a halfway house, he couldn't deal with that either. I spoke with him sporadically, but he definitely did not want to make himself the man he was to me before I was rehospitalized.
I could still get cocaine. I had a lot of other sources around town. All you had to do is step into a bar, preferably one with a druggie reputation, and get friendly with the bartender. In that kind of bar they liked people like me scouting for coke. It meant good tips. Cash-and-carry was the name of the game.
And if I didn't have Raymond, at least I had Robin. She had her sources and I had mine. Together, we could always manage to stay high. When we weren't doing lines, we smoked marijuana in the stairwell at the halfway house, spraying deodorant around after us to mask the smell. It was good to have a buddy like Robin.
Still, I wanted Raymond. I was especially lonesome around the holidays. My mom and dad were traveling and I wound up alone in Futura House with two other residents and a counselor. I whipped us up a fancy lobster dinner for Christmas—years ago my daddy had taught me how to prepare it—so we had some festivity. But as New Year's rolled around, I began to pine for the comfort of a man.
Against all evidence, I had it in my head that Raymond and I would spend New Year's Eve together. So as the clock ticked in the new year, I sat in the pay phone in the halfway house, waiting for the good news that Raymond had some blow, and that we were going to see each other again.
The hours dragged on. No calls. So I began to call him. Once he answered, made some vague, uncomfortable excuses and hung up. The rest of my calls went unanswered. Over and over I dropped my quarter into the resident pay phone trying to reach him. The phone rang and rang and rang. Midnight came and went. I saw in the new year alone, sitting in a phone booth. By 2:30 A.M. I finally realized. I was alone.
Very shortly afterward came another disaster. Robin and I got caught. We had usually been careful about using drugs at Futura House. It was strictly prohibited, so we knew that if we did it there, we had to be careful, indulging only late at night when no one was around. But after so long without getting caught, we grew careless. We laid some lines right out on the dining room table. Of course someone saw us, and ratted.
Deanna called me into her office. There was no warmth in her voice.
“Have you been doing cocaine? ”
I was cocky. “What if I say yes?” I asked her.
No answer.
“Well, what if I say no? ”
Back and forth we went. Finally I confessed. Deanna was angry. As I left the office the first thing I did was make a beeline to Robin. I had to warn her what was in store. But Deanna was quicker than I. By the time I reached Robin, Deanna had already gotten to her and delivered the news: We were both suspended for a week.
Mom and Dad were livid. They let me come home for that week, but they weren't happy. Dad roared at me.
“So this is what you do with the money I've been giving you?” Mom just shook her head that I would be so stupid as to add drug addiction to my other problems. The week I spent at home was pretty tense.
Futura House accepted me back on one condition: no more drugs. I accepted the condition, but things got worse anyway. I was beginning to understand how sick I was. But I was far too overwhelmed by my secret symptoms. I kept encouraging myself to hang on a little longer but I didn't know how long I would last, and I didn't know how to communicate my suffering to anyone else. My anger was returning. I was screaming for help, but the language I was speaking no one seemed to understand.
I played sick games with myself. Late at night when it got warmer, I went outside Futura House in shorts and a T-shirt, but no shoes. I walked to the curb, put my Walkman on my head and turned it up full-blast. Then I closed my eyes and crossed the street, one foot in front of the other. Cars zoomed by honking. I imagined hearing the drivers yelling and cursing. Smiling slyly, I finished my crossing and opened my eyes on the other side. My record was six round trips. Then I got bored with the game.
My violence was escalating. I smashed a window. I punched in my closet door. At the Thursday weekly meeting, the staff made things very clear to me: one more incident and I was out.
At nursing school my performance grew more and more erratic. I wanted desperately to succeed. But no matter how hard I tried to stay in control, I found myself doing wildly inappropriate and even dangerous things.
I couldn't even handle bed making properly. My first patient was a woman who had had surgery just the day before. I went into her room, introduced myself cordially as a nursing student and asked her to please get out of bed, as I had to change her sheets. She didn't want to climb out of bed so soon after surgery. She resisted. I persisted.
I knew she had had the surgery. I knew she was in great pain. I also knew that I had to make her fucking bed if I was going to pass this part of my nursing rotation. I finally helped her out of bed and seated her in a chair nearby. I tried to make her bed as quickly as possible, but in my haste I caught my finger in the guardrail and blood oozed out everywhere.
I never did get reprimanded for making the poor lady move. Instead, I wound up in the emergency room for bandaging and a tetanus shot.
I did all kinds of crazy things. Instead of washing my hands for twenty seconds as instructed, I scrubbed for two minutes by the clock. I went into a geriatric's room, and tried to cheer an old lady up by borrowing her cane and tap dancing like a fool around her room. I walked out of an anatomy and physiology exam because I didn't know where the parts of a dissected cat belonged. I faked patients’ blood pressure because the Voices were screaming so loud in my ears that I couldn't hear anything when it was my turn to take a reading. I was clever, though: I always wrote something close to the last reading on the chart. If the last true reading was 110/80, then I'd write 110/70.
In the first semester, I had just managed to pass my exams. This semester, I couldn't pass my exams, because I wasn't really taking them. I gave that job over to my Voices.
While I was sitting before my examination paper, I would hear the Voices whispering. “Pick B! Pick B!” they'd say. I believed everything the Voices told me, and knew that under their command I could do no wrong. I raced down the sheet answering question after question according to their instruction. I would finish a fifty-minute, fifty-question test in five minutes, hand in the paper and waltz out of the room confident I had aced the exam. Later when I got back a paper with a failing score, I was crushed. The Voices were fakes! They had deceived me and let me down.
Still, I couldn't study well enough to prepare for tests on my own. Was this really my brain? Was this really the same brain that had achieved for me a 3.9 average at one of the most competitive high schools in the country, and a 3.3 average at one of the most competitive colleges? Was this the same brain that learned to speak Spanish? That wrote papers the professors praised?
My thoughts ran all together, veered and careened and strung themselves together in ways I could not control. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't corral them.
I sat in class watching the instructor show us how to give shots.
“You do it firmly,” she said, grasping the syringe. “Don't hesitate. Pretend you are throwing a dart.”
“A dart. A dart,” my mind chanted. “Do it like a dart.” And then, as the lecture droned on, my mind was off in flight. “Do it like a dart.” The ultimate injection. A shot in the ass. Syringe. Cringe. To die in room 404. Dead. Gray plastic features. Cinema I and II. Last row. Row, row, row your boat. Don't be a cutthroat. Cut your throat. Get your goat. Go out and vote. And so I wrote. Topic: nonsense. Sense of none? The flying nun. Flying high on coke. Diet Coke. Ninety-nine cents. Two-liter bottles. Bottle it up. Seethe. Fester. Bubble. Explode. Ha! Ha! Ha! They're at it again …
To be sick. To be well. To wish in a well. Please let me be courageous. Another quarter in the fountain. Please let me be like everybody else. The outcast. Loser. Pitiful. Hate that word. Fighter. Winner. Delusional. False beliefs. Who am I kidding? Daffy Duck? Loony Toons. Deranged. Demented. Unbalanced. They're manic. I'm crazy. I'm crazy. That's insanity. It's cracked to be like Humpty Dumpty. Zcdera = crazed! Is a cuckoo clock wacky or just screwy (as in needing a Phillips screwdriver to be cured). What do I need to be healed. Will a wrench work? Maybe I can wrench my neck? Suicidal ideation seeping out? Too tense and nervous. SNAP! (and not as in “crackle, pop”). I'm suffocating as if a Ziploc bag has zipped my head off. That's witless; incredibly bugged out. It's like an overdose of Chinese mustard burning your brain beyond the Outer Limits of your nostrils. “You can pick your friends. You can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose.” I have no friends anyway. How about just a buddy? How about a Budweiser? How about a budding flower? How about a beer and a rose? How about a wedding? To love and to cherish forever and always. Isn't “always” a panty shield or a pregnancy test or tampon or something? Now I'm getting grosser by the minute. My second-hand first-hand Swatch watch's second hand is busted. Around and around the time goes, and where it stops, you may win a prize on The Price Is Right. Let's go to a club and eat cold cut sandwiches on club rolls, and bring clubs with us like we were in The Flintstones. Dr. Rockland is Fred's and Wilma's and the Rubble family's psychiatrist too. He goes way back to Stone Age times to give family therapy. Do you have the time? Does anybody know what time it is? Do you care? Sealed with a kiss. No valentines except from my daddy. Why can't I find a boyfriend? Why can't I find any friends? Maybe I'm a blockhead or a huge blackhead. No, I have a good complexion. I scrub my skin off. I will come to your aid with a Band-Aid. Fix me up. I want to be cured. No more schizo-affective disorder. Get it out of me. Not interested. Go to fucking hell. They always find their way into my mind. I'll show you assholes. All I want is a man and a family that makes it in this world. Please, dear God, I pray and pray for an advantageous kind of life. I promise to be a worthwhile contributor to this life and perhaps beyond. Crazy or just a bit touched? Either way, as they say, I'm my best buddy. High five, self!
Robin realized I was in trouble before anyone else did. Maybe she knew the signs because she had been there before. I started giving away things. I gave Deanna a photograph I had taken of a red bird that I loved. I gave away all my record albums, every last one, to the residents in Futura. I tried giving my stereo to the house. My dad would take care of my car. For several days I talked to Robin about wanting to kill myself. I was sick of the Voices. Sick of feeling depressed. Sick of feeling worthless. Sick of feeling hopeless.
She threatened me: “If you do anything, I'll kill you,” she said.
Ha! If I had my way she'd be too late. I had made the final decision. There was no other way out. This was to be my last night to plan, to think, to feel, to say goodbye to the Voices and to pray that I—and my parents and friends—would finally find some relief.
I had a plan. A real plan. This wasn't going to be another botched suicide attempt. This was it. After hearing about hell for so many years, I hoped that heaven would welcome me.
My plan was simple. During the day I would drive home. Mom and Dad would be gone for the day in Manhattan. I would put my car in the garage filling the empty space where Dad's car belonged. I would close the door to the garage. I had already noted that the garage door hit the driveway all the way down, and I wouldn't need blankets or sheets to fill the space. I would turn on the keys to my car, and also to my mom's car for good measure. I knew where the keys were always kept, hanging in the kitchen.
No one would be home for hours. The car fumes would fill the garage. I decided to play “Comfortably Numb” by Pink Floyd in the cassette deck of my car, and I decided to play it loud. I imagined putting the seat back listening to this mood music and going to sleep painlessly and forever. I felt confident that I could carry out my blueprint this time for sure. This was really it.
I was anxious to fall asleep. Tomorrow was the big day. I lay in bed, tossing and turning under my covers. I popped my head out. I buried it in my blanket. I turned on some Cat Stevens music. I got out of bed and paced around. My heart was pounding big-time. I tried taking a hot bath. I went back to my room and started staring at the ceiling. And then the tossing and turning started all over.
I needed to sleep. I needed to dream. I needed to prepare for tomorrow. I went to my supply of tranquilizers. I took one. I took two. Then four. I had to sleep. Five. I'm going to die in the morning. Six. Seven. I can't fall asleep. Eight. Maybe if I walked around enough I'd get tired. Nine. Ten. It was getting late. I couldn't keep track.
I thought about watching TV. I had to get out of bed, but I was feeling fuzzy. I tried to make it to the living room, but the walls knocked into me. I felt uncomfortably wasted. I could barely walk. How was I going to make it till tomorrow?
Robin intercepted me in the hall. She had been worried about me for a week, she told me. She had been keeping an eye on me. She helped me back into my room, where she saw the near-empty tranquilizer bottle. She begged me to turn myself in.
As clearly as I could, I explained to her that that was impossible. I
needed to die. But that was okay, I told her calmly. This time it was going to work.
Robin was crying. She was frightened. “Lori, I love you,” she sobbed. She didn't want to rat on me. But she didn't want me to die either. She knew she had to act quickly. Finally she turned me The counselor on duty took one look at me, called Deanna and then a taxi to take me to the White Plains Hospital emergency room. I don't know how much time went by, but very quickly, it seemed, both Dr. Rockland and Daddy were there to meet me.
I was still very groggy. I tried with my slurred speech to beg them to let me die. I had to die. I dozed on and off. I seemed to fade in and out of consciousness as I recounted my lovely plan, my strategy to end my life tomorrow.
All of a sudden, I woke up. It was tomorrow. I didn't like being awake. I wanted to go back to sleep. Wait a second. Where the hell was I? It wasn't hell. I was in a bed. It wasn't heaven. Too many colors. Some obscure, undefined being was sitting in my doorway eyeballing me as if she had nothing better to do with her time.
And then I realized: I was back in the fucking hospital.
Part V
The 9925 Key
21
Lori New York Hospital, White Plains, New York, May 1987-June 1988
On Tuesday, December 15, 1987, I arrived on 3 South—one of New York Hospital's long-term units—in time for lunch.
But even though I was starving, I refused to eat. Instead, I went straight to my room. I didn't want to see anyone. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was tense and upset and on the edge of tears. As I walked through the halls on my way here, I had seen the other patients staring. I knew that they were laughing at me and relishing my discomfort.
In my room, I unpacked my belongings. I covered my single bed with the pink comforter my mother had brought me. I put the boxes with my three hundred cassette tapes on the floor. Into the closet went the tons of clothes—in three sizes—that had been bought to accommodate my increasingly porky figure. I lined my windup toys on my desk. My parents were always on the lookout for new ones. They knew that I could fill hours of my empty day fiddling with these little children's playthings. I had a lizard with a wagging tail, a set of teeth that chattered, a walking pig that wiggled its tail and ears and snorted, a walking hamburger, a cackling witch and a psychedelic slinky.
The Quiet Room Page 19
