Dirty Secret (32 page)

Even though my mother has battled black moods for most of her life, I don't even consider asking her for advice. I plan to never mention it to her.

IT FEELS A
little like a defeat when I make an appointment to see my doctor. At the same time, it's exhilarating to be taking action.

A few days later, in her office, I list some of my symptoms and my doctor says it definitely sounds like depression. She asks if something in particular caused it and the only thing I can think of is that maybe it's some kind of delayed reaction to all the stress of last year. I tell her about my mother's cancer and my dad's heart attack. I leave out the hoarding and the bugs. Chronic stress can certainly trigger depression, she says, and writes me a prescription for Wellbutrin. She also says that my first few days on it I might feel a little anxious, and she gives me a prescription for Xanax, too.

She's right about the anxiety: I spend much of the first day staring out the window, terrified that I'm going to fling it open and throw myself out. It's not that I want to jump—I don't—it's that I'm not convinced that I won't. I actually have to press my palms against the window frame to reassure myself. Yet for some reason I can't go stand anywhere else, or sit down.

I've never taken Xanax before, and maybe because the pill's
so small, especially after I break it in half as my doctor instructed, I'm not expecting it to work. But it does, pretty quickly. I'm still wired and panicky, but calm enough to take Abraham Lincoln out for a long walk.

The second and third days are still tense; I feel dizzy, my heart pounds, and I've slept for only eight or nine hours total in the last two nights.

The fourth day is better. Much less panic. By the fifth day I feel fine: no racing pulse, just my usual amount of anxiety, and I slept well the night before. I still feel depressed, which disappoints me, even though I know these drugs take weeks to kick in. David comes home at the end of May and says I seem happier, though I don't feel any different.

IN JUNE, I'M
walking along the Hudson River as I sometimes do, when I notice that my iPod is sounding utterly fantastic. Because of the times I helped my dad test out his new audio gear, I can easily tell the difference between a crap stereo and a good one. And suddenly my iPod sounds as good as one of my dad's best systems.

I take out my earbuds. Did I buy new ones and not remember? They look the same. Besides, I would remember. And my iPod certainly hasn't changed. I put the earbuds back in and switch from the Lemonheads to Outkast. Again, the music sounds excellent. I try Radiohead, the Rolling Stones, PJ Harvey. I'm hearing individual parts to the songs that I haven't noticed, or at least appreciated, before. And these parts are coming together to create a vastly wider spectrum of sound. I continue walking, blown away by what I'm hearing, still baffled as to why. And then I realize: It's the Wellbutrin. I'd become so depressed that everything had gone flat, including music. Now it's round again.

I CONTINUE TO FEEL BETTER AND BETTER OVER THE course of the summer, and in August, exactly a year after my dad, Sandy, David, and I were cured of the bugs, my mom tells me over the phone that maybe they were a good thing.

“The scabies might be the stress that pushed your dad over the edge into having a heart attack, and the good thing, Jessie, is that he had the heart attack before it was a massive one—so he could have the surgery and be okay. If he hadn't been under so much stress he may not have had a heart attack for a long time, and that one could have been a lot worse.”

“Sure, Mom,” I say. If she wants to make herself feel better about the bugs it doesn't hurt anything. Besides, she might have a point.

“Oh, Jessie, I need your address.”

“Why? I've told you before how small our apartment is. I
don't want anything.”

“It's just a book. Please, Jessie, I know you'll really love it.”

“What's the book?”

“It's a surprise.”

I give her my address, then forget about it.

About a week later the buzzer rings, sending Abraham Lincoln into a barking frenzy. It's UPS, a package, and I have to go down and sign for it. The box is heavy for a book. She probably included more than one.

When I get inside the apartment, I grab the scissors from the drawer where we keep them and sit on the floor to open the box. It's wrapped tightly in tape. I can just picture my mom squinting in concentration as her tiny fingers hold down the edges of the box, while with her other hand she unpeels the tape, being sure to wrap the box up so carefully; it's a cute image and I smile at the thought.

I snip the tape away and get the box open. Inside is some kind of new-agey book, one of those One Rule a Day for a Happy Life–type books, which is a little surprising because my mother doesn't usually go for that kind of thing. Whatever was making the box so heavy is underneath a layer of newspaper. I lift that off and find something wrapped in tissue paper. I try to pull it out of the box, but it's jammed in there. The object is soft, so it's not another book. Maybe it's some kind of pillow? But why would it be so heavy?

Finally I get the thing out of the box and cut away some of the tissue paper. I can see parts of it: forest green, with patches of a silky lighter green material in some spots, and a netted material in others. The netting is stretched tightly across the fabric, it almost looks like—I tear away the rest of the paper—scales. I scream.

It's a stuffed snake.

About four feet long and surprisingly lifelike.

I go into the kitchen, get a garbage bag, and throw it over the snake. Then I scoop the whole thing up, flip over the bag, and tie the top in a tight knot.

I'm stunned. How could my mother not remember our talk? I can't think of any reason for her to do this. Her motives are so incomprehensible that I'm more confused than angry. I thought she'd finally understood the effect her behavior has had on me. I thought she even felt bad about it. I was wrong.

The stuffed snake looks handmade. I wonder how much of her dwindling savings she wasted on it. I pick up the garbage bag with the snake inside, walk down the stairs with it, and put it directly into the garbage.

WHEN SHE CALLS
a few days later, I'm prepared.

“Hi, honey, how're you?” she asks, her voice bright with almost-laughter.

“Fine, Mom,” I say. “You?”

“I'm good.” She pauses. “So, have you gotten any
interesting
gifts in the mail?”

“Oh, right,” I say. “Thanks for the book.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Wasn't there something else in the box, too?”

“No, just the book,” I say, trying to sound confused. “Why?”

“There was something else in the box, besides the book.” She sounds nervous.

“Really? What?”

“Something I thought you might find amusing.”

She thinks it's funny. Incredible.

“That's weird,” I say. “You know, come to think of it, David
opened the box. I wasn't home when it came.”

“Can you ask him if there was something else in the box?”

“He's not here. He's teaching tonight and won't be back until late.”

“When he gets home, ask him if there was something else in the box, because I know I put it in there.”

She sounds panicked now. I don't feel the slightest bit sorry for her—though I'm not enjoying it either.

“Mom, you shouldn't be buying me things; you don't have the money. What was it?”

“It was a stuffed snake.”

“Excuse me?” I feign surprise.

“A stuffed snake.”

“Why would you send me that?”

“I thought you would think it was funny.”

“I certainly wouldn't think it was funny. I'd probably think it was terrifying. I bet David saw it and threw it out. He was probably protecting me because he knows how afraid of snakes I am. Don't you remember the conversation we had about this last summer?”

“I guess so,” she says, sounding close to tears. One mention of the Bird Man or John Lennon and she'd be over the edge. I'm not that cruel, though it's tempting.

“Mom, how could you think I'd find a stuffed snake amusing?”

“I got it at the Renaissance Festival.”

It must be the antidepressants that keep me from going ballistic on her. Instead, I just say, “Well, I'm glad David kept me from seeing it.” Then I can't help but add, “It's a good thing someone cares about my happiness, because my mother certainly doesn't.”

“Oh,” she says. That's it.
Oh.

*   *   *  

LONG BEFORE I
ever heard the word “hoarding,” I knew there was something different about my mother. That's why I always get uncomfortable in groups of people if the talk turns to childhood stories. I either change the subject or clam up, hoping no one asks anything about my childhood and specifically my mother. In the rare case that someone does ask, I just say “She's eccentric,” or “She's hard to describe.”

I was so nervous the first time David met her. We'd been together about six months; I'd moved from New York to San Francisco to be with him and we were in Minneapolis for a visit. Before David, my mother had met only one other boyfriend, and that was eleven years earlier. She was on miraculously good behavior that night, and afterward the guy said she was “nice,” but I hadn't had as much invested in him. I was only nineteen.

David's opinion of my mother mattered to me. She was a reflection of what I might become. I feared that he would see something in her that would turn him off to me, maybe even make him rethink our plans for the future.

Some hoarders have extremely neat appearances, which is part of how they're able to hide their behavior, but my mother isn't one of them. She's always been sort of rumpled looking. And the older she gets, the more she chooses comfort, both physical and mental, over style. The keys on the plastic coil around her neck give her mental comfort and are a vivid example of how little she trusts her memory. She's so afraid of forgetting where she put them that she'd rather treat herself like a seven-year-old and wear her keys around her neck.

The day David met her, we went to a Chinese restaurant where my mother drank cups of tea as if she were a frat boy and they were tequila shots. Each time the waitress passed, my
mother would flag her down: “Say! Could I have some mo-ah tea!”

When my mother found out that David had gone to college in Santa Cruz, she peppered him with questions about the charming beach town she'd visited once when she and my dad were living in Berkeley. She was sweet and curious and funny.

Still, even though she'd behaved reasonably well, I was nervous. Afterward, we dropped her off at her house and as soon as she was out of the car, I turned to David and said, “Do you still love me?”

“Of course.” He laughed. “Your mom's cute. She's adorable, actually.”

And after all these years and the various hells she's put us through, he always treats her with respect. Which I appreciate immensely. Because no matter how loony or misguided or even occasionally cruel my mother may be, I still feel protective of her. I always have, and I always will.

BUT PROTECTIVENESS ASIDE
, after the stuffed snake incident, I'm more determined than ever to not end up like my mother. Given the strong genetic component to hoarding, sometimes I worry that the proclivity is within me, lying dormant, waiting for a catastrophe to set it in motion. I begin to mentally sift through my behavior, hoping that self-awareness will be the inoculation I need.

I'm definitely not a hoarder in terms of possessions, and it's not hard for me to keep things organized in our apartment. But I am really indecisive. It's gotten a little better now that I'm no longer depressed, but I still take too long to make decisions, and often when I do, I second-guess myself endlessly.

Then there's my ridiculously bad sense of direction. Even
after living in New York for ten years, I have to consult a map before setting off to
any
destination—new or not. When I was in graduate school, there was one class that met in a different building from all the others, and every week when class ended, I'd walk outside and head the wrong way down the sidewalk. Every class, for the whole semester. I was living in student housing, and each week after I'd taken a few steps, I'd hear my name from a classmate who lived in my building; I'd turn around and he'd be pointing in the opposite direction. Could this geographical dyslexia mean that my brain also has lower activity levels in the area of spatial orientation, like a hoarder's? It seems possible.

I'm shy and prone to isolation the way my mother is, and I often have to force myself to make plans with people or go to a party. When I do, I'm always glad I did, but I have to remind myself to make the effort. My natural tendency is to stay inside and nest.

And I'm a perfectionist, there's no question. But my mother is responsible for only half my genes, which means I have a fifty-fifty chance of ending up like my dad, whose perfectionism forces him to continue working and working to the point where he endangers his own heart, rather than my mother's style, which shuts her down before she's even started.

I suppose the best inoculation is to try to be as self-aware as possible—and to trust that even though the propensity for hoarding may lie somewhere in my genetic code, that doesn't mean I'm doomed.

I'VE ALWAYS BEEN INTERESTED IN HEALTH AND HAVE wanted to write about it, so when one of my former students emails to tell me that she's been hired as an editor at a health website and asks if I'd like to write for her, I jump at the chance. Soon I'm writing articles about Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, and epilepsy. I write a series of five-hundred-word articles on psoriasis, then fibromyalgia. The more uncommon the condition, the more interested in it I find myself. I love the research, the interviews with all types of doctors and experts, and the writing itself.