Hidden Valley Road - Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker Page 0,39

into a small red-brick bungalow downtown and sometimes invited Jim’s younger brothers over—but not Donald, never Donald. While Kathy got along well with the other Galvin boys, things were strained with Jim’s mother, whose visits seemed more like inspections. “You haven’t dusted,” Mimi would say, to which Kathy would reply, “I don’t have the time. Here’s my dust rag if you want it.” Jim loved that.

Kathy gave birth to a son, Jimmy, who was just a few years younger than Mimi’s youngest, Mary. Jim dropped out of college and started tending bar, a far cry from his goal of becoming a teacher like his father. But that hardly seemed to matter: He was a family man now, superior to Donald, he believed, in every conceivable way. When he landed a regular gig tending bar at the Broadmoor Hotel, one of the fanciest places in town, that seemed to throw off enough prestige to make him feel as if he’d won.

* * *

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JIM REVELED IN being a husband and a father, even as he took every opportunity to break his marriage vows. A ladies’ man before his marriage, he had no interest in changing now.

One night, Kathy noticed his motorcycle outside a bar and she went in, walked over to the table where he and his date were sitting, poured a pitcher of beer on them both, and walked out. She wanted to put Jim on notice—to let him know she had her pride.

Jim got back at her later, when they were alone. When Kathy decided to quit her day job and go back to school for a teaching degree, he pulled the spark plugs out of her car to keep her from getting to class. “Get a job,” he said. When she got a ride from her mother, Jim was waiting when she came home. He slapped her across the face.

As the violence increased, the worst thing she could possibly do, she realized, was threaten to leave him. Once, when she tried that, he punched her in the face so hard that she needed stitches. And she never could bring herself to follow through on that threat. Every time Kathy was about to leave, she thought that maybe he’d get better, or that their son needed a father. On the few occasions when she did work up enough nerve to get out of the house, just for a night or two, Jimmy would say, “I want Daddy home.”

There was another reason why Kathy wouldn’t leave. She had started to notice that Jim seemed tormented by something that had nothing to do with her—something that made her almost feel sorry for him. He would hear voices. “They’re talking to me again,” Jim would say. His voice tight with emotion, he’d describe them—people spying on him, people following him, people at work conspiring against him.

Jim stopped sleeping. He spent his nights standing over the stove, lighting a burner and turning it down and then off and then lighting it again. In these states, he would act impulsively and violently, not toward Kathy or their son, but toward himself.

Once, walking in downtown Colorado Springs, Jim rammed his head into a brick wall.

Another time, he dove into a lake, fully clothed.

Jim’s first hospital stay for a psychotic episode was on Halloween night in 1969, when little Jimmy was still a baby. He was admitted to St. Francis Hospital, but left within a day. Kathy was frightened for herself and her son. But she was also terrified for Jim. He was still her husband and her son’s father, and leaving him now seemed impossible.

Kathy never liked Jim’s parents—Jim himself had seemed to prefer it that way—but she felt Don and Mimi had to be told about what was happening. She could hardly believe their reaction. She had expected tears, maybe a show of compassion, or at least sympathy. Instead, Kathy saw two people trying hard to pretend the conversation wasn’t happening at all—and, when pressed, questioning the premise of that conversation. Was everything really happening the way Kathy said it was? Jim’s parents never came close to accepting that their son was entirely at fault, or even in danger. Instead, they framed what was happening as a marital problem between the younger couple—something that Jim