Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [40]
“Don't pay any attention to her,” he said. “She's a fat, old crazy cow.”
My mind raced back to Lori. When I had seen Lori on the streets of New York, disheveled and out of control, what had I been thinking? Oh, please, I was thinking when I looked at Lori in the late spring heat wearing her long winter coat and snow boots, and carrying shopping bags, please don't let anyone see her like this. Please don't let them be repelled, point, fear. Don't let them laugh at my daughter. Don't let them laugh at me.
Looking back on that moment, I was aghast. With all my might I had been trying to keep from seeing what was right in front of my face. I had looked at Lori and seen my worst fears. I had seen a childhood full of embarrassment and humiliation. When I looked at Lori, I had seen Cousin Sylvia. I had seen my mother, and my friends laughing at her all over again. I had seen my past. It was something I couldn't bear to see again.
And then came an even more frightening thought. Suppose I was seeing not just my past, but my sons’ futures? Schizophrenia, I had read, ran in families. Clearly it ran in mine. Suppose Lori was not the only child of mine to be afflicted?
As much as I could, I tried to act normally. With Mark, it was easy. He was away at Tulane, and, it seemed, really happy for the first time in his life. He had shaken off the adolescent depression that had so troubled him and begun to blossom as a man. He was doing well in his studies. He had plenty of friends. He was dating a lot. It was apparent he was having a ball, and I was so happy to see that.
Steven was at home and in his senior year in high school. I knew he was devastated by Lori's illness. We all were. Nonetheless, Steven seemed happy to me. He was really funny, and could always make me laugh.
Things couldn't help but change. Up until I had gone to work, and Lori had gotten sick, Steven had been the child to whom I had been closest. The other two had left the house, and Steven and I had spent an inordinate amount of time together. He was my baby, and my life had revolved around him as a mother. Now with nearly every waking minute focused on Lori, there just wasn't as much time to spend with him as before.
Still, as best I could, I tried to keep up the things we had always enjoyed doing together. We went to museums together, played golf together, and talked about school and life.
I never mentioned my suspicions to my sons. I didn't want them to worry about themselves. They knew that my mother was strange. But I never told them my newly awakened suspicions about her. As for our other relatives, we had never had much contact with them, so the boys were barely aware they existed. In silence, I worried. Mark was twenty-one, and, I thought, more likely to be out of danger from an illness that seemed to strike in the late teens. But Steven had just turned seventeen. Was he going to be next?
We saw what we wanted to see, and believed what we wanted to believe. With enough time, and enough medication, Lori began to grow calmer, and we took it as a sign she was getting better. And we began to push for her release.
Actually, it was Marvin who pushed. My feelings were mixed. Her behavior was certainly improving. Her rages were beginning to diminish under the medicine, and her pacing was abating. She began to appear more relaxed and started to attend some of the hospital activities. By Christmas and New Year's she had calmed down enough to receive passes to walk with us on the grounds of the hospital. In February for the first time since she entered the hospital she dressed in street clothes, instead of the sweat suits she had been habitually wearing. After a time, she appeared well enough to go out to dinner with us, and to spend a weekend or two at home.
What she needed now, Marvin argued, was activity, a job, friends, a social life. She needed things to anchor her to reality, he argued, not to spend her days in a mental hospital surrounded by sick