All the Things We Never Knew (8 page)

He nodded appreciatively and then skied toward me to offer a huge hug. “Thank you, honey.”

We started off up the road together, but David soon pulled out in front. I followed behind in his fresh tracks. His long arms reached out gracefully, his legs moving powerfully between each stride. The snow crunched against our skis, but other than that there was virtually no sound. The mountains were quieted by the snow, blanketed by a cover of powdery white layers. The sun dropped slowly behind the western mountains; I started to shiver, even as I skied faster to try to create more heat.

Suddenly, David stopped in his tracks ahead of me. “Shhh,” he said.

I tried to look for what he'd seen that made him stop so abruptly. The trees were empty. A trail of rabbit tracks took off from the left of us. The setting sun cast long, spooky shadows on the deep ravines and gullies; there was nothing moving as far as I could tell.

David pointed to the grove of aspen trees to our right. “There. Do you see it?”

I strained my eyes, my toes numb from cold, my nose stinging from exposure. “See what?” I asked, wishing more than anything that I could turn around and ski as fast as I could home to the safety and warmth of my parents' home.

“See?” he said. “Right there.” His glove pointed to three o'clock. I squinted harder.

There it was, camouflaged perfectly in its perch, a great horned owl staring out at us, with the biggest golden eyes I'd ever seen on a bird. Its eyebrows were slanted narrowly at us, its head cocked, mottled brown wings tucked to its side.

“Shhh,” David said. He clicked himself out of his skis and slowly, tenderly, took baby steps toward the owl. The owl fluttered its wings, turning its head abruptly to keep its eyes on David, preparing for its escape. Its prominent ear tufts seemed calculating and alert.

David took another step, then another, his weight placed so tenderly he barely made a sound in the snow. He was within a couple of feet of the bird. I'd never seen anything like it. The bird startled me with a deep hooting sound:
Hoo-h-hoo-hoo-hoo
. The sound echoed through the canyon. I caught myself gasping out loud.

From somewhere deep in the tree grove, a loud raspy screech returned the call, the owl's young crying for its mother. The owl looked again at David and then lifted off, its beautiful wings spanning nearly sixty inches. It soared so fast, so precisely, I lost sight of it almost immediately. It was one of the many times David took me to the extremes of his world: places of profound beauty and magic, with little miracles that came along only when I gave up any sense of control. David caught the look of ecstatic gratitude on my face and smiled.

There would be other adventures we shared that would not end so magically. David's insistence at hiking “off-trail” in the Columbia Gorge left him covered in poison oak boils, big red oozing sores that took weeks to heal. Somehow, Sophie and I escaped the allergic reaction to the same poisonous plants.

In Hawaii, again “off-map” at David's insistence, we circled a weedy, scrappy patch of the island for three hours, until I was so tired and pissed off we didn't speak for two days.

On another day, after a long mountain bike ride, we bolted from the hot confines of his truck to take a dip in the Columbia River. We came back to find his truck, our bikes, and my luggage stolen. He'd left the keys in the ignition.

At the time, I reasoned that David had more than his share of bad luck because he lived larger than most people. No risk, no reward. David's nature was that he would go to the end of the road and inevitably want to go further, like an Alice in his own wonderland. Truthfully, I too was curious about what was on the other side. I craved the intensity David yearned for during those wild explorations, and his moods, when high, were contagious. Holding onto the high of euphoria was impossible, and it made our inevitable fall that much harder.
Two weeks later, back home from Salt Lake, I was driving home from the television station to have my dinner break with David and Sophie. A heavy rain turned to slush on the windshield, and then, just as quickly, into fat, sloppy snowflakes. Rushing home for dinner was my way of trying to hold things together—not because I feared losing David so much, but because I didn't want Sophie to lose David. Would he stay in her life if we divorced? I could not say yes for certain. I couldn't accurately plot the course of David's day, let alone what might happen if we divorced. There was still so much about him I didn't understand.

I sat with the engine running in the driveway, watching the wipers wash over the flakes one, two, three times. We were doing better since the affair—weren't we? The wipers thumped a steady beat to Fleetwood Mac, something from the
Mirage
album, the one with the album cover of Stevie Nicks and Christine McVie sandwiching Lindsey Buckingham, both women attempting to capture something that was already gone. The music sounded tired, as if the band was going through the motions. I clicked the radio off and went in through the side door.

David was standing at the front door looking out on the falling snow. I set my briefcase on the kitchen counter and came from behind to hug his big back. I truly wanted to make it work.

“Hi, sweetheart,” I said. “Where's Sophie?”

“She's asleep,” he mumbled, staring straight ahead into the darkness. “I put her to bed early.”

I checked my watch. “But it's only six thirty. I really wanted to see her.”

He stared out the window, not acknowledging me. “She was cranky.”

I weighed my options. If I told him how important it was to keep Sophie up so that I could see her before bedtime, I'd have another fight on my hands. He was defensive about everything these days, especially Sophie's care. “Isn't it gorgeous?” I said instead, looking out at the snow.

“What?” he turned abruptly, revealing a pen and paper in his hand. “What's gorgeous? I can't see anything gorgeous because I can't hear myself THINK in this house. I can't sit down in this house and read a book. I can't even bear to look out the window because all I see and all I hear are those GODDAMN CARS!” His voice rose to a pitch that scared me. The blood vessels in his neck bulged, and his eyes darted to the window. There were no cars outside.

I was stunned. I began to speak and then stopped myself, not knowing how to gauge this level of anger. I'd seen David upset before, but never like this, never about something so bizarre. We were a block away from a busy street. This was a side street, not a busy boulevard! It was a total overreaction, reminding me of something else that had changed recently. He had a heightened hypersensitivity to sound, to bright lights, to smells, to clothing that wasn't organic cotton.

“What do you mean, the cars?” I pointed toward the street. “I don't know what you mean—David, are you okay?”

He pointed his pen to his yellow pad. “This, these cars! I've counted every car that has come along in the last two hours. Twenty-seven cars! Twenty-seven fucking cars, with their bright lights and fucking loud engines racing to their fucking homes going forty miles per hour. I can't THINK!”

His face was red and splotchy, and he smelled of sweat. Two hours. For two hours, he'd worked himself into a frenzy over traffic.

“If it bothers you, we can move,” I said softly. “Again.” Even as I said it, I didn't totally mean it. But it seemed crucial to calm him down. Three moves, two years of marriage. When we first married, we'd both sold our homes, mine a quaint Victorian, and his beautiful bungalow, to buy a larger home together in Laurelhurst, one of the most coveted neighborhoods in Portland. But it was too loud, he said, too disruptive to his sleep. Now this one was wrong, too, the house I loved most, with its plantation-style roof and a sweeping deck that opened onto a beautiful garden, with an apartment below for friends and family who visited. The house was wrong? No. A surge of defiance rose up through me.

“This is not about the cars, David. It is not about the neighborhood. This is about you. You need help.”

He dropped his pen and paper on the hardwood floor. “Fuck you,” he said, coldly. “What I need is a beer.” I watched him stomp out the door and through the slush.

You need a coat
, I thought instinctively, and then I caught my own reaction, protecting him even as he abandoned me, again. I stood at the doorway, frozen, unable to speak or move.

The next morning, David rolled over lazily and cradled me in his arms, as if nothing had happened. I felt my back stiffen against him. I'd brought Sophie into bed with me that night, so exhausted I'd hoped lying with her, rather than rising every time she cried, might make us both happier. My body lived in two worlds: the harmony I felt with Sophie, and the growing disconnect I felt with David.

As I cradled her, I felt a longing for David, the other half of us.

“Look, I've been a jerk lately,” he whispered. “I'm really sorry.” He curled his arm around both Sophie and me. “I am so grateful to you for bringing me Sophie. I have never loved anyone or anything as much in my life. I will try harder for us.” He moved into me breathing, our two bodies connected by this third life, this amazing force between us. His lips touched my spine, soft kisses down the arch of my back, my arms.

My throat tightened as I turned to kiss him back.

In the months that passed, David moved in and out of our marriage as if it were a pair of jeans he could wear or put at the back of his closet. Weeks would go by when David was fine, joyful even at the prospect of spending time at home, gardening, or remodeling a bathroom or kitchen. We made love, ate our meals together, and called one another several times during the day. “I'm just thinking of how lucky I am,” he said one day. “And how lost I'd be without my family.”

Each time it got better, I thought,
Okay, we've made it. We're past the tough part
. I hung onto those moments of connection,
building a case for staying the way Sophie built a pyramid of colored wooden blocks. She was patient, positioning each block so carefully her eyes never left the structure, even as she reached for her next block. It was only when she was smugly satisfied with her work that she swung her arm through the pyramid, crashing it to the ground.

David's sense of self-destruction seemed just as impulsive. A phone call or conversation could set him off, his anxiety building to a point that it twisted his face into a new position. A dark, foreboding sense surrounded him, physically and emotionally. He walked around with a hunch, burdened by this mysterious weight, a weight I could neither tap nor explore.

My life could be so much worse,
I rationalized.
I love my job. I love this house. Our daughter is healthy. I should be grateful.
I look back on those years, wondering along with everyone else how I stayed for so long. The only answers I can come up with involve my own stubborn sense of optimism and my cowardice. I believed David during the good times, when he told me his family was the most important thing he'd ever had. And given what I now know about how difficult it is to cope with the destructive and alienating thoughts of bipolar illness, I'm in awe of David's capacity for holding his life together as long as he did. I was coping, too, during those difficult years, so that Sophie might grow up in a household with the one man who would always love her unconditionally.

 

FOR CAREGIVERS

The symptoms of unipolar and bipolar depression are such that caregivers can feel enormous frustration in attempting to support a person who seems uninvested in recovery. Many family members report loved ones sleeping as much as twenty hours a day, refusing to participate in household chores, and canceling social engagements. People with mental illness may stop attending to their own grooming, causing frustration and embarrassment for other family members.

More than forty million women are the primary caregivers for a sick person, very often the man they married. In
The Caregiving Wife's Handbook,
Dr. Diane Denholm advises caregivers to avoid assuming roles and jobs because someone else thinks we should and to realize that sacrificing yourself completely will not make the sick person well. Also, Denholm advises that the caregiver should never accept abusive or dangerous behavior.

During the acute phase of David's mental health breakdown, loved ones and friends would often call to ask how he was doing. Very few people recognized the emotional and physical toll I was under as I cared for our daughter, kept a household afloat on one income, and managed the emotional heartbreak of witnessing David's deteriorating physical and mental health. I am most grateful for the friends who did not judge, but who listened.