Donald was prescribed Tofranil, an early-generation antidepressant with harsher side effects than the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, of the Prozac era, and Mellaril, a first-generation antipsychotic drug in the Thorazine mold that was eventually pulled from shelves when it was found sometimes to cause cardiac arrhythmias. And a few weeks later, on July 15, 1970, after cooperating with his treatment, Donald was released from Pueblo. Thanks to his psychiatric commitment, he was facing no further jail time.
While he was in the hospital, Jean had filed for divorce.
* * *
—
WITH DONALD BACK home on Hidden Valley Road, Don and Mimi faced a choice: Should they stop everything and stay home with their sick son? Or should they give him a chance to fend for himself, and continue traveling as a couple to events with the Federation?
In the end, they didn’t feel like they had a choice at all. The Federation was not just their only chance at the life they always wanted. It was the family’s only source of income. If Don and Mimi didn’t keep up appearances—if Don came alone to Santa Fe or Salt Lake City, and made it known that they were struggling with an adult son’s illness, and that son was at home and that his marriage had failed—it would have raised so many other questions that they were not willing to answer that they never seriously considered changing a thing.
Instead they helped Donald find a job in the admissions department of a business school in Denver. Donald was sent to North Dakota to recruit students, leaving town long enough for Mimi and Don to fly to Salt Lake City in September for a gala featuring Ballet West, and then again in November for a luncheon honoring the ambassador from Argentina, Pedro Eduardo Real, and his wife. “I sat next to the consular officer from Mexico City,” Mimi wrote her mother, on the hotel stationery. “He and Donald and his wife spoke in Spanish, and enjoyed one another very much.” Mimi went on to boast about Don dispensing $75,000 in grants for the symphony, the ballet, and other groups. “You should be very proud of his good works in so many fields!” She closed the letter by talking about the girls: “Mary C. and Margaret especially want to see you. They are growing up so quickly and this year may be the last that we would have everyone here to see you at one time!!!”
Donald’s hospitalization—his attack on his wife, the divorce, Pueblo, the prescriptions—went unmentioned. Mimi dared not say a word.
* * *
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DONALD’S TRIP TO North Dakota brought him nowhere close to Oregon, where Jean was now living. But that did not stop him from turning the trip into an excuse to travel more than a thousand miles farther west to try to speak face-to-face with the woman who was divorcing him. He and Jean spoke for five minutes, long enough for her to tell him that she wouldn’t see him. His uncle Clarke, who lived not far away, got him and brought him home.
Back on Hidden Valley Road, Donald took to declaring that his marriage to Jean was still in existence spiritually—because, he explained, the Church had never signed off on the divorce. He announced that he wanted to become a priest, and applied to the chancellery, which sent some people to visit him. After a few minutes of watching Donald talk a mile a minute about his dream of constructing a new church to honor St. Jude, the meeting was more or less over. Donald never heard back from them.
One afternoon, Margaret, eight years old, came home from school to find Donald naked and shrieking. She looked around and saw that the house was completely empty. Her brother had carried every single piece of furniture out of the house and stashed them in the hills. Margaret remembered the look of distress on her mother’s face as she told her to go lock herself inside the master bedroom—the only room in the house with a lock. She remembered finding five-year-old Mary, already there, waiting for someone to keep her company. A few moments later, their mother joined them. Mimi said they had to stay put while they waited until the police came to take Donald away.
Through the closed and locked door, Margaret heard Donald shouting biblical sayings, mixed with words with no meaning at all. She remembered it taking forever for the police to come. Finally, she heard the crunch of gravel on the driveway, and saw the red and blue lights flashing against the bedroom walls.
She remembered her mother leaving the room to talk to the police, saying, “He is a danger to himself and others.”
She remembered leaving the master bedroom and seeing her brother seated in the back of the police car—and the blue and red lights fading into the distance.
And she remembered him, sooner or later, coming home again.
* Years later, Carlsson would collaborate on the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI, to reach market, a precursor to Prozac. The impact of his dopamine work on treatments for Parkinson’s disease earned him the Nobel Prize in 2000.
DON
MIMI
DONALD
JIM
JOHN
BRIAN
MICHAEL
RICHARD
JOE
MARK
MATT
PETER
MARGARET
MARY
CHAPTER 11
One bright Monday in June 1971, a jet plane landed at Sardy airfield in Aspen, Colorado, carrying seventy members of the Ballet West dance company. Each summer, the Salt Lake City troupe came to Aspen for a residency, performing to a friendly audience of well-off owners of beautiful second homes. This summer was different: Ballet West would be rehearsing and performing six new productions in advance of a late-summer European tour featuring a few guest stars: Linda Meyer of the San Francisco Ballet; Karel Shimoff of the London Festival Ballet; and, from the New York City Ballet, one of the finest male dancers of his generation, Jacques d’Amboise.
The airplane door opened. Out came the three guest dancers, glamorous and smiling. And up the metal staircase climbed a little girl wearing white knee socks and clogs and a gossamer dress, handmade by her mother. Margaret Galvin—just nine years old, with long dark hair parted down the middle and an impish smile—was carrying a bouquet of flowers for Jacques d’Amboise. She was part of the welcoming committee, happy to be chosen to hand over the bouquet on behalf of the group that had sustained Ballet West for years—an organization run by her father.
Don and Mimi’s trips to Aspen with the Federation of Rocky Mountain States were heaven for Margaret. She dreamed of nothing but dancing, of joining Ballet West when she was older; she even wore the same plain blue clogs preferred by the members of the company. She took classes in Aspen during the summer months—three a day, plus pantomime and tap—wearing an outfit her mother bought for her at an Aspen boutique. By the age of twelve, Margaret was being fast-tracked as a dancer, practicing from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day in Aspen, and then going straight to rehearsals, then home for a quick bite before attending performances at night. When Margaret’s sister, Mary, was old enough, she joined her on adventures in Aspen, taking walks up and down Morin Creek, looking for mushrooms, and riding the chairlift together to Aspen Highlands. They both noticed how people sought out their father for conversation and counsel, and how relaxed and comfortable he was with everyone, rarely without a martini in his hand. Their mother seemed to enjoy it, too, even if, on many evenings, as Mimi dabbed on her Estée Lauder perfume, she’d fret to the girls that the family didn’t have the money for her to have what she needed to wear.