Butterfly in the Typewriter (32 page)

But for all the niceties the move to Hampson Street provided, Toole had driven deeper into the labyrinth. Seemingly at a loss as to how to edit his novel without destroying it, unable to spill the blood of his creation, his master plan now lay unraveled in his hands. Just as he did with
The Neon Bible
, he put away his manuscript in a box. He cut the string and gave himself over to the trappings of his own condition.

M
uch of Toole's life had been a continual progression toward achieving some stature of greatness, either in academics or fiction writing. And many of his accomplishments had come easy to him. But the novel had posed the most formidable challenge; it also held the greatest potential to elevate him and his parents out of their financial state. The fact that he could not revise it to the satisfaction of a New York editor must have been a devastating blow to his pride. What would his life become now that the path leading out of the drudgery of working to merely sustain his family seemed inaccessible? Many of his friends had left New Orleans: Emilie Dietrich had married William Griffin in 1963 and was living and writing in New York City. Nick Polites was writing and publishing articles on design and architecture while working at a prestigious design firm in Manhattan. Cary Laird was living in Miami and working for an insurance company. Joel Fletcher was living in Paris. And each day Toole walked to the small Catholic college a few blocks away to teach, and then walked home at night, living with his parents in the same neighborhood that he had known all his life. But there was something at play more sinister than personal failures or a sense of confining filial duty. Toole's brilliant mind was falling under the grasp of mental illness.

His family history had more than its fair share of mental health issues. His father slowly deteriorated into senility. Thelma's uncle, James Ducoing, committed suicide a few months before Toole was born. In December of 1941, several years after Thelma's sister died of an illness,
her surviving husband threw himself off a high-rise building on Canal Street. And in 1966 one of Thelma's brothers, George Ducoing, exhibited a full-blown mental illness that was getting out of control. Excluding Thelma, the Ducoing siblings lived in a small home on Elysian Fields, two doors down from the home where they had grown up. In a letter to the coroner dated February 28, 1966, Arthur Ducoing sought to have his brother committed:

The elderly siblings had requested the white Cadillac ambulance to come for their brother, just as it had for Ignatius Reilly. And now the seeds of psychosis germinated in the mind of Thelma's genius son.

It is difficult to determine when Toole started suffering from his illness. It appears the letters from Gottlieb, especially in their encouraging moments, sustained him in some ways. But Toole had embarrassed himself in New York with an uncharacteristic outburst, perhaps the first sign of his decline. One year later, Gottlieb still encouraged Toole to keep working at his revisions. But Toole tried to justify his decision to stop working on the novel when he told his army friend David Kubach that “if his book were published it was such a scathing satire of New Orleans that he wouldn't be able to live there, but he couldn't live anywhere else.” Kubach had read enough of the manuscript “to know it was fairly tame as far as satires go.” Toole's conviction seemed to offer him some comfort, so Kubach did not challenge his friend's reasoning. But packing up his novel must have put his life in terrifying perspective. As Kubach observed, “I think he thought his life was going to get long.”

In 1963 Toole had arrived in New Orleans, sensing his own assent; now he found himself at the bottom of Fortuna's wheel. And, at the bottom, the world looks different, as if the top seems unreachable. Toole succumbed to an inner force as he gradually lost grasp on reality. At first there came isolated incidents of strange behavior that his friends dismissed as anomalies. In retrospect, these episodes offer glimpses into the complex distortions of a brilliant mind suffering from paranoia; some people have conjectured paranoid schizophrenia. Whatever his diagnosis would have been, these episodes now appear as signposts pointing to a tragic end.

In 1966 Toole was still teaching at Dominican with no pervasive signs of illness. His students still enjoyed his lectures. However, Pam Guerin recalls that during this period he spoke frequently about “the Mother,” not
his
mother, specifically, but rather a caricature of a mother dragging her child to dance lessons and other performances, instilling in her offspring all the crucial social graces to be expected but also living vicariously through her child. Many of his students, having experienced the upbringing of a “proper lady,” could relate to such a figure. But his insightful description of this mother and child dynamic suggested “he was part of it.” Guerin and other students could tell that he had intimate knowledge of the very character he mocked.

As he explored this notion of the mother figure, he began having long conversations outside of class with his department chair, Sister Beatrice. She was described as “a master listener” because people often started conversations with her about literature and minutes later found themselves pouring out their souls. Sister Beatrice became one of Toole's closest confidants. And as their friendship matured, as he opened up to her, she recognized his suffering. On at least one occasion, she visited the Toole home for dinner, a visit that would take special approval for a nun at the time. While Toole often seemed indifferent about his faith, it is ironic that in his descent into illness one of his closest confidants was a nun. Despite many attempts by journalists and writers to interview her, she took his confidences to her grave in 2004.

Kubach, who had lent Toole his typewriter in Puerto Rico, also witnessed moments in his tragic decline. In the summer of 1967 Toole visited Kubach in Madison, Wisconsin. It had been years since they had seen each other in Puerto Rico, and Kubach was eager to show Toole his
city. But he was not prepared for some of Toole's odd behaviors. One day, as the two were walking in downtown Madison, Kubach spotted a friend approaching. Toole suddenly dove into a store, leaving Kubach awkwardly alone as he greeted his friend who had seen him walking with a companion. As Kubach recalls, “John was in fairly good spirits, so the action caught my attention.” He was puzzled as to why his affable friend had behaved so strangely to avoid meeting a new acquaintance.

During that trip, Toole sent two postcards on July 20. He wrote to his parents, “The weather is clear, pleasant; the air is very fresh and clean. I'm having a very interesting time and will see you sometime next week.” His language seems forced and trite. He also sent a postcard to his friend Angela Gregory with a simple message on the back: “Wish you were here.” While a cliché script for a postcard, he may have desired her company. He had spent many hours with Gregory, as they slowly walked home after classes, pausing at the corner of Hampson and Pine, continuing on with their conversation. Perhaps if she had been there in Wisconsin, he could tell her his thoughts, why he had suddenly fled to avoid meeting someone new.

The trip ended without further incident. Months later, Kubach visited Toole in New Orleans. Taking an overnight train from Madison, Wisconsin, he fell asleep in the northern reaches of the United States and awoke to “beautiful pastoral images of Northern Louisiana.” Toole met him at the train depot, and within a few turns they were in downtown New Orleans. As Kubach recalls, “He showed me right away the place that he would eventually be buried, those above ground mausoleums.” Often called “cities of dead,” the above-ground graves necessitated by the frequent floods are a popular tourist attraction in New Orleans. But it was certainly a morbid way to start his tour.

They continued on to the French Quarter where Toole “had a number of quips to say” about the “exotic looking people walking around.” Passing old colonial structures, such as the Old Absinthe House and Jean Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, Toole bragged to Kubach that the famed pirate Lafitte, who had inspired Lord Byron's poem “The Corsair,” was his ancestor. But then, as they drove through the historic city center, the paranoia that Kubach had seen in Wisconsin appeared once again. Toole became increasingly nervous. Looking in his rearview mirror, he explained to Kubach that his students from Dominican were following
him, again. Determined to lose them, he started taking “evasive maneuvers” through the tight, cramped streets. Kubach saw no suspicious cars filled with deranged Catholic schoolgirls behind him. But since Toole was his guide, Kubach respectfully kept quiet. Eventually they slowed down, turned toward Uptown, and headed back home to Hampson Street. Kubach presumed they had successfully eluded the stalker students.

While Toole played tour guide for part of the trip, he appeared generally uninterested in showing off his unique city. After the long journey south, Kubach wanted to experience New Orleans. But Toole just wanted to talk. “John never wanted to be out,” Kubach remembers. “His favorite scenario with me was drinks and talk. And he did most of the talking. I sometimes feel like I disappeared entirely in our friendship. I was just an audience really.” Eager to connect with his friend, perhaps Toole wanted to recapture some of the spirit of his army days. Kubach even suspected that Toole warned his mother not to interfere with their conversations. Thelma seemed to go out of her way to keep her distance. And somehow Kubach never met Toole's father during their many hours spent in the small home. As the main breadwinner of the family, Toole had grounds to request his parents stay out of the way. He would need to make the inside of the home comfortable for him and his friend, especially if the outside world stoked his anxieties.

Eventually, Toole and Kubach left the house to see the environs of New Orleans. They crossed Lake Pontchartrain, traveling the long twenty-three-mile bridge to Mandeville, and then returned. They headed west to Lafayette, although they did not stop to see the Rickelses or other friends. They also drove east to Biloxi, Mississippi. And after seeing the waterfront town, they headed back to New Orleans. But there was one more place Toole wanted to show Kubach. As they drove along the Gulf, Toole suddenly turned off the road. He drove north for a short distance and then pulled over onto the shoulder. They looked out to a nondescript field with a few pine trees. Toole seemed to think that this was a beautiful, peaceful place, a special spot that he wanted to share with his friend. But Kubach, accustomed to the majestic vistas of the upper-Midwestern states, found it unimpressive. “I suppose I wouldn't have brought someone to that place,” Kubach comments, “unless something had happened there, or in this case something was about
to happen.” Slightly puzzled by the trip, Kubach said goodbye to Toole and returned to Wisconsin.

Granted, it would be unfair to cast Toole as a perpetually brooding, melancholy soul. Despite the episodes of odd behavior, he still had moments where his personality shined. Charlotte Powell enjoyed his company at several of her parties in 1967. Her apartment on Decatur Street in the French Quarter was a popular gathering place, in part because she had the luxury of a spacious kitchen. They would boil shrimp and crawfish, spread the feast on newspaper-covered tables, and a full array of French Quarter characters from hippies to professors would dig in. While some guests railed against the Vietnam War, Toole preferred more convivial conversation, playing off puns, discussing the current state of literature, bemoaning the popularity of
Valley of the Dolls
, and of course talking about New Orleans. Powell marveled at how Toole “brought the city to life” whenever he talked about it. She told him about a time she asked a lady for directions and couldn't understand a word the lady said. She struggled to mimic the lady's accent. Without skipping a beat, Toole went into an interpretation of a New Orleans woman giving directions. To Powell's amazement, he sounded exactly like her. His humor, his intellect, and his quick wit, Powell recalls, made him “a most amazing person.” And despite some of the stories about Toole's mental illness, Powell has no recollection of him appearing uneasy or behaving strangely. In fact, she marveled at how he “would walk into a room not knowing a single person and within twenty seconds be at ease, comfortable, and chatting with someone.”

Toole also appeared cheerful during the Christmas of 1967, according to Thelma. Enjoying the extra income from his promotion at Dominican, they purchased a large Christmas tree and took out those fine European ornaments that they had bought just after Toole was born. They reminisced about their early days as a family. Thelma Toole would remember that holiday season as their finest Christmas in their new home.

Unfortunately, the yuletide cheer could not dispel the clouds that gathered over the charming house on Hampson Street. Polites had been to the Toole home many times since his friend had returned from Puerto Rico, and he witnessed the storm building. Usually, Polites visited several times with Toole when he was in town, but the last time he
saw him in 1968 the weight of depression pervading the house nearly chased him away. Polites recalls,