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By Root 513 0

my direction and then dart me a baffled and irritated smile. He would have been likably goofy except that he had real power in the department, and he made clear his views about women every step of the way: his sexual innuendos were deeply offensive, and his level of condescension whenever he spoke with me, or women interns and residents, was infuriating. He was a caricature of himself, in many ways, but it was clear that being a woman on his service meant starting ten seconds late for a hundred-yard dash. Fortunately, the tenure process has many checks and balances built into it, and, at least in the two universities that I know best—the University of California and Johns Hopkins—the system seems to me to be a remarkably fair one. Entities like the Oyster didn’t make it any easier, however.

Finally, after much rodenting along and through the tenure maze, I received my letter from the regents notifying me that I had been promoted to the next set of academic mazes: the holding pattern, the Inferno-land of Associate Professordom. I celebrated for weeks. One of my best friends had a lovely dinner party for about thirty people, on a perfect California night; the terraces in her gardens were filled with flowers and candles; it could not have been more beautiful. My family provided the champagne, along with their gift to me of Baccarat glasses for the champagne, and I had a wonderful time. More than anyone, my family and friends knew how much the tenure party was a celebration over years of struggling against severe mental illness, as well as a celebration of the major rite of academic passage.

Tenure really sank in, however, when one of my colleagues, a member of the all-male Bohemian Club, came over to my house with some wine from his club. “Congratulations, Professor,” he said, handing me the bottle. “Welcome to an all-men’s club.”

Part Three

THIS MEDICINE, LOVE

An Officer and a Gentleman

There was a time when I honestly believed that there was only a certain amount of pain one had to go through in life. Because manic-depressive illness had brought such misery and uncertainty in its wake, I presumed life should therefore be kinder to me in other, more balancing ways. But then I also had believed that I could fly through starfields and slide along the rings of Saturn. Perhaps my judgment left something to be desired. Robert Lowell, often crazy but rarely stupid, knew better than to assume a straight shot at happiness: If we see a light at the end of the tunnel, he said, it’s the light of an oncoming train.

For a while—courtesy of lithium, time’s passing, and the love of a tall, handsome Englishman—I caught a glimpse of what I imagined to be the light at the end of the tunnel, and I could feel, however elusively, what seemed to be the return of a warm and secure existence. I learned how marvelously the mind can heal, given half a chance, and how patience and gentleness can put back together the pieces of a horribly shattered world. What God had put asunder, an elemental salt, a first-rank psychiatrist, and a man’s kindness and love could put almost right again.

I met David my first year on the faculty at UCLA. It was early in 1975, six months after I had gone barkingly manic, and my brain had gradually knit itself into a rather brittle, but vaguely coherent, version of its former self. My mind was skating on thin ice, my emotions were completely frayed, and most of my true existence was lived within the narrow range of very long-cast inner shadows. But my overt actions were within the conservative range of my so-called normal colleagues, so—at least professionally speaking—all was ostensibly well.

On this particular day I had unlocked the door to the inpatient ward with my usual sense of annoyance—not because of the patients, but because there was a staff meeting scheduled, which meant that the nurses would be venting their collective spleen on the psychiatric residents, who would, in turn, be irritatingly secure in their knowledge that they had the final authority and higher degrees; the ward chief, who