Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors (10 page)

I sat in sweat pants in the easy chair I’d inherited from my grandparents with the rest of my family gathered around me.  My parents had taken me home from the hospital in their car, my brother had driven in from his home north of Manhattan, and my sister had driven in from Pennsylvania.  This congregating from various sections of the northeastern United States had become fairly common, as a result of our weekly, or bimonthly, family therapy sessions with John Patten.  However, due to the inflammatory issues I intended to broach, I thought the rest of the family might feel less assaulted, less exposed, without any outsiders present.  If all went well, I thought, then perhaps the dialogue might be moved into the more structured arena of our therapy sessions together.

The fear that I felt over asking my family to join me in examining our past was as severe as any I had experienced in my life.  It was a fear that was different from, yet equal to, the fear I had of losing my life altogether.  I have been told many times, by many people, that I am a brave man.  The merest mention of the suffering I endured in the treatment of the illness invariably results in proclamations of my bravery from whoever happens to be listening.  I expect that anyone who has lain in a hospital bed will recognize what I found to be the most common reaction among visitors when first witnessing the horror of the patient’s existence.  In hushed and reverential whispers, with tears in their eyes, the visitors shake their heads and say, “Oh, you are such a brave man.”  And I believe that anyone who has given it much thought would respond in the same way that I often did:  “Running into a burning building when you don’t have to, in order to save someone else, is brave.  Jumping out a window when you know you’ll die if you don’t – that’s just trying to stay alive.”  I don’t see anything courageous about behavior in situations where there is no choice.  But there has been nothing in my life that took more courage than when I gathered my family to ask them to release me from the ties that bound me into remaining the kind of son and brother that they had come to expect me to be.

The puzzled stares that met my opening declaration of “I’m not what you all think I am, and I’m not what I once believed myself to be,” were soon replaced by grimaces and expressions of wounded horror.  As I listed very deliberately, one by one, the episodes from my youth that had left painful impressions on me, I tried to carefully make clear my reasons for bringing them up that day.  I tried to impress upon everyone that the image of Evan growing up beyond the reach of the pain permeating the rest of the family was the result of a performance that even I hadn’t been aware of and that I could no longer continue to pretend.  I tried to make it understood that I had endured those events silently as they occurred, but that it had become important to me to be able to speak out loud the fact that I had been hurt by them, even though I hadn’t said so at the time.  I asked my mother and father, my brother and sister, to please accept responsibility for their own mistakes, their own sins, and I asked them to please, please save me from the guilt I felt over dredging up memories I knew they’d all rather forget.  By the time I finished, the huffing and puffing and sighing and shifting coming from my father’s side of the room made it clear that he had heard just about enough.

This didn’t surprise me.  In fact, it had been my worst fear.  In our therapy sessions together, all the members of the family had developed fascinatingly specific and unvaried methods of getting their feelings across while protecting themselves from whatever they were most fearful of.  I was the rabble-rouser, constantly campaigning for change and insisting that even if things were good, they could be made better.  My father would be the first to take issue with whatever I’d said, and he would argue the longest and the loudest that there was no problem at all.  As the arguing between my father and me grew more heated, Lowell’s Tourettic twitches would intensify as well.  Each time my father and I added another decibel to our accusations and denials, my brother’s shouts and kicks would become more wrenching and grotesque in direct proportion.

My brother’s symptoms had, in fact, become much worse as a direct result of my diagnosis.  Tourette symptoms can, typically, be exacerbated by periods of emotional stress, and the worsening of those symptoms can cause more stress still.  In addition, Lowell was struggling to adjust to his having been replaced as the neediest member of the family.  Since I had fallen ill, it had come to seem as if my brother and I were engaged in a crude battle for the title of most disadvantaged Handler.  In our family therapy sessions, Lowell would be slow to speak, but the agonized expressions on his face, as his body thrashed to the tune of the others’ strident shouts, made words seem superfluous to the situation.

Eventually my mother would try to lend some perspective to the impasse that inevitably descended upon me and my father.  So softly she would speak.  “Murry,” she would say, over and over, patting his hand.  “Murry, calm down.”

When my father ran out of steam, my mother would be surprised to find herself holding center stage.  At those moments, I saw my mother’s vulnerability as I had never seen it before and have never seen it since.  My mother, the assertive mental health professional, in our therapy sessions, would adopt the voice and demeanor of a shy, frightened child.  She sacrificed none of her insight or incisiveness.  Her views were still carefully considered, her arguments adult and persuasive.  But to observe her manner was to peel her life away and sit in the presence of the exposed seed.  “May I say something?”  was how she would typically begin.  Then my mother, who never needed permission to speak anywhere else, would begin to skillfully mediate and moderate whatever issue was being debated, replete with all the apologetic gestures and body language of an eight-year-old girl admitting that she’d broken the antique vase.

My sister, Lillian, who had generously postponed her wedding as a result of my illness, and who traveled the farthest to reach Manhattan each week, rarely contributed during the sessions unless it was requested of her.  Somewhat flustered, blushing, and appearing more uncomfortable than I was used to seeing her, Lillian would often carefully reemphasize the most compelling points of each argument being made.  Like Switzerland, it seemed that Lillian was most intent on remaining neutral.  More often, though, she would behave as if she were puzzled by all the fuss.  Most of her comments tended to fall within the realm of “I remember when that happened, but it never bothered
me
.”

I don’t know what made me expect anything different outside the doctor’s office, but, for the most part, these were precisely the responses that I got to everything I brought up that day.  When I had finished with my proclamation, my father glanced to either side, and, with his teeth clenched, said, “Well.  If no one else minds, I’d like to go first.”

My father faced me.  He took in a long, slow breath and let out a pained sigh.  Then he said, “Look, Evan.  I just want you to get well.  That’s the bottom line here.  Whatever it takes for you to get well, that’s what I’m willing to do.  And if what you feel you need to do to get well is to dump on us, then I’m willing to be dumped on.”

With that, I threw a fit.  I screamed, I whined, I cried and roared and cursed.  I looked to the others in the room, and, as I went from person to person trying to enlist the help of their memories, their own pain or shame, their systems of denial and self-protection were so deeply entrenched that my frustration couldn’t completely break free of my fascination.  I found myself alternately crying and laughing.  At times, the two overlapped into a kind of otherworldly whimpering hyena’s squeal.

I first turned to my sister, who had been a witness to or participant in many of the events I had already laid out.  My memory of her was of an extraordinarily talented, angry, withdrawn girl on the verge of womanhood.  I remembered the hours and days at a time she would spend locked inside her room, playing her guitar and singing to herself – she had a remarkable musical gift that she would rarely share with anyone else in the family.  I clearly recalled the two of us sharing our terror and confusion during the tenser moments of our childhood years, and I was also curious as to how she had dealt with her feelings about Lowell.  It was my memory that she had been approached by him in the same ways, for the same services, that I had been.  Her responses left me utterly confounded.

“Yeah, I mean, I remember those things, Evan,” she said.  “Now that you bring them up.  But I don’t remember them with any of the detail that you seem to.  You talk about it as if it all happened yesterday.  That was all a long time ago.  I don’t think about any of those things now.”

I just shook my head in amazement, wondering if I was lacking in some component that would have helped me to better shed the weight I felt dragging me down.

“Not ever?”  I asked.

“Mmm…no.  Not really.”

“And you don’t think that your feelings from those times carried over into anything that came later?  Like going to school so far from home; settling down to live somewhere just out of reach; marrying someone whose family and cultural background is as far from ours as you could possibly get?”

Lil kind of chuckled at me, with sympathy and affection, as if I were an extremely endearing lunatic.  “I don’t really think about why I did those things, Ev.  I just did them because that’s what I wanted to do.  I didn’t plan it out.”

My mother, who had been silent so far, now leaned forward.  When she spoke, there was none of the coy childish demeanor that I had seen in our therapy sessions before.  My mother spoke with deep concern, with sorrow, confusion, and with regret.

“Evan,” she said.  “I didn’t know you were in such pain.  If I had known, I would have done anything to protect you.  But how could we know you were in pain if you didn’t ask for help?”

“Mom,” I said.  “How can you expect an eight year old child, who has been rewarded for his independence, for his pretend precociousness, to turn to the adults and say ‘Excuse me, but I’m not really as strong as you’ve been praising me for being’?  The way I got your love and attention was by insisting that I was above it.

“I’m trying to talk about the history of what led us to this place.  I think that history may have contributed to what I’m facing, and I know that I need to alter the course of that history in order to get out of this the way I want to.  Now, I know that you and Dad have been angry at me.  I know you feel you’ve been slighted, harshly judged, and that I have barricaded myself away from you and hidden behind Jackie.  I can sense that you feel a bit usurped by her, and that you’re frustrated because I’ve locked you out of your chance to prove that you’re much more capable than I’ve judged you to be.”

I looked around at the four heads that were now bobbing up and down enthusiastically, and I saw that the brightness of recognition was replacing the indignation in their eyes.

“But you’ve got to try to understand that I believe it’s all connected.  I feel so trapped into behaving the way I’ve always behaved, the pattern of sacrificing my own needs to meet someone else’s, that I may need to keep you away.  I’m afraid that, with you guys too close, I may not do what I need to do to survive.  I’ll spend the same energy trying to be what I think you want me to be, trying to show you how strong and invincible I am.  I can’t afford to do that anymore.  I’m not bringing these things up today to humiliate you or to get even with you.  I’m trying to illustrate to you why I feel that I need to change the ways we respond to each other.”

I faced my brother.  If there was anyone on this Earth who loved me unconditionally, it was Lowell.  Despite whatever wrongs he’d done me long ago, I knew my brother admired me and was devoted to me like no one else ever would be.  I knew, and the increase in his symptoms proved it clearly, that no one was more shaken by my illness than he was.  And, I expected, no one would have been more devastated by my death.  Even so, I felt I had to go on.

“Lowell,” I said.  “A few days ago, you stopped by to see me when you were in the city.  You were with me for about an hour, and when I got tired, I asked you to leave.  You looked at me as though you were insulted.  I love you very much.  But it’s not always easy to spend time with you.  I have to be able to impose some limits, some barriers, because there have been very few in our family relationships.  I can’t afford to be around anything or anyone that takes energy from me, and, for now, I can’t afford to take anyone else’s feelings into account.  There’s too much at stake, and I’m too susceptible to giving myself over in order to spare them.”

With that, I started to cry.  But this was a different kind of grief than I’d displayed before, and I think that my family saw, for the first time, how vulnerable and lost I really was.  While I had insisted on being the leader in my crusade, and while I was still leading the call to arms, this time the enemy I was rallying against was the illusion of my own strength.  Sitting with my head bowed, I had at last succeeded in revealing the depths of exhaustion to which my life had led me.  When I gathered myself back up, when I felt ready to speak clearly, in a tone that might be seriously considered, I made my points as intently as I could.

“I’m not ‘dumping’ on anyone,” I said softly.  “I am trying to talk about things that happened between the people in this room — things that have hurt me.  I am trying to get well, yes; and in order to get well, I may need to heal some old injuries — injuries that are sapping some of my strength.  For anyone to dismiss this as “dumping” is wrong.  That’s not what I’m trying to do here, and it’s not what I have done.”

I don’t know if it was the way I had spoken, or the angle of the tilt of my head, but something about what I’d shown my family must have been startling, because when I looked up, I saw that the irritation that had been etched onto my father’s face had softened into a look of troubled concern.  In my father’s eyes that day, after I was able to relax my need to prove his failings to him, I saw a man who was filled with love for his son, who was frightened of where his life had landed him and who was trying with all his heart to learn what was needed from him.  I glanced over to my mother, and I saw a woman who looked stricken by accusations that she wasn’t succeeding in helping to save the life of her son, a son she undoubtedly would have sacrificed her own life for.  While the force of my initial howl of pain hadn’t been enough to penetrate their defenses, something else had happened in my apartment that day.  I think the discovery was made that it was not so essential that we all felt the same things, or agreed on the same causes, or shared any of the same beliefs.  What was vital was to get behind the family member in need, and support him or her in the way that he or she believed would be most helpful.  Somehow, during the course of the discussion, a truce was established, and my family and I decided to try to see each other as we were, to hear each other when we spoke, and to slow down our insistence that the others conform to our ideas of what they should be.