Madness (11 page)

Wait—so what you're saying is that I could go crazy for good.

Not likely, with treatment.

Does the treatment always work?

Not always. Usually.

So you can't promise me I won't go crazy and wind up on the street. (This has always been my greatest fear, that I will become a muttering bag lady, talking to the voices in my head, people staring at the ground as they pass me, avoiding my eyes.)

I can't promise you anything. Although I think that's very unlikely.
He looks at me.
It really is up to you.

Okay! Okay okay okay, I yell. I flap my arms around and climb up on my bed. I stand here in my many gowns, mind spinning with information I can barely grasp but that makes me extremely afraid. Dr. Lentz smiles at me and tells me he'll be back tomorrow. I leap up and crash back on the hospital bed.

Upside down, I watch the clouds scud across a blue, blue sky. Lentz is gone. Well, never mind all that. It's not really so bad. I just take my meds, and I'm cured.

I lie on my back, still for a moment. I am at peace.

***

Now, this is the part of the book where I emerge from the hospital into the July sunshine, fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked, eyes a-twinkle, and gung ho to embark on my journey, the obvious journey, the recommended journey, the acceptable journey from sickness to health, from dark to light, from inside the locked door to outside it, freedom! How dear a price we pay! Here is me, mellowed and medicated, smiling mildly, like the Madonna, with that touch of knowing sorrow in my brow, but overridden now by the hope of new life.

Here I am, striding with newfound purpose into my house, collecting the bottles off the bar, out of the wine rack, out of the tank of the toilet, out from under the bed, behind the desk, in the washing machine, the garage, the spice cabinet, the bucket of cleaning supplies under the sink—shocked, just shocked to realize how much I'd been drinking, but full of strength, the strength of the totally sensible sane, strength enough to dramatically flush all the booze down the toilet, and here I am going to bed by ten and waking up at six every day, exactly right, and I'm taking my meds in the morning and taking them at night, and I begin yoga, and kick-boxing for good measure, and in the interest of balance, I become a Buddhist and meditate while perched on the silk pillow in my little temple, formerly my husband's office, and my husband is part of my support system and totally supports my hijacking of his office for the higher purpose of sanity and balance, and I decorate the room with all sorts of meaningful little knickknacks, Buddhas and the like, knickknacks not purchased, oh no, in any kind of manic spending spree.

Well, no. That's not exactly what happened. Just kidding. Really, it embarrasses and frankly baffles me to write this, but the next part of the book is where I'm at my house, knocking back my meds with a beer. I'm working twenty-four hours a day. I'm having parties, going to parties, staying up all night. I'm acting exactly as I did before.

You may be asking at this point, Why? Or more to the point,
What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you completely dense? Are you—ha ha!—insane?

Ladies and gentlemen, yes I am.

I'm standing in front of a crowd of people in New York the first time it happens: I'm on book tour, giving a reading from my book
Wasted,
and suddenly I come to, as if I've been away, and I don't know how I got here. I'm terrified, and I hear myself talking, and then people clap and praise my book, which I have apparently been reading from, and then they take me to a hotel and I stand in the middle of the hotel room, paralyzed and confused. Where am I? Where am I going tomorrow? What if I fuck up? What if I make a fool of myself? What if I just go crazy and start to scream? That's what scares me, because I feel as if I'm just about to do it, every minute of the day. I sit in television studios, in radio studios, the crazies welling up in my chest. I sit in coffee shops with reporters and recite the correct answers (What are the correct answers?), still feeling it. And then, at night, the switch trips and I am
on,
in front of a crowd,
questions, more questions! Bring it on! I'm on top of the world!
My speech comes out in rapid fire, I fling my hands around in sweeping gestures, my brain races along at the speed of light, and I love it, the heat, the crowds, the way I get so fucking high each night I think I'll never come down.

At first, it's just mania, which isn't so bad when you're on book tour. You're flying from one interview to the next, guzzling coffee, off to a reading, to a dinner, back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep, and up early to get on a plane to go do it again. I keep going as fast as I can. Day after day, I have endless energy. I'm always
cheerful, never get tired, never need a break, will take any number of interviews; the publicists who drive me around are amazed. And, okay, I'm a little nuts, and they laugh at my constant stream of chatter, my loud laugh, my wildly gesturing arms. But no one mentions it because I'm a writer, and everybody knows writers are crazy (or maybe she's on cocaine?).

Might as well be. I hardly sleep. That in itself is enough. But I've forgotten everything Lentz told me about sleep, and everything else—the bipolar body clock is readily startled, he told me over and over, trying to get it through my head that I can't just go careening around all night. He warned me that the tenuous balance that exists in my brain is easily set off kilter, but like everything else he said, that has slipped my mind. I've thrown myself into the insane schedule of book tour, possessed with the need to do it perfectly, I have to do it
right,
what if I fail? I can't say no, I can't slow down, I have to keep going or they'll find out I'm a little kid in grownup's clothes and a fraud. The lack of sleep is one thing, and the airplane rides and time changes another, the erratic, unpredictable daily schedule, the back-to-back events and interviews, the poor nutrition, the continuous state of heightened awareness, the fact that I'm drunk almost around the clock—if Lentz were here, he'd tell me yet again: there's no way my system can maintain the homeostasis it requires to keep my chemistry on course. My brain becomes highly "brittle," thinks it's in a fight-or-flight situation. It's primed for collapse.

I fly back to Minneapolis for a weekend break from the tour. I get in around midnight and collapse into bed. I have forty-eight hours to get some sleep into my bone-tired body. But it's in these forty-eight hours, by some freak chance, that the worst that could happen does.

At five o'clock in the morning, the phone rings. It's just getting light. I pick it up.

My beloved cousin Brian is calling. I knew this phone call would come one day. His muscular dystrophy has been slowly
killing him since the day he was born. The last two years in Minneapolis, I've been able to talk to him at all hours, see him nearly every day, have dinner, go to movies, spend time with all our friends as often as I wanted; and as close as we've been since we were little kids, now he's the most important thing in my life. I made myself forget he was sick. I knew, but I ignored it. I knew in the back of my mind I would lose him. I just didn't think I'd lose him so soon. Not yet. Not today.

We rush him to the hospital. His mother, father, and sister are there, and so are my mother and father. We race after the nurse who has cared for him when he's been hospitalized these past few months, who runs toward ICU, pushing Brian's gurney, Brian is howling in pain as his vital organs shut down, the nurse is crying and saying,
I promised him this would never happen,
and we finally reach the room and the nurse turns up the morphine and Brian's wails slow and then stop. He dies at 8:23
A
.
M
.

His mother cries,
My child, my child.

I turn into Julian's chest and slide down him to the floor.

I delay tour for a few more days to stay with my family and our friends for the memorial. We planned the service this winter while Brian was in the hospital. He made us swear they wouldn't play "On Eagle's Wings." He made his mother promise there would be no Jesus. There were to be two eulogies: he ordered our old friend Chris to make everyone laugh, and me to make everyone cry. He gave us his credit card and told us to go out after the wake and blow his entire credit line on a party at a bar, since he wasn't going to have to pay anyway. He made me promise to wear a red dress. Furious, I wear a red dress.

The night of his memorial, we drink ourselves half to death at Benchwarmer Bob's, laughing and crying and telling stories until last call. Julian drives and I stare out the window at the freeway lights and passing cars as we head for home, feeling like my guts have been ripped out.

I shut down. The next day I get on a plane bound for London
to do what I'm supposed to, show up for the still-long list of radio, TV, and newspaper interviews, the panels and dinners and readings, another month on the road while it's taking everything I have not to scream. Shock. Grief. Jet lag. The booze I inhale on the plane. The pot of black tea I drink when I arrive. Enough to make anyone crazy. And more than enough for me.

I am triumphant. I have arrived. I am torn apart with grief. Brian is dead. BBC London loves me. The book critic loves me. I hold court at a publication party, pouring wine down my gullet like a pelican, the table littered with bottles, everyone laughs.

Then it hits me: they're laughing at me. They've found me out. They see what I actually am.

You can almost hear it: a little tiny
snap.
Here's my tiny scream as I go down.

I am sitting at a table in a hotel bar in London, wrapped in a black wool thing. I am watching my hand, in fascination, as it lies on the table and trembles like a paper napkin in the breeze. My hand absorbs me completely. The bar is enormous, then tiny. I am sitting in a brass-tacked, leather-upholstered chair. I myself am enormous, like Alice, my legs and arms everywhere. But then I am minute, tucked back into the corner of the overstuffed, regal, genteel chair. They are watching me. Especially the barmaid—she hates me. She speaks to me only in French. My ashtray is the size of Montana. My cigarette burns in it slowly. The sound of the paper spitting as the red cherry creeps down the cigarette is deafening. I look around the room. The barmaid turns her head away in a haughty gesture. I note that things have taken on a particularly tactile, vivid, saturated look. The leather chairs are oxblood. They are very, very fine. There is a businessman in the bar, leaning back in his chair, smoking his cigar and reading the London
Times.
I panic. I remember there is an article about me in today's
Times.
I shrink in my chair. I know he will see it, see my picture, and he will swing his head in slow motion toward me and fix me
with his beady, foxlike stare.
"I don't care," says Pierre,
I chant in my head.
But I will let you fold the folding chair! "I don't care!" says Pierre.
I will show that man I don't care. I am Pierre!

A desperate situation has arisen: I am out of wine. There is nothing left for me in this world. I look pleadingly at the bar, behind which the French barmaid stands, ignoring me as if she were an elegant cat. Two men enter the bar. Shit! More knees to navigate in my path to the bar. Everyone's shirt pleases me: they are all superbly ironed and have excellent cuffs. Eventually I manage to stand. I take deep, calming breaths. I take my wineglass and tiptoe up to the bar and point to the bottle of burgundy I like. In mortal shame, I lower my head as the barmaid pours me a glass. I want to tell her I am sorry I don't speak French. I feel horrible about it. She puts the bottle back and I crawl away like the bug that I am. I crawl up the leg of my chair, carefully balancing my fine crystal wineglass in my hand. I crawl across the seat. I crawl up the arm of the chair and sit perched there. I am a millipede. Elegantly, fooling everyone, I cross my million legs and sip my wine.

I am outside and lost. I hunch over, pulling my black wings over my shoulders. I stay close to the buildings. I duck around corners, searching. There is a crepe stand around here somewhere, and I shall find it. I put my head in my hands and lean my back against a stone wall. I note the puddles running off into the gutter. I take a deep breath and
carry on, old chap, buck up, old chum, tallyho, sally forth,
and I continue skulking through the narrow alleyways of London. There is one safe place; that place is the crepe stand. There they do not humiliate me as they do in the other places.

I am in a square. There are people all around, and thousands of pigeons. Mary Poppins!
"Feed the birds, tuppence a bag! Tuppence, TUPPENCE, TUPPENCE A BAG!"
I may have shouted it aloud. I have been walking through the square for years, never getting closer to the other side. Perhaps it is Trafalgar? Where is Trafalgar?
Where is my bloody crepe stand?
Where they give me
a ham and cheese crepe and don't ask any questions and leave me to huddle into my plate, keeping an eye out for the watchers? My mother went to London once, and brought me the Mary Poppins hat when she returned. There is a picture of me holding an umbrella and wearing a fine little blue wool suit and my Mary Poppins hat. I am grinning my horrible grin. I hate the child. She is hideous. Her blue wool suit fit poorly. See someone about it.

Trafalgar becomes Knightsbridge,
Excuse me, where am I?
Ire-main very polite so nobody knows. Occasionally I stop in a bar to refuel. The wine in London is highly satisfactory. If they knew who I was, they'd hasten to help me. But I dare not disclose myself. I cover my mouth with my hand, and demur. Piccadilly Circus, Mayfair, Harrods! Heavenly Harrods! The excellent people, the fine, fine people there! I make many purchases. I trot through London, hailing cabs, carrying my packages,
Where to, Miss?
Take me to the theater! No,
take me to my hotel,
and I recite the name and street number, which I have written down on the back of the business card of a literary critic with whom I recently had dinner, and behaved spectacularly well, and got hilariously bombed. I mutter my way up the stairs of my little hotel, my black thing over my head.