Hidden Valley Road - Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker Page 0,65

sympathetically reported, “it seemed like his tears would never stop.”

The psychiatrist, taking a page from Freud and Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, seemed to believe that Donald somehow had the ability to climb out of this state on his own—“It seemed that Donald had chosen to become psychotic again,” Nemser wrote—and so he decided the staff should do what they could to help Donald choose wisely. They went out of their way to empathize with him, holding his hand and telling him how sad they were for him. The strategy did have some effect on Donald. “He began to express himself more freely about Jean,” he wrote, “saying that he still really cared for her and hoped that she might one day contact him, but that he refused to contact her anymore since every time he did this, it ended in disaster for himself.”

Donald worked his way toward being discharged again, finding a job lead while out on a one-day furlough. He would be a vacuum cleaner salesman—good money, flexible hours, everything he could reasonably want. He got out on May 2, 1972, and the cycle started again. This time his behavior became so menacing—threatening both of his parents’ lives, they said—that Don and Mimi petitioned a local court to order Donald back into Pueblo in August. When the staff decided to place him in seclusion, he grabbed the keys from the door, pushed the attendant into the seclusion room, and locked him in. Donald didn’t try to escape, however. He just sat there outside the room, saying he wanted to teach the attendant a lesson. The doctors gave him a high dose of Thorazine and a smaller dose of Stelazine. Gradually, he climbed out of psychosis again, and he was discharged on August 28 with a guarded prognosis.

The following spring, 1973, Donald was admitted to Oregon State Hospital after trying once more to see Jean. His intake notes described him as “very uncooperative and unmanageable” and “both confused and disoriented”—saying, for example, that he had no memory of ever being at this hospital, despite this being his third time there.

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BETWEEN HOSPITAL STAYS, Donald was home in time for another family wedding, this one a less pleasant affair than John’s a year earlier. Richard, son number six, had been the Galvin family’s schemer—ambitious and gutsy, entrepreneurial, and more than a little willing to bend the rules to get what he wanted. As a freshman at Air Academy High, he found a way to sneak into the school commissary by applying chewing gum to the lock of a door. For months, he and his friend stole jeans and food and anything else they could get their hands on. Once he was caught, he was suspended for a year and forced to go to another high school, which had infuriated his father. “You’re going to mess up if you keep going this route,” Don would say.

In 1972, Richard was back at Air Academy High, completing his senior year, when he scored the winning goal in the state hockey championship. After the game, a girl from the opposing team’s cheerleading squad asked Richard if he was going to the victory party. He was, and she got pregnant that night.

Their wedding took place a few months later, somewhat under duress, at the Garden of the Gods, the geological marvel in Colorado Springs. Richard was high on mushrooms during the ceremony. His friend Dustin played “The Times They Are a-Changin’?” on the guitar. Still, all seemed to be going smoothly until a voice cut through everything. Donald had climbed to the top of the rocks. Now he was shouting: “I’m not allowing this marriage! This marriage is not in the truth of God!”

Jim and Don subdued Donald, and the ceremony went on.

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IN MAY 1973, Don and Mimi agreed to take Donald back from Pueblo one more time. This time he lasted four months.

On September 1, a member of the sheriff’s office brought Donald back to the state hospital on another “confine and treat” order, requested by his parents. Donald told the intake staff that he’d taken his Stelazine, as instructed, but when he asked Mimi for some Benadryl, she refused to give it to him; she was worried it would make him too