The Search for Philip K. Dick (14 page)

I continued to worry aloud about money. I didn’t mean to put pressure on Phil and in my heart I always believed that somehow we would manage, but, looking back, I think Phil didn’t perceive my faith. Perhaps I only expressed the negative side of my thoughts and feelings.

I continued to develop my jewelry business, opening up accounts in southern California by mail, and told Phil, “Maybe the jewelry business will grow enough to help our family finances.” It never occurred to me to worry about Phil’s ego in relation to my earning money. After all, he was a recognized writer. How could a brilliant and accomplished person like him have any ego problems?

Phil told me that he was going to sell the Inverness cabin that Joe and Dorothy had given him. I was sorry to hear him make this decision. I loved that place; we’d had some wonderful times there. But there were a few rotten boards on the front porch and Phil said that he didn’t want to spend any time doing carpentry or house repairs. This sounded logical. He did sell the cabin. I didn’t know that he had promised Joe and Dorothy that he would transfer the cabin back to them for the purchase price if he were ever going to get rid of it; nor did I know that he told Joe and Dorothy that it was my idea to sell it.

Next, Phil told me, “I’m tired of being a writer. I can’t get what I want published, I don’t earn any money for what I write. I want to go back into the record business.” After a lot of conversation about writing versus having a record store, he convinced me that this was what he really wanted. I said, “So, let’s mortgage the house and buy a record store.” Shortly after this conversation, Phil’s mother phoned. Speaking coldly, she told me it was improvident of me to believe that mortgaging one’s house was a good way to finance a business.

The next time I saw Dr. A, he bawled me out and told me that I had “delusions of grandeur for wanting to mortgage our house and go into the record business.” “But,” I told him, “it was Phil’s idea, I was just going along with what he said he wanted.” Dr. A didn’t seem to hear me. Behind both Dr. A’s and Dorothy’s comments was the implication that I was trying to make Phil give up his writing. Looking back, I think that I had missed my cue. When Phil talked about giving up writing and buying a record store, my role should have been to beg him to continue to write. I wouldn’t have minded doing this at all. I
liked
that he was a writer. That was one of his big attractions. I could have cared less about owning a record store.

That summer I had planned a vacation for all of us, a week camping at Yosemite. I told Phil, “Going on a camping trip will be good for this family. It will bring us together.” Phil wasn’t enthusiastic. He didn’t want to go, but I insisted. I was trying to find some way to improve our relationship. “Next year, let’s go to Mexico or Canada,” I said. I made all the preparations, food, equipment, clothes, but at the last minute Phil balked and refused to go. The girls and I were disappointed; we went to the Russian River just up the road twenty miles and camped in a tent for one night.

Then occurred the first of Phil’s unpredictable actions that was to frighten and paralyze me, and also to make me very angry. I was eating a pleasant dinner with my family when Sheriff Bill Christensen came to the door. Bill had a bunch of papers in his hand that said I had to go with him to Ross Psychiatric Hospital for seventy-two hours of observation. The papers were signed by Dr. A.

It was easy in those prefeminist days to arrange psychiatric commitments in California in 1963. I wasn’t the only woman this happened to. Only one doctor’s signature was required. The laws have since been changed to prevent this kind of civil-rights violation
.

Phil was perfectly charming to Bill, and calm as a cucumber. You’d think Bill was coming by to have a cup of coffee and gossip with us. Hatte remembered Bill’s saying, “You girls will understand this when you’re older.”

But even as a thirteen-year-old girl, she thought to herself, “I understand as much as I’ll ever understand; I know that he’s wrong and I know better than he what’s right.”

Phil had been telling Dr. A that I was ruining the family with my outrageous expenditures; that I had a “grandiose” plan to mortgage the house for $50,000 and buy a record business; that I was planning trips to Mexico and Canada; that I had threatened him with a knife, and tried to run him down with the car. Phil had arranged for Bill Christensen to confer with Dr. A, too, after having primed the latter with the same stories. Phil used to say to me, as a commentary on human nature, “Everything I tell you three times is true.” In this case, he got quite a bit of mileage with this technique. Hitler originated it.

Earlier, he had approached my best friends to persuade them to testify against me at a sanity hearing, but they wouldn’t agree. They thought I was fine mentally. But Phil’s big lie technique had left them stunned, and in those days it was taboo to get involved with husband-and-wife problems. Years later my friend, Missy Patterson, told me, “Anne, you were railroaded.”

I couldn’t believe what was happening; it was like a bad dream. One minute I was sitting with Phil and the girls at the dinner table, the next minute I was riding in the sheriff’s car going to a psychiatric hospital. I gave Bill a piece of my mind in a deadly calm way. I knew I had to be cool but I would really have liked to hit him over the head with my purse.

Hatte was furious at Phil; this was something he didn’t expect. She never felt really friendly to him again. During my stay in the hospital, Missy Patterson told me that Phil asked her several times to take the girls to the beach, but she refused. She didn’t want to do
anything
for him. At one point Hatte bawled out Dr. A, but she was just a thirteen-year-old and had no power to change anything.

When I got to Ross Hospital, I told the head psychiatrist, Dr. S, my story. I began, “I was having normal fights with my husband; I used to occasionally throw a plate or two for emphasis….” At the time he led me to think he believed me. After talking with me, Dr. S talked to Dr. A. He was furious with Dr. A and wouldn’t even speak to Phil (who had shown up at the hospital). His lips literally curled with contempt when Phil tried to talk to him that evening. Phil slunk away, looking ashamed.

Dr. S pointed out to me that I had the choice of going to a legal hearing with judges, lawyers, and witnesses or agreeing to going to Langley Porter Clinic for two weeks for an evaluation. At the end of that time, he felt, they would release me as a person who did not have the sort of serious psychiatric problems that would warrant hospitalization. I felt crushed and stigmatized. I had no spirit left to fight and to go through an involved legal hearing. I had no option but to take his advice and go to Langley Porter.

Researching for this book, I was able to obtain my medical records from Ross Hospital and Langley Porter Clinic under the Freedom of Information Act. In 1963, there were no such rights. But I was in for a surprise. Dr. S, who I had thought was sympathetic to me, wrote, “The husband was the more stable of the two…. [H]e would never lie.” He must have talked to Phil later and, like Dr. A and me, been enchanted by Phil, the magical shaman of the twentieth century. Maybe Bill Christensen weighed in there, too. I was brought up believing in male chivalry, but in many cases I’ve noted men bond together against a woman. I was amazed when I got older to realize that many men are quite afraid of women
.

It was frightening as those heavy metal doors shut and locked behind me when I entered the fifth-floor ward at Langley Porter. But I learned something important. Now, I have a lot of empathy for the political prisoners of the twentieth century who were seized and carried off and imprisoned—often for good. I was one of them, but luckily one who got back home.

The doctor at Langley Porter prescribed a medication, Stelazine. I tried one pill but it made me so groggy and depressed that I held the next one under my tongue when the nurse gave it to me and shortly afterward quietly spit it out in the toilet. Taking this awful drug was mandatory, but no one in his right mind would take it. Every day after I was given one I surreptitiously spit it out.

When I looked around me, I found that in some ways this was going to be an interesting experience. The other people in the ward with me weren’t crazies at all, as I had expected. They were just people—pitiful people with terrible problems. I wanted to help them. I listened to their stories and gave some encouragement and good advice.

Generally it was very boring there. I felt isolated from my busy life and insisted that Phil and the girls come every day to keep me company. They spent the entire time I was in the hospital driving back and forth over the curvy thirty-five miles between the hospital and Point Reyes Station.

Hatte was the valedictorian of her class for eighth-grade graduation and I couldn’t go. Though she had been popular with her classmates, she was suddenly uninivited to all of the parties that were being given. On one occasion during the drive to the hospital, Phil told her, “I’m going to talk to the doctors today. I’m sure they’re going to tell me that I’m the one that should be in there, not your mother.” On the way home he told her, “That’s what they told me.”

Hatte reflected, “I already thought that, myself. Well, maybe it’s true and maybe not, that’s the kind of thing he’d say.” The hospital records say Mr. Dick “was unhappy. He says that he has never seen his wife looking worse. Mr. Dick feels he is the mentally ill partner and should be hospitalized. He feels he may be schizophrenic.” The doctor who wrote the record went on to say that he feels the problem is that Mr. Dick was “unable to control his wife.” Well, of course not. That’s not what marriage is about.

A few days later Phil and I took part in a group therapy session at the hospital. The psychiatrist in charge was amazed and entertained at the snappy dialogue, the complex interaction between us, and all the depressed patients momentarily woke up.

At that time Phil was writing
The Simulacra
. Part of the story is set in Jenner, a town like Point Reyes Station, described as a dismal, rainy, swampy, jungle populated by vegetarian “chuppers,” throwbacks to Neanderthal Man. Richard Kongrosian, world-famous psychokinetic pianist, is falling to pieces. The beautiful woman president of the country, Nicole Thibodeaux, has turned out to be a phony, a simulacra of the real Nicole, who died long ago. The country has been taken over by the head of the secret police. To save Nicole, Richard Kongrosian uses his psychokinetic ability to send her to Jenner to stay with motherly but boring Mrs. Kongrosian and her five chupper children. From this time on a policeman has a major role in Phil’s writing.

Langley Porter released me after two weeks. Phil insisted that I stop and see Dr. A on the way home from the hospital. As far I was concerned, Dr. A was a non-person: he didn’t exist in my universe anymore. That afternoon, I remember Dr. A saying to me, “You fooled Ross Hospital, you fooled Dr. S, you fooled Langley Porter Clinic, but you don’t fool me. I know you’re a manic-depressive.” And grumpily, after I had given him my coldest response, he said, “All manic-depressives drop their psychiatrists.”

He advised me to switch over to a female psychologist, Dr. J, who was also a marriage counselor. She was there at his office to meet me, a skinny bleached blond with harlequin glasses, a designer suit, and high-heeled shoes. I had to agree. I certainly would never talk to Dr. A again, and she seemed warm and kind. It was arranged that Phil would come with me to sessions with her.

I phoned Dr. J, my ex-psychologist, and we met for an interview at her house in Mill Valley. She seemed awfully nervous at first. It was almost like she had a guilty conscience. She told me that she didn’t like Phil; his magic and charm and her receptors “weren’t in phase with each other.” She said that Dr. A got a kickback from the fees I paid to her. After Phil left, I went to see her once a week for about two years. Often my second daughter, Jayne, would ride with me, and we’d grocery shop afterward while the family laundry was washing at a nearby laundromat. During our last session, Dr. J thanked me for coming to her and didn’t charge me. I remained in touch with her over the years
.

That afternoon in Dr. A’s office, Phil’s usual cheerful self appeared clouded over by bewilderment as he put his arm around me in a protective manner. But it was too late. He hadn’t protected me from himself.

I thought I had just been through a horrible experience, but worse was to follow. The morning after we got back home, Phil told me that Dr. A had said I must continue taking the pills I had been spitting out in the hospital (of course, I had told Phil about this), that I was sick, and I must take these pills or he would leave me. So I took them. I wanted to keep my family together, and, in spite of everything, I loved this man and didn’t want to lose him.

Stelazine, an antipsychotic drug fashionable at that time, has many side effects. Sometimes it is referred to as a chemical straitjacket or a chemical lobotomy. Some people taking it develop an extreme lethargy that can pass into a coma and death. It is helpful to about 40 percent of schizophrenics. It makes some people think more clearly. Phil was lucky; it affected Phil this way
.

These drugs must have been much stronger that the ones I had spit out at Langley Porter because they turned me into a zombie. I had no energy, I couldn’t think, and all I could do was lie on the couch. Once I had taken one of them I didn’t have sense enough not to take any more. I took these horrible mind-dulling pills for two or three months. Later, in
The Ganymede Takeover
, written by Phil and Ray Nelson, a young woman is described as undergoing oblivion therapy. She loses her personality and keeps staring at ants building anthills. Unhappiness has been cured—but there’s no one left in that psyche to be unhappy.

My friend, Sue Baty, the local judge’s wife, told me in 1982, “You weren’t sick before you took those pills; the pills made you sick. I was horrified, but I didn’t know what to do. I had grave reservations about Phil’s motives and felt Dr. A was acting unprofessionally.” Unable to accomplish anything or even do much housework, I practically lived over at Sue’s during the day that September. I read all her books but I couldn’t remember a single thing that I read. I didn’t know that Phil was also taking Stelazine. He told June Kresy how good it made him feel. She told me in our phone interview that she remembered him saying, “It doesn’t have the same effect on me that it does on Anne, at all.”