An Angle on the World

by Bill Barich

  Leroy was impressed by how positively his boarders responded to an increase in structure. He had seen the same thing happen among inmates in prison. Men who were overwhelmed on the outside, surly and lost, longing for discipline, functioned perfectly well behind bars, in a community where the rules were simple and explicit. And he noticed, too, an odd psychological similarity between schizophrenics and the heroin addicts he’d been working with for so long: they both tended to get so involved in their game that the game wound up playing them.

  It was like the course that alcoholism takes, Leroy thought. A person drinks for fun and then out of routine and finally from desperation, having no other way to cope with his loose time or his emotions. Say you’re a teen-ager, isolated, shy, gangly, probably confused about sex, and you hear voices in your head, and have feelings and perceptions that don’t fit with those of others all around you. Eventually, you go to a doctor, and he gives a name to your condition—and this is a great relief, because it presents you with a mask to hide behind. At first, you can put it on at will, using it to your advantage, but slowly you begin to blend with it, and in time you and the mask are one.

  That’s what Leroy saw at the Chateau—schizophrenics who were addicted to “crazy” patterns of thought and action, and had to break their addiction before they could go on to the next phase of recovery. Yet at the same time he understood that schizophrenia was a debilitating organic disease, rooted in biology. Both he and Kathy were aware of the anguish in the house—how much labor it took some boarders just to tie their shoes and put on a shirt. Although the Chateau was a more orderly place, some residents still made trips to the hospital, and the Loopers were upset at being unable to detect the signs that preceded such episodes. Then, one day, their worst nightmare came true: with no warning, a man climbed onto a neighbor’s roof and jumped to his death.

  Early in 1979, the Loopers were introduced to Mel Blaustein, and they invited him to be their consulting psychiatrist. Blaustein was in his mid-thirties, a trim, fast-moving transplant from New York, who still had a trace of Brooklyn accent and sometimes carried a copy of The Ring, boxing’s Bible, on his clipboard as he made his rounds. This was appropriate, for he had a triage approach to board-and-care medicine.

  Only a few doctors in the Bay Area were willing to deal with such poor (and demanding) patients. Blaustein himself had got into the field by chance, in 1976, after being mustered out of the Army in Oakland. A physician friend told him he could earn seventeen dollars in Medi-Cal money by giving a shot of Prolixin to an old woman in a home, and he was glad to get the cash, since his private practice was new and undersubscribed. But he found, too, that he enjoyed the work, which had an appealing immediacy; and he felt a professional obligation to serve those in need.

  On his first visit to the Chateau, Blaustein was awed by its extravagance, and by the scope of the Loopers’ efforts. From his research he knew that the average board-and-care operator was a single person over the age of fifty, often female and widowed, usually black or Filipino, who had some health-care training, took in about eight people, and did not rely on the income for a livelihood. (San Francisco is too expensive, liberal-minded, and bureaucratically complex to support an owner whose sole intent is larceny.) Having been to many such homes, he had come to expect the patients in them to be apathetic, and he marvelled at how healthy, vigorous, and engaging the Loopers’ residents were. It wasn’t that other owners were insensitive, he decided, but that they didn’t have the political sophistication of Leroy and Kathy, or their tenacity.

  In Blaustein’s opinion, the Chateau was an evolving model of what a home could be, and he worked to make it stronger. Twice a week, he stopped by—once to see patients and once to talk with the Loopers and their staff. He had them buy a logbook and record any instances of bizarre behavior—“getting hot,” he called it. This taught them to recognize the warning signs they had been missing. A loss of appetite, a temper tantrum, a sudden desire for a blue Corvette—any one of these might be a tip that a person was coming unglued. With his wife, a nutritionist, Blaustein revamped the menu, limiting coffee (and heady jolts of caffeine) to breakfast; and always he carried a pager, so he could be reached in an emergency.

  Over the next two years, 1980 and 1981, Blaustein collected data at the house. The Loopers took in forty-seven referrals in that period, about half of whom came to them directly from a hospital. There were thirty-six men and eleven women, and they were mostly in their early thirties. Some had been jailed for acts of violence; eighteen had a documented attempt at suicide in their files. Blaustein assumed that with such a volatile population an ambulance would have to be parked by the curb, but just twelve residents were hospitalized during the study period—for an average stay of seven days—and they were all highly dysfunctional schizophrenics, who would have done worse on their own. The savings to the city and the state had to be enormous.

  As the atmosphere at the Chateau became less frantic, the Loopers had more time to fix up the building. They got a grant to strip off the exterior paint, which was a dull mustard color, and overlay the old wood with a new coat of white. Inside, they ripped away wallpaper, buffed floors, waxed bannisters, and hung an elegant glass chandelier in the foyer. Some evenings when they walked in from the Cadillac, they could actually feel a calm, as if every overheated brain in the house had arrived at a moment of peace. For Kathy, this meant more hours in the garden, planting seedlings and bulbs. Leroy did not have a real hobby (though he had started collecting German beer mugs), but every now and then, when things were going well, he’d give Dr. Blaustein a call, and together they’d sneak out in the evening to attend a boxing match.

  * * *

  The Loopers’ quarters, in late afternoon. Their room measures about forty by sixty feet—it’s the size of a large studio apartment—and it has a fireplace and big windows and a certain homey clutter, from the overflow of Kathy’s many projects. Nearly half the room is taken up with overstuffed chairs and couches, which are usually covered with sheets and arranged around a coffee table. A mahogany-frame bed dominates the other half, and on it Leroy is currently stretched out, barefoot, dozing, indulging in a ritual pre-dinner nap—company or no company.

  Leroy’s years in prison altered the way he relates to space, scaled down all his needs. In a cell, he says, you look for beauty in a patch of light. It’s different for Kathy, though. If she were redesigning the Chateau, she’d put her family on the second floor, so they could all be together. As it is, her children are deployed around the house—the two older boys upstairs, Agape in a room off the kitchen, and Camlo in a big, converted ground floor closet. Also, Kathy is cramped in here, among all the antiques and collectibles that she absolutely must have for her emotional well-being; it offends her that some of them disappear behind others—the piles of Mario Lanza 78s behind the boxes of carnival glass, say, or the rolled-up rugs and tapestries behind the two anatomically correct statues of nymphs shouldering urns.

  Right now, Kathy is searching for her yellow slicker and her red rubber boots. She wants to wear them to an invitation-only premiere of August Wilson’s “Fences” that the Loopers are attending tonight.

  “They asked all the blacks in town, right, Leroy?” she says, digging through a pile of old curtains on the floor.

  “Uh-uh,” Leroy replies, a forearm shielding his eyes. “Only the cosmopolitan ones.”

  Another woman left the house this week. On the day she got her S.S.I. check, a man who had been a patient in the mental-health system picked her up on the street, made some extreme promises, and escorted her home and bragged that she was going to live with him. He was a pimpy-looking dude in tight rhinestone-studded pants, clearly after her money. To discourage any violence, Leroy decided to do some cooking, even though it was almost midnight. In the kitchen, he took a cleaver, glared at the pimp, and loudly chopped an onion—whack, whack, whack!

  Meanwhile, Kathy darted up the back stairs and asked the woman if she was sure about her choice,
suggesting that it might just possibly be a mistake.

  “Oh, I’m sure!” the woman said, in a high, squeaky voice, her hands clasped at her bosom. “It’s going to be lovely! We’ll be so happy together!” Three days later, she was sick and broke, occupying a bed in San Francisco General Hospital.

  “That’s how confusing this business is,” Leroy says when I mention the incident. “When to interfere, when not to interfere.”

  “The hospital wanted us to take her back.” Kathy is rooting around in a freestanding cupboard by the old RCA Victrola. “But we wouldn’t.”

  “Because she hasn’t learned anything yet. She won’t admit she’s got anything wrong with her.”

  “The only person we ever took back was Anatole.”

  “Well, Anatole, he’s different. He’s Anatole.” Leroy yawns. “We got all kinds of crisises around here. Did you talk to Ed about his troubles at the day center?”

  Ed is a former carpenter in his twenties, and he has dark circles under his eyes and the long blond Buffalo Bill hair of a cowboy hippie. Until a year ago, he had his own construction firm in Marin County, but the stress of competing for work got to him, and he lost all his money, fell ill, and had to be hospitalized.

  Because he has recovered fairly well, stabilizing on Haldol, his counsellor at the center—a young person with little experience—arranged for him to enter a vocational-rehab program to be trained as a clerk. That was fine with Ed, since he likes to type and file, and believes he could manage to stay cool if he had a quiet job at, say, a post office. But he has just found out that he’ll ultimately be placed in a nongovernmental job that pays a minimum wage, and he’s angry. He’ll be thrust into the same sort of poverty that contributed to his breakdown.

  “Those counsellors, they’re doing the best they can,” Leroy says. “But you got to take that as a center for socialization, not education.”

  “They go overboard, Leroy!” Kathy pushes aside a wicker rocker in need of recaning. “What looks good on a report isn’t always good for a client. How about Paul? He’s got this counsellor who wants him to switch from his day program to the Jewish Community Center, cut down on his meds, move to a hotel, and make a bunch of new friends.” Appalled, she counts on her fingers. “One, two, three, four major changes! Even a sane person would have a problem with that.”

  It isn’t always easy for the Loopers to maintain their optimism. Inevitably, they lose people to the disease, and to quirks in the system. But they have their victories, too—Duane, for instance, who is in such good shape that he is planning to visit his mother in Georgia. When he first moved into the Chateau, after his suicide attempt, he was still so sick that he would sneak off every three months without telling anybody, and then do something weird to get into a hospital. Leroy and Kathy sat him down and explained that he was violating a trust, concealing his emotional problems from them; if he wanted to stay in the house, he had to be more open and in touch. Since then, Duane has struggled successfully to stay out of the emergency wards, and has been improving by the day.

  At last, Kathy finds her slicker. Buried under many unidentifiable things, it is wrinkled like a relief map. She asks Agape to throw it into the dryer and goes off to take a bath. With another yawn, Leroy bends over, puts on shoes and socks, and rises from the bed in what amounts to stages.

  “If this show’s no good, I’ll fall asleep in my seat,” he says, with a laugh. “That’s my way of being a critic, you understand?”

  He slips into a shirt and sweater, and then adds a huge medallion on a chain. The size of a small clock, it bears a Wedgwood image of Sagittarius, the Archer, his birth sign. He runs a hand through his hair, humming, as he does at breakfast, and sits on a couch across from me. After all these years, he has a guileless face, and when his features are in repose I see reflected in them a look that is weary but not without hope.

  In a friendly way, marking time until Kathy is ready, he tells me about a conference for board-and-care operators they went to last weekend, where a medical researcher presented some of the current evidence in support of a biological basis for schizophrenia. “It’s important research,” he says, “because, the thing is, it might move us out from under our guilt. Mental illness, it’s still a taboo in this society. Instead of blaming parents for everything, I’d like to see them more involved. Because we need help, understand? There’s no money around for mental health—no money at all.”

  For research on schizophrenia, the federal government spends fourteen dollars a year per patient, compared with three hundred dollars per cancer patient. “People here at the Chateau, they didn’t do this to themselves. They’re victims, really—of their background, their chemistry. Some of them, they’ll never be able to work, or live alone. The smallest favor you do for them, they’re grateful. Because they’ve been kicked around the block. And that’s not right. They are sweet, sweet people.”

  Kathy returns to the room, the tips of her hair still wet from the bath. “How do I look?” she asks, with a pirouette. In a pink blouse, green slacks, and the red boots, she looks a little blinding. When I first met the Loopers, I thought of Kathy as everybody’s aunt and Leroy as nobody’s uncle. But that’s only half the truth. They are the sort of married couple who complement each other, forming a unit larger than the sum of its parts. What is it that sustains them? Aside from their commitment, it’s a belief that they’re earning a fair reward for their work—a house they love, a house they couldn’t have owned under any other circumstances, a house that is the realization of their dreams.

  * * *

  An April afternoon, mild and breezy. With a shopping bag containing a toothbrush and some clothes, I arrive at the Chateau to spend the night. Georgie’s sitting in the foyer, one leg crossed over the other. I always think he’ll forget who I am, but he never does. I’m a part of his world now—an object in it, a tree or stone—probably forever. “You weigh about a hundred and fifty pounds, right?” he asks.

  I nod.

  He says, “Are you a Catholic?”

  I shake my head.

  Georgie looks perplexed. “How come? You’ve got a Yugoslav name.”

  “My father’s family was Catholic,” I say. “But he married a Lutheran.”

  “Was your father strict?”

  “You know the answer, Georgie.”

  A small voice. “He ever hit you with a razor strop?”

  “Never. Did yours?”

  “Nope.” The famous Georgie grin. “But I got lickings from the nuns at school.”

  Next is Rodrigo, whose battle with smoking goes on. He’s very curious about what might be in my shopping bag, so I let him have a look. It isn’t that he wants to pry; it’s the permission that excites him, the possibility we’re about to share a secret. He examines my toothbrush carefully, and seems glad to learn that I, too, wear underwear. Rodrigo doesn’t care much for mysteries. One of his own secrets is that he needs to be constantly reassured.

  Kathy comes into the dining room and shows me the form I’d fill out if I were actually checking in. It is as complex as a legal contract, and spells out all the general and health services I’d be due: seventeen dollars a day for three meals, a snack, bedside care during minor illnesses, and transportation to and from medical and dental appointments. When I’ve finished reading, she leads me to Room No. 4, at the top of the stairs, on the second floor. It’s got two beds, but I’ll be alone. The beds are oak with carved posts, and there are two oak bureaus, a lamp with a marble base, an Oriental rug, and four French prints depicting scenes from the life of a courtly woman.

  Dinner is at five. I eat with Darnell and Anatole. Darnell is too shy to speak very much, but Anatole makes up for him. “I hope you don’t mind if I eat my dessert along with my entree,” he says, alternating forkfuls of meat loaf and Jell-O. Sometimes he gives a nervous little laugh, high in his throat. As he warms to my company, his eyes begin to sparkle. I can see the mischief in him, a dormant muscle he’s starting to flex. He’s remembering
things, how one moves from Topic A to Topic B, and after every successful leap across the chasm he pauses briefly, as if to brush the dust from his trousers and wait for applause.

  When we turn in our plates at the kitchen counter, somebody suggests a game of pool. It isn’t easy to round up players, since chronic schizophrenics are nothing if not set in their ways. But after some negotiation Duane, Bud, Anatole, and I descend into the basement, a cramped space with the feel of a suburban recreation room. Women come down here occasionally, but at their own risk. Although there’s a rule forbidding sex between residents, when sex happens it’s likely to happen here. (Leroy: “I make the rules, but I’m no policeman.”) Every nonessential item the Loopers own also lands in the basement, including Kathy’s high-school yearbooks, more than three hundred used record albums, and some paintings on black velvet.

  By accident, I knock an album off a shelf with my cue. It breaks. I stare at the pieces. There lies Mantovani in full high-fidelity sound, a relic from 1955. “Just so it isn’t anything by Mary Wells,” Anatole says, chalking up. We’re partners in eight ball. Anatole played a lot of pool in the Army. He shoots right-handed first; then he shoots left-handed. He shoots with his stick behind his back. After he sinks all but one of our balls, he sinks a ball that belongs to our opponents. Obviously, he’s bored. He appears to be rebelling against the laws of physics—they simply don’t hold his interest. Soon he’s looking for new configurations. “Ever seen the seven and the three lined up like that?” he asks before drilling the cue ball directly into a pocket.

  “You missed,” I tell him.

  He leans toward me confidentially.“I don’t care much for competition,” he whispers.