Hidden Valley Road - Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker Page 0,96

on missing the mountains so much.

Lindsay graduated Hotchkiss in 1984 in the top quarter of her class. She could have found a college farther away from home than Boulder. But Colorado, she was amazed to realize, had been calling to her—not Hidden Valley Road, exactly, but something about the state that felt like home. Now that she was back, she wanted to climb every fourteener she could see, all the time. And for a short time, she could commune with that place again, until all her usual fears came back.

At the University of Colorado, she got straight As doing hardly any work, and yet at odd moments she was overcome with panic. She had a social life, boyfriends, parties, drugs—nothing was stifling her anxiety. She found herself reading every self-help book she could find at any bookstore, trying to figure out why.

When she tried mushrooms for the first time, she thought that this must be what schizophrenia felt like: absolutely terrifying. She didn’t need mushrooms to be afraid. She had plenty to worry about without them.

She grew tired of pretending that nothing was wrong. She was looking for help, but she was unsure of where to find it.

* * *

—

“TELL ME ABOUT your family,” the campus therapist said.

Lindsay started talking. And then something happened. As she started explaining that she had ten older brothers and that six of them had schizophrenia, the look on the therapist’s face changed.

At first it seemed like she didn’t believe Lindsay—that she thought she was making the whole thing up. Then Lindsay saw what was really happening. The therapist was wondering how much of this was all in Lindsay’s head. She thought she was the crazy one.

The session went nowhere. Who would listen to her? Who would believe her?

That fall, Lindsay started seeing a boy, someone she’d known for years. Tim Howard was Sam and Nancy Gary’s nephew. Like Lindsay, he had been visiting the Garys’ lake house in Montana his entire life—another of the many children Sam and Nancy would host. Like a lot of boys, Tim had been in awe of the Galvin sisters—both stunning, both effortlessly athletic. Now he and Lindsay were in college together in Colorado.

Lindsay and Tim had been dating a few months when they both ended up as guests of the Garys in Vail during a school vacation, staying at the family’s condominium on the main strip. There came a time when they finally had the place to themselves—everyone else was either skiing or shopping—and they were on the verge of sleeping together.

Lindsay couldn’t.

Tim asked her what was the matter.

Lindsay looked at him.

This wasn’t an angry boyfriend, demanding sex. This was a boy, nearly a year younger than she was, who had been carrying a torch for her for the better part of a decade—a boy who genuinely liked her, who would not judge her. He knew a little bit about her family already, even if he didn’t know some of the more difficult details. And this was Tim, not some stranger. There may have been no safer person to tell.

Lindsay was in tears as she talked. This threw Tim, at first. She had always seemed so tough to him—a shtarker, like Sam had often called her; Yiddish for a tough guy, someone who knew how to get things done. But he stayed in the room with her. He listened.

She stopped short of revealing Jim’s identity. She didn’t say who had abused her, and he didn’t ask. When she stopped talking, he struggled with what to say.

“I don’t know what to do,” Tim finally said. “But I know who would.”

They got dressed and left the condo when Tim spotted Nancy Gary in the distance, walking toward them along the main drag. Tim left Lindsay and ran up to his aunt. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Lindsay stood there, snow on the ground around her, as Tim and Nancy talked. Barely a moment passed before Nancy cut away from Tim and marched down the lane to Lindsay. She and Nancy went inside and talked some more.

* * *