Torment Saint: The Life of Elliott Smith (51 page)

In this precariously drug-free state, his mind, both more lucid and more discombobulated, latched on to a terrifying, depressing circuit. It was a subject he’d actually been circling for some time, never sure what to make of it, never sure how much to believe, at once certain, at once thoroughly
mystified. With Chiba he had bought a book on the sexual abuse of young boys. He read it closely, underlining pages, making notes in the margins. Broadly, it matched his sense of his own history—of emotional pain, hypersensitivity, disconnection, fear. He’d lived in the same atmosphere of torment and anger. He decided—or suspected, or intuited, it’s impossible to say—that he, too, might have been sexually abused. The realization hit him like a hammer blow. The implications were horrifying, there was the question of what to do about them, but suddenly, in light of this revelation, his agony found clarity. He figured, correctly or not, he might have some kind of answer now. The depression, the suicidal feelings, the self-abuse—it all made provisional sense at last. Everything he was in the process of uncovering he shared instantly with Chiba. He even disclosed it to others, in her view indiscriminately. It became all-consuming, something he needed to get out whenever and wherever he could. In his mind, as he dug through dim recollections, he seized on some sort of event in an attic. There was another that seemed to have occurred in a shower. “He told me,” Chiba says, “as he got sober, all these horrible, shameful memories.” But he also doubted their accuracy. He couldn’t ever be sure. He’d speak, in one moment, with absolute certainty; then he’d take it all back, saying “actually I don’t think that happened at all.” Chiba had worked with sexually abused kids. “He asked me,” she recalls, “ ‘You’ve got to help me through this.’” Back in Portland he’d made similar intimations. Then he’d identified someone outside his immediate family, a person with whom he’d only had sporadic contact.

In any case, there seemed to be little way of knowing, with certainty, whether this was a false or a true memory. It was—no doubt—psychologically and emotionally real, its effects monumental, but what really happened, and who had been the abuser? On that subject Elliott wavered. He was reluctant to name anyone. He was confused. He didn’t trust his own memory. Yet finally, over days and weeks, and never without some trace of uncertainty, he seemed to settle on the likeliest possibility. The abuser, he now suspected—rightly or wrongly—had been Charlie.

It wasn’t Elliott’s plan at first to take this up directly. There was too much uncertainty, and the last thing he wanted was a confrontation. But as he did now and then, he called his mother, Bunny. She may have been in
her classroom at the time, where she taught, or she may have been at home. She mentioned, in passing, that Charlie had been to school. She told Elliott the kids there had come to view him as one of the teachers—he’d been doing a lot of volunteering. On occasion they ran to him to tattle on peers, a fact Bunny found funny, since he wasn’t, technically, a school employee. Hearing this, Elliott was alarmed. Two different ideas came to him suddenly. First, Chiba remembers, he had the paranoid sense that Charlie was planning to kill his mother. He felt he had to warn her. He had to protect her. Second, he insisted Charlie should not be around the kids. He wasn’t to be trusted. By that, Bunny knew what Elliott meant. The connotation was sexual. He had asked her once before, “Do you think Charlie ever sexually abused me?” He’d told her he wasn’t sure; he was trying to figure things out. Still, she was shocked. He’d never before made specific allegations, yet for the moment he seemed convinced. He was angry and adamant. And over the course of the conversation, he divulged everything, all the memories (veridical or reconstructed) he had withheld before, of abuse generally, and also of sexual abuse. Bunny’s response was that she’d never observed anything, never seen anything suspicious. Elliott, however, insisted he needed to protect the children, to which Bunny suggested that perhaps he wasn’t thinking straight, perhaps his mind was playing tricks on him. He’d gone off all drugs, after all, and he clearly wasn’t in the best condition to accurately reach such conclusions. What she proposed was a meeting, a chance, she hoped, to set things straight. She and Charlie could come for Thanksgiving, to spend the holiday with Ashley and him, and the three of them could talk. This Elliott found “terrifying,” Chiba says. Not only was his mother skeptical, albeit possibly reasonably, in the circumstances, but he’d be put in the position of facing Charlie, a person he viewed with a mix of abject fear and contempt.

In this swirl of emotional chaos, everything spinning off in several directions at once, Elliott fearful, guilty, uncertain, angry, and still intermittently paranoid, as always, there occurred still another frightening act of self-abuse. He and Chiba had planned to attend the film
Lost in Translation
(released on August 29). At the time Elliott had been listening to My Bloody Valentine, the band’s aesthetic, its crawling noise, an inspiration for the music he was working on. Five tunes by Kevin Shields, My Bloody Valentine’s
vocalist and guitarist, were featured in the film; plus, Brian Reitzell, former drummer for the punk band Redd Kross, had supervised the soundtrack, and Elliott was set to work with him on the movie
Thumbsucker
, for which he’d recorded “Trouble.” But at the last minute Elliott decided not to go. He wanted to stay home and record. So after some discussion, Chiba went alone. She thought it was odd, but there was no convincing Elliott otherwise.

When she returned the house was suspiciously dark, Elliott nowhere to be seen. She called but there was no answer. At first she assumed he wasn’t home. Yet as she wandered, anxiously, room to room, she finally located him under the covers in bed, “cowering and crying.” She noticed a knife, then she saw blood in spots across the sheets. There were cuts, she saw, superficial ones, at various points on his body. It was too much to take. Instantly she thought, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live with him. I need to break up with him.” The ordeal of managing his day-to-day needs was seriously undermining her own mental stability. Again she moved to call 911; again Elliott begged her not to. She asked, “Why Elliott?” It was a question everyone had been asking him nearly all his life. His answer was, “I don’t know.” Chiba quickly contacted Ashley, and like always, she drove over immediately. For the next several days Elliott wound up staying at Ashley’s place, partly to give Chiba a break, partly to pull himself together. But this was the beginning of the end. His life was lived moment to moment.

Chiba kept trying. She loved him, and she wanted him alive. But in the last month everything seemed to pick up pace. Despite all that had been going on, Chiba says, they were actually working to get pregnant. They had even tossed around possible names, “Tuesday” if it was a girl, “Harmony” if it was a boy. On September 19 Elliott played Redfest in Salt Lake City. It was his final performance. The songs spanned the years. There was “Plainclothes Man” from the Heatmiser days, “Needle in the Hay,” “Between the Bars.” He closed with George Harrison’s “Long Long Long,” something he did often. “I love you,” the last line in Harrison’s song, were Elliott’s last words to a live audience.

In early October Dorien was in L.A. With Valerie gone her contacts
with Elliott had become less sporadic. She was no longer cut off. She stopped by the house, and the two talked about Elliott’s decision to go cold turkey, how he’d done it essentially overnight. She told him she didn’t think it was a good idea. She said it made more sense to taper gradually, that doing so would be better for his body and his mind. But he wanted to have a child, he said. His plan was to “conceive with no drugs in his system.” He also felt that “having a kid might help him get his shit together.”
¹¹
Garry was happy for him, sympathetic, but once more she warned him, “You need proper medical guidance to get off this shit,” referring, at this point, to the psychiatric medicines, the benzos, the antipsychotic, the antidepressants.

By mid-October Elliott felt well enough to plan future performances. Fellow Lincoln High School grad Matt Groening was curating the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in Long Beach, set for the first week of November. He had chosen Elliott to play, along with the Shins, Built to Spill, Mission of Burma, Modest Mouse, Sonic Youth, and others. “We rehearsed for about two weeks,” Shon Sullivan recalls. “And Elliott was doing so well. He wasn’t drinking, or doing anything. He put on weight. He looked healthy and strong.” He seemed, Sullivan felt, to be in a very “good spot” in his life. “I remember thinking this is going to be good for all the people who care about him.” They could see he was back. They could see he’d come out of the living hell alive, purged and rejuvenated.

Yet around the same time, Elliott had driven to Malibu Ranch to check in with Schoenkopf. Schoenkopf remembers thinking “he was not well.” Apparently, then, there were good days and bad days. Also, because of the nature of his relationship with Schoenkopf, Elliott may have felt freer to disclose. Clearly, according to Schoenkopf, Elliott “was interested in the dark side.” Yet: “I don’t remember any obsession with death,” he said. “I don’t know that he had a death wish.”
¹²

On October 17, Charlie typed out a letter. In fact, he typed out two: one to Chiba, and enclosed within it, another, longer one, to Elliott.
¹³
He told Chiba he hoped all was well with her, and said he enjoyed meeting her when he and Bunny had come to L.A. over the summer. He felt, he said, that she was a good person for Elliott, and a good influence in his life. He asked her to read over what he’d said to Elliott, and to give it to him if she felt it wouldn’t upset him. He also asked her to let him know whether Elliott
had read the letter, because he and Bunny were planning to arrive for Thanksgiving. He included his phone number and e-mail address, thanking Chiba for her help.

The letter to Elliott is in some ways a brave, self-aware statement. He had written at least one other letter like this, several years before, also addressed to Elliott; now he was more direct, focused on Elliott’s intuitions of sex abuse, which he had heard about from Bunny. He starts by admitting, again, that Elliott’s early life in the family was not happy. Again he connects this to his deficiencies as a father, saying he lacked experience, that he was too demanding, quick to anger, judgmental, and downright mean at times. But he says he’s changed. He’s a different person now. He had made efforts, he adds, to see Elliott when possible, but notes Elliott’s unwillingness to let either him or Bunny into his life. The sexual abuse he denies thoroughly. He admits it sometimes occurs in families, in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world. He calls it immoral and depressing. Then he asserts pointedly that he’s never had any urges to sexually abuse anyone, ever. Charlie does not say “I never sexually abused you, Elliott.” Instead he denies even the slightest thought of such behavior. It is a global rejection of a concept, almost; it is not personalized to the specific situation. He closes by saying he’d like to talk the matter over, along with many other subjects. The letter’s final paragraph is two sentences. He asks Elliott to take care of himself. Then he says, heartbreakingly, I love you.

Elliott never saw the letter.
¹⁴

October 21 was a Tuesday. It was to be taken up with errands for Jennifer. In the morning she had a medical appointment; her blood was being monitored for possible leukemia. Weeks before she’d had a suspicious lymph node removed. Elliott drove her in her Saab (he had to do it; she’d gotten a DUI). Test results looked good, they were told. There would be no need for additional monitoring. The two left with a feeling of relief. Chiba was going to be okay.

As they got home again they reviewed the plan for the afternoon. Chiba had a therapist appointment; again, Elliott would need to drive her. The doctor was Abigail Stanton. As it turns out, Elliott was planning to see Stanton too. He’d ended things with Schloss, the plan being to make a fresh start. Stanton, then, would be taking over his care, managing his meds in the
event he decided to start them back up again, this time more thoughtfully. Based on what Stanton knew already, she had concerns. In her view Elliott’s decision to go cold turkey from the psych meds was perilous, Chiba says. She intended to speak with him about it. Her idea was to evaluate and reassess.

All this was up for discussion as Chiba laid out the day’s remaining agenda. But suddenly Elliott interjected: “Don’t talk out loud in the house. You know it’s bugged.” Chiba tried laughing the comment off, thinking she might neutralize it. She answered, “I’m not paranoid like you are.” Elliott now was on the computer. He called out, “Are you working for somebody? To sabotage this record? Are you working against me too?” Overwhelmed by the emotion of the day, feeling hyped up and anxious from the earlier medical appointment, Chiba locked herself in the bathroom. It was something she’d done before. It was her way of getting some distance, a temporary respite. On other occasions like this Elliott had called Ashley, who came by to mediate, to talk Chiba out. This time, in the moment, he did not. He knocked on the bathroom door. He told Chiba he was sorry. He asked her to come out. He told her he knew he was crazy. He apologized for what he had said. But Chiba wasn’t ready yet. Impulsively, as she’d said before, she told him to leave her the fuck alone. She was sick of the paranoia.

For several long seconds there was quiet, only the usual sounds of the ticking house. Then came an awful noise, a scream Chiba vaguely recognized, both familiar somehow and utterly alien. A few nights prior she and Elliott had stayed up sharpening a new set of knives. As she flung herself out of the bathroom and ran to the kitchen, where the scream seemed to come from, she found Elliott at the sink. He had his back to her, but as he turned, she saw a knife in his chest. In milliseconds her mind raced over scenarios. Was this a dream? Was it some kind of joke? Was the knife even real? What, exactly, was happening? Looking in Elliott’s eyes his expression was “apologetic” but also hard to read. He seemed “half panicked.” Not thinking, her hands did what seemed to make immediate sense. She pulled out the knife. Elliott then crashed onto the balcony, as if, she believed, he were trying to jump off it somehow. She tackled him there, then quickly climbed off him to call 911, seconds later performing citizen CPR. For a split second, seeing the knife on the floor, she thought of using it on herself.