Hidden Valley Road - Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker Page 0,163

and mental health issues: bulimia, anorexia, anxiety disorders. It was there that Lindsay and Rick learned that Jack’s issues had less to do with pot or ADD than with anxiety—the fear of becoming mentally ill.

Jack was angry. He had been saddled with a genetic legacy he’d never asked for, and made to feel like a freak. Lindsay blamed herself for this. “I made such a deliberate effort to expose my children to my mentally ill brothers, so they would not have a bias or feel shame around it. It sort of backfired a little bit.”

But it wasn’t just the brothers themselves who affected him. For both Jack and his sister, it was witnessing the strain that their mother shouldered, the burden she carried. “My kids have seen how much pain all of it has caused over all the years, and I think they’re protective of me,” Lindsay said. “Anytime I’m having to deal with something—my sister, or my mom, or one of my brothers—there’s angst and frustration around it.”

When Lindsay looked at Jack, some part of her had to recognize herself—the little girl she’d once been, walking rings around her brother Donald, tightening the rope, planning to burn him at the stake, bursting with fury and shame.

* * *

A FEW MONTHS into the program, Lindsay and Rick traveled to Montana to see Jack and take part in some family therapy exercises together. Margaret came along, mostly to lend her sister moral support. They stayed with the Garys at Flathead Lake, just like the old days. It was a time warp for them both—the meadows in shades of green, yellow, and rust; the dusting of snow on the trees; the gorgeous home; the tennis courts, the orchard, and the horses. Even Trudy, the housekeeper, was still there, embracing both sisters warmly.

That weekend, Margaret’s own past replayed in the back of her mind—not just being back in Montana with Sam and Nancy, but watching Lindsay and Rick in the same position her parents must have been in so long ago, when they decided to send her away to the Garys. But she was there to help Lindsay, not to relive the past. Lindsay was going through huge emotional swings. On one hand, Lindsay understood the privileged position she was in. On the other hand, her son was going to be away from her for two whole years. What kind of mother does that? Of course, both she and Margaret knew the answer to that question.

For both sisters, being around the Garys gave them that feeling they had become accustomed to so long ago—the awareness that they were, simultaneously, some of the unluckiest and luckiest people on the face of the earth.

When he got home, Jack did well, attending school, staying sober, and earning good grades again. Jack had learned to manage his anxiety with rock climbing, meditation, even journaling, though he was quick to acknowledge that all these techniques were just deflections. “There’s no real way around the anxiety,” he said now. “You have to go through it.” Jack had become so therapized that he policed everyone else in the house. “He calls us out on our stuff all the time, and uses all the technical language,” Lindsay said, awash in relief.

Nancy gave Jack a fly rod as a graduation gift. “He’s a different kid,” she said. For college, Jack was looking to study early childhood education. After that, he wanted to pursue a career in outdoor wilderness therapy.

When Lindsay looks at Jack now, she thinks not of herself, but of Peter and Donald and Matt and all of her sick brothers. What sort of early interventions might have helped them before the medications took their toll, neutralizing them without curing them? And what about the thousands of people who couldn’t afford what her son had—who languish because of a lack of resources, or a stigma from a society that would prefer to pretend that people like them do not exist?

“The haves have these options and the have-nots do not,” Lindsay said. “To see this kid take this other track and have it be so successful—it could have easily gone the other direction. I genuinely believe if my brothers had had the opportunity to do something like this, they may not have become as ill

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