Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [32]
No. What I tortured myself with were questions. If I had loved her so much, why hadn't I seen this coming? How could I have been so blind?
I combed through my memories of her childhood. Everything had seemed so normal to me, but now in the cold light of this illness, I wondered. Lori had always been moody, especially as she got into her teens. Sometimes she would say she was depressed and fat and had no friends. But then I would talk to my own friends, and they would say their daughters said the same thing. We all chalked it up to hormones. I was often pretty mercurial myself. If Lori was moody too, at the time it seemed normal. But was it? Or was it a sign of what was to come that I had missed? All along, I now realized, I had never really worried about Lori. She so clearly had it all. It was always Mark who worried me. Mark, our middle child, had been shy and awkward. When we moved to Scarsdale, both Lori and little Steven were intrepid. Off they went into their new schools without a hint of self-consciousness. Mark, though, had trouble adjusting.
In high school, Lori was a good student, involved in all kinds of activities, surrounded by friends, and by and large cheerful. Mark, on the other hand, was always depressed, moping around, getting teary-eyed, listening to acid rock and writing poems about death and suicide. It was he, growing up, who kept me awake at night, not Lori. Now suddenly everything was reversed. Mark had blossomed in college, was talking about going on to business school, and was showing every sign of being happy and well adjusted. And Lori was in a mental institution. Where had things changed? What signs had I missed seeing?
And when I finally realized she was sick, was I too passive? Could I have done more to help? In particular, I berated myself for letting Lori be treated by that Dr. Kline. I never met the man, but I hated him. I thought he was awful. I didn't think he was helping these kids. All he seemed to do with Lori was give her more and more pills.
I could see the effects in her eyes. Just a few weeks after she began seeing him, her eyes became glassy and vacant, and she began to move like she was sleepwalking. She put on nearly twenty pounds. Her beautiful complexion began to break out, and her chestnut hair turned gray almost overnight.
Still, I didn't know how bad she was until one day in late spring. I came into the city to visit her often, and on that day I was on my way to meet her. I walked down a street in midtown, heading toward the corner where Lori and I had agreed to meet. As I walked, I passed a street person, a woman laden down with heavy shopping bags. Although it was late spring and very hot, she was wearing an overcoat, hat and boots.
Something about the woman made me look back. When I did, I was horrified. It was Lori.
Why hadn't I stepped in even then? Why hadn't I insisted she go to a hospital right away? I knew something was terribly wrong, but I had been unable to grasp it, helpless to act. Was there anything I could have done back then that could have saved her from the terrible fate she was suffering now?
So all through the summer, I walked that lonely route, up from the subway, past the ice cream store, past the flower cart, past the other sad-eyed parents who looked like me, into the bleak colorlessness of Lori's room. As fall approached I bought her hot pretzels from stands on the street, and pretty sweat suits from Bloomingdale's. Her weight had ballooned up so much, she couldn't fit into her own clothes anymore.
Sometimes she was so sick she kept to her room, huddled up and uncommunicative. Sometimes she was well enough to join the other patients in some activities, like painting and crafts. Crafts! I could scarcely believe it. My straight-A Lori, who had gone