Here's the Story LP: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice (23 page)

How Much Time?

A
serious illness unfurls in stages, with pauses that can either make you believe life is back to normal or make you wonder if life will ever be normal again. Unfortunately, with my mom’s cancer, it was the latter.

Even when my mom was well and as far back as I could remember, my parents’ home was a mess. My mother was a world-class hoarder who didn’t throw out a thing while collecting more and more stuff. Their place was filled to overflowing capacity by decades’ worth of furniture and knickknacks and even newspapers my mother simply refused to throw away. As she got sicker, it seemed suffocating and dangerous, like the past was closing in around her until life was squeezed out. Plus, with Denny there too, I knew it was no place to convalesce.

I wanted her to be closer to me. I insisted, really. And after some back and forth, she and my father agreed to move into the place where Kevin lived. It had three bedrooms and plenty of space. But I was shocked and disturbed to learn that Kevin kept two bedrooms for himself—one to sleep in and one for high-tech camera equipment he’d purchased—and my parents and Denny shared the master suite.

I didn’t know what to make of the situation. Denny slept on a foam mattress on the floor. Sometimes he woke up in the morning covered in ants and spider bites. Kevin refused to let anyone use pesticides. He threw a fit when I wanted to hire an exterminator. But then he’d also been against my mother receiving chemotherapy, arguing that would kill her quicker than the cancer.

Again, one of the biggest regrets of my life is that I didn’t take my mother out of that situation. I considered it. I desperately wanted to set her up in our house, where I knew she would be comfortable and well cared for. But she refused. She was as stubborn sick as she was when healthy. She wanted to remain in her role as wife and mother, even though my father and brothers were all grown men.

Still, it scared me to know she was basically dependent on my father and two brothers, one of whom was intellectually handicapped, while the other one often spoke of life as the fifth dimension, like when he said, “Maureen, the floor is not really here. This is all an illusion.”

It wasn’t an illusion—it was a nightmare. One day my mother called and said, “Maureen, I feel like I’m in prison with your dad and Kevin.”

She said the two of them sat around the house and talked nonstop about conspiracy theories, like how the government controlled the population through prescription drugs, how ordinary food was dangerous (hence his devotion to health foods), and how it was likely they were being watched.

“Watched by whom?” I wondered.

“I don’t know,” my mother said.

When I asked my brother such questions, he always gave me the same response. “You’ll see. You’ll find out.”

“I come out of the bedroom, listen to them, and it makes me sicker,” my mom told me. “It’s easier to just turn around and go back to bed.”

I was at their place as much as possible, almost daily, and still I beat myself up for not doing more. My mom still refused to leave. I hired a nurse who came highly recommended from friends. She reassured me that I was doing everything possible and said she would make sure my mother was well-attended to when I wasn’t able to be there.

But Kevin fired her a week later. I brought in another nurse, and he fired her, too. It was maddening to me. It seemed unconscionable. But he had his reasons, he said. Ultimately, I felt like he didn’t want anyone else in the house. Kevin turned into a paranoid germaphobe. He picked up a napkin before he touched a door handle. He kept his own special food in the kitchen. Then one day he put blue duct tape on the floor between the kitchen and the living room and stipulated no one could cross it.

I told my mother it wasn’t right—I told everyone it wasn’t right.
What if Mom got hungry?

Once again I begged her to come live with us.

As always, she refused.

“Maureen, just take care of your family,” she said. “I’m all right here in my home.”

A
t the beginning of the summer, I asked my mother’s doctor how long she might have under favorable conditions. He hesitated to give me any length of time, but after I pressed him, he said about six months. I shook my head at that harsh dose of reality. Six months was such a short time.

I started to bargain with God. I asked Him to let her live through the holidays. I just wanted another Christmas with her. Unfortunately, she grew weaker and lost more and more weight. It was impossible to know whether the cancer caused her to whittle away or the conditions in which she insisted upon living. I tried to get her to eat. Friends brought her pots of stew, soups, chocolates, and ice cream, but Kevin ended up putting most of it in the trash.

Kevin and my father became constant companions. My brother set up a large-screen TV and recliner in the living room for my dad, then made blackout curtains and bought more camera and recording equipment for himself. From her bed, my mother called me and complained Kevin was crazy and brainwashing my father. She said she felt like a prisoner.

“Let me get you and bring you to my house,” I said.

“No, no,” she said. “This is home.”

“But it’s not a good situation for you.”

“I’m just trying to figure out where I went wrong with your brother.”

When my mom first got sick, she and my dad wanted to create a living will. Up till then, they didn’t have a trust or a will. They asked me to recommend a lawyer. I got some names from friends and let them pick. Afterward, they let all of us know they intended to split everything evenly among the kids. They also made me the executor. No one objected.

At one point during her illness, my mom worried about the rate at which Kevin was spending money on equipment and suggested adding a provision in their trust that gave him his money in installments rather than one lump sum. Nothing like that was ever done, but it showed that even from her sickbed she had realistic concerns.

I echoed these after I saw the blackout curtains go up and more equipment come in. But my father said not to worry, and indeed, there were plenty of other things on my mind. One day I went to my parents’ place and learned of a new change. Denny was only allowed to sit in one chair. If possible, Kevin didn’t want him touching any doorknobs.

“He’s not clean,” Kevin explained.

“What?” I said.

Kevin shook his head, angry that I didn’t get it. “Maureen, why do I have to spell things out for you? He doesn’t know how to clean himself after he goes to the bathroom.”

My mother was in bed but not deaf. When I went into her room, she gave me a look that kind of said “you can’t believe what’s going on here.” She seemed to have resigned herself to the worst. Kevin continued to fire all the nurses who were good. I was disturbed but helpless to do anything. One day I found my mother lying in her feces in her bed. My father hadn’t changed her. I screamed at him, then tried to clean her up and put on new adult diapers myself. But as thin as my mother was, she was still heavier than I could manage. Both Kevin and my father refused my entreaties for help. My mother rolled her eyes and apologized. I held back tears.

I was frightened a few days later when Kevin spoke about building a contraption to lift my mother up so the person changing her wouldn’t have to touch her. I thought he was joking. But he actually built it. That’s how crazy things were. And my father boasted about it.
Look at that! Kevin did it all by himself!

My mother gave me a look that let me know she was petrified, like my father and Kevin might actually put her in it.

O
ne day in early July, my father said he could no longer take care of Denny and asked me to find a home where Denny could live. I was stunned and then heartbroken. We’d never discussed what was going to happen to Denny after my parents were no longer alive, but until then, for as long as I could remember, my mother had been clear. She wanted Denny at home, not in a home.

“Why me?” I asked my father. “Why do I have to do this?”

“Maureen, I can’t take care of him anymore. You have to do this.”

That didn’t sound like my father, not the person I’d known my whole life, not the person who’d taken classes in special-education instruction after Denny was diagnosed as intellectually handicapped. Denny always accompanied my father on errands. They had been pals Denny’s whole life. Still, like a good daughter, I did as asked, reasoning that maybe I could find Denny a place where he would feel wanted and be cared for with love and compassion. It took a while, but I found a place.

I decided to break the news to my mother. And because I didn’t want her to hate my father, I told her it was my decision. I thought it would be best for Denny, I said. Propped up on two pillows in bed, she turned from me and looked out the window. She knew her world was not going to be the way she wanted it to be when she finally left.

“I promise you I’ll always look after him,” I said. “I swear. I’ll make sure he’s okay. But it’s going to be good for him to have his own life.”

As I suspected, she didn’t ask questions. She was too weak. She trusted me to do the right thing, and that was that. My father and Kevin packed up Denny’s things. They repeated that they were overwhelmed by having to care for my mother and couldn’t take care of Denny, too.

At that point, I said, “Well, Dad, would you like to go see where Denny is going to live?”

We made what was basically an obligatory trip there, and then a day or two later, my father and I moved Denny in. Denny was confused, but he settled down after I promised to come see him the next day. Outside the facility, my father put his arm around me and said thank you.

It was strange. I had the feeling he was saying good-bye to me. And given what I know now, I wasn’t wrong.

A
fter Denny went into the facility, my mother took a turn for the worse and we brought in hospice care. That was when I finally began to accept the reality that I was going to lose her. From the time she was diagnosed, I really believed she could beat the cancer. I refused to think otherwise. After all the two of us had been through and shared, I knew how strong she was.

I was wrong. I arrived one day and as soon as she saw me walk into the bedroom she begged for something to drink. After she sipped water, I called an ambulance and had her taken to the hospital. Dehydrated, she was given fluids and she seemed to rebound enough that no one expected her to die anytime soon. But a short time later, on August 1, 2004, my father called me and said she’d passed away.

I couldn’t believe it. I’d spoken with her the day before.

And now?

I raced to the house, went into the bedroom, and then came out and stared at my father and brother. My mother was gone. Literally gone. They’d already had her body removed. I wasn’t able to see her one last time or say a final good-bye.

I was in shock for a few days afterward. Even so, at my father’s request, I made the funeral arrangements. My father waited outside St. Jude’s in Westlake, where the service was, for Denny to be dropped off, and right before they went inside he informed my brother that our mother was dead and they were going inside. I was nearby, within earshot of the conversation, and I thought it was the coldest, cruelest thing I’d ever witnessed. Denny’s expression melted into one of pained confusion.

“Mom is dead?” he asked.

“Yes,” my father said.

“Mom is dead?” he asked again.

“Yes.”

“I want to say good-bye.”

“You can’t,” my father said. “She’s dead. Let’s go inside now. Everybody’s waiting for us.”

Denny wanted more explanations, more sympathy, more time. None was given him. He was in tears, bawling his eyes out.

I cried, too.

And I would’ve continued to cry if things didn’t take such a scary turn.

The Family Trust

L
ess than a week after my mother’s death, my father and Kevin were truly and wholly inseparable, so much so that my father’s brother, a retired Air Force colonel, worried that “Kevin will cause my brother to lose his soul.” One day they showed up at my house unannounced. They came in full of nervous energy, and I didn’t get the sense they came to see how I was holding up.

Their energy was different from mine. It felt like they were on a mission. Kevin certainly was. With my father standing behind him, nodding at everything he said, he let me know that he’d hired a lawyer. To prevent me from screwing him out of his share of money that was due him.

“What are you talking about, Kevin?” I asked.

“You know, Maureen. And I want to say this for the record, the will is no good.”

I said, “What?”

“The will—mom and dad’s trust—it’s no good.”

I glanced at Michael, who rolled his eyes. I looked at my father, who was nodding in agreement with Kevin.

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a page missing from it,” he said.

We debated that point back and forth. It wasn’t true. I understood the real point, though. Kevin had heard from my father that their living trust was going to give him money in increments, and he was freaking out about it. Since my father was still alive, it didn’t affect him or any of us. Why he wanted to fight about it now was beyond me. He scared me, and made me scared for my father.

At this point, my father still drove, and the next day he came over and apologized for the previous day’s scene.

“Kevin is so sick,” he said. “I’m very sorry.”

I told my father that he needed to also apologize to my brother Mike in Hawaii. I had to explain that he and Kevin had treated my brother poorly during my mother’s illness. They didn’t keep him informed about her condition. They didn’t let him talk to her. They made him feel like he wasn’t part of the family.

“You need to communicate better with him,” I said.

At that, he called Mike and said he loved him. He said he was sorry for the way he’d treated him, blaming it on Kevin, who he said was sick and needed help. After the call, my father and I reminisced about my mother. He cried and apologized to me for his own behavior and for Kevin’s. He reiterated that Kevin had threatened suicide and needed to see a doctor.

He sounded like my old father again, and I fantasized about getting the family back together. I put my arms around him and promised to arrange for all of us to go to counseling. I said we had to work together in order to come together. My father agreed, but a moment later, seeming alarmed, he asked what time it was and said he had to get back to Kevin.

Alone, I found myself, for the first time, able to think clearly about my mother’s death. All of a sudden it hit me hard. I’d always thought I’d be with her as she took her final breaths, holding her hand, comforting her, and making sure the last words she heard were “I love you.” At the end, what else could matter? Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked out that way. I was thinking, God, if Mom was only here, none of this would be happening. She was the rock. She was the glue that held us together.

I felt awful that I hadn’t been there when she passed. I was angry at my dad and Kevin for not allowing me those moments. They knew how close we were. All of a sudden, as I thought of my mother being gone forever, I was unable to hold myself together. Not that I’d been doing such a good job up to then. But I burst into tears and felt what I was supposed to feel—extreme sadness, anger, and loss.

So much loss.

I remember Natalie coming home and seeing me so distraught. She walked over to me, and without saying a word, my fifteen-year-old daughter wrapped her arms around me. We hugged the way I wished I could’ve hugged my mother, the way I wished my mother would’ve hugged me, me taking strength from Natalie, then trying to give back the same to her, and then hearing her whisper, “Mom, I love you so much.”

I
’d experienced my share of bizarre people and situations, but nothing prepared me for the kind of truly bizarre, un-
Brady
-like craziness I encountered in the ensuing months. The confrontation I’d had with Kevin at my house following my mother’s death was merely a warm-up. At the end of the summer, I was looking over some financial documents and accounts when I came across a bank statement that had my name on it as well as my parents’. It was an account of mine from years ago that my mother had monitored, as she did all of our finances.

I was surprised. The sum was significantly larger than I’d thought. I left a message with my father, asking what he knew about it. The response I got floored me. Kevin and my father called back, insisting I needed to sign paperwork canceling the joint accounts. When I hesitated, Kevin threatened to ruin my career if I didn’t comply. I wish I’d called his bluff. Instead, frightened and nervous, I let my dad take me to the World Savings Bank, where I signed everything he asked me to sign—which, in effect, transferred exclusively to him a huge sum of money.

The woman who’d helped with our family’s banking for years assisted us with the paperwork. She had been close with my mother and knew all of us, the whole family history. With each form she put in front of me, the two of us exchanged looks and I could tell she was asking if I was sure I knew what I was doing, if I was sure I wanted to transfer that much and take my name off those accounts.

I knew her instincts were right. I shared the same worry. But between the fact that my father was still my father (and still, at this point, behaving like it, sort of) and Kevin’s threats, I felt handcuffed. Then the two of them made a quick jaunt to Hawaii, first to Kauai and then to Maui, to look at a couple of investment properties. When my father told me about the trip, I assumed they would also see my brother Mike, his wife, and two boys, Brandon and Colin. My father had always enjoyed a close relationship with his grandsons.

However, when I called Mike to see how things were going with Dad and Kevin, he asked what I meant. He didn’t know they were in Hawaii. Nor did he ever hear from them. My father was back in Los Angeles before Mike, deeply hurt, caught up with him. My father explained that he and Kevin had thought it would be too uncomfortable for Kevin and Mike to see each other, so they’d decided against visiting. My father went on to say that he was also upset with Mike for beating him up thirty years earlier.

Mike was dumbfounded. As he told me, he heard this and stopped, shocked. When had he ever beat up our father, hit him, even raised a fist?

Never!

Both of us wondered what Kevin was telling our father. Was he brainwashing him? It sounded like it to us.

Mike was very upset. He couldn’t figure out why they’d slighted him in Hawaii or where my father came up with the story of a fight. We talked all the time. He lost sleep. He couldn’t figure it out. He assumed the problems dated back to the trip he and Kevin had taken to Europe as young men or the Mine Shaft.

In December, Mike’s younger son, Colin, was graduating from the University of Hawaii, and Mike invited my father to the ceremony. Mike reported that their conversation had sounded normal, like old times. My father agreed it would be good to spend time together since he hadn’t visited the last time he was there. He didn’t mention his accusation about the fight.

All seemed good until the day before my father was scheduled to fly out of Los Angeles. He called Mike and canceled his trip, explaining that Kevin thought that flying would jeopardize his health. In addition, my father said he was hurt after Kevin had told him that Mike’s older son, Brandon, who worked in the music business in Los Angeles, had referred to Kevin as a drug addict.

Mike didn’t know how to react. It didn’t sound like his son. Still. When he phoned his son, Brandon called the accusation ridiculous and said in fact he’d been helping his uncle set up a studio so he could record his own music. He expressed the same kind of shock, hurt, and confusion as the rest of us.

T
oward the end of February 2005, I received a certified letter from the Los Angeles County Clerk’s Office, notifying me that one of the houses in the family trust had been quitclaimed, or deeded, to Kevin. Then I received a call from the woman at World Savings who helped with our banking. She alerted me to the fact that my father had transferred a large sum of money into an account for Kevin.

A few days later, my brother Mike received a certified letter in Hawaii. It was from my father, who wrote that Mike was no longer to have any contact with him, except by mail. It went on to state that neither Mike nor any other family member was to set foot in any of the McCormick homes listed in the trust, including the one my father and Kevin occupied. My father’s signature was at the bottom.

One day, after the money transfer but before I knew about the letter, Kevin called and insisted I come see my father and him. His voice was stern and clipped; he sounded like the head of some tribunal that had power over me.
We want you to get over here right now!

I drove to their house, and Kevin let me in. I had a sense he’d been watching for me. The condo no longer felt like my mother had lived there. To be fair, I wouldn’t say she ever really had lived there. She’d just been sick there. After a quick glance around, I sat down on the living-room couch. Kevin quickly said I couldn’t sit there; he wanted me on the chair opposite the couch, one of two leather recliners.

Suddenly I realized the purpose of his camera equipment, the blackout curtains, and recording equipment. As soon as I sat down in the chair, he ran out of the room, then came back a moment later, studying me intently. It dawned on me that I was being videotaped, and he’d left the room to adjust the camera. Then my father entered the room. He looked at Kevin, as if the two of them were following a plan. Then my father gave me a piece of paper and told me to sign it.

What?

I scanned the paper which was an agreement saying that I willingly relinquished my role as executor of the family’s trust because I was mentally incompetent. I refused to sign it. My father and Kevin were irate. They threatened never to talk to me again if I didn’t sign. Kevin shouted at me:
Face it, Maureen, you’re mentally incompetent. Isn’t that true? Admit it, you’re on mind-altering drugs. Just state that you’re incapable of being the executor because you’re a drug addict!

The more I resisted, the louder he yelled.
I’ll tell people about the drugs you take. I’m going to ruin your career.
My father stood beside him, agreeing. When I tried to talk back, Kevin grew louder and more insistent.
You’ll never work again.
I felt like I was being punched and bulldozed. Sobbing so hard that I began to gasp for breath, I looked at my father in desperation and bewilderment.

“Dad, why are you doing this?”

“Maureen, you know,” he said. “You are sick. You are on mind-altering drugs.”

Unable to take their punishment anymore, I crumpled to the ground and curled up in the fetal position. They broke me. Crying, fearing I’d never see my father again, scared by Kevin’s threats, I agreed to say whatever they wanted.
Yes, I am greedy
, I cried.
Yes, I did cocaine. Yes, I am incompetent and crazy.

But I didn’t sign the paper.

No matter what they said or threatened, I wouldn’t sign.

Deep down, I knew better.

I
don’t remember how, but I finally got out of there. I saw that nearly three hours had passed. My mind was going a million miles per hour, and I felt like I was about to have a nervous breakdown. My whole body was trembling. I kept replaying everything they’d said to me. I felt like I’d escaped from a cult that had been holding me captive, and it left me traumatized and scared.

I was scared for my own safety; that’s how scrambled and out of it I felt. I thought I might need hospitalization to calm me down. I went to my doctor friend Janie’s house for help and guidance. She was still at work, but her mother-in-law was there with Janie’s children, and she let me in. Still trembling, I called Janie, who told me to climb into her bed and wait for her to get home.

She got there as soon as possible. I stayed for several more hours. I didn’t want to leave the doctor’s care. I needed her reassurance that I wasn’t going insane. She went much further, in fact, saying that my family had imploded since my mother’s death, that my father and brother had gone off the deep end, that they had basically abused me for three hours, and that any sane person would respond the same way as I had—they’d feel like they had gone crazy.

My husband had a different response; he wanted to hunt them down and beat the crap out of them. I wouldn’t let him set foot out of the house. A couple weeks went by. Then Mike phoned with news of the letter prohibiting him from contacting our father. After hearing my story, he flew to Los Angeles, intent on finding out what exactly was going on with Dad and Kevin.

After he landed, we went straight to my father’s house. We knocked on the door even though it was apparent that no one was home. From the newspapers piled up at the end of the driveway, it appeared no one had been there for quite some time.

Concerned, we phoned the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department. On their advice, we filed a missing-persons report, and then my husband and I returned to my father’s house, where several sheriffs and a social worker from Adult Protective Services joined us on the front lawn. The scene brought out all the neighbors. I heard several whisper my name. I wanted to crawl into a hole.

There were two deputies. They knocked on the door and looked around. One deputy thought he heard something inside. My brother Mike and I said we thought Kevin might be holding our father hostage. The deputies explained they didn’t have the legal authority to enter the house forcibly, but they said Mike and I, as concerned family members, could break in to check on our father’s safety.

They showed my brother how to kick the door in. Sure enough, it popped open. Mike gave me a surprised look, like “wow, it really worked.”