Detour from Normal (19 page)

I have to admit the whole thing was a bit of a stretch—even considering my state of mind, but I was lucky to be alive and even luckier to be home with my family. So what if I bought a car ten minutes after conceiving the idea. So what if I left a $5,000 car sitting on the lot. "Screw it!" I yelled to myself as I drove away in my new car. I was elated and was sure that Beth would be just as thrilled when I took her for a spin. When I came home, I couldn't wait to show her. "Beth, I've got a surprise."

"I heard. Cole called me. Apparently, you used him as a reference. How could you do that without talking to me? We've always made these decisions together."

I was caught off guard by her response but didn't miss a beat. "I bought it to celebrate. I could have died at Desert Hope or ended up a vegetable at Pinecrest. Besides, we have a great credit rating and no debt."

"We can't afford a new car right now. You're not even working."

"Everything will be OK; you wait and see. We don't ever have to worry ever again." That certainly seemed true in one respect: for the first time since I was a child, I wasn't worried about anything.

"And what about the Kia? What were you thinking, leaving it there like that? You left a window down and everything in it. They had no idea what to do with it. You didn't even leave them the keys."

"I offered them the keys, but they wouldn't take them, probably because I didn't have the title." As far as the window, contents, or
anything else having to do with the Kia, I really didn't care—none of it mattered to me.

The dispute continued but not for long. Though Beth was clearly upset, it was pointless trying to talk sense to me. Afterward I was optimistic that I'd be allowed to keep the car. Within the next twenty-four hours, however, I'd learn that my drive home in that little red car was both my first and last.

Late that night, as I was lying in bed struggling to sleep, I reflected again on ending dysfunction and shutting down my negative emotions. All of a sudden, I realized that those things were a big deal. Not just anyone could pull them off. The knowledge that I had done it around the supposed date of the Rapture added even more to the miraculous nature of my accomplishments. The more I considered it, the more it occurred to me that I should receive some kind of prize for my deeds. In fact, a small voice said, there was a prize. The prize was that I got to design the future.

That was a huge responsibility for me, and I took it very seriously. I wanted to design a world that was perfect for everyone. After much contemplation, I finally had it—the simplest design imaginable. It boiled down to five words: only good ideas will succeed. What that meant was that if an idea was beneficial to humanity, it would succeed. An idea that was destructive or dangerous to mankind—a biological weapon, for example—would fail. Good ideas would percolate to the top, and bad ones would sink to oblivion. It was astonishing. It was flawless. I could no longer feign sleep. I got up, woke Washington, and whispered in his ear, "Let's go for a walk, Washie." Even though it was 2:00 a.m., he stood, shook, and was ready to go in an instant.

Washington and I walked many miles on that moonlit night in the neighborhood and on the nearby bicycle trails. In the dead quiet of the
early morning, I couldn't help but notice the echoes of my laughter as one amusing "good" idea spawned another. I might talk to my dogs—or the rats—travel to Mars, be little kids with my brothers again. Any of those things were possible, assuming they
were
good ideas. That was something for a higher power to decide. With plenty of changed people on the way—all of them as passionate and as eager to work together toward a better world as I was—ideas that would have taken lifetimes to come to fruition or that never would have been possible at all in the world of the past could be commonplace in a generation, or perhaps sooner. I vibrated with excitement as I contemplated a future beyond belief.

A faint glow began to spread across the eastern horizon, and I noticed that Washington's tongue was dragging almost to the pavement. He never once complained, but he was exhausted and nearly dying of thirst. So I put "only good ideas will succeed" on a mental sticky-note, placed it right next to the one that said "Utopia," and we headed back home. Once there I turned on the front faucet for Washington. He sat and looked at me. Instead of making him choose, I immediately said, "OK." So ended another night without sleep: strike two.

"When you're high it's tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the
desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one's marrow."—Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, describing mania.

Chapter 18

A FLAWLESS NIGHT

As the next day, May 23, dawned, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. I hadn't seen much of the kids but didn't realize that it was because Beth was shielding them from me. She didn't want them to hear their dad babble about Utopia, about talking with dogs and rats, traveling to Mars, and being little kids with his brothers. I was perfectly content to discuss any of that with anyone who would listen. For me, they weren't realities; they were just inevitable possibilities.

My older brother, Dana, arrived that day. Dana is less than a year older than me—360 days. Growing up, Dana and I were inseparable. In the brick, row-house neighborhoods of Baltimore where we spent our youth, we roamed wild. We were rarely home; instead we built tree forts from scavenged lumber, explored the nearby woods, or played baseball or some other pickup game with the many other children in the neighborhood. As we grew older, we remained close. We were on the high school gymnastics team together, moved into an apartment together, worked together, attended the same community college and later the same university, where we received the same undergraduate degree. We were a regular part of each other's lives until I moved across the country a few years after graduating. We hadn't seen each other much lately but
still kept in touch. Dana's youngest daughter moved to Phoenix several years ago to attend Arizona State University (ASU). She stuck around, got married, became pregnant, and her due date was fast approaching. So Dana had additional incentive to visit the area.

It shouldn't have been a surprise that Dana had come. He is the quintessential big brother, the kind of guy you'd want watching your back. He is cool, calm, and analytical, and always takes time to understand the situation before making decisions. He'd be the first guy I'd call if I was in a bind, and, as far as Beth was concerned, I was well beyond a bind. She'd made the call. The doorbell rang and I went to see who it was. When I opened the front door, there he was with his unmistakable mountain-man looks, well-worn running shoes, baggy shorts, and hunting-themed T-shirt.

"You're looking good," I said, reaching out to shake his hand. "I haven't seen you since Desert Hope."

"Yeah, that was sure a lot of fun. Let's don't do that again," he said with a grin.

"What brings you here?"

"I was just out here visiting my daughter. The baby's almost ready to pop, you know."

"Yeah, she must be pretty big. I haven't seen her in a while with everything going on."

"She's OK, just has a little basketball. Doesn't seem like a very big baby."

"Well, that's good. Come on in out of the heat." I opened the door the rest of the way for him.

Dana acted normally, but I knew the real reason he was here: he was part of the ever-growing "Army for Ken." That's how I thought of
everyone who was banding together to help me. No one in the growing army had any experience with my particular issues, nor had they done any appreciable research, so to me they were like a bunch of vigilantes united behind a cause but clueless how to win the battle. I didn't mind. If I wanted anyone on my side, it was Dana. We didn't always see eye to eye, but when push came to shove, I knew I could count on him.

Like everyone else, Dana didn't have a plan; he just wanted to assess the situation and wing it from there. Things looked pretty grim to him right from the get-go. We sat down and started talking, and it wasn't long before he realized that his brother was AWOL. Some freak with relentless ideas and nonstop energy had taken over his body.

Once the assessment was done, it was time to get to work. First thing on the agenda: the red car had to go. The story was that the dealer was going to hold it for thirty days. I know I should have thought,
Yeah, right.
Normally I would have, but one odd thing about being manic is that I trusted the ones I loved even when they lied outright. It was easy for loved ones to trick me and even easier for me to accept what they had to say rather than doubt it. Beth returned the car with less than ten miles on the odometer and got our money back, end of story. A while later the little blue Kia I'd abandoned was back in the driveway.

Beth's journal, May 23, 2011:

Dana arrived just after the girls left for school. He spent much of the day with Ken. I went to the car dealer to see about returning the car. I had no choice. I could not afford a car payment on my part-time salary,
and if Ken was unable or unwilling to work, I didn't know how I would support the family. The dealer was reluctant to take it back and kept trying to make a deal with me. When I told them that I was leaving to consult with my attorney, they rapidly agreed to take it back. The salesman admitted that Ken had behaved very strangely during the sale, and there was no way that they would win if a lawyer heard what had happened. I spent much of the rest of the day freezing our bank accounts, credit cards, and investments as I did not know what Ken would do next. He could easily have spent all of our money.

I spent all morning with Dana and then had lunch with him. In the afternoon we went to see a movie, but at the last minute decided against it because I wasn't feeling very well. We went home, but rather than lie down, I took the blue Kia for a drive to clear my head. While driving, I thought about the Elantra and wondered if it might still be sitting at the dealer, waiting to go into "storage." If so, perhaps they'd let me take it for one more drive. That raised my spirits, and I set a course for Phoenix Hyundai. As I turned into the dealership, I grew excited at the sight of a red car out front. Unfortunately, it was someone else's Sonata. My Elantra was nowhere to be seen, so I walked into the dealership and asked for the salesman who'd sold me the car, then waited. As the minutes passed, I felt increasingly uneasy. Eventually I decided the whole thing was a bad idea and left. The dealer, aware by then that I had psychiatric issues, must have called Cole again. Word made it back to Beth, and that few minutes at the dealer transformed like a fish story into "He's trying to buy another dream car."