Another Kind of Madness Page 3

  Within a week Dad disappeared. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. I waited blankly while the weeks dragged on. No questions were allowed, no answers offered. Concentrating on schoolwork and sports might keep my body and mind occupied—anything to stop questioning, anything to stop feeling. I had no idea that our parents were under doctor’s orders never to even mention the subject of Dad’s mental illness to Sally or me. Walking through the house each day was exhausting, as though I were a mountain climber scaling a Himalayan peak without an external oxygen supply. Every few steps, slowly asphyxiating, I stopped and gasped for air. How long would all this go on?

  I usually have a strong memory, but around Dad’s departures and returns, the computer inside my head simply shut down. Some kind of vacuum sucked out my recollections, just like the water pump in our basement, chugging away, spitting out the flood water onto the driveway. This one worked on my mind, emptying it of remembrance.

  *

  The following spring, preparations for the Saturday evening dinner party were in full swing. When Mom and Dad hosted such events, it felt like a portal opening onto a different world. For a few precious moments the brittle tension of the household evaporated. “Cocktails at six,” the mailed announcement pronounced in italics.

  Mom’s worries were vast. Would Dad stay healthy long enough to host the event? The next time he departed, would he ever return? But if they somehow went forward as though nothing had ever gone wrong, perhaps relatives, neighbors, and the campus community would stifle any questions about Dad’s mysteries. For Mom, who’d been raised in an era when appearance was everything, throwing such a party was transcendent. A top student her whole life, she’d met Dad in the late forties while earning her Master’s degree in history from OSU. Now a proud wife and mother, she wore the hope for her family like a badge. Making her preparations, she anticipated the house full of excited friends and colleagues.

  Dad was in his element, too. A scholar of ultimate promise, he was a logical positivist who had also mastered classical philosophy. As Mom told me years later, during those years he was the apple of the Ohio State philosophy department’s eye. At any gathering, he held court about the world’s big ideas. In a few hours, the couple’s charm and erudition would be on full display, the picture of grace and accomplishment.

  High above the dining room table, the small chandelier illuminated plates of hors d’oeuvres—deviled eggs, asparagus spears, watercress sandwiches—while dinner warmed in the oven. In the living room, light-brown and pale-orange shafts of light from the lampshades provided a soft glow. A radio-delivered Eisenhower speech sounded while Mom bustled, straightening cushions and doling out ashtrays. Dad put his favorite records on the phonograph. The triumphal march from Aida filled the air, transporting the household to Egypt, before the resonant organ chords of E. Power Biggs, playing Bach, transformed our home into a cathedral.

  Green, brown, and amber liquor bottles gleamed on the card table Dad had installed near the back porch, his bar station for the night. The shakers glistened, the metallic ice-cube trays so cold that your fingers would stick to the frosted silver surface if you dared touch them. The faintly medicinal smell of the liquor hinted at hidden pleasure.

  As the hour neared Sally and I got into our pajamas, awaiting our sitter as we perched on the stairway. At last the doorbell sounded and guests began to pour in: professors, doctors, artists, neighbors. Filling the house with their excited voices, the men sported tweed jackets while the women glittered in jewel-adorned dresses. Stepping aside to remove their coats, the handsome couples beamed.

  “Alene,” one said, gazing at my mother; “you look splendid this evening! What a spread in front of us!”

  “Where’s Virgil?” said another, a grin covering his face. “Aha, just as I suspected, pouring cocktails behind the table! Get on over here and say hello, you philosopher king!”

  A third bellowed, loud enough for everyone to hear: “I’ve searched for years for the perfect party, but here it is right in front of me, chez Hinshaw! Get me a drink, right away!”

  When the guests spotted Sally and me, 1950s-style love flowed. “Let’s see how tall you are, Steve! And Sally, you’re nearly as big. How beautiful you are, just like your mother! Come here and give us a hug.” Another guest entered. “Steve, will you become a scholar-athlete like your robust father?” A glowing faculty wife gushed: “Sally, are you taking ballet already?”

  In the living room at his makeshift bar, exposing a wry grin, Dad carefully measured each shot before shaking the requested drink, then tossed in a bit more before serving it. His wit was on full display, his laugh infectious.

  As the sitter arrived Sally and I groaned. Mom guided us upstairs but we could still hear bits of conversation. “Virgil, where is Bertrand Russell these days? What did you tell him at Princeton?” Dad had studied with the noted philosopher while in graduate school.

  “Alene, how can you look as you do with two children in tow? But we must get you to campus; surely there’s room in history or English for someone with your talents.”

  Among the men: “Can Woody bring home another national championship with the Buckeyes in the fall? On to the Rose Bowl!”

  Bursts of excited laughter periodically reverberated up the stairway. At one point, an enthralled voice cried out, “It may be a Cold War outside, but the house is warm inside! Here’s a toast to our charming hosts!” Glasses clinked. From upstairs I pictured the gleam of the stainless steel serving dishes, the blue-yellow flames underneath exuding a faint scent of burning fuel that made its way to our bedrooms.

  I’ve surmised that, during a pause, Mom passed the living room’s front window, suddenly shivering. I learned about this moment during a conversation I had with her twenty years later, a few years after Dad and I had held our first, fateful conversation during my initial spring break from college. At the window, she recalled the clear, cold afternoon a few months before the party when she and Dad had stood right at that spot, peering out at the homes of the neighbors. He had returned from Columbus State Hospital after a period of uncontrolled behavior, voices in his head, paranoia raging. The incident at the Willard had been a clear sign—in hindsight, he was climbing through mania at frightening speed.

  At Columbus State Hospital, part of his regimen was electroconvulsive therapy, abbreviated as ECT, with electrodes placed on his temples to induce grand mal seizures in his brain. To cut his episode short, the doctors had also prescribed high-dose Thorazine, the original antipsychotic medication. Yet once Dad was home, something was amiss. Usually back to his normal self after a bout of madness, he seemed in a fog, his personality elsewhere. Had his condition lingered, Mom wondered, or was it the effects of his treatments? To shield Sally and me from Dad’s confused state, she sent us to Grandmother’s house for consecutive weekends.

  Timidly, her husband had approached her one Saturday, his voice wan. “Dear, could you help me a bit?” he asked. Straining to find patience, she assented. Since his return, one overwhelming need seemed to follow another. “It appears that I’ve forgotten the names of our neighbors,” he lamented. “What do I say when they approach me? Could you help?”

  The names of the neighbors, the ones they’d known for years? What had happened to the brilliant scholar she’d married? With each episode, she understood with more clarity her unexpected role as mentor, guide, and caretaker. Yet she was immediately all business, pointing across the street. “Of course you recall the Caldwells, Pete and Angie? There, in the white house?” Dad followed her gaze, his expression blank. “We play badminton with them, remember? Pete’s the life of the party, always with a joke or a story. Remember?”

  Staring, he showed a glimmer of recognition. “Sure,” he said softly, “I can picture them. What are their names again?” As though speaking to a child, she went through it once more. “And what about next door?” he asked. “The man seems to know me so well.”

  “Honey, you must remember the Barkers?” They
laid their eyes on the beige home just across the driveway. “Bill, who always greets you when you’re home from campus? A little shorter than you, crew-cut, bow tie? And three doors down,” Mom continued, “the Drakes?” They craned their necks. “Tim is Steve’s age. His older sister Mary is already well along in junior high school.”

  “What are the children’s names again?” Taking in a sharp breath, she began afresh.

  Back at the dinner party, Mom’s brief reverie came to an end. She looked up to see her husband fill a glass and bring in a spare chair amid the scattered guests. He’s as good as new, she thought, the convivial, eminent philosopher she’d married. He betrayed nothing of his inner mysteries, his chilling absences. It had taken a few weeks for his confused state to lift but his memory had finally returned, especially when the Thorazine dose was lowered. They exchanged a glance and nodded to each other, acknowledging the party’s success. Yet when might the tell-tale signs return, the signs of incipient madness? She’d already made the crucial decision in her life: To survive, she would need to concentrate on the good times, like tonight. If she dwelled on the past—or thought too much of his next round of impossible behavior, along with the distance between them regarding his bouts of insanity—she wouldn’t be able to face another day.

  Back in command at the dinner party, she made sure each guest got seconds. As coffee was served, couples started to murmur about relieving their babysitters. By now Sally and I had been asleep for hours, weak starlight shining into our bedroom windows. Perhaps we dreamed of the party’s continued excitement.

  Conversations lagged as a few more revelers gathered their belongings. Dutifully, Mom saw them to the door with a brave smile. A few more guests made to depart.

  Wait, she thought desperately. Don’t leave! If only the party could continue just a while longer.

  If only the magic could last.

  2

  Out in California

  Did I live in two different worlds, depending on Dad’s presence?

  Was Dad two different people?

  Was I?

  His particular form of bipolar disorder—with episodes beginning during his late teen years, fast escalations into grandiose bouts of mania, miraculous recoveries after months of incomprehensible behavior, and remarkably normal functioning in between episodes—was striking. Some call this pattern “Cade’s disease,” named after the Australian psychiatrist who pioneered the use of lithium therapy for bipolar disorder during the late 1940s and whose accounts of the condition reflected this classic pattern of cycling. Not everyone with bipolar illness shows such distinct manias and depressions. In fact, a majority show lingering symptoms during the periods in between episodes. But until relatively late in his life, Dad showed the extreme, classic pattern. Not surprisingly, when he took on a separate personality, so different from his usual self, my world turned upside down. When he vanished, I was frozen in time, not even daring to wonder where he might be. Following his return after weeks or months of shut-down, he was rational, calm, and responsive, my go-to person when confused or upset.

  As strong as Mom was—holding the family together through sheer force of will—she didn’t want to see me sad or angry. It might remind her of another male in the house whose emotions could threaten destruction. I learned to keep things in.

  Throughout, no one could let on that anything had changed. We were all engaged in serious play-acting, the costumes stiff and the scenes perplexing, without rehearsal. Over time, we ended up pretending that we weren’t pretending—enacting the ultimate in fantasy role-play. Each performance was live, and we acted out our roles as though our lives depended on their success. Why were the most important things in our family’s existence such an ongoing mystery? Whatever lay behind the silence must have been so devastating that it would have destroyed us if brought into the open.

  For the past couple of decades, beyond my career-long research and teaching in child and adolescent mental health—which was inspired by what I began to learn from Dad all those years ago—I’ve been engaged with the concept of stigma. This term is defined as the shame and degradation meted out to members of social groups believed to be unworthy, dirty, or untouchable. From its Greek origins, stigma signifies a literal mark or brand. Coming to the agora, the public marketplace, a citizen in ancient Athens might have wondered who had fought for Sparta or who was a former slave. A burned mark into the skin publicly announced such status—a physical stigma, an observable mark of disgrace to define those not deserving of full citizenship, true outcasts.

  In modern times, such actual marking still sometimes occurs. Concentration camp inmates in Nazi Germany were branded with numbers. During the early days of the epidemic, individuals with HIV in certain countries were also physically marked. Yet the vast majority of stigma today is psychological, referring to the subtler but still devastating mark of simply being part of an unfit group. Stigma pollutes any interactions between such individuals and members of mainstream society, containing the clear message that the outsiders are unworthy and despicable.

  Throughout history and across cultures, many characteristics have been stigmatized, including physical deformity or disability, diseases like leprosy (now known as Hansen’s disease), minority status with respect to race or religion, any sexual orientation other than heterosexual, being adopted, and having a mental illness. Some of these are overt and visible, such as race, physical disability, and many chronic diseases. “Lepers,” as they were called—noxiously equating the person with the disease—could be distinguished by their scaly, dark-toned, disfiguring skin lesions. Yet other stigmatized traits, like sexual orientation, being adopted, or having a history of mental disorder, are potentially concealable. These kinds of hidden stigmas can be especially troublesome, because the individuals in question may constantly wonder whether their characteristics are “leaking,” adding layers of tension and uncertainty to every social encounter.

  Think of the questions and decisions people like my father faced—and, far too often, still do: Can anyone tell? If my secret of being insane, a madman, comes out, I’ll be shunned. Covering up completely is the only course. Stigma breeds shame; stigma breeds silence.

  As cultures evolve, a number of formerly stigmatized traits or attributes can become far more acceptable. Left-handedness was formerly disgraceful but hardly seems an issue today. Strikingly, rapid shifts in societal attitudes toward gay marriage have emerged over the past two decades, fueled largely by young people. Such positive trends are unmistakable, giving real hope for tolerance and acceptance. Yet mental illness and intellectual disability, a newer term for mental retardation, have both been extremely stigmatized throughout history and across nearly all cultures.

  Three attributes, in fact, rank at the bottom of social acceptance in current attitude surveys: Homelessness, drug abuse, and mental illness. The general public does not wish for close contact with such individuals, revealing a strong desire for social distance. Even more, on the typical scales and questionnaires used in such research, respondents are likely to underplay their negative attitudes to avoid being perceived as bigots. Privately held attitudes may actually be far worse.

  During the silent 1950s, when I was young, mental illness was stigmatized to the extreme, linked in the public’s mind with utter incompetence as well as major potential for violence. Over half a million Americans were placed involuntarily in crowded, inhumane public mental hospitals, many of which resembled snake pits. The very term “mental illness” made one a complete outcast. Our family was caught in the crossfire.

  As a boy I knew nothing of the term stigma, which became publicized after the 1963 publication of Erving Goffman’s classic monograph on the topic. What I did know was that something unimaginable lay just beneath the calm exterior of our family—and whatever it was could never be mentioned. What I did feel, in the rare times I allowed myself emotions, was that I might plunge so far down a steep chasm I’d never claw my way up to the surface. To invoke an overused
phrase, the shame and silence were deafening. There were no awards handed out to our family for acting ability but we deserved, at the very least, nominations in all the major categories.

  *

  While home, Dad would periodically take me aside to discuss his family out in California. In the beginning, he escorted me into the living room of our house on Wyandotte Road, with its soft carpet and long, flower-patterned drapes. Later, as I proceeded through grade school and began junior high, we would go to his library in our new home. Each time, he asked whether I might like to talk about his family. Not knowing when he might vanish again, I always nodded. He planned his presentations carefully, laying out an assortment of photos neatly on the table. The room was still, the eagerness in his voice impossible to mask.

  “Take a look,” he said. His brothers and all those other relatives out West seemed to be a mysterious tribe, as distant from Columbus as Siam or Brazil. Southern California was mystical, I was sure, with oranges growing on trees all year long and vast beaches fronting the Pacific. Dad’s eyes lifted upward as he spoke. If I had questions, I stifled the urge to ask, taking in each syllable without interruption.

  The family spent their early years in La Grange, Illinois, outside Chicago. Grandpa Hinshaw was chairman of the Prohibition National Party from 1912 through 1924. The Eighteenth Amendment, enacting Prohibition, was ratified during his leadership, in 1920. I hoped that someday I might make history, too. Yet the wait seemed interminable. If I wondered, over the years, how the son of a Prohibition leader delighted in making cocktails at dinner parties, I kept that thought to myself.

  Virgil Sr.’s interest in Prohibition arose from his Quaker background, including the firm belief that alcohol was the root of many social problems, like crime or the abuse of children. At 12, he joined the “Band of Hope,” the children’s branch of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Dad showed me old newsletters he’d saved, which reported that while in his twenties, his father toured 203 college campuses to speak about the evils of alcohol before obtaining his law degree. I was inspired but stunned. Where did that kind of energy and devotion come from? What kind of family was this?