Donald was discharged on January 7, 1980, only to be readmitted in March—his sixth visit to the state hospital in Pueblo in ten years—after Don and Mimi lost patience with him and told him to get his own apartment. On the ward, Donald shouted about Jesus, and his Thorazine prescription was increased several times with little effect. He was discharged in June, once he was stabilized with an antipsychotic drug called Loxitane.
But he returned yet again in November. He stopped taking the medication and had been staying awake for eighteen hours a day, walking around naked in the house, screaming at the top of his lungs. Jean was back in his thoughts. He referred to her as his wife. He also was talking about guns and knives.
Mimi and Don, according to the hospital report, were afraid of their oldest son. “They want Donald to get the strong message that they love him,” the report reads, “but they cannot accept him until he has been stabilized on the medication.”
* * *
—
JOHN, THE MUSIC TEACHER, was in Idaho. Richard, once the schemer of the family, was trying to start a business in Denver. The two hockey brothers who had not become sick, Mark and Joe, also were hours away in Denver—there but not there, able to avoid the worst of it. Mark, once the family’s prodigious chess master, was hurt deeply by what had happened to his hockey teammates, Matt and Peter. Joe, driving a fuel truck at the airport, was living quietly, even as he seemed to be exhibiting some of the warning signs of psychosis—a disconnection from everyday life, problems understanding basic social cues.
And then there was Jim.
The most important rule of the house was clear enough: The last thing Mary should ever do was talk about any of this. But she saw what was happening to her family. She was angry about that, even as some small part of her was preparing to be next. As she got older, Mary stopped hiding her frustration. She was almost thirteen—not a little girl anymore, and not to be trifled with. She banged on her walls at night now with abandon, without apology, trying to get Donald to be quiet.
She noticed other changes, too. During the day, she sensed a growing distance between her mother and father. It was as if Mimi had become her husband’s caretaker now, nothing more. Once, her mother even left for a few weeks, staying with her sister, Betty, back east, leaving Mary alone with her father and brothers. Another desertion, another abandonment.
Mimi must have noticed that Mary felt this way—recognized the anger inside her, maybe even identified with it—and started taking her on shopping trips downtown, just the two of them, and to tea parties with her friends. Without explicitly saying so, Mimi was working to ingratiate herself with Mary—to let her know she loved her, too. Despite herself, Mary found herself enjoying this time with her mother, away from the others. While she thought all she wanted was to get away, what she really wanted, perhaps, was this sense of closeness—an uncomplicated love, free of mystery, free of danger.
DON
MIMI
DONALD
JIM
JOHN
MICHAEL
RICHARD
JOE
MARK
MATT
PETER
MARGARET
MARY LINDSAY
CHAPTER 23
MARY HAD TRIED to follow Margaret to the Kent School. When her seventh grade application was denied, she was furious. I can’t get in to Kent?? My sister is at Kent. She didn’t even get Bs!
At the start of eighth grade, in 1978, Mary told her father that she wanted to go to boarding school. Don asked Sam Gary for advice. Sam asked Mary if a place like his alma mater, Hotchkiss, in Connecticut, might appeal to her. Technically, Sam had been kicked out of Hotchkiss, but all was forgiven now.
Mary didn’t hesitate. She’d already been doing whatever she could to stay out of the house. If she got into a celebrated, unimpeachably refined school two thousand miles away, there was a chance she might never have to come home again.
Mary applied to Andover, Exeter, Hotchkiss, and Taft. She got into them all. She chose Hotchkiss because it seemed like the prettiest, the one farthest away from a city. The Berkshires seemed like a reasonable substitute for the mountains of Colorado—the best that she could do.
Mary’s tuition was paid by a scholarship funded by another alumnus. The Garys picked up other costs, like transportation. After three years of looking for a way out, Mary had earned her ticket.
* * *
—
THIS NIGHT WOULD be different. Mary knew it had to be.
She was thirteen years old. Jim was thirty-one, still married to Kathy, and still running the Manitou Incline. Behind the funicular station at the top of the hill was a musty cottage with a couple of old mattresses and sleeping bags. As the manager of the incline, Jim had unfettered use of this cottage. Sometimes, instead of hosting his younger brothers and sisters at home, he invited them there, at the top of the incline, where they could be alone.
This time, on a cool evening in the spring of 1979, Mary was there with Matt. Jim had invited them both to camp out and smoke pot and drink beer. When it got late, she fell asleep in one room of the cottage, the guys in the other. Matt was passed out, but the light was still on, so Mary pretended that she was asleep, just as she always did when she knew Jim would come to her—disassociating by pretending it wasn’t happening, at least not to her.
But she could not go through with it that night. Mary had gotten her period. She was more terrified of getting pregnant than she was of Jim’s fury at being refused.
For the first time, when Jim came over to her, she lost control, saying things she hadn’t expected to say. Leave me alone. Get away from me. I hate you.
Jim attacked her anyway. He entered her, something he’d never accomplished with Mary’s sister. He came. And he never spoke to her about it after that. He avoided her altogether.
There were, of course, several weeks of terror that she might become pregnant. Once it became clear she wasn’t, Mary expected to feel relief. She’d done it: She’d fought him off, protected herself, made it so that he would never do it again. She was almost delirious with the thought of it.
But then, quite unexpectedly, part of her found Jim’s ability to disappear from her life to be utterly wrenching. She tried to ignore that feeling, but there was no mistaking it. She was heartbroken. Some part of her had truly believed, as a child does, that this was love.
* * *
—
SHE WAS ALMOST free now. Jim was no longer in her life. Soon neither would Peter or Matt or Donald. Her future was her own. At the end of eighth grade, not long after she was accepted to Hotchkiss, Mary was invited to a high school party hosted by the older brother of a friend. She said yes right away.