Red Clover (3 page)

“He told me he would be willing to review Lee’s case but it would be difficult for him to form any opinions without seeing him. I think I’m going to spend this summer in the New York apartment with Lee and see what Dr. Ballou can do for him.”

“Do what you want,” his father grumbled. “At least that damn apartment will get some use.”

One thing Lee and his father agreed upon—seeing yet another doctor was a giant waste of time. He dreaded having to hear more of the same stuff he had been hearing from Dr. Jerry for as long as he could remember. He argued against going, but at ten, he had little influence over...just about anything.

For the next four weeks, Lee met with Dr. Ballou for an hour and a half, twice a week. In between, Lee and his mother took long walks in Central Park, fed the pigeons, and went on extravagant shopping trips. Lee watched television whenever his mother felt the need for one of her frequent naps.
Jeopardy
was his favorite show, and whenever he answered a question right, he wondered if either of his older brothers would have been able to do so, or even his father. When he came across the soap opera
All My Children,
he got excited, thinking he might learn about how other families worked. Instead, he learned that some families were even more confusing than his own.

At the end of their sessions, the New York doctor recommended a female therapist in Chicago, who was supposed to be able to help Lee develop “a more positive perception” of himself and “relieve some of his social anxieties.” He saw that doctor seventy-four times over eighteen months before his mother allowed him to stop.

The Chicago doctor was no different from any of the others Lee had seen over the years—not at all friendly. This confused him—each one had indicated they wanted him to be open with them, but how could he when they appeared so distant? Lee didn’t trust most of them either, having overheard his father say once that it wasn’t in their best interest to cure him in order to keep those checks coming in from his mother. As a result, Lee revealed very little to any of them.

When Lee turned fourteen, Bennett had just graduated first in his class at Yale and was about to enter law school. Nelson had an MBA from Harvard with two years at Barclays, well on his way to a lucrative career in investment banking. In addition to their high intellect, both brothers had matured into strong, physically fit young men. With narrow shoulders and skinny arms, Lee felt his body was yet another one of his hopeless shortcomings, at least compared to his brothers.

Lee had little to do that summer except agonize over what his parents had in mind for him for high school. The thought of having to attend a school after all the years of being home-schooled horrified him. While he struggled with getting passing grades from his tutors, at least he didn’t have to deal with other children and teachers who weren’t handpicked by his mother. Thankful his parents were too preoccupied with other things to pay much attention to him—his father with some big real estate deal, and his mother with the annual American Red Cross fundraiser—Lee waited for a decision to be made about his schooling.

When his mother informed him he would have to attend high school, he was devastated. He was now going to have to face what he feared most—the unknown.

On the morning of his first day, Lee awoke in a full-blown panic attack. He huddled in the corner of his room, trembling, his fists clenched, breathing erratically, until his mother came looking for him.

Paralyzed and barely able to speak, he managed to whisper, “Just leave me here for a while until it passes, Mother.”

Dr. Jerry had told him to relax when he felt an attack coming on, practice the deep breathing exercises he had shown him, and imagine himself in a safe place. It helped.

“What about school?”

“I can’t go. What if I get a panic attack there?”

“You’ll take the paper bag out of your briefcase and slowly breathe into it, like Dr. Jerry demonstrated for you. Then you’ll ask to be excused to go to the nurse’s office.”

“It feels like I’m going to die when I have one of these, Mother. It feels like someone is choking me. I’m cold, and then I’m hot. It’s horrible. I don’t want to go through it again, not two days in a row.” He couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. “You have no idea how scary it is. I’m not going to school.”

“Lee, we’ve been over this numerous times. You have to go to school. It’s not a choice for either of us. The law requires it.”

“I don’t see why I can’t continue to be home-schooled.”

“We’ll discuss it further after dinner...when your father gets home.”

When his father arrived, his parents talked behind closed doors. Thirty minutes later, they summoned him.

“Lee, we have agreed to allow you to continue being home-schooled,” his mother said.

His father stood across the room, staring out the window while she talked, his stony profile telling Lee he wasn’t happy with the decision.

“But here is the arrangement. We think you need social interaction with other children, so you must spend some time with children your own age doing something outside of your regular school work.”

“Like what?”

His father was quick to respond. “Sports. Just pick a sport,” he said, as if it was a no-brainer.

“You’ve got to be kidding. I throw like a girl. When I run, I usually end up twisting an ankle. I can’t stand up on ice skates, and I’m deathly afraid of water. What do you expect me to do?”

“Anything, boy. Just pick
something
.” His father’s voice tightened.

“How about karate?” Lee said without thinking. The previous month, Lee had snuck out of the house on a Sunday afternoon when his parents weren’t home and had gone to see
Enter the Dragon
with Bruce Lee, a movie his parents would not have allowed him to see due to his age.

His parents looked at him in disbelief.

“What’s wrong with that?” Lee asked.

“What’s right with it?” his father asked.

“It’s a sport. It involves interaction with other children my own age. Isn’t that what you want?”

“Karate is—”

“Henry, wait a minute. He does have a point, we must admit.”

“Not karate.”

“Why not?” she asked.

His father’s twisted face said it all. To him, the only sports worth anything were traditional team sports, like football, basketball, baseball, and soccer. He walked away mumbling.

Lee signed up for karate classes with nine other twelve- to fourteen-year-olds. Neither of his parents attended his first lesson, for which Lee was grateful. When he came home, they asked him how it had gone.

“It was okay, I guess. We didn’t really do anything but listen to Sensei Kim talk. Living in harmony. Spiritual awakening. You know...all that kind of stuff.”

“Really. And what do you think about ‘all that stuff,’ as you so eloquently put it?” his father asked without looking up from his newspaper.

“I like it.”

“That’s just great,” his father said.

He went to the class three times a week and enjoyed it. During down time, the other boys talked about cutting lawns and shoveling sidewalks to earn spending money, watching television shows like
Chico and the Man
and
Happy Days,
and playing Pac-Man in the arcade at the local roller rink. Lee was curious about the cassette-tape players they all said they had in their bedrooms where they listened to popular musicians Lee had never heard of, like Bob Dylan, Queen, and Steppenwolf. The only music allowed in his home was classical, played from stereo components housed in a floor-to-ceiling entertainment center his father had custom-built in his den.

After several weeks of classes, Lee overheard his mother talking on the phone with Sensei Kim.

“The best in the class? Really?”

For some reason, she never mentioned that phone call to Lee.

3 | “Don’t Expect Him to Change”

In June of 1977, Lee unceremoniously received his high school diploma in the mail. By that time, he had earned his brown belt in karate, something that went unrecognized by his family. He relished the sport and discovered early on that it involved much more than learning how to kick and punch for the purpose of self-defense. Mental development was also an essential aspect to it, as well as unifying the mind, body, and spirit—concepts that he quickly grasped but terrified him at the same time.

One week after he received his diploma, his parents asked him to join them in the parlor. The setting made Lee nervous—they rarely asked him to join them in the parlor, and when they did, it always meant there would be a difficult conversation to come.

His parents were sipping their usual after-dinner port. His father didn’t waste any time asking Lee what his plans were now that he had finished high school. It wasn’t as though his father hadn’t asked that question before, and Lee knew he now had to do something besides petition for more time. The painful look on his mother’s face made him even more nervous.

“Believe it or not, I have a plan, Father.” Lee had dreaded this conversation for months and wondered if he would be able to get through it without vomiting, passing out, or going into a full-blown panic attack. “Oakton Community College offers a variety of horticulture classes, and they also have a karate team.”

Lee avoided eye contact with either parent as he held his breath waiting for their reaction. When he did look at them, his eyes darted back and forth between his mother’s pursed lips and the enlarged vein in his father’s neck. Seconds of silence felt like hours.

“What’s wrong with the University of Wisconsin?” his father asked. “I told you I can get you in there.” His father was a UW alumnus, member of the Bascom Hill Society, and major donor.

“I understand why you might want to consider community college as opposed to a regular college,” his mother interjected. “Given the fact you’ve been home-schooled your entire life, attending a four-year college might be a bit overwhelming. And then of course, there are your grades. Will you consider transferring to a regular college after two years?”

“Let me get this straight. Are you telling us—”

“Henry, let Lee respond to my question first...please.”

“I’m not thinking that far ahead, Mother.”

“Figures,” his father grumbled. “I don’t understand why—”

His mother finished the sentence. “Why horticulture, dear?”

“I think it’s an honorable field of study. Studying the soil, plant propagation and breeding, cultivation and environmental factors. The world needs people who understand this.”

His father got up to leave.

“Where are you going, Henry?”

“Out for a walk.”

“Don’t worry about him, Mother,” Lee said when he heard the front door close. “He has never believed in me or supported any of my decisions up to this point. Don’t expect him to change now.”

Lee left the parlor for the dining room and stood in the shadow of the massive antique breakfront, one of his several safe havens for eavesdropping on his parents. He had learned over the years that this was sometimes the only way to find out what they were thinking.

Twenty minutes later, his father returned.

“Did you have to walk out on him at this pivotal moment in his life, when he’s talking to us about his future?”

“What future? Where can a sword-swinging, leg-kicking kid who has taken a few gardening classes from a community college go? What is that boy thinking?”

“Henry, don’t you see it’s a start? We know he’s not like Bennett and Nelson, but Lee will succeed in life. It may take him a little longer than the others, but he will eventually get there.”

“First of all, I never mentioned Nelson or Bennett.”

“You didn’t have to—I know what you’re thinking. Can’t you recognize the merit in his furthering his education when he’s struggled his whole life with his schoolwork? Could you give him just a little credit for that?”

“I don’t get it, Abbey. I will never get it. The boy has an IQ of 132, for god’s sake,” he mumbled under his breath.

When Lee was a sophomore in high school, his mother had asked Dr. Jerry to arrange for an IQ test. To everyone’s surprise, he had tested very high.

“Don’t forget what we were told, Henry, about children in the genius range.”

“What hogwash are you referring to this time?”

“I don’t understand why you’re so hard on him when we know he has what often accompanies a high IQ—a difficult time with social relationships, frequent bouts of feeling inadequate, and an obsession with being different.”

“Those are just excuses. Face it, Abbey, he
is
different. Just excuses.”

* * *

Lee entered the community college in Des Plaines, about ten miles away, and continued to live at home. He joined the karate team the first semester. But while he managed to maintain decent grades in all of his classes, he still had made no friends after two months and feared he would always fail miserably when it came to relationships with his peers. One of the problems was that he avoided talking to people—afraid he would say the wrong thing, afraid of what they might think of him, afraid they would immediately see his flaws and judge him. And girls were the scariest.

One day during his second semester, after sitting through a long, monotonous biology class, Lee walked down the hall behind one of his classmates, Trevor. He was close enough to overhear him ask the pretty blonde by his side out on a date, obviously for the first time. The boy made it look easy, so normal. Lee remembered something Dr. Jerry had told him many years earlier: “To not try new things guarantees you’ll never be able to do them.”

The next day, as Lee strolled across the campus on his way to the library, he spotted a girl named Catherine Tynes a hundred feet or so in front of him. Catherine was in the same horticulture program, a year behind Lee but in many of the same classes. With honey-colored hair, sleepy brown eyes, and a nice figure, she may not have been the prettiest or hippest girl in school, but she was a good student.

“Hey Catherine,” he called to her. “Wait up.”