On the day that Larry was released, Jack and Harriet were waiting for him. Dr. Goldsmith photographed him before he left. Without urging, Larry gave the camera a broad smile. The resultant photograph, of a relaxed, cheerful young man, seemed incredible when laid beside the photograph snapped two weeks earlier, with its tortured, emaciated face. Before the three departed, Dr. Goldsmith warned Harriet that Larry’s home care was important, that he must not be allowed to drink alcoholic beverages, that he would have to be retaught personal habits of cleanliness like shaving, bathing, and remembering to use the toilet.
As they left the hospital, Larry seemed to be in a good mood. His head was unbandaged, and the scars, on both temples, were clearly visible. They would be concealed, however, when his hair grew back. Larry’s face was pleasantly animated, and he appeared at peace with the world. Harriet was taking him back to her family in Ohio, where he’d have care while recuperating. There were several hours before the train left, and Jack and Harriet debated how they could best occupy them for Larry. They decided to visit the State House on Beacon Hill, and then sit in a park and rest. At first, both Jack and Harriet were very restrained with Larry. They could not relax. They kept expecting him to become annoyed by something they’d said. It was not until they went into a restaurant for breakfast, that they realized almost nothing could annoy him. In the restaurant, Harriet asked Larry what he would like to eat. He glanced at the menu without reading it. “Anything,” he said finally. “It doesn’t matter.” He ate heartily, and after the meal Jack asked him how he felt. “Just fine,” he said, good-naturedly.
While Jack went back to New York to find a job, Larry and Harriet boarded the train for Ohio. They lived with her family again. The family only dimly comprehended what the whole thing was about. They were not sure why or how Larry had been ill, or what the operation with the funny name involved, but he was Harriet’s husband and he had been sick and that was enough. They treated him, as they had before the surgery, with consideration.
The operation and care had cost between $1,000 and $1,500, and there was only a small share of Larry’s inheritance and of Harriet’s savings left. Harriet invested this money in opening a neighborhood bakery. Larry lacked the patience to help her. When he visited the bakery, he was only in the way. He took to accompanying his brother-in-law on the delivery truck again. Sometimes he hung around a nearby confectionery store, playing the pinball machine or glancing at newspaper headlines. Dr. Goldsmith had thought that he would read comic books. He never picked one up, although he loved movies, anything and everything, indiscriminately. Nor did he ever urinate outside of the bathroom.
Often, Larry went on long walks for mile after mile. When he returned to the house, Harriet found large blisters on his feet. He said he had not felt them. He seemed immune to pain. Once, when it was very cold, he wandered outdoors in his shirt-sleeves, obvious to the weather. Harriet’s mother chased him, calling out, “Larry, why don’t you put your jacket on?” He halted, then said, “Why yes, good idea.” He ran back into the house for his jacket.
He had no interest in his personal appearance. Harriet always reminded him to shave. When he prepared to shave, and had turned on the faucet, he would frequently stand staring at the running water for a half hour or more. He usually thought that he had been there only a minute or two. Harriet had been warned that most lobotomy patients lose their concept of time, and many are fascinated by water. He never drank whiskey. Harriet told him he could not, and he never disobeyed her. He was satisfied to sniff her beer, when they were out.
He was difficult in many ways. He seemed to have lost a certain social awareness. In the street several times, he abruptly confronted strangers with his hands raised in a pugilistic pose, and threatened, “Want a fist full of knuckles?” He was always good-natured about the way he did it, actually kidding, never aggressive, but people did not know that and they were constantly startled.
Harriet’s family had a five-year-old boy in the house. Larry played juvenile games with him and enjoyed teasing him. He’d make funny faces, and invent fantastic names to amuse the boy, saying “Look out for Goofus Gerhardt, the bear! He’s under the bed!” Then he’d steal the five-year-old’s ball from him, and when the boy complained, Larry would playfully pinch him. When the family, irritated, protested, Larry would tease them, too. Everyone’s nerves began to fray. Meanwhile, Harriet’s bakery, which had done wonderfully the first month, steadily declined. Harriet was forced to give up and sell. She’d lost most of their money in the ten months that had passed. She decided that a change might do them both good, and so she took Larry to New York.
Jack, informed of their coming, rented a room for them from a French landlady in Manhattan. After they were settled, Jack and Harriet twice took Larry to see Dr. Goldsmith. In Larry’s presence, Harriet related some of his difficulties and habits. She could not understand the things he did. Still in Larry’s presence, Dr. Goldsmith replied, “Well, Larry is only three and a half years old socially.” Jack thinks he said this merely to test Larry’s reaction, but Larry did not react. Later, as the conversation continued. Dr. Goldsmith turned to Larry and said, “Certainly you can shave yourself, Larry.” Larry stared at him a moment, then suddenly spoke. “I’m three and a half years old, doctor. How could I possibly know how to shave?” The doctor blinked, and Harriet and Jack were agape.
In New York, to support Larry and herself, Harriet took a job in a Schrafft’s kitchen. It was heavy work, hard work, from seven-thirty in the morning until four o’clock in the afternoon. She went about, daily, in a daze of exhaustion. Larry, with no one to look after him full time, was constantly in trouble. One day, alone, he went into an expensive restaurant and ordered the best meal. When he was done, he told the manager that he could not pay. The manager was decent about it, and there was no incident. A little later, Larry ran into an old acquaintance and invited him to lunch. They both ordered expensive meals. When the check came, Larry admitted that he did not have a penny.
Once, Harriet returned home to find Larry nursing a black eye and bruised cheek. She wanted to know what had happened. “I met a man and called him a sonofabitch and he hit me,” Larry explained proudly. “He knocked me down.” Harriet was aghast. “What did you do after you got up?” Larry answered seriously, “I didn’t call him a sonofabitch any more.”
Also, he had taken to bragging. Before the surgery, he had been gentle, shy, self-effacing, never once mentioning his educational attainments. Now, if he met someone, and chanced to get into a discussion or friendly argument, he would suddenly terminate it by shouting, “I’m a Phi Beta Kappa man! You’re just a shoe clerk!”
When Harriet returned from Schrafft’s every day, she was physically depleted. Yet she had to prepare dinner, look after household affairs and Larry’s clothes, and give him a bath. She had to face the aftereffects of his latest escapades, and listen to his complaints. In the evening, though she was half asleep on her feet, he would want her to go walking with him until two or three in the morning. Sometimes she tried. Usually she could not, but if she could not, she would toss in bed wondering what was happening to him. They had been married six years, and in those six years she had not had a single full night’s sleep.
She could not take it any more. When she had first come to the Cassidy household so long before, and even when she had married Larry in Albuquerque, she had been a happy,’ bouncy, enthusiastic extrovert, full of health and hope. Now she was thin, jittery, thoroughly crushed in spirit. She confided to Jack that she had reached the end of the road. She was leaving Larry. She would not divorce him, since she was Catholic. She told Larry that she had to leave. He was upset. But not deeply. He was incapable of deep feeling or hurt. He told her that she was inconsiderate. And two days later, he had forgotten the whole matter. She moved to New England, where she now lives and works. Larry rarely speaks of her and never writes.
After Harriet left, Jack took Larry into his own walk-up for a week. He had intended to keep him lo
nger, but it was impossible. Jack, working as an insurance salesman, would allow Larry to accompany him on his rounds. When they would reach a call, Jack would say, “I’ll only be five minutes, Larry. You wait right here for me. Don’t move.”
Larry would nod agreeably. When Jack would emerge, five or ten minutes later, Larry would be gone. He would be at least six blocks off, in any one of four directions, strolling aimlessly.
At the time, Jack was in love with a pretty, saucy model named Susan, who had time to spare and tried to give Jack a hand. She took Larry to movies, museums, walking in Central Park. But this was not enough. Jack, and his brothers, who had been kept informed, felt that Larry needed full-time care. They arranged for his readmittance to the Veterans Hospital in Lyons, New Jersey. Larry accepted his new address with complete docility. After several months in Lyons, Larry was transferred to the Veterans Hospital in Roanoke, Virginia, where the Veterans Administration was carrying out a special program for the rehabilitation of lobotomy cases.
Early in 1949, Jack married Susan, and they decided to try their luck in California. On the way, they stopped over in Roanoke to see Larry. He wanted to go along with them. His reasons were not sentimental. “I want to write again,” he said. “I want to write Alan Ladd movies for a hundred thousand dollars.” Jack promised to have him transferred to California, and this was accomplished in the summer of 1949.
Larry has been in Los Angeles ever since and lives there now. He is committed, by his own signature, to the Brentwood Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, which is connected with the Sawtelle Veterans Hospital. He was first kept in an open ward, which was neither guarded nor enclosed, but after two attempts to run away, he was more closely confined. The first time, having saved his veterans’ disability checks, he left in the middle of an afternoon for San Francisco, but soon returned voluntarily. The next time, he took off without funds for Phoenix, where his brother, Tim, lives.
Like most of the inmates in Sawtelle, Larry keeps army hours. He sleeps in a room with other patients, rises at dawn, now shaves promptly and efficiently, almost never bathes or showers in the hospital, and carelessly wears the same clothes day after day. There are work therapy groups and various classes for the patients, but Larry is disinterested in them. Once, he promised the doctors and his family that he would attend classes. He went for two days and never returned to them. Because he had the highest I.Q. in the ward, he was made a library attendant. He stayed on the job two hours and then wandered off: “We don’t want to force him to do anything,” a hospital psychiatrist told Jack. “This isn’t a penal colony.”
There are two things that Larry is faithful about—movies and food. Regularly, without fail, he goes to the two movies shown weekly and sits through them both. And he is always on time for meals and cleans his plate. Since the lobotomy operation, his appetite has been enormous. He is actually capable of eating six or seven full-course meals a day. But he has little patience for other activities. He used to enjoy golf. Recently, when Jack led him to a pitch-and-putt green, he took a couple of pokes at the ball, on the second hole tried to hit it using one hand, and finally threw down his clubs and walked off to sit in the parked car. He still carries two or three paperback books in his pockets all the time, a hangover from his old reading days, but he rarely does more than scan them. What he likes to do most, still, is walk. He tramps the hospital grounds constantly, tirelessly. Jack estimates that Larry must cover thirty miles a day. He never thinks much, when he walks, or if he does, he never remembers what he was thinking about.
He has few friends in the hospital. He likes only the patients and doctors who respect his intelligence, believe his claims of suffering petty persecutions, and who accept his own high opinion of himself. When another lobotomy case doubted that Larry had ever gone to Princeton, Larry refused to speak to him again. He likes to say that he is smarter than the doctors, because after all he is a Phi Beta Kappa. In arguments with other patients, he propounds flash opinions formed from glancing at a headline, and is extremely dogmatic about them. He likes to give advice to other patients. When he observed one patient being considerate of another, Larry interrupted, “Don’t be so damn considerate, mister. Look where I wound up being considerate—in a booby hatch.” He likes to call the hospital a booby hatch or a nut house.
He has mingled contempt and respect for the hospital staff. When the family noticed that his teeth were bad, though he suffered absolutely no pain from them, he refused to visit any army dentist. “Those guys,” he said contemptuously, “I can buy and sell them ten times.” One day, he regards the hospital staff as so many dedicated Arrowsmiths, and thinks he will write an epic movie dramatizing their courage. The next day, down on them for some fancied slight, he mutters threateningly of the book he will write. “It’ll make The Snake Pit look sick,” he says. “It’ll blast the Veterans Administration apart. It’ll let everyone know how they treat their patients.” The harassed army doctors, aware that Larry needs some way to work off his constant if momentary grudges and aggressions, accept his mutterings with good-natured tolerance.
Larry has long forgotten his dream of becoming a teacher. However, he still wants to write. When Burt, who is editing a Hollywood quarterly published in New York, heard this, he sent Larry a simple assignment. He sent him material about a famous film star and told him to write it up into a five-hundred-word picture caption. Larry managed to finish the task and send it to New York. The caption had to be completely rewritten, but Burt mailed him a check, nevertheless. For months after, Larry refused to cash the check, keeping it instead, to show to the patients and doctors as proof that he was a writer. Whenever Jack and Susan visit him, he promises to deliver at least a paragraph of a story by the following week. But he never does. “I don’t want to write in this nut house,” he says. “I want to do screenplays for Alan Ladd. I’ll go over to Paramount one day and tell them I’m Larry Cassidy, and you watch and see if they don’t roll out the red carpet.”
Most every weekend, either Susan, who now writes about interior decorating, or Jack, who works for a large public relations office, picks Larry up at the hospital and brings him to their newly purchased bungalow in the San Fernando Valley, about a twenty-minute drive from Hollywood. Often, when the weekend begins, Larry is angry with Jack. For a while, it was because he remembered that Jack did not invite him to his wedding in the East. “You were afraid Susan would like me better,” he told Jack. More recently, he felt that he was being confined in the hospital because Jack feared that Larry might take his public relations job away from him. When he suffers these brief delusions of persecution, he will wag his fist in Jack’s face, until Jack says, “But, Larry, I’m your brother. I love you.” Then Larry will lower his fist, and break into a childish grin. “That’s right, Jack,” he’ll say, “and I love you, too.”
During these weekends. Jack is able to see the degree to which Larry has changed, for better or for worse. Dr. Goldsmith had promised that Larry’s behavior would level off after three years, and however he was then would probably be the way he’d remain for the rest of his life. Today, at thirty-seven, with four years behind him since the lobotomy operation, Larry’s new personality has probably solidified.
Unquestionably, today, he is happier than he was before the operation. His face is round, young, cherubic, and he’s getting plump about the middle. He is never depressed, rarely moody, and when moody, only for fleeting moments. Emotionally and physically, he is free of pain. His occasional complaints of persecution, his pretended belligerences, and his continued social impatience do not alter the fact that he is carefree, irresponsible, happy-go-lucky.
The price of this contentment, of course, has been the loss of many of his old powers. His intelligence is still high, but this brilliance is erratically mixed with terrible streaks of childishness and unreality. When he has bright periods, behaving as of old, and his family begins to think he is recovering, he suddenly lapses into irrelevant fantasy or moronic soliloquy. In his pre-lobotomy
days, he used to listen to the radio program Information, Please, and in several years missed only one or two questions, a record which matched John Kieran’s. He knew, for one thing, the most obscure passages from Shakespeare. Recently, when someone asked him to recite the routine “To be or not to be” passage from Hamlet, he was unable to recall it. Yet, a few days after that, walking with Jack past a library, he read the Latin inscription etched above the entrance and accurately translated it. On another occasion, when Jack was writing a publicity story about a burlesque queen, and trying to remember a synonym for striptease that had something to do with insects, Larry looked up and said, “Ecdysiast, just call her that.” Jack went to his Webster’s and found “ecdysis” defined as the “act of shedding an outer cuticular layer, as in the case of insects, crustaceans, etc.”
Now the family has learned neither to underestimate nor to overestimate Larry’s intelligence. They accept the fact that he has stupid days and smart days, without rhyme or reason. They also accept gratefully the fact that his sense of humor seems largely unimpaired by the operation. One afternoon, driving in Beverly Hills, Jack committed a minor traffic infraction. A motorcycle policeman rolled up alongside and bawled Jack out. The moment the policeman left, Larry exclaimed, “Somebody ought to give that cop a lobotomy.” Around the hospital, arguing politics, he will often get steamed up at the national administration and say .that the President ought to have two lobotomies a week. Leaving the hospital for his weekend recently, he realized that he had forgotten something, and blurted in exasperation, “Gee, I should have my head examined.” Then, looking about the hospital corridor with quick humor, “Matter of fact, I’m in a great place for it!”
The Sunday Gentleman Page 21
