Hidden Valley Road - Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker Page 0,95

what he was calling a cancer society benefit. At the hospital, he asked the doctors for a bulletproof vest to protect himself. The Vail police, he said, were jealous of him and out to get him. Eventually Peter made it back to Hidden Valley Road with Mimi and Don, staying in bed, not bathing, subsisting on coffee and cigarettes, alternating between long periods of silence and occasional explosive outbursts. Once, he locked Mimi out of the house and put his medicine in the family’s coffee.

Two of the other hockey brothers, Joe and Matt, were in and out of Pueblo at the same time. Joe was preoccupied by Catholic imagery, like his brother Donald, but never grew menacing like Donald once had; the voices in his head were not so much evil, he would say, as bothersome. Matt’s fantasies were more paranoid, making it hard for him to stay stable for long. Between hospital stays, he was arrested once for loitering in Colorado Springs and placed on probation.

Donald had been living more or less peaceably at home since his last state hospital visit in 1980. Now the one everyone was most wary of was Jim.

Earlier that year, after sixteen years of marriage, Kathy had finally left her abusive husband. For years, she’d worked and raised their son, Jimmy, while steering around Jim’s ups and downs. Her friends all knew about Jim—his mental illness and the abuse—and yet Kathy never made a move until the first time she saw him strike their son. Jimmy was fourteen. Jim hadn’t touched him before then. He saw Jim about to hit Kathy and got between them, facing off against his father for the first time, trying to protect his mother. When Jim punched his own son in the stomach, Kathy called the police. She left with Jimmy soon after.

Now Jim was living alone, still getting outpatient shots of a neuroleptic drug to keep his symptoms in check. But he was working less and drinking more. No one in the family knew what he might be capable of.

A few days before Margaret’s wedding, Jim came by the house on Hidden Valley Road, where Lindsay was staying with a boyfriend for the weekend. When Jim arrived, Lindsay wasn’t there, but her boyfriend’s car was. Others in the house watched Jim as he slashed all four tires, screamed obscenities at the top of his lungs, and drove off.

Lindsay and her boyfriend moved that night to a friend’s cabin, where Jim could not find them. If there had been even a little doubt in Lindsay’s mind that Margaret was right to start a new life with Chris, there wasn’t any now. Part of her wished she had a similar ticket out.

* * *

—

THE REHEARSAL DINNER was at the Garden of the Gods country club. At least two hundred people would attend the church ceremony, followed by a reception in the backyard of a family friend’s new home in Broadmoor, the fanciest part of Colorado Springs.

Wylie called Margaret the night before the wedding with a last-ditch offer. He was in Massachusetts with his family. “I’ll send you a ticket here if you don’t marry him,” he said.

Margaret cried for hours. Lindsay stuck an ice pack on her face to keep the swelling down. Margaret knew that she wasn’t doing the right thing, that she was about to marry a man she hardly knew. But what was the alternative? Fly to Wylie? Cry on his shoulder? Tell him that one of her brothers had molested her for years—and that another killed himself—and that there were four more at home just like them?

To Margaret, that was no choice at all. Wylie wanted more from her than she could give anyone—a sincere, honest look at her own life. With Chris, she wouldn’t have to think about her family ever again.

DON

MIMI

DONALD

JIM

JOHN

MICHAEL

RICHARD

JOE

MARK

MATT

PETER

MARGARET

LINDSAY

CHAPTER 26

She hadn’t counted