Fall to Pieces: A Memoir of Drugs, Rock 'N' Roll, and Mental Illness (4 page)

It took a couple of weeks to work up the nerve to speak in class. Eventually, sarcasm and a sense of humor helped me make some friends. Long story somewhat shorter, I guess I worked it out. Nevertheless, I fiercely hid my family’s financial situation, and worked like a dog in class and at night to make up for being so far behind. Soon, I was able to go to school without vomiting.

In time, a couple of generous girlfriends let me borrow their clothes, which boosted my comfort level at school. But the mall on weekends still sucked. My friends shopped at Nordstrom, the Gap, Contempo, and Nine West; I hung back and watched. One day, a friend’s father handed her a hundred-dollar bill just before he dropped us off. I had to clench my jaw to keep it from dropping open; I had never even seen a bill that large before, let alone had one to spend on myself. But I wasn’t stupid. I knew I had to suck it up and learn to be content with enough pocket change for Hot Dog on a Stick. “I forgot my wallet” or “I’m saving for something really expensive” worked most of the time; other times, I made up excuses to just not go.

When I started modeling a few years later, I worked for Nordstrom, the Gap, and Contempo, which went a long way to help erase the hurt and resentment those mall trips had created. For a long time, my picture was on Contempo’s glossy shopping bags. Revenge is sweet. And childish. But even now, I can’t pretend it didn’t matter.

I was thirteen
, my parents were definitely finished, and on weekends, my mother went out with her girlfriends. She even started dating. I was dumbfounded by this. She’d always been the stable one,
the reliable one—my
Knots Landing
buddy on Thursday nights, my rock-out-with-the-hairbrush singing partner. Now that was over.

I didn’t want my parents to get back together. I knew enough to understand why my dad lived on the other side of the bridge. But now my mom was gone, too. This was the only time in my entire life (and for that matter, in hers) that she ever left the house at night. She’d never dated before she got pregnant and married my dad, she’d never gone out with girlfriends. She was thirty-one and yet, she said, it was as though we were both thirteen going on fourteen. She was trying to find her way, and I was certain I’d lost mine.

I couldn’t fall asleep at night, woke up angry almost every morning, and could not haul myself out of bed. Mom was defensive, trying to be independent while managing a family with little financial help from my father. The fighting between us accelerated to something ugly. She wanted me to babysit. She wanted me to clear the table. She wanted me to dry the dishes or keep an eye on my baby sister while she ran to the store. There was always a daycare baby in my room, taking a nap.

“This is bullshit,” I said.

“Don’t take that bullshit tone with me,” she said.

“Fuck this, I’m moving in with Dad,” I said.

She called my bluff. “Look, Little Miss 1975. I could’ve been a nurse now, if not for you. You think it’ll be better living at your dad’s? Be my guest.”

Dad was living in a small, ugly apartment on the same street where he and my mother had lived when I was born, and the only thing in the fridge was potato bread and orange Shasta. “All these years we spent getting away from that place,” my mother said, “and he goes back to it.”

When I got to Dad’s, there wasn’t a houseful of daycare kids, but nevertheless my routine was complicated. In order to stay enrolled in the same Coronado school, I had to wake up at 5:00
A.M.
, walk a mile to the trolley station, go to downtown San Diego, then take the bus over the bridge to the island. So I moved back to my mom’s. Johnny and I did this moving-back-and-forth thing periodically, playing our parents against each other, using one to manipulate the other. I’d feel the words coming to my mouth, hear myself say them, and all the while, I’d stand outside it somehow, witnessing, unable to stop the scene. Then it would somehow blow over. An hour or day would go by, and the surface appeared calm again. But the ugly moment never felt fully gone.

I wandered around wrapped in a thick black cloud, my own personal bad-weather system in sunny SoCal. For hours, I rode my blue beach-cruiser bike all over the island or walked barefoot through the sand on the beach. Often I pretended to run away, rehearsing for the day I’d do it for real. I’d go to my school friends’ houses, try on their clothes, making believe that I lived there, until Mom tracked me down and ordered me to come home.

Time and again I found myself at the Hotel del Coronado, which sits on the beach, a ten-minute bike ride from our house. The Del is a magical old sprawling place, with painted white wood and red turrets. It’s haunted, somehow, and elegant. Many movies have been filmed there—Billy Wilder’s
Some Like It Hot
is probably the most famous. I’d walk right in and stroll around the lobby. Nobody ever paid much attention to me. I wondered what it would be like to be a guest in such a place, to actually sleep in those rooms and eat in a dining room with glasses and silver and flowers on the table.

Sometimes laughter came from the restaurants or from the patio,
where people sat by candlelight with the last traces of the sun going down behind them, and it made me want to cry. I’d go out to the pool, stretch out on a lounge chair, stare at the sky, and shake—it was cold at night, always. I wrapped my arms around myself and stayed there until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I didn’t want to walk out of the fantasy; I didn’t want to go home.

In those first weeks at
Coronado Middle School, I was determined not to be that solitary geeky girl alone at the lunch table. I made friends. But I never made a best friend. Always the new girl, the third wheel, to girls who had known one another forever and already had best friends. When opportunities arose to become close with a girlfriend, I didn’t know quite what to do. It was like I was wearing something great that didn’t have pockets, and I didn’t know what to do with my hands. These days, I’ll buy almost anything as
long as it’s black and has pockets. I still like the comfort of giving my hands a safe home.

The first time I put my lips around the icy green glass of a beer bottle, I was thirteen years old, in a girlfriend’s house where the grown-ups were rarely around and the big brothers always made sure the fridge held plenty of beer. The bubbles went up my nose, the taste went right to my gut. By the time I’d finished the second bottle, I knew I’d found my best friend. No more third wheel. The way this felt was all mine, and I was in charge of it. My instant affinity for booze explained the purple cough syrup, although it took me a long time to make that connection. I’m drunk, I thought—and simultaneously realized that if my mom found out, there would be hell to pay. I delayed going home until I figured she was safely asleep, then started walking. This was Coronado at the time when a girl could walk through the streets at night without an ounce of concern. And sometime during that short walk home, the Oh-my-God-how-can-I-make-this-happen-again? drumbeat began. The noise that filled the space between my ears that night has never gone away. For some brains, once that demon moves in, it never fully moves out.

Carefully opening then closing the front door, I silently crept into my house, into my room, and into my bed. The slow movements of my water bed (cut me some slack here—it was the eighties!) lulled me almost to sleep until I realized I needed to go to the bathroom. Tiptoeing down the hall again (and triumphantly past my mother’s room), I sat on the toilet for what seemed like a very long time. I’d had a lot of beer. When at last I opened the door—quietly, carefully—there she stood, her arms folded. I wondered how long she’d been standing there. She looked me straight in the face and said, “Jesus, Mary, how much did you drink?” I was busted,
wobbly drunk, starting to slide into the morning after, and Mom decided it would be a great idea to take pictures of me so that later she could show me what an ass I had made of myself. They were not pretty, and neither was I.

My real punishment began the next morning, when Mom woke me up early. “I’m going to make you the foulest breakfast you’ve ever had,” she said, “and you’re going to sit in front of me and eat it.” Fried eggs, swimming in bacon grease. Black coffee that could have peeled paint. And a bowl of soggy Lucky Charms, little pastel marshmallowy things floating in milk. “Eat it,” she commanded. She knew I would hate it or vomit. She was right on the first count, nauseatingly close on the second. If it was meant to serve as a deterrent, it didn’t.

I don’t know how much I actually drank that first night, but I soon learned that no matter the circumstances, I could always drink most people under the table and keep on going, even if I wasn’t sure quite where. The ultimate goal, whatever it was, seemed always just a little bit out of reach. Maybe having more, just a little bit more, would take me there. Getting a buzz was the perfect excuse not to care about anything anymore.

I know that a hangover is the body’s way of fighting off the toxins, but something else always accompanied the physical aftermath—a letdown, a darkness, a frustration that replaced the high from the night before. It was hard to get out of bed not just because I’d been drunk and was now sick, but because even when I was sober and
not
hungover, I just did not want to get out of bed.

For an underage girl looking to get into trouble, the key to success is the college-age boy. It wasn’t difficult, in a Southern California beach town, to find one. Flirting without following through became my strategy for getting access to a party and a six-pack. A
few weeks later, I was with my girlfriend Sloane at our friend Hardy’s house. Hardy was older than we were and had a few of his friends over. Hanging out with Sloane was always kind of exciting. Her dad was an officer in the navy, and she seemed well-traveled and worldly to me. She knew what to wear, how to put on makeup; at thirteen, she could easily pass for eighteen, and she often did.

Hardy’s parents ran a local restaurant, and there were a lot of kids in his family. They all went to parochial school, which I’d thought was stricter, more straitlaced, than where I went to school. So I was very surprised when somebody brought out a large bong, fired it up, and began to pass it from person to person at the party. It was the first time I’d ever been in the presence of drugs. The bong made its way around the room to the strains of Bob Marley and the Wailers and “Waiting in Vain.” When it got to Sloane, I watched with shock as she took in a lungful of smoke. Then she handed it to me. I almost dropped it; I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it. Panicky and embarrassed, I pulled both Sloane and the bong into the bathroom and shut the door behind us. “I don’t know how to do this,” I whispered, “and I don’t want anyone to know that.”

Carefully, she gave me a step-by-step introduction: inhale, close your eyes, hold, exhale slowly. I blinked, my throat burned, my eyes watered. Seconds later, we were outside the bathroom and I was on my own. I inhaled again, and nothing in particular happened. I wondered if maybe I was doing it wrong. I decided that maybe more would be better. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Still, not much of anything. I just felt a little sleepy.

Sloane decided it was time to go home. I walked with her to her apartment (a bland, nothing-beige building that suddenly made me wonder if she ever felt like she was living in a Band-Aid) and then
I continued on to my house on El Chico Lane, a couple of blocks away. As I was walking, I found myself stepping over water hoses on the sidewalk, snaked out in front of nearly every house I passed. “What’s the matter with these stupid people, leaving hoses out all night?” I muttered. “Don’t they know that anybody walking along could trip and fall and break a leg or something?”

And then I realized that there weren’t any hoses. They were shadows on the sidewalk, made by the overhead telephone wires in the artificial light of the streetlights. I was high. I stopped in my tracks, peering around me, trying to take inventory of every house, every front lawn, the sidewalk ahead of me and behind me. Nope, no hoses. I wondered what else I had gotten wrong, and it made me laugh so hard I had to wipe the tears from my eyes. Must’ve looked pretty silly, I thought, high-stepping over imaginary hoses all the way home.

It turns out that I fall into the category of funny stoner. I’ve never been paranoid or immobile, just wildly entertained and (I was always convinced) entertaining as well. Laughing, and laughing hard, at everything. It was so light and fun, being up there, with the black cloud lifted away. And then I’d get hungry. Not just hungry, but starving. Ravenous. Raid the refrigerator, order Chinese, somebody get in the car and go get me something. Good thing I eventually quit. Otherwise, I’d probably tip the scales at half a ton today and be working at a 7-Eleven to keep up with my insatiable stoner snacking.

I was the last of my friends to drink, smoke pot, or kiss a boy. It sounds funny now, but at thirteen, it seemed like I’d been waiting forever for something to happen. And until I started getting high, nothing did. But the escape never lasted long enough. Getting
drunk, getting high, riding my bike alone—nothing stayed. I felt like I was pushing through something thick, something that pushed back and made my body hurt. I was sure the blood in my veins was made of something sludgy and leaden.

Every night I turned off the light and pulled up the covers, and within minutes, every stupid thing I’d done or said all day long repeated itself inside my head. How could I go back and face it all again tomorrow? Sometimes sheer exhaustion worked in my favor and I finally fell asleep at some long-past-midnight hour; sometimes I cried myself to sleep. Then came the morning. I know some people are afraid of the night, of the dark; I was afraid of the light. Should I tell my mother I was sick and plead to stay home from school? Should I deliberately oversleep and blow off the first half of the day entirely? Most days I went to school late and sat near the tennis courts eating a donut and drinking hot chocolate, wanting to turn around and run. Even skipping school a day here, a day there, was only a temporary reprieve; there was always the next day to come, and the one after that. So one night, I called the suicide hotline.

Every time I went over the Coronado Bridge, I made a point of reading the posted suicide hotline sign, coming and going:
SUICIDE COUNSELING CRISIS TEAM 24 HOURS
1–800-479–3339. Some people hold their breath or pray when they drive through a tunnel or over a bridge; I memorized the hotline number. And one night I called it. I don’t remember what specific thing had set me off; it could’ve been the wind, or the way the morning dew blanketed my walk to school. I don’t believe even now that I had an actual idea that I wanted to end my life. I just knew the people who used that number probably felt as awful as I did. Maybe whoever picked up that phone would have the answer to why I felt this way. My heart raced as I dialed.
I was afraid that somehow our number would be traced and then they’d call my mother and report on anything I said. I didn’t want her to know—she had enough to worry about.

The phone rang more than once, which I thought was odd. Wasn’t this line reserved for people practically standing on the bridge railing? You’d think they’d have someone with one hand on the receiver at all times. A woman answered the phone; I could tell that she, too, had a sadness in her. Maybe this was why she volunteered there. My voice cracked as I attempted to spit out the words. “I think I need some help.”

She told me her name, which I can’t remember now, but whatever it was, I decided a name like Phyllis would suit her better. She asked me a couple of simple questions, and I told her what a difficult time I was having just trying to move through the world. “It’s so bad, I just can’t seem to get out of bed in the morning,” I said.

As Phyllis led me through the conversation, I decided that she was a good listener. Easy to respond to, sympathetic, sort of like somebody’s nice old aunt who lives across the country and calls to check in every once in a while. I wasn’t thinking of actually killing myself, I told her. It was just that some days, suicide sounded like an easier alternative to getting up and getting dressed. I thought of it every time I crossed the bridge.

I tried to imagine what Phyllis looked like. About fifty-eight, maybe. Short, grayish hair. She hadn’t aged well, I guessed, most likely due to the sadness that she carried and the two-pack-a-day smoking habit that gave her a deep voice, a little hoarse and scratchy. She kept clearing her throat. I’m not sure now what time of year it was, but regardless of the season, I pictured Phyllis in jeans and a holiday sweater. Greens and reds, a little Christmas tree, maybe
some holly. Matching ornament earrings. Phyllis has probably heard some bad things in her day, I thought, from people who were in way more serious trouble than I was. Maybe my call was nonsense. Maybe I shouldn’t have called. “The main thing is, I just can’t seem to get out of bed in the morning,” I said again. “Do you think you maybe can help me figure out a way to do that?”

I paused, and into that pause she dropped the magic words: “I think I might have a solution for you, honey.”

Oh, thank you, God! Phyllis has the solution! I’m finally going to get out of this funk and get moving. I won’t dread the start of each day, the end of every weekend, the knowing that no matter what I do, every morning the black cloud reappears and pushes me back under the covers. I waited.

“You need an alarm clock.”

What? I wasn’t quite sure what I’d heard. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Really, honey,” she rasped. “An alarm clock. That will get you up in the morning, right as rain.”

It took a few awkward seconds for me to understand that she wasn’t joking. When the reality sunk in, I got mad. “Thank you,” I said through clenched teeth, and hung up. She’s the one who needs suicide assistance, I thought. Someone to push her off the bridge.

It was terrible. What if another girl, sadder than me, someone more than ready to drop off the bridge and into the water, called in a moment of true desperation, and she got Phyllis? An alarm clock. Who could bear to live in a world full of idiots like Phyllis? If I hadn’t grasped the gravity of what I’d been thinking before, I now had the full picture. How simple that last straw could be.

A day or two later, in science class, I went up to my teacher and asked to be excused to go to the restroom. Once in the hall, I went
to the water fountain and swallowed a whole box of Benadryl. I already knew that one made me sleepy; a fistful should put me away for good. I did not think: I want death; I embrace death; I’d like my life to be over now, thank you. At thirteen, I had no idea what that meant. I hadn’t buried anyone; no one I loved had yet died. Dead, gone forever, the end—that wasn’t it. What I was actually thinking was, I’d like not to feel like this. And when I’m asleep, I don’t. So I’d like to go to sleep for a very long time.

When I got back to the classroom and sat down, it was only moments before I did indeed get quite sleepy. I rested my head on my hand, and my head got very heavy. My eyelids just wanted to close. The teacher said something to me. A question about whatever we were studying. Then, “Mary, are you okay?” I tried to sit up, to look straight at her. Couldn’t do it.

“Mary, what’s wrong with you?”

In about two minutes, I found myself in the nurse’s office, where they peppered me with questions, which I could not get my mouth to answer. Finally, “I took Benadryl.”

“How many?” the nurse asked.

“A lot. The box. All of them.”

The slower I felt, the faster everyone around me moved. I don’t know how much time passed between that moment and the moment I was strapped on a hospital gurney—my mother’s pale, scared face hovering somewhere on the periphery of my vision—while ER docs forced truly foul liquid charcoal down my throat. My stomach was churning, and I couldn’t seem to get any words out to explain what I’d done or why.