“Me too,” she said. “I feel great.” She took my hand and our fingers interlocked. “It’s all about dopamine and serotonin and controlling your brain chemicals, Daddy.” 

“Cool, hon.”

I didn’t get it. I did what any dumb love-struck animal does when he is happy to see his mate has returned to their den. I kissed her and told her, “Let’s take a Jacuzzi” when we pulled into the driveway.

“Sure.”

I ran out and opened the door for her. She stepped out of the black steed. Almost on cue, the kids ran up to her and hugged her. Sean was a kid with his brown soulful deer eyes and Henry and Shauna with their hazel eyes and blond locks crowded around their olive-skinned mother and she petted their heads; they were her darling cuddly pups. They hunkered up close, what I came to call huckling after something John Lee Hooker once sang, “Let’s huckle up,” least that is what I think he sang, you never know, and they all gathered around their mom. I think it was the last time they ever did. Sigh.

“Hi mommy,” Shauna shouted almost too loudly. 

Oh how we missed you, mommy!

“How do you feel, mommy? Did you quit smoking, mommy?” she asked, tugging at her mom’s emerald green blouse, her mom’s earrings dangling, her lips opening, her hand tapping her blond daughter’s head.

“So good to have you back, mom,” Henry said.

Do you remember those words, honey?

“So far so good,” she said.

I was beaming with happiness, and she was too. Later that night when they were asleep and the nanny was gone we went in the blue-lit spa beneath the tea trees.  

Pellegrino was all she drank. The cold air hit the hot bubbling water, and it felt better to be almost all under, except she did not try to push me under. 

Life was almost effortless, including the sex, now with her. That night was the ultimate high. No smokes, no beer, just sparkling water.   Lots of lovemaking.

“Honey, I need you to see the video they gave me. It’s important.”

God, I never watched it. I never knew what had been done until it was way too late. I never knew about the pharmaceutical brain surgery that docs routinely perform. Even if I had known it isn’t as if I could have done something. I was powerless against this enemy. I just did not know that everything was set. I was too busy holding Tiffany beside me in the cool swirling blue turquoise backlit waters of our stone Jacuzzi. That night we went to bed but she got up and said she wanted to go downstairs for a while so I fell asleep alone.

Like I said, the first few days were great. 

Excellent. 

 

One day Ray walked down the road from his home to ours to share the drawings of our new home. “What the hell is going on?” she said. “Why do you mean always take all the credit?”

I didn’t know what happened there either. All I knew was that she was talking to me that night about how beautiful our home was going to be. We already had the architectural drawings approved by county regional planning and the next step was to in with them to the coastal commission. We had experienced expeditors working on our behalf and everything was moving along. “The fact that Ray gets to be the first name on the architectural renderings when everyone knows it was my genius that created this house. I should be first.”

Ray, looking up in his thin rimmed glasses and closely trimmed beard, slender hands clasped, said, “Sure.”

But it wouldn’t end, not for her, at least. “I’d take my name off completely,” he said, “except that the Coastal Commission wants to have a licensed architect.” 

“Oh fuck you people.”

But she went back to her room and went out and left. I didn’t know if she was going back to her cigarettes or what. We would break ground within a year on our fully green home, he told me while we sat in the living room and she was out there on the patio doing something I did not know about. We even knew what kind of sustainability rating we would get for our wood and where the solar would be installed, he said. 

But this ended. It just stopped. 

She came out and said, “You all think you can talk to God.”

The dream just stopped. Reality came barreling down. Sometimes you really don’t want what you wish for. Yes, of course, for the moment, she wasn’t smoking. 

But I kind of wished for the old ways, bad as they were. I kind of was starting to miss them. I was shivering. I was frightened. I wanted to get her out of there. I got up and I walked with her outside on the patio, and Ray stuck his head out and said, “I’ll be going.”

She was emailing all of her friends from the group and they were talking via email all day and they were complaining and grumbling from what she told me. But they were all going to get through this. It was going on two weeks now and she had not smoked. I thought everything was good but inside she was falling apart. I thought I could go to my office and enjoy a day without a crisis, unlike Erasmus of Samuel Johnson fame. Tiff called my office a few days later. Her voice was frantic. 

“Come home, now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Shenny is kidnapping the kids.” 

I burst in through the door and jogged into the living room and out to the patio by the pool. Henry and Shauna, blond under the sun, stood beside Shenny on the picnic bench. She had with her the Guatemalan pouch purse packed with towels, sunscreen, shovels and sand buckets.

“We’re just going to the beach, daddy,” Shauna said.

I stepped inside Tiff’s studio. I saw the fridge in there now and it became suspicious looking. 

“She’s trying to take them from me.”

I held her close.

“They’re going to the beach.” 

She pushed off me. 

“Tell her to tell them to stop calling her Mama. Don’t they know I’m their mom?”

“Of course, they do.”

“I can’t stand her here.”

“We don’t have to have her.”

“She’s going to take my kids. All of them.”

Things worsened.

Her father, who lived outside Boston, died. She came out of her studio and her she was holding a whisky bottle.

“My father died.” 

She never had seen her father in all the time I knew her. He never called. But she became furious at her step brothers and sisters. 

“They’re going to get everything.” 

“He didn’t have anything, honey. The man lived alone in a junkyard with rusted out earth movers, diggers, and dumpers.   He had nothing.”

“He had famous paintings. I saw them. Andrew Wyeth was his drinking buddy.”

She was holding a whisky bottle.   Jack Daniels. High school sweethearts and backseat of a Chevy, it was all coming back now, a very bad time. Not now but a long time ago. She was here but she was invaded by her father now and she was being taken over and he just took everything out of her sucking out everything that was good and replacing it with the darkest cloud that came out in the pallor of her skin.

Life isn’t the same anymore but it unfolds so quickly it is difficult to make adjustments. She was my beautiful wife. I loved her deeply. She was mother of my children. She needed help. I was not prepared, though. Everything happened quickly, even though time, as measured in hours, days and weeks, seemed to make the experience stretched out. If it happened over months it seemed like seconds. No moment was free of worry. Weird sounds came from the studio that night. She’d gotten hold of one of my electric guitars, the one my dead sister’s dead boyfriend played, and had started playing with feedback from her amplifiers at window-breaking volume. 

I heard knocking. 

I opened the door. 

“You got to shut her up.”

Karl stood in the doorway with two other neighbors, Nan and Charley in his thin-rimmed wire glasses. Karl was around six three, a writer. Tiffany’s music kept going. It was like our neighbors did not even exist. She was going to play her weird wailing guitar feedback. Our eyes all met. 

Charley said, “I’m going to call the sheriff if she doesn’t knock it off.”

“I’ll make sure we quiet it down,” I said, then went to Tiffany as soon they left.

“Come with me.” I took her hand and led her upstairs. I saw her down on the bed. She was grinning. 

“You need to talk to your doctor from the clinic,” I said. “You need to get off whatever drug he put you on.”

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“Because if you drink and take Wellbutrin, you can’t just quit.”

“What is Wellbutrin?”

“It’s the prescription they gave me there. I tried to tell you about it. You know, the dopamine. The video.”

“You’re kidding. You’ve been on Wellbutrin.”

 “That’s right. It’s what the doctor gave me to help me stop smoking. I love it.”

But, of course: she was on the perfect drug. Since she wouldn’t talk to her doctor, she couldn’t taper the dosage. Since she couldn’t taper the dosage she couldn’t stop drinking. And why wouldn’t she talk to her doctor? Didn’t I get it? Didn’t I know why? Couldn’t I read her mind? She could read mine. I just went up to the room. I’m telling you. I think I shut down. I became afraid of taking action. I had some hope.

I was trying to sleep while hearing her voice streaming up through the heating and ventilation system. When I woke the next morning she was up talking to herself. She stayed up all night again the next day. I walked into her office and saw the computer screen where she had begun tapping out words like Zyban and Zion as if they were connected. I read another section where she’d written a note reminding herself to take a cell phone with her everywhere “so people will just think I’m talking to somebody.” 

 

I entered that weird zone—whether your significant other is suffering bipolar, schizophrenia, alcoholism, postpartum depression, paranoia, or whatever else—where the person who’s ill accuses the one who’s trying to help of being the one who is really, really sick. And you need help. You would have thought I was Sean Connery in Hitchock’s Marnie. 

You spend all of your time trying to convince them finally that they need help. You go through so many weird things to keep with them. Because you love them. You don’t want to give up on them. You don’t want to turn them over to the authorities.

I did so many weird things chasing this girl that was no longer with us. God, I remember one time going to the Commons and I swear to God she was wearing a musical triangle on her wrist as a bracelet, traipsing up ahead of me, in white go-go boots. And I put up with this for a long time. 

So more weeks went by and February slipped into March and I don’t know how we got through these months. I hung on, trying to hang onto my marriage, feeling as desperate as anybody in human history. I even took her to New York, thinking that if we just spent some time away from the kids it would be all good again. No such luck.

After New York that spring, things worsened and I became desperate to get her help. I know this might sound weird because she was acting very weird. I know this. You’re wondering how on Earth I could not have gotten her help. But you have to understand time changed here. I do not know how months passed. I do not know why I put up with it or how. You don’t have control of time. You go through one day at a time. I kept the kids away from her. She was drinking and in her office. I was scared for the kids, and for my marriage. I visited a family law attorney who told me to snap pictures of my wife passed out with all the beer cans and whisky bottles in the picture. I could not conceive of betraying Tiffany like this even if it were in the interests of the children. I did not do this. I kept trying to talk. Once, that spring, I tried to talk to her in the bedroom and things escalated.

“You need to contact the doctor from the clinic.”

“You know, you’re a real nut case,” she said. “You need to go to a mental institution with padded walls. That’s how crazy you are.” 

Tiff slammed the door shut so hard this time it became wedged in the frame. She stood there, framed by a doorway with a light strip all the way down the center. She came back into the room.

“I’m telling you right now—get out of this house. Quit molesting my children and quit bum fucking the nanny.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” The crows’ feet at the corners of her eyes deepened and her lips thinned out. I stopped and moved back. I could feel my fingers balling into fists while I tried to not exist. I wanted to leave. She was so in one of her crazy stormy moods, and if I went away when I came back she’d calm down and things would be okay. It had worked a few times a long time ago when we fought. She would calm down. I moved to the door. But she blocked my path. “I want to go,” I said.

“You don’t get to leave. Not till I’m done talking to you and get you to behave. You quit molesting children. I know why you invite them into bed each night.”

“No, sweetie, I’ve got to go.”

“You’re a child molester.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“I should call Child Services.”

“I’m not a child molester, not in any way, and you know that, sweetheart. Now come on. I have to go.” I again tried to make my way to the door, but she blocked my way and shoved me onto the bed. 

“Sit down, motherfucker.” 

 “I’m sorry,” I said, “for whatever I did to you. I’m really sorry. But now you have to stop it, okay? Just leave me alone. I’ll listen to you. I’ll do what you want but you have to quit screaming and accusing me of things you know perfectly well I’ve never done.”

“What the hell are you writing a book for? Everything you ever wrote you cribbed from me. I wrote all your books. You thieving bastard. It ought to be my name on your books. You’re trying to get too close to God. You actually think you have something to offer this world. I hope you die.” 

 “I want to go.”

She shook her finger at me. “I’m an atheist. So don’t think I live in God’s hell.  You’re dead and you’re a whore. You are my hell. Sit down.” 

She pushed me down. She was about to bitch-slap me. I slipped the first but didn’t see the second and felt her hand smack the side of my head. It hurt. I just tried to shake it off. I was willing to endure anything to just talk one more time with Tiffany not this bedroom monster.

“I think, honey, that whatever medication the doctor gave you, you need to contact him.” I watched for another try. “He needs to lower your dose. You’ve been up for days. You must be exhausted.”

“Shut up,” she said. 

“You must be tired. I think you’re up too high. You need to contact the doctor at the clinic.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“I’m trying to help you.”

“You’re a homo.”

“Tiff, stop it.”

“Child molester.”

“Stop it,” I said, “just stop it now before something bad happens.”

“Like what? Are you going to kill me? You want me dead, don’t you? You always have. Remember when you told me you wanted me dead?”

“Just stop it. Now. You’re so twisting my words.”

Someone was pulling in the drive. I knew the beautiful low rumble. It was our neighbor in his new Porsche. The moment she was peering through the curtains I got up and ran out the door downstairs. 

I went up to the kids. I didn’t know what else to do. I went directly to the kids. Henry and Shauna buried themselves in the folds of the nanny’s short-sleeved cotton blouse. Shauna sucked her fingers and Henry suckled his green binky. They seemed almost oblivious to what was happening. I knew they were not. 

Shenny patted Henry’s back as he intently peered into the warmth of the Olsen twins playing on “Full House” on the TV set. 

Upstairs we all heard things being thrown, door being slammed, feet stomping around. She appeared between me and the television.

“Quit using our children as your shield.” 

I got up.

“Just stop it,” I said. “Just let it go.”

“I can’t let it go. You’ve ruined me.”

We somehow went out of the house to get her away from the children.

“You’ve got to get some help.”

“Screw you. What do you know?”

She went from me to inside her Suburban, throwing things onto the driveway, slamming doors, and screaming. I pulled her out.

“Stop it. Just stop it!” 

I held her by her shoulders near the rose bushes by the playroom with the French doors. 

“Stop it,” I shouted.

“Stop it,” I said, holding her arms.

We struggled.

“I’ll call 911 on you, you bastard. You’re trying to kill me.” 

“You’re drunk. You need help.” 

“I’ll call 911 and tell the sheriff you’re trying to kill me.”

I went cold. I dropped everything. 

“Do what you want,” I said.

I went through the kitchen into the family playroom. Sean slouched on the couch, the long wires of his X-Box 360 trailing across the floor. Beside him was his friend Ian. 

 Sean didn’t seem particularly affected by it all, and Ian just kept laughing and playing and swearing. I stepped back in the living room. Shenny had taken the twins upstairs and put them to sleep.

She was gone for days now.

Everything was bad after that fight. 

It just all changed after that. 

I blamed the hospital for giving her medication that sent her on this manic spree. I called the hospital but they said all they could do was talk to the patient herself. 

I went online and saw she was using the charge cards. After Santa Monica, she went down to Orange County, then out to Palm Springs. I tried calling.

Finally, around 6:00 AM one morning, I reached her. She hung up once she heard my voice. I tried again. She picked up.

“Come on, sweetie, you have to talk. We’ve got nothing if we can’t talk.”

“I can’t be around you,” she said. “You’re too dangerous.”

I spoke to her on the phone and I do believe I made myself cry, “Come back home, baby,” like the most pathetic blues man in the world. “Come back home, and I’ll be good,” I said on the phone, and my eyes felt good, all filled with tears, but losing her did not feel good. 

Tiffany didn’t come back for five days, and when she did she looked like a total street person.   I was with the kids in the pool so this must have been around May or June or by now. 

She flounced in through the backyard and passed by us in the swimming pool, her big bonnet hat covering her little head, her hand holding it down yet flapping like two big wings coming out of her head. She seemed totally different. Her shoulders were hunched and her beautiful hair looked dull, but it was more than that. It was also how insanity takes somebody and changes them, their whole being, so that they become somebody else, not the lovely woman you fell in love with but someone with dirty blotched skin and unfocused nobody’s-home eyes…. The skirt to her dress, a flowery two-piece thing, hung low on her hips like it was falling off. She kept bouncing around taking things; some were her things, but a lot were our things. 

At one point she stopped in front of the pool. I turned to look at her, and she just seemed so dirty and unkempt, dirt on her cheeks, her clothes piled on, unwashed. The kids were swimming around and laughing and splashing.

“Hey, asshole, I want a studio and I want it now. If you don’t get me one, I’ll divorce you for sure. Besides, I want you dead.” 

She went back in the house. 

Minutes later, she began moving things out of the house and slamming doors and laughing madly. 

“What’s the matter with Mommy?” Henry said.

“Oh, sweetie, I don’t know. Come on, it’s not your problem.”

“But, Daddy, why is Mommy taking things?”

“I don’t know, honey,” I said.

“But, Daddy, what’s happening?” Shauna said.

“What’s going on?” Henry said.

“Daddy, what’s wrong with Mommy?” Shauna said.

“She’s just not well.”

“I don’t want Mommy to be gone so much.”

“Neither do I, sweetie. I’m here, though, so don’t you worry, darling.”

I was trying to keep things light even though things were melting down.  

“Daddy, toss me in the water!” Henry shouted. I picked him up and tossed him into the deep water, and he fell in with a big splash, swam to the side, grabbed onto a rock, and waited for me to toss Shauna. I tossed her and she screamed and went underwater and then her beautiful round otter face popped up with her half-moon grin. Henry swam over and put himself in my arms. 

“Mommy drinks too much.” I threw him in the water, and he popped up, his blond hair smooth.

“She smokes too much,” Shauna said, popping up out of the water. “It’s making her sick.”

I threw him into the deep end next.

Tiff shuffled past, holding her painting of a coastal barn. 

I was swinging Shauna around when she passed by. “So are you teaching your daughter to spread her legs?” she said. 

I don’t know if Shauna heard her mom or knew what she said, so I just tried to ignore it, and pretend she hadn’t said anything. I just went on living life as if it was normal.

“What do you guys want for dinner?” I said.