Thirty Rooms To Hide In

by Sullivan, Luke

  He warned also that there are good and bad times in this process – and spoke of Roger as having been “very sick.” So I am trying not to be too enthusiastic about the results of my week in Hartford.

  Notes from the Hartford psychiatric record, October 29, 1965

  The patient reported the visit went extremely well. He found that he was able to discuss many difficulties with his wife that they had been unable to deal with in the past.

  It is evident both from the patient and his wife that the time spent together was the first time in their recent married life they were able to communicate with each other. The therapist has pointed out to both of them that the brevity of their contact was different from day-to-day existence at home. However, both the patient and his wife have agreed to another visit in the Hartford area and are also planning for the patient to go home for Christmas vacation to spend some time with the children.

  A letter from Kip on one coast to Dad on the other, November 10, 1965

  Dear Dad: When I got letters from both you and Mom saying you both had a good time, I could’ve jumped for joy. You mentioned some of the changes in the family you’ve sensed already. Man, just think what a difference this will mean for all of us. God, that sounds good!

  Dad, written while at Hartford, to Kip in California, November 15, 1965

  Dear Kipper: Monday morning has rolled around again – another week gone by and am delighted to report that I am feeling better and better. Do wish there were some way of speeding up this process of emotional regrouping. It is impossible to describe to anyone who hasn’t been through this business how painful and actually exhausting it is. Am convinced, however, that the months spent now will mean so much more happiness in the future.

  I’ve already, of course, seen the difference in your mom’s response in the short time that she was here. Can also hear it in the kids’ voices at home. Called yesterday and Collin and Luke were bubbling over on the phone. Even that experienced man-about-town, Jeff, sounded great. Mama’s change since her return home after our visit has made itself felt in the kids doing better school work, staying on the ball more, etc.

  Needless to say you are in my thoughts so much of the time and can hardly wait to see you. Looks as if we’ll both be getting home for Christmas about the same time and probably both leaving about the same time. I’ll have to return here for a few weeks after my visit. Take care. – Dad

  Mom, to her parents, December 6, 1965

  I’m safely home again from a second visit to Hartford and it was just as loving as the first one. I still find it hard to believe that after such a nightmare we can now so thoroughly enjoy one another. We count off the days now till the Christmas visit. Roger and Kip will both arrive on December 17th – what a joyous Christmas this is going to be for all of us! We did little else except talk talk talk. We have so many years to catch up on.

  Kip’s diary, December 20, 1965

  I talked all day with Dad. Oh, has he changed. He can be talked with!! It’s unbelievable.

  Jeff, today

  When Mom visited Dad that second time, they bought new wedding rings. I’ve never seen Mom as happy as she was that winter. When she returned home she redecorated the master bedroom. She did however mention that while they were together in downtown Hartford, a car engine backfired nearby, a noise like a gunshot, and Mom described Dad’s intense panic reaction at being startled.

  Mom, today

  This ring I have on now is the one we bought in Hartford together. We were walking downtown somewhere and in front of a jewelry store we looked at each other and agreed, “Well, the first part of our marriage hasn’t been so great. Let’s start over.” That Christmas of 1965, he was loving, interested, and connected. Just like he was years before.

  * * *

  The last happy family film was taken on Christmas Eve, 1965.

  Mom is in the kitchen wearing a red dress and her hair high in a beehive. Dad is next to her and together they’re preparing the evening’s feast. Mom does the pot-stirring and finger licking but leaves the big job for Dad, who puts on the oven mitts and pulls the 25-pound turkey from the oven. He places it on the new roll-away dishwasher (with its modern hose connection to the kitchen sink’s spigot). The Mayo Clinic doctor has a poultry knife in one hand, a large fork in the other and when he tries to transfer the turkey from pot to platter, the turkey comes in half, butchered a second time. Watching this film as I have many times, there’s some sorrow in seeing the Mayo doctor fail to pull off the holiday photo-op with surgical precision.

  The other surviving artifact from Christmas ‘65 is an audio recording of our living room on Christmas morning. Dad recorded the festivities using, as it turned out, the same recorder Kip and Jeff had hidden to capture the “Rage Tapes” that spring. The tape is remarkable only in its banality. Tolstoy wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” As I listen to this pointless and precious chit-chat, the observation is confirmed again. Christmas carols play on the Hi-Fi in the background; the wrapping paper with its high-end crackling sometimes obscures the conversation, but snippets of the quotidian back-and-forth come through.

  My father’s voice on the Christmas ’65 tape:

  Jeff, that after-shave you just opened? That “Double-O-Seven” stuff really grabs Mama. [Mom laughs.] … And I like this other shirt even better, with the zipper collar. Who’s this from? Thanks, Chris. The perfect size. How did you know? … Well, if it’s all right with you folks, I’m going to open this “record-shaped” present. I sure hope it’s that recording of Julie Andrews, “The Sound of Music.”

  Dad starts to unwrap the last gift and little Collin teases him; says the gift he’s opening is a “just a fat slice of moldy old cheese.”

  Dad chuckles, “Is that all? Well, you just wait till next Christmas.”

  There will be no next Christmas but the tape plays on and in the background Julie Andrews begins to sing. (“The hills are alive with the sound of music.”) I can hear myself announce the unwrapping of my new Kodak Instamatic camera, which will take the last pictures of my father. The cheerful prattle continues and the Ghost of Christmas Future points at the tombstone, but for now, here on this tape of a man’s last Christmas, I listen to my father and it seems no matter what has come before (“I’LL GO GET THE AXE AND BASH THIS DOOR IN!”) on this Christmas Day, on this thin brown tape, I hear Roger Sullivan is a good father, loving to his wife, kind to his six sons, and grateful that his whole life with all its blessings has been pulled from the edge of the abyss and in an act of inexplicable grace handed back to him.

  * * *

  The last page of the psychiatric notes, January 11, 1966

  Dr. Sullivan returned to the hospital from his visit. The patient found he was able to deal with almost all situations with relative ease. Dr. Sullivan does not feel that he will have any difficulties returning home, except in relations with his wife. Final diagnosis: Passive-aggressive personality, alcoholism.

  Condition on discharge: Recovered.

  Chris’s diary, January 10, 1966

  Boy, life is going to be good when Dad gets home.

  Dad flubs his line in the family film, Christmas, 1965.

  TINY DETAILS IN FAMILY PICTURES

  Dr. Mark Coventry, my father’s boss at the Clinic

  I can vividly remember after the Hartford episode, Roger and I were standing in my office at the Mayo Clinic. It was a beautiful day, we were looking out the window and he said he was doing fine, felt great and was very optimistic. He said he was really off alcohol, now and forever.

  Dad’s sudden return to the Millstone was a car crash in backwards motion. The metal popped smooth, the pieces of glass flew out of our hair and assembled into a window, the grill of the Mack truck that hit us backed away – and there was Dad again, sitting in the kitchen, smiling.

  He simply showed up back at the Millstone. He never apologized to any of us, showed no contrition, made no amends, and simply walked i
n the front door – a drunk driver striding through the hospital ward where his victims lay, waving and smiling in at everyone through the eye slits of their head bandages. (“Say … about that axe thing? Waaaaay outta line, I kid you not.”)

  But in 1965, the needs of the alcoholic’s victims weren’t part of the typical treatment plan. Once the addict had dried out and filled in his discharge forms, it was “Bye-bye, don’t be a stranger” and a cab to the airport. Modern treatment for alcoholism now addresses the needs of the family along with the alcoholic. If only someone had come to us and said, “What happened to you was wrong. Let’s talk about it. Here’s why it happened. Here’s what alcoholism does to families, here’s what it does to trust, here’s what you can do to rebuild.” This didn’t happen. When Dad returned in January of ’66, we simply picked up where we’d left off, hard-splicing the family film from the “Fist Fight Scene” to “Hi, Honey, I’m home.” There was no reconciliation.

  All the crimes went under the rug, along with the injuries.

  Denial of the injuries was denial of the car wreck and since most of the past eight years had been a car wreck, all the emotions of those years were denied too. Family life was again refracted through that 1950’s prism of cheerful dishonesty. The billboard grins were back in place and everything was just hunky-fucking-dory.

  But behind the grin, even we four little ones could tell Dad hadn’t healed; he’d simply stopped bleeding. Where one might have hoped for a joyful rebuilding there was only a depressed sort of resignation. Remembering Christmas ’65, Myra says, “There was a level of defeatism in Roger then. He wasn’t the same vigorous person he’d once been. Something was missing.”

  Part of it was a sense of “victim” he carried with him, apparent even in a card game of Hearts he played with his sons that spring. Chris remembers ribbing him when Dad drew the Queen of Spades in a bad hand. “Dad took it personally. His reaction was disturbing. He just quietly put his cards down and walked away.”

  “Something was missing,” said my Mom. I’ve gone through the family photographs many times, looking for this missing something and today I wonder if I’ve found it on one-quarter inch of film in a family movie – the one made on Christmas Eve, ‘65. In two frames of this 8mm film, my father’s self-pity and resignation show plainly; two frames in an emotional Zapruder film that capture him in an unguarded moment.

  Dad is facing the camera speaking into the microphone of the cassette recorder. (He’s making a sound track he hoped to marry to the 8mm film at playback.) Though this audio tape has since been lost, by lip-reading I’m able to make out one word, “holidays,” and guess that he’s making an introduction to the night’s filming. But he flubs it. His introductory remarks have some small stumble of tongue and his shoulders slump, the muscles in his face sink and just before the camera is turned off his eyes roll wearily to the left and then close in defeat. I see a weight descend upon him. Perhaps I’m too unforgiving here. It’s just a guy flubbing a take. So what? He’s pissed, big deal.

  I roll the tape back over the play-head and it is there: a heavy-lidded roll of eyes; an irritation much deeper than this stubbed-toe of a moment merits, a look one might see in a teenager who’s just been asked to move the refrigerator and barbells up to the attic. Rolling the film (now transferred to video) back and forth over the play-head, it’s plain the world is too much with him. Even if I am reading too much into this quarter-inch of 40-year-old film, from the psychiatric records I know that Roger’s tenuous hold on sobriety was not founded on honesty or insight or strength of spirit – only abstinence.

  The treatment he received, though it was the best available at the time, was clinical, not spiritual. That he was diagnosed as passive-aggressive was probably correct. That his sense of self was not strong also seems true. But neither diagnosis helped him become whole or happy.

  * * *

  Daydream: I Save Dad

  I am one of the drunks taking part in a group session in a modern rehab center. There are twelve steps written on a wall poster, five alcoholics in folding chairs, and a counselor. And in my fantasy, sitting with me in this 21st-century facility, is my father. He’s getting a taste of modern chemical dependency treatment; the kind that could have saved him. There are no Rorschach ink blots in the room today.

  The counselor is leading the discussion and you can tell he didn’t learn this stuff from a book. He’s a recovered cocaine addict devoted now to helping others beat their addictions. In this small room of chairs and drunks he has heard every story there is.

  “Roger, during family week we had Myra in here with the group. We all heard her read a list of injuries your drinking has caused her and the boys. I was pretty shocked to hear some of that stuff. Like: ‘Roger threatened me with a gun.’ Interesting that you didn’t bring that up during your intake week.”

  Another group member choruses: “Yeah, or that part about the axe? Jesus Christ.”

  Dad says, “Well, she’s always dominating me, telling me what....”

  The counselor leans over, interrupts. “Is that how you solve problems in your house, Roger? A glass of bourbon and an axe?”

  “Well, of course not!” flashes my father’s anger. (“Who does this $10-an-hour orderly think he’s talking to? I’m a doctor from the Mayo fucking Clinic. Goddamn guy’s probably got a bachelor’s degree in psychology and he’s telling me?”)

  “None of us here buy your bullshit, Roger. Sorry, but the ‘She’s dominating me’ stuff doesn’t sell here. We met Myra during Family Week, Roger; little five-foot-somethin’ bit of a thing, sat right where you are now. Not quite the shrieking harpy we heard about from Roger during his first two weeks here, is she, guys?”

  “She seemed scared of you,” says another patient through the steam of his coffee. “And no shit, with you hittin’ her and wavin’ a gun around.”

  “I hit her just that one time, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Mmmm,” doubts the counselor. “When you first arrived, you said you’d never hit her. Which is it?”

  “What does hitting have to do with anything? Just tell me why I drink and I’ll fix it! Look at my M.M.P.I. scores about my mother and you’ll….”

  “Roger, nobody here gives a shit about your mother or about why you drink; we already know why. You drink because you’re an alcoholic and ...”

  “I haven’t had a drop since ...”

  “Since the night you slugged your son, we know. Twenty-one days so far, congrats. But Roger, you aren’t gonna get sober or happy until you get honest with us. This isn’t about your wife, uh, ‘dominating’ you or whatever, or about your mother or any of that stuff.”

  “You have no idea of the pressures I face!” Roger erupts. “Have you ever – one goddamn time – ever had to tell a little girl where her leg went when she woke up?!”

  “No,” the counselor says, barreling on, “but I once had to tell a little girl, ‘Your Daddy was decapitated by an alcoholic who hit him with his car.’ An alcoholic kinda like you, Roger.”

  “THAT’S UNFAIR!”

  “And then I somehow managed to get through the rest of that horrible day without getting drunk and threatening my wife with an axe.”

  “TOTALLY UNFAIR!”

  “That’s precisely your problem, Roger. You want the world to be fair and it isn’t. The world isn’t fair. Okay? This just in: some of us have shitty parents. Some of us get fibrosarcomas. Little girls lose their legs. We all get rotten rolls of the dice and you know what? Most people pick themselves up and just sorta move on. Most people when they get a flat tire they call the Triple A. You get a flat tire and you call the goddamn suicide hotline because your flat tire is so much worse than everybody else’s flat tire because you are Dr. Sullivan from the Mayo Clinic and when things don’t go Dr. Sullivan’s way, well, that just gives you the perfect excuse to go medicate your feelings with a quart of bourbon and threaten your wife with a chair or a gun or an axe, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it, you big crybaby?”


  Roger looks into the counselor’s eyes; then up at the ceiling; down at his hands.

  Boxes of Kleenex are usually set in the center of these group circles. If Roger could have opened that door just a half an inch, if he could have leaned forward and reached for a tissue, he might be alive today.

  * * *

  Dad came home armed with only a piece of paper: his diagnoses (passive-aggressive personality with a side of alcoholism). That, and the half-finished wallet he’d made in a crafts class where he practiced sewing until the shakes passed and he could pronounce himself fit for surgery.

  Perhaps he did go through some kind of emotional scrub-down and humbling self-inventory that modern rehab centers require, but the record does not show it. Whatever insights he’d had were purely intellectual, not spiritual. He wasn’t sober. He’d simply stopped drinking and had achieved this in a closed hospital environment. He had no clue how to face the slings and arrows of the real world and when he stepped back into it, the first arrow went deep.