Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing (10 page)

BOOK: Stormie: A Story of Forgiveness and Healing

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“I’ve just finished cleaning up our room,” I said with pride.

With teeth gritted, her steel-blue eyes burned a hole through my heart as she said, “I told you if I wanted this house clean I would clean it myself. This is not your house, it’s mine.” Then she went to the closet and pulled out all the books and toys I had so neatly organized and threw them on the floor. As she shoved everything off the shelves, then began to empty the drawers on the floor something inside of me snapped. This was too much! I began to scream—open-mouthed, nonsyllabic, hysterical, depth-of-my-being screams.

Then I lunged at her to try and stop her. Quickly her right hand struck me hard across the ear and cheek and part of my eye. The blow stunned me, and before I had time to consider what I was doing, I struck her as hard as I could across the face, the same way she struck me.

She was shocked and so was I. I couldn’t believe I had done that. Now my fear of getting stabbed in the middle of the night was far greater. I didn’t wait for any further reaction. I ran immediately out of the room, grabbed my purse, and left the house.

I started to cry in the car, then stopped myself. “She’s not worth crying over,” I said out loud. “She’s just a hateful old witch and not worth the tears. It won’t be long before I’m out of there, and then I’ll never have to see her again.”

After a few semesters at several other colleges, I wound up at UCLA, majoring in music. It was a relief to be away from home and in a somewhat normal environment. But coping wasn’t easy. My emotional needs were so intense that I frequently experienced fits of depression. That didn’t stop me from trying to find fulfillment through relationships with men. I became involved easily, yet commitment frightened me, so I refused to get too close to anyone.

Married men were particularly attractive. I became romantically involved with a professor. I was miserable, yet I was drawn to a situation where I called the shots. Because he was married, all of our meetings were secret, and I could choose when we saw each other. It was flattering to think that someone so highly regarded and intelligent would find me attractive, yet the guilt and secrecy were overwhelming. I was glad when summer came and I went back to work at Knott’s Berry Farm.

This time my job was acting and singing in a melodrama at the Birdcage Theater. I was the heroine, and the actor who played the hero was a handsome, talented comedian named Steve Martin. He was bright and sensitive, and what began as a relationship sharing poetry, philosophy, thoughts, and dreams turned into my first normal, head-over-heels-in-love romance. Steve made me feel beautiful, feminine, and desirable for the first time in my life. However, our destiny did not include marriage. So after our season together there was no sad parting, only an uncalculated drift. It would prove to be the only relationship in the first 30 years of my life for which I would have no regrets or bad feelings.

The following school year I started dating Scott Lansdale. When he invited me to go back East and spend Christmas with him and his family, I jumped at the opportunity. I would take any excuse to avoid being around my mother, especially during the holidays.

The Lansdales were wealthy and their home was everything my home was not. It was large, sprawling, beautiful, and clean. Even the windows that looked out over the beautifully manicured lawn were spotless. Scott’s parents were normal, and I loved them. Scott teased me, saying that I liked his parents more than I liked him. That was fairly accurate. I would have given anything to have traded mothers with him.

Mrs. Lansdale was a gentle, sensitive woman who got up early every morning to fix breakfast. She treated me as if I was worth something, and it was hard not to contrast her to my own mother. We quickly became close friends, but not close enough for me to share the intimate details about my past. It was too embarrassing to tell anyone about being locked in a closet as a child, or having to listen as Mother wandered the house at night, answering voices that only she heard. Perhaps if I revealed this to Mrs. Lansdale she would reject me. After all, I reasoned, if a parent rejects you, you must be the rejectable type.

One evening after a big party at the Lansdale house, all the guests had left and Mr. and Mrs. Lansdale went upstairs to bed. Scott and I stayed in the luxurious party room in the basement and had a few drinks by the fire. In my desperation for love I was careless, and it proved to be a night I would later regret bitterly.

A few weeks after returning to L.A., I learned from my father that Mother’s condition had worsened. He had consulted a doctor, who diagnosed her mental illness with a string of medical terms, of which “schizophrenic” and “paranoid” were the only ones I understood. So it was confirmed that more than just meanness and a hateful disposition were motivating my mother’s behavior. There was something definitely wrong with her—something that had a name.

Mental illness was not openly discussed at this time and did not produce a sympathetic response. It was a reflection upon family members, as if their sanity was suspect too. Dad and I kept it quiet, and Aunt Delores agreed to fly in and help Dad have Mother committed.

“You need to be there too,” Aunt Delores instructed me on the phone from Omaha. “She should know that we are united in our belief that this is best for her. The doctors say that if she can be convinced to go on her own to the hospital, half the battle will be won. The response of patients who turn themselves in is far better than those who have to be taken forcibly.”

“But, Delores,” I cautioned, “she will never go for it. She won’t go peaceably and she will never let you take her.”

Everyone but me seemed to think there was a good chance she would respond well. However, I knew Mother’s dark nature far better than anyone else and was convinced the scene would be ugly.

The date was set for a week later, and I was to meet Delores at Mother and Dad’s home. It was arranged for my little sister to be away that night. Dad, Delores, and I would lay the plan out for Mother. She would see the wisdom in it and would go calmly with us as we drove her to the mental hospital.

“They’re dreaming,” I thought. “They really don’t know her at all. My mother is totally convinced that she’s right and the rest of the world is wrong, that she’s innocent and all others are guilty, that she’s normal and everyone else is crazy. There is no way she’ll admit there’s something wrong with her.”

In the meantime I tried to prepare for finals at college, but was so sick I couldn’t eat or sleep, let alone study. I had grown increasingly ill since the holiday. At first I figured it was flu, but as it persisted, I finally went to a doctor and learned, to my horror, that I was pregnant. The news devastated me. I stumbled out of his office and made my way to a pretty little church just off campus. I sat in the empty sanctuary and tried to examine my options. None were good.

Marriage was out of the question. While I would have gone for that solution in an instant, I knew that Scott was repulsed with the idea and no longer wanted to have anything to do with me. He was a brilliant law student, an important man on campus, and the pride of his family. No way would he throw it all away just to right a little mistake.

Suicide was an option. But what would that do to my sister and father? Here we were on the brink of having my mother committed to a mental hospital. It would destroy them. But having the baby would be even worse. I was sure my family would rather that I be dead.

Where could I go? What could I do? I slipped off the pew to my knees and prayed. “God, please get me out of this mess,” I cried.

I don’t know how long I knelt and cried and prayed. But when I finally got up, I had heard no answer from God.

After that I became so nauseated that I couldn’t eat or sleep. When the day came to confront Mother, Aunt Delores flew into Los Angeles. I was so sick I could barely drive, but somehow I made it to my parents’ home. Delores greeted me at the door and I immediately began to shake. I went into the bathroom to try to pull myself together. I was grateful for the strength of Aunt Delores and was glad she was there. If only I could tell her the truth and go home with her to the pretty rainbow-colored room I had once stayed in upstairs in her house. If only I could crawl between those clean colorful sheets and pull them over my head until this nightmare went away.

“Oh, God,” I cried. “There is no way out. I’m trapped.”

I came out of the bathroom and told my aunt, “I can’t stay. I’ve got finals in the morning and I don’t feel well. I can’t bear to see the scene that’s going to be here tonight. Please forgive me, Delores, but I have to go. Can you explain it to Dad for me?”

My aunt looked disappointed, but promised she would call and let me know the result.

I made my way back to my UCLA apartment in Westwood Village and threw myself onto the bed. I was too sick and distraught to study for finals. I would have to rely on the work I had done all semester to carry me. “Oh, God, give me a good memory,” I cried. Why was I praying? Did God hear me? Was there even a God?

Early the next morning Aunt Delores called. “Are you feeling any better?” she asked.

“A little. I’m heading for my exam in a few minutes. How did it go last night?”

“Not good. When we approached your mother about going peacefully to the hospital she became hysterical.” My aunt took a deep breath before describing it. “I’ve never seen her like that. She screamed at us and said we were just like all the other communists who were out to get her. She called us horrible names—you can’t believe the things she said.”

“Yes, I can. She says those things to me all the time.”

“We tried to talk reasonably. She screamed,
‘You’re
all crazy,
I’m
not! There is nothing wrong with me.’ Then she ran to her room, grabbed her purse and car keys, flew out the door and into the car, and was gone before we could stop her.”

“Where is she now?”

“We don’t know. She didn’t come back last night. The doctor informed your father that he could sign some papers and the police would pick her up and have her committed.”

There was silence.

“Well ... what did he do?” I pushed her to tell me.

“He broke down and cried and said he just couldn’t do it,” she described painfully. “He feels that if he doesn’t have her committed maybe she’ll snap out of it.”

I knew that he had visions of insane asylums out of the horror movies of the past and felt there would be no hope for her there. As cruel as she had been to him over the years, he still loved her enough to stick it out in hopes that someday she would “snap out of it.”

“So it’s up to you, Stormie,” Aunt Delores’ deeply exhausted voice continued on the phone. “The only one who can do anything for your mother is you.”

“Me?” I choked. “You’ve got to be kidding. There’s nothing I can do with her. We’ve always hated each other.”

“Yes, I know,” she sighed. “I’m afraid your mother was a terrible mother.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Someone else knew that she was a horrible mother. I gathered strength in her remark because the recognition of that truth by someone else made me feel like I wasn’t crazy after all. At the same time, I felt the responsibility of the world on my shoulders. I was pregnant and sick, and my dad and sister needed me more than ever now that Mother had left. I couldn’t disappear for a year to have a baby. My suicide would destroy them. There was only one place left to turn.

CHAPTER SEVEN