The Varnished Untruth (31 page)

Yes, but it seems to me as if you may have been trying to rework the teenage developmental stage that, due to your trauma, you failed to finish . . . Trying various styles and self-definitions in an effort to find out who you really were . . .

Mmm . . . I even went back to church, albeit to a kind of all-inclusive place of worship that welcomes everyone from Sufis to Satanists. I know it all sounds pretty weird, but I don’t believe it’s ever a bad thing to be a seeker, open to all kinds of learning. And my approach to all those different disciplines was simply to take what was useful and discard the rest. But, truthfully, while those things were interesting adjuncts to my healing, it was the long, hard work of undergoing psychotherapy that most effectively led me out of my malaise.

Thankfully, I finally reached the point where I was not only resolved in my own mind, but ready to be of proper help to others. What I’d been through myself helped me understand others – their pain, their despair, their anxiety, their struggles with relationships – and I felt confident about my ability as a psychotherapist.

But in California in 1994 there was more turmoil to come – if not in my psyche, at least in my physical environment. While driving along the wide, palm-lined Santa Monica Boulevard one January afternoon, I felt a sudden urge to turn into the parking lot of a store I’d rarely patronized. It was a hardware store, one that sells everything from energy-saving light bulbs to barbecue sets. In a bit of a daze, I wandered inside. I was not consciously looking for anything in particular, but something drew me towards certain products. For example, there was a display of battery-powered torches and some emergency kits that all Californians are advised to keep in their homes in case of natural disasters. I already had one of them at home somewhere, but I imagined it was out of date so I picked up another – just in case. And some torches – one for each bedroom – as well as spare batteries and a set of emergency house lighting that I installed the minute I got home. Well, you never knew. Former host of
The Tonight Show
Johnny Carson once famously quipped: ‘Things are looking up in California – the mudslides have put out the forest fires.’ It was a bit like that.

Where we lived in the Hollywood Hills, high above Universal Studios, the whole of the San Fernando Valley was stretched out below us. We could see the yellow smog line (I fancied we were above it, but I’m not entirely sure) and, in the summer, dark smoke from the forest fires sometimes blackened the sky. It never seemed like a particularly healthy place to live, but the line, ‘The air quality today could be hazardous to your health’ was usually delivered by such a pretty news anchor, with such a bright smile, it was easy to ignore the threat to one’s lungs. Jesus, what would we hear next? ‘The water’s toxic’? ‘There’s vipers in your mailbox’? ‘The zombies are coming’? ‘But have a nice day!’ Some people actually did keep axes in their cars in case of a zombie invasion . . . Or was it to ward off the junkies who tried to clean your windscreen at traffic lights? Who knows? LA’s a crazy, unpredictable town. And it enjoys a kind off perpetual summer, so driving the kids to school on a rare wet day was always hazardous. The oil build-up on the roads could easily send you into a skid, while rocks – even large boulders – were liable to topple on to the road. And there was a novel way to rub shoulders with your neighbours: whole houses had been known to slip down a hill.

On 14th January 1994, on my way home from that hardware store, I suddenly decided to telephone my best friend from the car (in those days you were allowed to dial and drive). ‘Hi Sharon! I was thinking . . . You know, I think we ought to . . . um . . . get out of town this weekend.’ ‘Dunno honey, I’m kinda busy . . .’ Billy and Jamie were away, and so was Sharon’s husband Dennis. ‘C’mon! I’ll put the girls in the car and pick you and Kelly up around ten,’ I insisted. ‘We can drive up to Big Bear and see if there’s any snow. I’ll book a place. Bye!’

I’d never done such a thing before. Why then? In the deepest recesses of my intuition, had I known something shocking was about to happen? Probably. Three days later, at 4.31am on Sunday morning, the beds in our Big Bear hotel started shaking violently. I immediately knew what it was – the dull rumbling and shaking of earth tremors were fairly frequent occurrences in LA – but this was different, far more powerful than I’d ever experienced. We all woke in great alarm. When the girls began to whimper, I clutched them tight and we all hung on for dear life. ‘When will it end?’ I remember thinking, ‘Is the building about to collapse? Should we try to sprint to the doorway?’ But we were being pitched about so precariously it was impossible to move off the bed. The shaking lasted nearly twenty seconds. I know that doesn’t sound like a long time, but when you’re on one of nature’s most challenging roller-coasters it seems like forever.

Once the shaking stopped, we turned on the TV and discovered that what became known as the Northridge earthquake had just occurred. Its epicentre was not far away, in Reseda, a city below us in the San Fernando Valley. Thankfully, in Big Bear we were far above the valley. The earthquake was given a ‘moment magnitude rating’ of 6.7, which was disappointing, in a ghoulish way. As Californians we had become pretty
au fait
with earthquake ratings and could usually guess pretty accurately what level we’d just experienced. ‘I bet this is a three!’ the kids would say as we crouched under a table (‘Drop, Cover and Hold’ was the rule). We would have predicted an eight for the Northridge quake but we learned later that it just seemed that high because the ground acceleration was one of the highest ever recorded in an urban area in North America, measuring 1.7g. The effects were felt as far away as Las Vegas, more than 220 miles from the epicentre. Fifty-seven people died, nearly 9,000 were injured, and the damage bill came to twenty billion dollars. There were endless, nerve-wracking aftershocks – I remember one particularly nasty one when the kids and I were watching a show in a Santa Monica theatre – and an outbreak of potentially lethal Valley fever, a respiratory disease caused by inhaling airborne spores that are carried in large clouds of dust created by seismically triggered landslides.

But if we were nearly thrown out of bed in Big Bear, can you imagine what it would have been like if we’d stayed in LA? Thank God I installed the emergency lighting, because Jamie came back to the house unexpectedly and needed it when all the power went out and the windows shattered. Had I unconsciously predicted the quake? I suppose, I said to Sharon, if animals can do it, why not a sloth of a psychologist? For years after that she and other people around me got uneasy whenever I felt the urge to leave town.

At that point in my psychological career I fully understood post-traumatic reactions, and most people seemed to be suffering from them – including me and the kids. The aftershocks were frequent, strong and terrifying, and since the main quake had weakened many buildings and structures, we were always afraid that subsequent tremors would cause them to collapse completely. Freeways had already crumbled and we didn’t feel safe on the road or at home. If a truck drove by you’d think it was another quake rolling in – they sound rather similar, with that low, ominous rumbling. Heavens, even a Joe Cocker track would make us ‘Drop, Cover and Hold’.

Several friends lost their homes in the quake, and our house was a shelter for waifs and strays for several months. In particular, my friends Michele and John moved in with their two children. Michele was a primary school teacher and a fantastic mother, so that turned out to be a wonderful chance for me to observe her interaction with her children up close and learn from her advanced skills. See, I just never had the maternal confidence I should have had. My heart was in the right place and I worked hard at being a good mother, but I was always second-guessing myself. People who’ve been parented well can ask themselves in any given situation: ‘Now, what would my mother have done?’ But, in my case, it wasn’t good enough simply to avoid emulating mine. No, I needed practical advice and good modelling, and Michele – as well as Martine, of course – certainly provided that.

I just can’t imagine how it must have felt for Michele and her family when their entire apartment building collapsed in the middle of the night. In the aftermath of the main quake, many local buildings were condemned, while lots of people voluntarily moved out of their homes and camped in open spaces (in Beverly Hills they set up tents on their tennis courts!). The fear of being killed by your own home collapsing on top of you while you slept – even from an aftershock – was omnipresent.

So, you would say you and your children were all suffering from post-traumatic effects?

No question. We were hypervigilant – alert to the possibility of another shock – and very on edge generally. It was hard to sleep and we all had nightmares. I didn’t want to leave the children even for a minute but I had to work. My therapy office became flooded with people needing trauma treatment.

I had been practising psychotherapy – at first under supervision – since I gained my Master’s degree in 1992, but at that point I was still quite a way from being fully qualified. If you’re going to seek help from a psychologist, it really has to be someone you can trust – right? You want to be sure he or she will be consistently competent, provide exactly the type of treatment you need, and not tell your secrets to their manicurist. Fortunately, the State of California shares that point of view. People think of California as a laid back, ‘anything goes’ type of place – and in certain fields that may be the case – but not so in psychology. The State has rigid and highly demanding legal and ethical requirements for psychologists, and tough criteria for licensing – including incredibly challenging exams. In the UK the rules are not so stringent but, in order for me to become a licensed professional in California, I had to jump through many, many hoops. Once I obtained my PhD in 1994, by passing all my exams plus writing and defending my doctoral dissertation on ‘The Intrapsychic Experience of Fame’ (what happens in the mind when a person comes to public attention), I had to start studying all over again for the licensing exam. The latter was in two parts: firstly you had to receive a high score in a written exam that covered every branch of psychology – clinical, industrial, research, statistics, social, and so on; and then there was an oral exam, in which highly experienced psychologists grilled you face to face on your ability to assess, diagnose and treat a patient. And, on top of all that, I had to complete 3,000 hours of supervised clinical practice, which takes most people between three to five years.

Frankly, it’s a good thing that these requirements must be met; having legal and ethical rules (such as guarding patient confidentiality and never having sexual contact with a patient) written into law – with jail punishments for non-compliance – is an excellent way to protect the public. Nevertheless, it took me six years or so to complete my studies and receive my licensing qualifications; and that was considered fast. It was such a relief when it was all over. I felt enormously proud and grateful.

Billy and many other people in my life – including my children – congratulated me and seemed genuinely pleased about my achievement. On the other hand, my mother was very snooty about the fact that I had attended a graduate institution rather than an Ivy League university, while my father once snorted that he thought psychology was a ‘soft science’. Oh, Lordy, Lordy, Lord.

But Dad never knew I graduated. Six months before I finished my PhD he suffered a massive heart attack – his second. The first more minor one had occurred in the eighties, when my father was getting into a boat on the beach in Rio de Janeiro. Perhaps the sight of all those near-naked, butt-shaking women was more than he could handle.

But this second attack was serious. My mother telephoned me to say he was on life-support in the UK (where they were now living) and I’d better jump on the next plane. I knew what she meant – obviously he was not likely to survive – but my psyche kept forming a rebellious question: why? Why should I jump on the next plane? To do what? Say what?

Within two hours of torment over what to do, I had developed a severe toothache.

Surely a psychosomatic response? When a person cannot use words to describe how she is feeling, the body will often act for her . . .

Yes, I suppose so. Isn’t it amazing how the body can do that? My dentist informed me that I urgently needed a root canal and began the process. ‘Of course, you must not fly,’ he warned me. Hah!

Interesting – and what torturous ambivalence you must have felt . . .

‘I wish I could be there,’ I lied to my mother, ‘but my dentist has forbidden me to travel. It could be dangerous – and very painful.’ ‘You’re going to miss seeing him alive,’ she said. ‘We can’t keep him on life support forever. We’re going to have to switch him off.’ The full meaning of this sunk in slowly, but the immediate harshness was shocking. ‘OK,’ I said, ‘but, well, I’m really stuck here. Billy is in the UK, though. I’ll get him to come.’ I felt bad for offering Billy as the scapegoat, but it turned out he didn’t mind at all. Actually, he has a strange fascination with death and will travel half-way around the world to attend the funeral of someone he hardly knows.

Next time I called, Billy was ensconced by my father’s bedside. ‘You should speak to him before he goes,’ he said, sounding just a little reproachful. ‘He’s barely conscious but he may hear you. Have a go. I’ll hold the phone up to his ear.’ Before I had a chance to protest, there was a terrible silence, except for the irregular, pressured breathing of a seventy-eight-year-old man to whom I was being forced to say goodbye. ‘Bye, then, Dad,’ I said awkwardly. ‘And thanks for . . . um . . . thanks for . . .’ I couldn’t think of anything much so I just said, ‘for the great education.’ That was it. I was numb. Baffled. Hurrah for Sharon, who was beside me explaining I didn’t have to feel guilty about not being at his side, not caring, not anything.