Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [38]
The message “face facts” must have followed us from Payne Whitney. Or maybe Mrs. Shachnow had arrived at that conclusion on her own. In any case, we didn't want to hear her message to us: that we weren't “accepting” Lori's illness. By pressuring Lori to get better, she told us with professional kindness, we were denying the reality of her disease. Everyone would be better off, she said, when we came to “accept” that Lori was profoundly ill.
We knew Lori was very sick. But we—Marvin especially—couldn't accept that she was permanently sick, that she would not get better. I could see Marvin's back stiffen at the suggestion. And then he would adopt a professional, detached air, and begin to question the questioners: Had they tried this drug, or that treatment, or consulted this or that person? When he began to act like a therapist himself, the room bristled with tension.
We both seethed at their hints that we stop putting pressure on Lori. Lori worshipped us in a way that wasn't healthy, Mrs. Shachnow said, ever so gently. But inside, she continued, there was anger Lori was repressing, anger that was fueling her symptoms.
She wasn't telling us anything that we hadn't berated ourselves for a million times over. But in a perverse way, the social workers pushed our backs to the wall. As much as we tortured ourselves in the darkness of our own room, we didn't want strangers shoving it in our faces.
When it came right down to it, we just didn't want to talk about it with them. When Marvin was home, we talked late into the night. What had we done with Lori? What could we do about Lori? We wanted information, and medical advice, and insight into her problem. We didn't want to replay it over and over.
So we played little games with the social workers. When Mrs. Shachnow tried to set appointments, we put her off.
“We'll be out of town then,” I said, no matter when the appointment was scheduled for.
We made dates and didn't keep them. When we did show up, we would get lectured about keeping appointments. Then we would be even ruder. I tapped my feet, and Marvin pulled out business correspondence. They asked questions and we gave clipped answers. It was our little revenge. We don't want to be here, we were saying. If you force us to be here, here's what you'll get. We were like petulant children, sitting there with our arms folded, refusing to speak.
“Are you feeling a little hostile, Mrs. Schiller?” Jody Shachnow would say in her schoolteacher voice.
“Hostile?” I was sarcastic. “You might say that.”
Inside, I was even more belligerent. Why shouldn't I be hostile? I thought. You don't know Lori. You don't know what a beautiful, intelligent, charming girl she was. And now she is locked up in your hospital. I don't know what's wrong with her. You don't know what's wrong with her. And now you are treating me like a five-year-old. Wouldn't you be hostile?
Privately, Marvin and I mocked their professionally saccharine voices.
“And how are you tonight?” we would mimic in the car, and then collapse in peals of laughter. It was cruel. They were professionals, they meant well, and they were only doing their job. It was the only laughing we did those days. But at least it was better than crying.
For nowadays, there was no escaping it: Lori was getting worse.
Anyone could see she was hallucinating. Once the doctors at Payne Whitney had told us about it, I began to see it clearly. The staff at New York Hospital was doing what we wanted done. They were trying to take her off as much medicine as possible, to see what her symptoms were like underneath.
Off all medication, her symptoms raged. She was frightened, almost panicked, by what she was hearing inside her head. Sometimes when I would visit, she was able to carry on a conversation. She talked with me about her day, asked me to bring her cigarettes, or batteries for her Walkman. She would be very coherent, and aware of what was going on. Then all of a sudden—boom!—sometimes in the middle of