LOVE STORY: Truly, Madly, Deeply

By Patrick Tracey

 
I took a step back when I met my sister’s new boyfriend. He’s the new guy on the scene here at the Webster House Center, a clubhouse in Boston for schizophrenics, and was I impressed. He was quieter than my sister, a bit more reflective, but a nice complement, possibly a new balance for her more wildly schizophrenic tendencies. 

Boy meets girl and they give it a go. Not an unusual story, right?  But when the “girl” and the “boy” are schizophrenics, then it is unusual. I never felt the odds at the clubhouse would be so good, if only because the goods were so odd. I could be the one who has it backwards, though, because the bloom is on the rose here at the day care center for the mentally ill.

As always the back entrance to the clubhouse was crowded with smokers coming and going on a gray November day, some puffing, some dozing on meds at the slow track of life, on the day I met him. Not far off, two scruffy men were playing pool. Across the recreational room, another man was strumming wrong chords on an acoustic guitar. Others milled casually about, talking to their own head phantoms. Everyone looked dizzy or disoriented. This was nothing new.

And then there was my sister Chelle who I found, finally, with her new beau Murray. They’d set themselves up on a couch together inside the sprawling center, holding hands and sneaking shy smiles amid the music and artwork on the walls made by the dozens of schizophrenics who come here each week day. There they were, two schizophrenics in the mid-fifties, beating the odds by falling in love way outside the mythical romantic mainstream.

What luck, I thought. He’s not too off the wall and they are both single, both artsy, his thinning white hair just a few shades brighter than her own. He has a soft smile and intelligent eyes on a face that’s nearly handsome. He is not a large man. In fact, he is slight. This reassures me. I’m Chelle’s only brother, and I feel protective. If the new fresh prince gets rough, I think I can take him. Not that it would ever come to that, but you never know. If it did kick off, then it’d be more like subduing little Billy Bibbit than the giant Chief in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. 

Murray is a sensitive soul who shares Chelle’s fondness for theatre. Once an actress Off Broadway, her eyes light up as he begins to hum a Cole Porter tune. When it ends, we clap gently. Despite them both having the most horrible mental illnesses known to psychiatry, you could never imagine them being horrible to each other. They are so naturally at ease together that I wonder if their shared passions might transcend their mutual disability.

Even before Chelle developed her schizophrenia—a biological mental illness that strikes suddenly, normally in the late teens to early twenties—she was forever waiting for the arrival of what she always called her shining white knight. If her knight wasn’t thundering up on horseback, then he might be a handsome fellow stage actor in Manhattan, or even a sensitive playwright. One day a door would swing open and there he’d stand—warm and charming. They’d marry and live happily ever after.

The church bells never rang for Chelle. Things did not break her way, because schizophrenics are hardly winning the marriage sweepstakes. But Chelle was never plagued with failure. To her the idea that she was out of the loop permanently never seemed real to her. She kept this one knightly hope with her, even as the rest of us doubted it would ever happen.

When we heard about Murray, we wondered if he was merely imaginary. Yet here he was in the flesh, a living, breathing Lothario in the day center for schizophrenics. Or rather, here they are.

I sink into the sofa with them. Remembering my own awkward “meet the parents” moments, I do my best to project a sense of non-threatening warmth. Words matter all the more, so they come slowly. Whenever there’s a break in the conversation, another schizophrenic man standing a few yards away stops staring at us.

Like Chelle, Murray is somewhat intellectual. This is good. As a teenager, Chelle had found a  kindred spirit among the existentialists, winning a national high-school essay contest for her thoughts on The Outsider by Albert Camus. Like the author, Chelle was drawn to those on the margins.  

Then she herself became one of society's far-end outsiders, a schizophrenic swept up in her mid-twenties by the sudden onset of this enigmatic psychosis, the fifth member of our clan (and the second of my four siblings) to carry the burden of this neurological disorder that runs in families and gallops through our own.

Schizophrenia is not split personality and is not imbecility. Basically, it’s just hearing disembodied voices, an experience that can come out of nowhere, usually between the ages of 16 and 25. Schizophrenics can also hear ordinary voices more loudly, see colors more brightly, and often have the feeling of being followed.  The experience can make it hard to sleep, to have a conversation, to drive or do many everyday activities, much less have a decent romance.

When Murray excuses himself, Chelle whispers that they’ve also shared their first kiss already. “On a bench in the little park outside the center,” she says. “It was a good one. Shhh. Here he comes again.”  

This is concerning.  I wonder, aren’t they going too far too fast?  I don’t want to see Chelle get hurt. My sister's  journey has been bruising enough. In the mid-1970s, she came home from Manhattan to announce that she’d just dumped the film star Warren Beatty to take up with Jesus of Nazareth. For awhile these voices had her believing that the whole planet was preparing for her end-of-the-world wedding to Jesus. Apart from Jesus and Warren Beatty, the heart throbs rising from the mists of her madness include Buddha, the actor Chevy Chase, and the newscaster Brian Williams. 

Chelle was so far gone that one time she bolted from my mother’s condo stark naked. Within minutes she found her way to the local Roman Catholic parish. In the midst of the Sunday service at St. Peter’s, the pews packed, Chelle flung open the doors and strode up the center aisle. She walked with perfect aplomb, though not wearing a stitch. Nearly to the altar, she spun around to face the shocked congregation. “You bastards,” she snarled, “that’s my husband you’re worshipping.”

These days Chelle keeps the family posted on her prospects. One week we were all chagrined to hear that Murray had got the ax. It turns out that he was moving too fast. Chelle hit the brakes and he fell off. Good for her, we all thought. She knows her boundaries.

By the next week, Murray is back in the frame, trying to win her heart again. He may yet attain shining-white-knight status, though it won't be easy. “This might sound crazy,” Chelle says one night over the phone, “but Chevy Chase and I are going to get married. And I think we’re gonna be as tight as two people can be. I think he’s perfect for me.”

All right then. I am not surprised. Chelle always had a weakness for the funny preppy type, and Chevy Chase has always been right at the top of her hit parade of love. And then Chelle adds matter of factly: “You know, I created him 2,000 years ago when I was the sky. I was the sky and Chevy was the first force.”

Chelle delivers this in a voice so full of certainty that we just nod, knowing that if she’s dumping Warren Beatty for Jesus of Nazareth, or upgrading from Murray to Chevy Chase, even if it’s all in her head, then how bad could things be for her.

The next time I see Chelle, she has forgotten all about being the sky. She’s still waiting for her knight to appear. Chevy Chase is still the odds-on favorite, but the newscaster Brian Williams remains a close second, Murray a not-so-distant third. On their little park bench outside the clubhouse, Chelle and Murray are holding hands again, singing show tunes together, and working their way back to their next little kiss. 

For today at least, Murray is going at my sister's pace, cooling his jets. Who knows? Tomorrow they may be making mad love to loud Bach music--and I hope they are. Or tomorrow they may be star crossed schizophrenics. As with all who come this way, there's no guarantee on tomorrow. Then again, for the truly-madly-deeply in love, maybe there are no tomorrows. 

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Patrick Tracey is the author of the newly-published memoir Stalking Irish Madness: Searching for the Roots of My Family’s Schizophrenia (Bantam Dell).  He can be reached at stalkingirishmadness.com.