Thirty Rooms To Hide In (18 page)
Read Thirty Rooms To Hide In Online
Authors: Luke Sullivan
Tags: #recovery, #alcoholism, #Rochester Minnesota, #50s, #‘60s, #the fifties, #the sixties, #rock&roll, #rock and roll, #Minnesota rock & roll, #Minnesota rock&roll, #garage bands, #45rpms, #AA, #Alcoholics Anonymous, #family history, #doctors, #religion, #addicted doctors, #drinking problem, #Hartford Institute, #family histories, #home movies, #recovery, #Memoir, #Minnesota history, #insanity, #Thirtyroomstohidein.com, #30roomstohidein.com, #Mayo Clinic, #Rochester MN
August 25, 1965: Coming out of the dentist with half my face numb.
I cried two times that spring. The first was when I heard that Stan Laurel of our
Laurel & Hardy
films had died.
The snows were melting in Elton Hills, running off the great hill where the convent still frowns over the small houses of north Rochester. I’d come indoors from snow-damming the cold waters as they came in freshets down the edges of 13th Avenue and was warming up in my bedroom when Jeff leaned in and told me Stan Laurel was dead.
Something happy and good was taken from my world. Let fathers be assholes, I thought, let families suffer; but the empty space where this gentle clown had been, who’d babysat the six of us on a hundred popcorn Saturday nights could not be filled. Minnesota April’s are all grey and mud and now with an uncertain summer months away it may as well have been November.
Perhaps it was the chill in my soul that spring which led me to steal some colorful packs of spring flower seeds from the local grocery store. Perhaps I was showing rebellion. Or perhaps I was just a larcenous fifth grader and sticky fingers. Whatever the reason, there I was, bookended by two store clerks back in the manager’s office, in tears and calling my mother to come bust me out of the joint.
Mom, who’d given up any hope of mapping the demons in Dad’s psyche, wasn’t about to let one of her sons grow any new ones of his own. And so the week we moved back into the Millstone she took me to the Mayo Clinic and I had my first look at the ceiling tiles over a psychiatrist’s couch.
From notes of Mayo Clinic psychiatrists Drs. Delano and Morse, May 11, 1965
INTERVIEW WITH MOTHER: Mrs. Sullivan states the main complaint is that Luke has been taking things from his brothers and denying it for the past year. He was caught stealing flower seeds from a store and finally broke down and cried about it, one of the few times he has cried and told her he didn’t know why he’d done it – though one reason he gave was they were to be a birthday gift for his father.
Mother emphasized she and her husband also have seen and are seeing psychiatrists. When I asked if she had any idea about why Luke was doing this stealing, she said she knew little about psychiatry but thought perhaps he might be searching for security, going on to state he is involved in a very unpleasant family situation and has been for most of his life. When I asked her to elaborate on this, she said, of course I was getting only her viewpoint on the problem and she was sure she was partly to blame but also that her husband was probably paranoid and there has been a severe marital problem for the last seven or eight years. She described this as severe emotional violence at home, which included drunkenness and fighting.
Chiefly verbal attacks, she says, with no physical violence although the husband may go on with his foul language and verbal lashing for up to six or seven hours at a time. He says ugly, obscene, and untrue things about her and in the past two or three years has said these things in front of the children. Things such as: she was really no woman at all, she has no normal sexual urges, that she “couldn’t earn 25 cents by spreading her legs,” that she is abnormally attached to her father, that she is stupid, and reads the wrong books, that she keeps the household in a chaotic state, that she cannot manage money, etc. In December of 1964, “he drove me out” and this was chiefly due to his rantings about her lack of sexual interest. This abuse was occurring in front of the two older boys, and she finally, after threatening to leave, did walk out.
This drunkenness has interfered at times with his work and he has been unable to report for work on occasion. He apparently has been encouraged very strongly by his Section Chief to get psychiatric help, otherwise his job is in danger. She began seeing [adult psychiatrist] Dr. Steinhilber about a year ago and has continued to do so. She candidly admits she is now a very “stony” and cold person and is sure … she is a “different person now than ten years ago.” She is more determined now but before she would always do what was the best thing for her husband. He has told her since their marriage that she wasn’t good enough for him and she said she believed him for the first part of their marriage. She believed for some time it was all her fault and withdrew from her friends and became depressed. At the present, she has no sexual urge at all for Roger and this is one of their problem areas. She says she has gone from one extreme to the other and is very determined now to do things she wants to do whether her husband wishes it or not.
A break in the psychiatric records, then my session begins
Luke is a ten-year-old fifth grader, rather short, horn-rimmed glasses, big teeth, and quite a deep voice for a boy his age.
When I asked him if he knew why he was here today, he said yes, and after some hesitation said he had been taking things. The only reason he gave for stealing was that they were “things I don’t have.”
He was quite guarded in telling me about other things he had taken. He mentioned taking stamps from his brother’s collection at one time but then said it “wasn’t really his fault.” He then mentioned taking ten cents from another brother – “But that was two years ago.” Throughout this part of the interview, he was continually looking around the room surveying things.
About his dad, he said, “He is a doctor who works on West-6 at the Clinic and I think he is 43 years old and sure gets enough bills. I suppose he told you about his drinking? He is nice and he gives me a good job and allowance, and a room. He has a room with Mom. He likes to go on trips and goes out with Jeff with their rifles to shoot at targets.”
While he was sketching a picture, he asked me if I knew his dad, to which I said I hadn’t been able to talk with him yet. I asked if he would like to be a doctor when he grew up and he said “I would like the money” but he didn’t think he would like to “look inside of guys.”
RECOMMENDATION: His parents clearly have severe marital strife. They are attempting to resolve some of this with psychiatric help. Suggest watchful waiting in that Luke shows little in the way of disturbing signs besides the stealing.
Every night my little brother puts on a Beatles record and sings himself to sleep, rocking back and forth on his bed in a trance. Dad won’t let Mom put us to bed anymore so the rocking is my little brother’s lullaby to himself. But the singing, that’s his fantasy. He is singing himself to a better place; he’s probably onstage at The Ed Sullivan Show. But in my fantasy, down here on the carpeting of my little brother’s dark bedroom, I am “Quiet-Man.”
Quiet-Man’s super-power is ninja stealth. For the last fifteen minutes I have been slowly crawling through the dark towards my goal – to hide directly under Collin’s bed.
He will never know Quiet-Man is in the room with him.
Quiet-Man knows precisely what he is doing. He times each carpet-burning inch forward to a lilt of John-and-Paul harmony, rubs his itchy nose at Ringo’s cymbal crash. No one is more silent than Quiet-Man. He could move under a librarian’s nose and make it all the way to the card catalog and never show up on her radar.
Chicks dig Quiet-Man.
When you get right down to it, though, Quiet-Man’s Super-Silence is sort of a Woolworth’s five-and-dime super-power. He can’t really do anything once he’s arrived wherever he’s sneaking to. He just sort of lies there under the bed or behind the couch.
It has another drawback: nobody ever says, “Look, down on the carpeting! It’s Quiet-Man!” Best he ever gets is, “I think I just heard something.”
Collin hates it when Quiet-Man invades his privacy like this. If I crawl over a crinkly candy wrapper and reveal myself, he sits up in the dark and screams down at the floor.
“Get out of my room!”
Quiet-Man also uses denial; he doesn’t answer, doesn’t move. Like the Devil, his greatest trick is to convince you he doesn’t exist.
“I know you’re down there! Get out!”
But John and Paul pick up a new beat. “’CAUSE I DON’T CARE TOO MUCH FOR MONEY. MONEY CAN’T BUY ME LOVE.” It’s too infectious a song for Collin to let pass. He doesn’t want to get out of bed, feel his way across the room, and set the phonograph needle back at the beginning of the song. So he warns the darkness, “You better not be there!” and resumes his singing and rocking back and forth.
“I MAY NOT HAVE A LOT TO GIVE, BUT WHAT I GOT I’LL GIVE TO YOU.”
Quiet-Man has finally made it under the bed. The springs of Collin’s mattress now creak rhythmically, inches from my face. There is a kind of cocoon safety to hiding under your little brother’s bed at night. Nobody knows where you are. And you know your little brother is safe, too.
