Hidden Valley Road - Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker Page 0,151

he’d almost laugh. “He wants so much to be like his father and feel on top of the world,” he said. “I think he tries too hard.”

To hear Richard tell it—over lunch one day, a few weeks later—he clashed with Lindsay because it seemed to him that all she ever wanted to discuss was the sick brothers. “I got so upset. I said, ‘Mary, I want one dinner to talk about the moon, the stars and the skies without talking about mental illness.’ It just became so depressing for me.”

Richard seemed to take more after his mother than his father, determined to speak about pleasant subjects only, like his trips to Pebble Beach and Cabo, and his business deals in Dubai. Like Mimi, Richard also was convinced of the value of having a pedigree, being raised from good stock. This much was clear when he told stories about his father that were unlike any that anyone else in the family told. In Richard’s version of his father’s life, Don Galvin wasn’t the second-in-command of the USS Juneau—he was the captain. Don Galvin wasn’t just a briefing officer at Ent Air Force Base—he had a personal relationship with President Eisenhower. Don Galvin wasn’t just the first executive director of the Federation of Rocky Mountain States—he founded it. Don Galvin didn’t get his Father of the Year award from the Knute Rockne Club—the award came directly from President Nixon. Don Galvin wasn’t just the president of Colorado Springs’ local ornithological group—he “brought Audubon to the West.”

And Don Galvin wasn’t just a communications officer at NORAD. “Dad was in OSS,” Richard said, “which became the CIA.”

Richard would talk at length about covert missions his father took to Iceland, Ecuador, and Panama, all while using his jobs at the Academy and NORAD as covers. All this, Richard said, he’d gleaned from conversations with his mother. “She just said there were things that he could never say,” he said.

The idea that Don Galvin was a spy is unsubstantiated by any available information from any military branch or intelligence agency. And yet this romantic view of his father was helpful to Richard. At the very least, it was preferable, for instance, to the story of a father whose military career stalled out—perhaps because he’d harbored the liberal political views of an academic, not the hawkish view of a military officer—and who gritted his teeth after being demoted to service as a glorified PR man.

Rather than think of Don Galvin that way, Richard adopted a convenient self-delusion. Not the sort of delusion that fits a DSM criterion. But we all have stories we tell ourselves.

* * *

—

MARGARET HAD TOLD Lindsay that she didn’t want to spend the night at the house—that she’d rather come in for the funeral the next morning with Wylie and her two girls. Once again, Lindsay felt abandoned. She was not sure what to do with that feeling. Most of the evening, she didn’t discuss it—until, in the kitchen, John turned to Lindsay.

“So. Margaret’s not here.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Lindsay said.

“What’s the problem?”

Lindsay took a few seconds, not sure how measured to make her response.

“I think it’s Margaret’s overwhelming guilt,” she said finally, “at not having lifted a fucking finger for, like, ever.”

“Yeah, she’s into her own thing,” John said, treading lightly.

“She is into her own thing,” Lindsay said, and her smile widened. “Actually, there you go! That is the explanation.”

* * *

—

LINDSAY WALKED OUTSIDE to the patio and hugged Michael and Mark. There was talk of who had RSVP’d for the funeral and if the clear weather would hold long enough before an expected rainstorm. Then the reminiscing started—the epic road trip the family took across the country for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York; the luggage flying off the roof when Dad misjudged the clearance of an A&W restaurant drive-through; all the luggage coming into the car, jammed in with the kids and the birds.

“Didn’t he drive off the road in Kentucky in another rainstorm?” Mark asked.

“Yeah,” said John. “And in the rainstorm a rock hit the truck, the bus. And then he had to take it