Second Sight (3 page)
With no impulse to move or to be anywhere other than where I found myself, I looked around the tunnel now surrounding me. It was an amazingly still, long, cylindrical space, its gray color gleaming as if illuminated from behind by a subtle, shimmering source. Though the tunnel did not seem solid, as in ordinary reality, its translucent walls appeared to extend endlessly in both directions, comprised of a swirling, vaporous material resembling billions of orbiting atoms moving at enormous speeds. Other than enclosing me, this surreal world was completely empty, but comfortable and soothing: There were no harsh edges, and the whole tunnel seemed to be vibrating gently. In fact, my body now also looked translucent and was vibrating, as if it had changed form to suit this new environment. I felt utterly at peace, contained, and self-contained, in a place that seemed to be without limits, going on forever.
Suddenly I remembered being a little girl, looking up into space while sitting on my rooftop, fascinated by the sky and the planets, sensing an invisible presence. For hours I'd stare at what I couldn't see but could feel more strongly than anything material. From my earliest memory, I always believed in God. Not so much the God of the Jewish religion in which I was raised, or any other religion for that matter, but a formless, ever-present being that twinkled through all things and lovingly watched over me. That same presence was now with me in the tunnel, more familiar and closer than it ever had been when I was a child. Enveloped by it, as if wrapped in a warm cashmere blanket on a cold winter's night, I was in perfect balance, impervious to harm, protected by an invisible but somehow tangible, sustaining life force.
Time had stopped, each moment stretching out into eternity. From what felt like a great distance away, I gazed through the shattered windshield, noticing soft moonlight streaming through the canyon. The car bounced off huge boulders, turning end over end through the air as we plummered down the mountainside. And yet I never perceived that I was in the slightest danger; I experienced not a single moment of fear. With the coolness of a detached observer, I counted the times the car somersaulted: once, twice, three, four, all the way up to eight. Protected by the shelter of the tunnel, I remained in a void, suspended in free fall, not knowing if this was life or death.
As abruptly as I'd been pulled into it, I was jolted out of the tunnel and back into the present, just as the car crashed down on solid ground. With a high, shuddering bounce and a grating sound of steel against rock, we careened to a grinding halt, the front wheels of the car projecting over a narrow ledge. We were precariously balanced, actually teetering on the precipice.
Thrown by the impact of our landing, my companion and I had both ended up in the backseat. Fragments of broken glass were scattered all over the inside of the car, but miraculously, neither of us was hurt. We quickly realized, though, that we were still in danger: At any moment the car might slide forward and tumble into a large ravine below. We had to get out of there fast.
A live oak tree trying to crawl in through the window appeared to be our only available support. Without looking back I grabbed on to its branches and managed to pull myself out of the mangled car. My companion close behind, we scrambled up the side of the cliff, pushing through thickets of manzanita and wild mustard, barely penetrable scrub brush and wild chaparral. Trying to avoid the loose, unstable mounds of dirt and slippery leaves beneath our feet, we used shrubs as ropes to pull ourselves up the sheer hillside. Yet even as we inched our way to the top, I kept asking myself, Why were our lives spared? We should have been killed. Instead, we were walking away with hardly a scratch. And already the image of the tunnel haunted me.
Very relieved to be on solid ground again, we were soon able to hitchhike a ride down the winding canyon roads back into the city. Faint rays of pink dawn light were beginning to illuminate the hills. I don't think either of us said a single word the entire time, but I'm not certain. I have little recall of the trip. Staring off into space, I replayed the accident over and over in my mind, unable to account for how we could still be alive. Only a miracle could have saved us.
For many days, I blanked out the details of the actual fall but retained a few disjointed images. I could distinctly remember the car rolling over the cliff and the giddy, weightless, out-of-control sensations during the drop. It was like going over the first big dip on a gigantic roller coaster. I also recalled how every cell in my body had screamed in protest in the instant of the screeching, bone-jarring landing. As for the tunnel, I had no idea what to make of it. It was an enigma, a mystery I would continue to try to unravel for a long time to come.
For my parents, what happened that night was only the latest in a series of drug-related calamities in my life. I was their only child and they were frantic. It wasn't so long before that my mother had sung me to sleep with lullabies, that my father and I had played miniature golf on the weekends. I looked up to my parents, and I knew they both wanted my life to be easy, to shelter me, but the tighter their hold, the more I rebelled. When I began to take drugs, I could see I was breaking their hearts. I knew they feared for my safety, saw our relationship slipping away. But I felt I had no choice. I had to break free. During the past years, they'd watched me change from being a quiet, sensitive girl into a stranger—unreachable, out of control.
Before the Tuna Canyon wreck, my parents had done all they could to get me some help. My mother, a strong-willed family practitioner, and my father, a soft-spoken radiologist, were both prominent physicians in Beverly Hills; they had the resources of the community behind them. A practical man, with a root integrity, successful but satisfied with the simplest pleasures, my father would look at me with his large oval, blue-green eyes as if trying to see where I'd gone. And my mother, powerful, gregarious, afraid I wouldn't fit in, seemed to be determined with all her intensity and faith to straighten me out, even at the risk of being overbearing. But I was stubborn and rebellious. I just wouldn't listen, was convinced my parents were incapable of truly understanding my inner struggles, perhaps because I didn't understand them myself.
Among other things, I was fed up with being so sensitive. I felt no one could understand me anyway—how I sometimes knew things about people before they said a word. Or how I made accurate predictions about the future, often unhappy ones. My father never gave these predictions much credence or even said anything about them. Loyal, a man of few words, he was a strong, steady presence; his chief concern was keeping peace in the family. His mind sought the concrete, was most comfortable with the world in which he'd succeeded so well. The strange, the unusual—well, if it created problems, he was against it. But for my mother, my predictions seemed to touch a raw nerve. She never encouraged them; they made her uneasy, fearful that such talk would keep me from being normal. Much honored, my mother took enormous pride in being part of the Jewish community, the medical community, having a celebrity practice in Beverly Hills, many friends, a phone that never stopped ringing. But my predictions made me no more comfortable than they made her. In fact, I would have done anything to shut them off. And drugs could do that for me. They provided a way out and I took it.
After the accident, my parents did their best to protect me. The next morning, they packed up my things from our West-wood home and sent me to stay with some of their close friends in Malibu Colony, a well-guarded and affluent section of Malibu Beach. While they were deciding how best to help me, they insisted I remain there, isolated from my own friends, and most importantly, away from drugs. I knew their motives were good, but still I went grudgingly.
Nonetheless, I'd reached a turning point. My close brush with death had shaken me, but more than that, I'd undergone a passage, had in some strange way come back to myself. I couldn't stop thinking about the tunnel, its utter tranquillity, and the miracle that somehow, in defiance of the laws of physics, it allowed me to survive a catastrophic wreck.
When my parents dropped me off at the Malibu beach house, a dense fog was beginning to burn off as the sun lit up the coast. Disgruntled and moody, I settled in as best I could. Refusing to talk to anyone, I installed myself on the living room sofa and turned on the TV. There I lay, in a pink tie-dyed tank top and bell-bottom jeans with flowers embroidered on the pockets, mindlessly watching a
Star Trek
episode. Soon, however, my parents' friends barged in and introduced me to a neighbor. Viewing any interruption as an intrusion, I was hostile when I looked up at him, but I quickly did a double-take.
Jim was a tall, lean man in his midforties, with full, curly white hair and a white beard. He also happened to be standing in front of a backdrop of golden rays being reflected off the ocean, creating a halo effect. He looked like a storybook version of God. I wanted to burst out laughing, but I stopped myself. On sheer principle, I refused to cooperate, and laughing might be misconstrued as my “coming around.” But in the celestial light of Jim's presence, this whole mess suddenly took on a comic twist. Here I was, exiled in Malibu, very much alive for no apparent reason, and now a man who looked like God was towering over me.
Almost before I knew it, Jim was sitting on the couch beside me and gently asking me questions about myself. Annoyed by how forward he was, I wondered, Who is this man anyway? I wanted to dislike him, but somehow I couldn't. His large brown eyes and kind, unassuming manner soothed me. His presence gave me a feeling of acceptance, something I seldom experienced around adults. The quality of his voice and the tender way he looked at me seemed familiar, as if we'd sat together a thousand times before, though in fact no one in my life remotely resembled him.
I instantly connected with Jim, felt some sort of magical alliance between us. But there was no way in the world I was going to admit that to anybody. I'd programmed myself to be miserable, and nothing would change my stance. Adamant about refusing to give in to my parents' demands, I hardly spoke to him that first day. Eventually he said good-bye, got up, and left. I made a point of not watching him, kept my gaze fixed on the television.
The next morning my parents issued me an ultimatum. As usual, my mother did most of the talking while my father quietly sat back, giving her his silent but strong support. Either I had to agree to go into psychotherapy now, or they'd send me to live with relatives on the East Coast. My only exposure to psychotherapy had been the few instances when my parents dragged me to family counseling sessions that always ended up in yelling matches, after which we all went home in frustration. As a result, I viewed therapy as a farce, punishment for the inept who couldn't work out their own problems. But since I wanted to stay in Los Angeles at any cost, I reluctantly consented.
Late that August afternoon in 1968, two months after my high-school graduation, the three of us headed for Beverly Hills in the family Lincoln. I sat in the backseat, watching my father's somber but kind face in the rearview mirror. My mother's eyes were unflinching, but whenever she glanced at me, they were sad. To stay numb and pretend I didn't care, I kept silently repeating the words to “Purple Haze,” a Jimi Hendrix song.
Our destination was a modest, four-story office building with two cramped elevators and long, windowless halls. While sitting in the waiting room before the appointment, our tension mounted. It was all I could do to keep my mouth shut and not fly out the door.
Not a moment too soon, a familiar figure greeted us: Jim, our friend's neighbor in Malibu, the man I'd met the day before. He was the pyschiatrist we were scheduled to see. I was furious; I felt I'd been tricked and set up. At the same time, I was strangely attracted to him, intrigued by my sense of our intangible rapport. Against my will, it seemed I shared an unspoken camaraderie with him, almost a kinship. Whirling with feelings, I nodded at Jim and grumbled a guarded hello. Then my parents and I followed him into his office.
For the first session, Jim met with us all together. He sat in a black leather swivel chair and motioned for me to sit beside him on an oversized rust-colored ottoman. My parents stiffly sat opposite us on a green-and-beige-striped couch. Soon my mother started sobbing and told Jim how worried she was about me. I pulled my knees up to my chest and rolled into a tight ball. I felt suffocated by the intensity of my mother's love. Her attention always seemed to be on me. I knew how much she cared, but was afraid that if I let her in too close I'd be devoured. She was so dominant a personality that the only way I could be real, I felt, was to oppose her. Given her intensity and persistence, to do so took every ounce of strength I possessed.
Jim listened patiently to both my parents. Then he listened to me. I felt unusually timid around him, paying attention to his opinions, sneaking looks at his clothes, noticing his wedding ring, how he held his hands. I never once intentionally provoked him or cut him off, as I did so often with other adults, particularly authority figures. At the end of the hour, I surprised myself by agreeing to come back again, to try whatever “therapy” was supposed to be.
Relieved that I was at last cooperating with them, my parents allowed me to move back into their home. But after a few months, Jim suggested that I stay in what he called a “halfway house.” He knew of two therapists, Pat and Ray, who rented rooms to people like me, people who were in transition and needed support. They lived on the premises with their two young daughters, a cat, and two dogs. Jim thought the move would give me a chance to grow up and begin to separate from my mother and father. I was all for it; I couldn't wait to be on my own. My parents were wary but they'd made a decision to trust Jim and so reluctantly agreed.
I fell in love with the house the moment I saw it. It was a two-story, weathered pink Victorian A-frame on the corner of Park Avenue and the Speedway, an alley that runs along the entire stretch of Venice Beach. The boardwalk and the sand, separated from us by an empty dirt lot, were less than a half block away. At night, I could hear waves breaking on the shore as I fell asleep. I quickly became fast friends with Pat and Ray, good-hearted hippies in their midthirties with degrees in social work who now devoted their lives to helping others. They welcomed me into their home.