Another Kind of Madness Page 12

  All morning I heard the distant smack of shoulder pad on shoulder pad, sharp whistle blasts ending a play, the rhythmic hand-clap of a coach. If I gazed from a bedroom window on the second floor, peering over the fence to an angled view of the field, I saw passes whizzing through the air, running backs breaking through the line and sprinting 20 extra yards before jogging back to the huddle and flipping the ball to an assistant. I marveled at the huge linemen perfecting their blocking techniques. Getting ready for my cross-country workout that afternoon, I witnessed a repeat performance as the sun began its slow westward slant. With each sharp whistle from the field the realization hit me like a blast furnace. I’d blown it, my opportunity lost. The despair clung to me like a shroud—I should have joined the football team.

  It’s always been this way for me. After weeks or months of planning, something might topple the structure I’ve assembled. With a single setback, the balloon punctures. There’s no middle ground between moving forward and hopelessness.

  I’d gone out for tackle football the year before, in my last year of junior high. In Ohio football was king. I’d become a decent baseball and basketball player and was pretty fast in middle distances for track, but I’d always wondered whether I could handle the contact of football.

  I’d brought up the debate with Mom and Dad. Not realizing I was upstairs, they quietly argued from behind their closed bedroom door. “Football is too dangerous,” Mom said, with emphasis. “There can be major injuries.” Dad countered with his own quiet determination, trying to keep his voice low but not quite succeeding. “When I played there were just leather helmets. The equipment is superior now. I say we let him.”

  Dad prevailed, and it was time to prove myself. At the first practice I put the shoulder pads, rib protector, and hip pads on my 135-pound frame, wondering how I’d be able to run in all that equipment. At twice-daily workouts in the sweltering humidity, I hit the blocking sled, firing out from my three-point stance, shoulder square into the huge pad, digging my legs in at the same instant, as grass and dirt flew out from my cleats. I tried to make tackles during defensive drills when a fast, strong kid tried to run right through me, the dust and heat overpowering. But after a rare good play, pride poured over me like a soothing bath. I made the team and played in every game. I’d passed the test.

  Before I knew it the issue loomed again the following spring. The reminders poured in each day as I saw the mammoth new high school structure and endless playing fields a block behind our house. Our high school team was ranked among the elite in the state. I’d be lucky to make junior varsity as a tenth grader, and earning a spot on the varsity was no guarantee after that.

  I started to think about joining the cross-country team, instead. I reasoned that cross-country might be a safer option, physically and mentally. Maybe I could get a varsity letter, even as a sophomore, during my initial year of high school.

  By mid-summer I headed to the river with the cross-country team, lacing up my shoes after some stretches. The running course started under leafy trees and picnic benches on a small rise above the riverbank, the air hazy with humidity. Underneath us, the picnic grounds were bright green from spring and summer rains. The trail sloped down to the boat ramps, meeting a gravel road on the riverbank, the acrid smell of gasoline and tar filling the air. As it flattened the first auto bridge came into view. We passed underneath to the high-pitched hum and rhythmic bumps of cars on the grooved pavement far above. Suddenly, the full expanse of the river lay straight ahead, blue-gray and rippled, deep-green trees lining the opposite shore. The second bridge was a mile and a half beyond.

  With my arms pumping, some of my breaths turned into gasps as I struggled to keep pace. Lazy clouds held in the oppressive heat, the grate of cicadas from nearby trees penetrating the dank air. At last we charged up a slope to some shade, turning around without pause to head back. Some of those guys could fly, showing all the lung power in the world. My runs were punctuated with the worry that I would deplete all the oxygen in my body. But while I was moving, doubts about my decision vanished.

  All was lost, though, once I’d witnessed that initial football practice. In the back yard the next morning, as though drawn by magnetic force, I burst out crying as I watched the tryouts again. Back inside, I searched for something to read, anything to distract me, but my agitation was overpowering. Mom wondered why I was so upset but I choked on the words when I tried to explain. When Dad came home from campus for lunch, I leapt into his study and blurted it out. “Football practice began this week,” I said hoarsely. “Everyone knows the plays but me. I can’t wait until next year; I’d be so far behind I wouldn’t last a day. Don’t you see,” I stammered, “I’ve wrecked my only chance. How could I have done this?”

  Dad directed his gaze into the distance. I buried my face in my hands, fighting the urge to gouge out my eyes.

  “I know it seems late,” he finally responded. “But if you’re sure you want to try, I could do this: I could call the head coach later to day before the afternoon. He’s an honorable man, though tough, as you know. I can see what he says.”

  I felt myself sink deeper, repeating that it was too late. Considering his words carefully, Dad looked out the window and repeated his plan, stating that I’d probably have to meet with the coach immediately to have any chance. I relented but couldn’t escape the self-hatred that had overtaken me.

  Later that afternoon, Dad told me that he had spoken with Coach Mueller, who, if I were willing, would meet me that very evening. What did I have to lose? In the twilight Dad drove me to a street close to our old house on Wyandotte Road. He would pick me up in a half an hour, down the block. I managed to ring the doorbell and was ushered to a side porch. A moment later, the coach strode in, exuding his usual intensity. He looked me in the eye and briskly shook my hand. “Steve, tell me your thinking,” he inquired.

  I gave it my best shot, telling him of my errant decision while certain his eyes could bore holes through my skin. Finally, he sat straight up. “I believe that I understand your thinking, Steve. You’ve missed some crucial sessions but there’s still time. If you bring a physical exam form in tomorrow and let the cross-country coach know, I’ll get equipment fitted for you and order you a playbook. You’ll have to learn our systems thoroughly.”

  Had he just said yes? Stay of execution granted, I headed out in the dusk to find the car. Dad looked pleased as I nearly melted into the seat with relief. Saturday morning I was on the practice fields, part of the large, uniformed group. It took no time at all to get used to the intensity of two-a-day drills in the overpowering heat. I fought my way up and made the junior varsity squad. Our Saturday morning games were a pale afterthought to the excitement of the varsity contests under the lights the evening before, but I caught a few touchdown passes, rare for our Midwestern-style running team, and relished being part of a team. Without Dad, what would I have done?

  *

  The following summer, desert sands stretched endlessly, red-orange, tan, yellow, and pale brown. The peaks of Arizona’s Monument Valley were primordial, sheer rock emerging from the desert floor. We pulled over and Dad handed me the steering wheel for the first time, at age 15. Soaring over the highway, the car rocketed forward with the slightest touch of my foot on the gas. I sensed that my life might soar, too, if I could ever transcend my yoke of order and duty.

  Finally reaching Southern California after our cross-country drive, we spent a day at Uncle Paul’s ravine-perched house near LA. With our cousins, Sally and I raced soap-box cars down the steep driveway. Before long a huge white Cadillac pulled up out front. Out climbed Uncle Bob, tall and confident. Pausing, he measured the slope with his eyes, slowly placed his artificial leg in front of his good leg, and walked magisterially down the path. He waved over at us, a jaunty smile on his lips, wearing his self-assurance like a crown. The amputation, it was clear, had not kept him down.

  I felt like a stranger in the sun-washed, hip LA Basin. Yet Bob reached out, lett
ing me know that it would take some time for me to get the hang of the pool cue in his den, while he hosted us there in his large, modern home overlooking the San Gabriel Valley. He helped me overcome the awkwardness I was feeling.

  His four kids—additional cousins, roughly our age—seemed to look at Sally and me askance, which I attributed to our semi-hick status from the Midwest. What I didn’t know was that almost precisely seven years before, when Dad was gone for my entire third-grade year, Bob had flown to Columbus to take him to psychiatric facilities in Southern California and, during the final months, invited him to stay in a spare bedroom of their family home while finishing his recovery. What did their family know about Dad, and our family, that I didn’t?

  A week later we were on the road back to Columbus. Mom wanted to see Lake Tahoe and its deep blue waters but Sally and I protested. My new girlfriend was waiting; I’d finally found someone I wanted to get close with. Even more, I needed to prepare to make the varsity football team as a junior. Sally, too, had commitments, including choir and cheerleading tryouts. After we begged, Mom and Dad relented and we stayed straight on the interstate to Salt Lake City and beyond.

  Looking back, I feel ever guiltier over my selfishness. Mom desperately wanted to see that lake, to plumb its cobalt-blue depths. Something about deep waters drew her in, reminding her of long-ago train trips from Ohio to Cape Cod as a teenager, when she served as a camp counselor and taught sailing. She longed to escape land-locked Ohio and her duties there. Sally and I didn’t know of the pain and terror she’d endured, always in silence, as she continued to wonder whether Dad and the family would survive the next assault of his mind.

  If I wanted to meet my goals I couldn’t let up. I’ve always had multiple plans, taking on many projects at a time. My plate is always full, the food spread thin to cover the china. A half-full plate might allow reflection back from the polished plate, a straight-on look that might be too revealing. With the plate filled, I can bypass any self-searching.

  Early in my senior year, Sally and I pondered the future. She asked if I’d really leave home for college. I replied that if I got accepted, Harvard would be great.

  “But won’t you be scared, being so far from home?”

  “Maybe at first,” I countered, “but I’d like the challenge.”

  “I don’t know if I could move that far away,” Sally continued. “It might be too scary. And for Mom, wouldn’t it be better if I were close by?” In her own way, Sally sensed the vortex lying beneath the family silence, completely identifying with Mom.

  I didn’t know which was stronger: excitement over the prospect of departing Columbus or guilt that I’d be letting my sister down, maybe everyone else too. Sally might need to sacrifice huge parts of herself to stay close. Be brave—take the risk—move away! I wanted to shout in her ears. But how could I bring her to a place of confidence when I was as confused as I was about my own life?

  Each season left its mark. Fall afternoons in the receding light, relentless football practices, victories each week under the stadium lights. In the winter, patchy snow lay on the ground. Basketball season was harder, my skills having peaked back in junior high. The blossoms finally burst forth in April, as track workouts burned my lungs. If I got to bed after 10:30 p.m., I fought panic that I wouldn’t get enough sleep.

  On weekends, I saw my girlfriend, Barb—striking eyes, long brown hair—at her house, a long block down the treelined street joining our street at an angle just beyond the front yard. She was kind and funny, sometimes sarcastic, which I found unsettling but also a relief from the unrelenting seriousness that weighed me down most of the time. I usually felt uncomfortable around people who seemed casual: Didn’t they know how important it was to stay focused? But sarcasm had a bite, revealing a difference between appearance and the deeper reality underneath. Barb and I went to movies, hung out with friends, and gradually got more physical. Were we falling in love? I wasn’t sure, but the odds were good that we’d get married one day just like most of our classmates. I clung to the stability of knowing she was there.

  Dad remained at home during my high school years, teaching graduate seminars and the huge intro to philosophy class, reading long into the evening, and pondering the futility of the Vietnam War as the sixties wound down, especially once Cronkite changed his own mind about the U.S. effort. Too many days he seemed blank and withdrawn, in a kind of retreat from the world. My activities locked up my time. I watched from a distance.

  For many people with serious bipolar disorder, episodes increase in regularity and intensity across their adult years. In what’s called the “kindling” theory, it takes a large amount of stress during late adolescence—for example, experiencing maltreatment, confronting a major loss, or perhaps overusing drugs that prime the central nervous system for disaster—to spark the initial episode. But after that, the episodes emerge more spontaneously and regularly in the way that a raging fire escalates after it’s kindled. This was clearly Dad’s pattern. After his initial, age-16 bout, it took eight years for his hospitalization at Byberry. But between his mid-twenties and forties, things got far worse, with severe episodes every year or two. Inexplicably, though, he reached some equilibrium by middle age.

  Still, he sometimes exuded an intensity I couldn’t place. Once the animated psychedelic film Yellow Submarine had been released, the Beatles’ title song played relentlessly on the radio. On a whim, I asked Dad to listen to the lyrics on our phonograph (“We all live in a yellow submarine…”). Intrigued, he cleared out the family room and positioned himself precisely between the two speakers for maximum stereophonic effect, playing the song over and over. Afterward, his eyes were ablaze. “The meaning is dark,” he said, a strange energy driving his words. “The yellow color of the submarine and the theme of the song betray a fundamental cowardice in the human condition.” He gazed over to the wall. “This song conveys the weakness of our species.” A profound insight? Or were Dad’s meanings filled with a logic I couldn’t see? As always, something lurked just out of reach.

  During the fall of my senior year, I mailed in seven college applications. But my main concern was football. Somehow, I’d made the first team, and the new stadium was set to open right near our house. The whole team knew—how could we forget?—that the Golden Bears had won 20 consecutive games, state champions two straight years. Could we seniors do it? Between my courses and the never-ending practices, I hardly saw Dad.

  The first Friday in September we took a three-hour bus ride for our opening game against a northern Ohio powerhouse. I pulled my “away” jersey, bright gold with a black 87, over my shoulder pads. But during warm-ups in the setting sun, I felt mucus, tons of mucus, in my stomach, and kept swallowing hard to keep it down. Something didn’t feel right in my head. I left the lines of calisthenics and threw up by the side of the field. It was just a gob of yellowish bile, as though I’d cleared poison, like a migraine but without any aura or headache.

  Under the lights, in a fury of hard runs and defense, we squeaked by, 7-6. The block I made from my left-end position—elbows out, hands into my chest, slamming that big defensive tackle into the ground—sprang our fullback’s 40-yard run, our only touchdown. The next week we inaugurated our new stadium with a resounding win. Each subsequent week yielded a victory, some close, most lopsided. In the middle of the season, we were winning handily at home. I was in on offense and we were close to scoring. Our quarterback called a pass play, faking a handoff right. The defensive back took the bait; I cut left, wide open. But it was a bullet when a touch pass would have done; I lost it in the lights and it bounced off my chest. It didn’t matter: We kicked a field goal and won, 59-0.

  But my world caved in. I quickly showered and skulked home, the shame burning my skin like acid. Dad had been at the stadium, though I wasn’t sure how he’d arrived. With a desperate look in his eyes, he walked toward me as I lay in my bed. “I’m proud of the way you and the team played,” he said. But all I could do was watch his vali
ant attempts from afar as I sank farther.

  The season’s final week, at 9-0, we were one win from a third straight state championship. Light-headed from the flu and a fever, I forced myself into school and played every quarter, as I had all season. After another shutout victory, the celebration began in the locker room, coaches beaming, players whooping. Dehydrated and dizzy, I showered and walked home, falling asleep in a heap for 11 hours. I missed the party at the home of one of the star players, where beer and who knows what else was brought in. I’d never had a drink except for little-kid sips when I was tiny. I needed to stay pure, in control. I hated missing out but felt strangely relieved. What would I have done there?

  *

  By late April, as the lawns and trees turned a radiant green, letters appeared underneath the mail slot at home on our hallway’s slate floor. Each time I ripped open the envelope and saw “accepted” underneath the university insignia, a surge of pride washed over me. I’d known all along that if I got into Harvard—the oldest and highest-ranked school—I’d attend. Just after I accepted, the Kent State shootings took place in May of 1970, 100 miles north of Columbus. But I felt untouchable, a glass layer between me and such a fate. With a draft number of 38, I was next in line to Southeast Asia, but a college deferment had me heading to New England instead.

  Which would be stronger: the surge to depart or the guilt I felt at leaving? I counted the days.

  7

  New England

  I’ve often wondered what Dad felt as he began his college career at Stanford in the autumn of 1939. He must have made the move from Pasadena shortly after September 1, the day Hitler’s troops overwhelmed Poland to initiate World War II. If he thought about it at all, he must have realized that his delusional mission to save the world from the Fascists three years earlier was a complete disaster. The Fascists continued to escalate their preparations to take over Europe; Dad had barely survived his hospitalization. Undoubtedly, he tried to block out that period of his life altogether, moving forward to take up the study of psychology and philosophy up in Northern California, keeping his half-year siege locked up somewhere as a distant memory.