Thirty Rooms To Hide In (30 page)

Mom, writing eight days after my father’s death, July 11th, 1966

The last time I saw him was the morning I took him to the airport, June 28th. Roger leaned in the car window to kiss me goodbye and heaven must have been watching over me, for my last sight of him was one which filled me with tenderness and the old love.

His first stop was Newport News. Mark Coventry phoned later that first week to say the Newport News doctors had called to say Roger was arriving for interviews intoxicated and irrational. A three-way effort was made by Mark, me, and the doctors in Virginia to get him to come home or go back to Hartford. But the expected result was an intensified, hysterical denunciation of all of us – Mark for following him across the country to “give him the axe,” me for my willingness to believe everybody but him, the Newport News doctors for being s.o.b.’s he wouldn’t work with anyway.

So he went on to New Orleans – with much the same result: arriving full of confidence, leaving because the men there were discourteous or incompetent. During this time I was in a constant state of confusion and distress. The money was draining away fast – with hotel bills, transportation, and constant phone calls. I was getting too much advice – Mark saying, “You’ll have to start commitment proceedings,” Dick Steinhilber saying it couldn’t be done, Tony pressing me to get funds frozen, the lawyer protesting his inability to do much till Roger’s return.

In the midst of all this, Tony and Mark Coventry were pushing to have the Clinic put Roger on a disability basis, which resulted in me getting phone calls from the Board of Governors, from the head of Psychiatric Department, Clinic insurance men, and the Orthopedic section heads. Even brother Jimmy called me during that last week – till my head was finally spinning.

Conversation with Dr. Tony Bianco, today

Mark Coventry and I went to the Board of Governors and said, “Please, you can’t fire Roger. He’s sick.” We asked that he not be fired, that he be reinstated so he could be committed and then put on full disability. And the Board was very agreeable; they said yes. So we were ready to commit him when he returned – even against his wishes if necessary.

Mom’s July 11, 1966 letter

Whenever the phone rang I was braced for bad news. Through all this was the dread certainty that doom was near. I feared he would meet with a fatal accident – or involve himself with the law since he always rented a car wherever he was. The Thursday and Friday and Saturday nights of July 1st through the 3rd were horrible. He phoned as many as eight times in one day – usually to berate me with all the old vituperation.

I finally told him Friday night not to call again – that I’d hang up the moment I knew it was he. Those were my last words to him – a knowledge that will haunt me for a long time.

Kip, today

I remember Dad calling home from Georgia late the night he died.

I answered the phone. His voice was weak and drunk. It pissed me off to hear it. I made small talk with him but only for his benefit. He asked to speak to Mom. She was upstairs and said no she didn’t want to talk to him. I told him this and tried to end the conversation. When I said goodbye I wasn’t sure he said goodbye back. So I waited a second, said goodbye again and hung up. That was less than an hour before he died.

Mom’s July 11, 1966, letter

At 12:45 a.m. I heard the phone ring. Kip and Jeff were down in the study and they answered it. He spent ten minutes complaining to them about what was wrong with me. Kip says Roger fell silent many times and they had to speak to him several times before he began again. Then he drifted away and didn’t even answer when they said goodbye. Kip came upstairs to tell me about it – and the phone began ringing again. “Let it ring,” I told him. “You managed to be pleasant last time – don’t let him antagonize you into a nasty answer.”

Jeff, today

The phone was on the desktop to my right. We were watching TV in Dad’s study. I was sitting on the big chair in the corner. At 12:45 or so, it began to ring again. I recall counting the number of times it rang – 17, before it finally stopped. We all kept our eyes on the TV. No one said anything.

Mom’s July 11, 1966, letter

So we let it ring – and that sound will echo in my ears forever I fear. Rationally I know that had we answered it, we’d have been subjected to the same accusations and perhaps have been goaded into angry retorts we’d have regretted even more. We’ll never know. Unhappily, the medical report places the time of death at 1:00 a.m. This moment of time obviously is bothering me. I have been several days on this last page to you – unable to write all I’m thinking – equally unable to leave it and move on. This is a fact I must deal with. It is not easy.

Myra’s letters home, 1958

[At a Mayo Clinic cocktail party, Mom had been introduced to a famous British surgeon.] According to legend he operates all day, spends the night at the Club drinking seven or eight double-scotches, and beats everybody to the hospital the next morning.

Back in May of 1961, Mom was at the sink peeling potatoes when she saw Ernest Hemingway walk by the road out in front of the Millstone wearing his trademark turtleneck sweater and knitted cap. For a woman whose library included copies of the famous writer’s best works, seeing one of the century’s acknowledged literary masters stroll by her back window was worth a phone call to her best friend.

“I
thought
that was him,” JoAnn Bianco confirmed. “He passed down here just a few minutes ago.” The phone lines buzzed a few times around the neighborhood until it was established Myra had indeed seen Hemingway. He had checked into Rochester’s St. Mary’s Hospital back in December of 1960 under the name of his personal physician, Dr. George Saviers, ostensibly for treatment of high blood pressure and unofficially for psychiatric care of depression. After two months of sometimes twice-weekly electro-shock therapy he was released in January but was readmitted in April.

“He was friends with the Kjerners,” Mom tells me, “who lived right across from the Biancos.” She saw his short, stocky figure pass the Millstone’s gates maybe ten more times that spring until he was released at the end of June, a week before he committed suicide in his cabin in Idaho. Like most alcoholics under traditional medical care, Hemingway charmed and bullshitted his doctors into releasing him; an assessment his wife Mary shared.

“The name’s very mention brings to mind bullfights,” reads one laudatory website, “barroom brawls, deep-sea fishing and daiquiri parties, big-game hunting and booze binges; it is a legend as steeped in alcohol as it is in adventure.” That sentence on the Hemingway mystique is full of the same kind of misguided admiration as my mother’s letter about the British surgeon she met at the Clinic party – the one who’d had “seven or eight double-scotches and beats everyone to the hospital the next morning.” Oh, marvelous. The doctor who is standing over you – with a scalpel and a hangover – arrived to work
on
time
. Well, that’s fucking great.

This mythical marriage of passion, creativity and chemical dependency is a disease we pass down as a society through storytelling. For ages we’ve let our talented drunks cut wide destructive paths with impunity. If you have some sort of skill, be it word-slinging or rock songs, the world waves you past the purple rope –
“He’s with the band!”
– and you’re allowed to become intoxicated, treat people poorly and do whatever you want. This adulation has likely been going on since the first caveman crushed grapes. Some mead-guzzling schmuck named Thog probably did a great cave drawing and then spent the rest of his life barfing on the saber-tooth tiger rug and crying, “Village not
understand
Thog.” Nothing’s changed and we’ve simply moved on to applauding an obese Elvis or an emaciated Cobain as they slur their way through concerts while we all shrug, “Tortured genius.”

If the Bullshit Police pulled up when we had one of these false heroes on our shoulders, we’d get the bullhorn to our ears and a loud reminder that behind every tortured arteest we celebrate are families and loved ones who suffer the actual torture. Behind every drunken high-achiever is a trail of parentless and rudderless children, broken promises, broken teeth, cigarette burns, restraining orders, neglect, deceit, hurt, anger, shame … and for what? A nice song? A two-fisted story without adverbs? Whoop-dee-fuckin’-doo.

And when they’re finished with “the work”? They slap a lip-lock around a 12-guage and spackle the ceiling with their brains leaving yet another in a long line of messes their poor families have to clean up.

* * *

Myra, today

I think of all those holidays he ruined – the Christmases, the Thanksgivings. Finally, on his way out, he wrecked Fourth of July.

My father’s autopsy

Charles R. Sullivan, deceased.

The body was embalmed by arterial injection. The heart weighed 310 grams. There were no congenital anomalies. The heart valves and myocardium were normal. The coronary arteries showed grade 1 arteriosclerosis. The trachea was filled with partially digested food material. There was no blood within the aspirated material. The right lung weighs 490 grams and the left lung weighs 515 grams. The pleural surface is smooth. Dissection of the bronchial tree reveals the entire tree of both lungs to be filled with partially digested food material. The stomach is normal and contains partially digested food similar to that found in the tracheal-bronchial tree. The liver weighs 1,950 grams. The surface is smooth. Examination of the brain reveals an intact skull. The brain in its entirety, is normal. Samples of blood and other tissues were not taken for examination…