CHAPTER SIX
Misdiagnosis
AUNT SADIE WAS NERVOUS. SHE SWUNG MY HAND BACK AND FORTH TO soothe me, but her palm was gooey with perspiration. I was nervous also. I tapped my brown loafer on the marble floor, unable to stand still. We were in a large reception hall of the Hillside Psychiatric Hospital, a private facility set on four acres in Great Neck, waiting for Uncle Bernie to return from his conference with my mother’s psychiatrist. We hoped Uncle would come back with permission for me to see her.
The central hall was part of Hillside’s grand main structure, a stone and marble mansion built by one of the Roaring Twenties stock manipulators. His ruin in the crash and the forced sale of his possessions at depressed prices led to Hillside’s creation by Dr. Frederick Gulden. Gulden was an early refugee from Nazism, trained by Freud himself, who had earned the good will of a wealthy widow for the “cure,” or improvement anyway, of her manic-depressive son. In the late forties, Dr. Gulden added a three-story concrete dormitory for patients and the mansion itself was converted into offices and consulting rooms. The reception hall’s high domed ceiling and sweeping marble staircase was an oddly imposing entrance for a sanitarium. Nor did the mahogany reception desk and its sour-looking occupant, Bill Reedy, make the place more inviting. Reedy drank heavily every night, nursing his hangover while on duty, staring at prospective patients and their nervous families through bloodshot eyes. He looked enraged that anyone had dared to enter his domain.
I was intimidated by Reedy’s face: it started my foot going again. That disturbed Aunt Sadie. “Don’t tap your foot, honey,” she whispered and its echo scurried across the marble floor up to Reedy’s florid cheeks and squinting eyes. His frown intensified, as if focusing to identify me as a miscreant. That set off another fusillade of foot tapping, completing the vicious circle.
Uncle Bernie was conferring with Dr. Halston, who ran Hillside in the 1960s for the semi-retired Dr. Gulden and, given Uncle’s stature, had personal charge of my mother’s case. When Bernie returned with him, they led us into a reception room in the dormitory wing. Its walls were painted green down to the level of the mopboard, then white down to the linoleum floor. The room where I saw my mother was furnished like a doctor’s reception area; a couch, a love seat, a coffee table, a lamp, a magazine stand, and museum posters of masterpieces on the wall.
Ruth sat on the couch, shoulders slumped, eyes fixed on a copy of Time that someone had left open on the coffee table. Her hands were limp at her sides, palms up. She was very thin and her face seemed devoid of blood. I almost screamed — I thought she was dead.
Aunt Sadie sensed my panic. Her grip tightened and she pulled me close. My mother didn’t look up.
“Your son is here,” Dr. Halston said. He had thinning blond hair combed straight back and, as long as I knew him, wore glasses whose thick black frames looked more like goggles for a World War II pilot than aids for weak vision. He was a compact muscled man with a military posture, but his voice was thin and rather high-pitched. There was little natural warmth in it to begin with and Freudian training washed out any other coloration. “Ruth. Look.” Halston waved Aunt Sadie to bring me forward. “Your boy is here to see you.”
As soon as I realized she wasn’t dead, I recovered my nerve. I broke off from Sadie, rushed to the couch and tried to hug my mother. I hadn’t been given any instructions or advice by Halston about how to behave or what to expect. (I cannot fathom why not; I am amazed that no one discussed her condition with me in advance. Perhaps my memory is faulty.) Ruth didn’t move. I pressed against her awkwardly, trying to fit into her limp body. Once I had wished she would never touch me again; now I longed for the energy and passion of her abuse. I felt her love for me had died.
“Mom,” I said into her ear, leaning my cheek against hers, my arms attempting an embrace. “I’m here, Mom.” I held a rag doll. I smelled her. Someone had perfumed her with an unfamiliar scent. She was dressed in a demure white blouse and a long blue skirt. The clothes were unlike her usual style, which was both more dramatic and always sexy. Hillside was really an institution for the wealthy, or more often, the mentally ill relatives of the rich. Except on the rare occasion that a patient became violent and required restraint (before the widespread use of antipsychotic drugs), Hillsiders were encouraged to dress neatly in their regular clothes; even catatonic patients were carefully groomed. Obviously someone had made up Ruth for the occasion. I was put out by her rouge, her eyeliner and lipstick. All were applied by a stranger. The incorrectly drawn lines made this Ruth seem more like an lifeless imitation, an approximate mannequin of my mother.
I wanted to cry but I was worried the visit would end if I showed I was upset. Dr. Halston urged me off Ruth, saying, “She needs time to get used to you being here.” To hide my feelings, as I slid away to sit beside my mother, I pushed my forehead against the outside of her shoulder. She didn’t react, hands at her side, palms up, face immobile, eyes blank and fixed on Time magazine. It was awful, worse than any state I had yet seen her in, worse than her rages, worse than her brutalized body on the car, worse than her seductions. She wasn’t human.
Uncle came forward. His cello didn’t resonate with its usual confident sound. “Ruthie,” it quavered. “Rafe is fine, as you can see. We all want you to get better. Everything is taken care of. I don’t want you to worry. When you’re feeling better, you can come live with me, and raise Rafe, and …” I heard a tear in his powerful voice, a note of boyish awe and distress. He trailed off. “And … uh … everything will be okay. That’s all. Don’t worry.”
I peeked out at Ruth’s profile. I felt that Uncle’s unusual display of tenderness would move her. No. She looked right through him.
Sadie covered her mouth, quelling a sob. She turned away. Bernie backed off, appalled. “I thought with Rafe here …”
Halston took my uncle by the elbow and moved him toward the door. He mumbled as they retreated, “No, she’s totally schizo. Living in a fantasy world. I doubt she knows you’re here.”
Aunt Sadie choked out a phrase, “Don’t talk about it.”
I assume Sadie meant because of my presence, since Bernie’s reaction was to glance in my direction. He turned, and nudged Halston to turn away, giving us their backs while they talked in whispers. Aunt Sadie joined them, forming a huddle at the far end of the room.
It was a short time, perhaps ten seconds, while Sadie, Bernie, and Halston weren’t looking my way. I continued to kneel on the couch, angled toward my mother, my nose flattened against her shoulder. Ruth’s eyes suddenly flashed with intelligence and mockery; big and green, they moved in their sockets while her head remained still. She whispered rapidly, lips hardly moving: “Rafe. Don’t react. Just listen. Everything they say is a lie. I’m playing possum. I’ll come get you soon as I can. Keep my secret or they’ll put you in here. Be brave.”
“Mom …” I started to answer, but I was stopped when Ruth’s eyes glazed over and died. I glanced at the door to see Halston peer in our direction. Because of their thick black frames, his glasses were so obstructive that I couldn’t tell whom he was scrutinizing, me or my mother. After a brief survey, Halston returned to the huddle.
Immediately Ruth’s eyes came to life. Her lips moved into a smile. “Fool,” she whispered.
“Mom,” I said into her ear. “You’re not crazy?”
Her profile crinkled with delight. “No. Read Hamlet.”
“What…?” I leaned closer. Her eyes dulled. Presumably Halston or Bernie or Sadie were checking on us.