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MANAGE YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONThe Madness Equation
The complete text of this selection is available in our print edition.
Over and over again, the world displays a regular irregularity.
— James Gleick, Chaos
When your child goes mad, you begin to question everything you once thought to be true. Even if you’ve been a questioning person all your life, as I have, the things you took for granted — or, as my college English students often write, “for granite” — no longer lie rock-hard in your palm, but shift and slip away like sand.
Jason, my twenty-five-year-old son, moved from New York City to Chicago last January. I’d arranged for him to stay in a friend’s vacant basement condo while he looked for a job and a place to live. Both Jason and I were full of hope that he would finally be able to have a quiet, independent, satisfying life. Chicago seemed perfect: fairly affordable, with plenty of free activities and great public transportation. A decent job, a small place of his own — those goals were modest enough. And Jason had just graduated with an associate’s degree in art; what better city for an art lover?
Jason had also recently suffered a heartbreak. He’d fallen in love with Max, with whom he’d been friends for more than a year, but Max hadn’t felt the same way, and the friendship had ended. I knew Jason was depressed, and I hurt for him, but what young person hasn’t gone through the pain of rejection? I didn’t see his depression as a sign of something worse to come.
Once Jason was in Chicago, his world opened up again; he saw that his happiness did not depend on one person. He called me daily, sounding joyful — sometimes a bit too joyful. I tried not to think about his strange behavior a year earlier, when he’d become manic and briefly psychotic, and I’d had to bring him to the emergency room. Although he’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I believed it to be an isolated incident, a result of staying up four nights without sleep. His regular doctor, too, had questioned the diagnosis. In Chicago Jason’s shyness disappeared, and the flamboyant side of his personality emerged; he began going to nightclubs, dancing under the strobe lights, and having 3 A.M. breakfasts with people he’d just met. He decided to call Max to let him know that he was having a great time and had made peace with what had happened between them.
But Jason hadn’t expected to hear the hurt in Max’s voice. My son was shocked to realize that he might have inflicted pain as well. After the call, Jason just couldn’t stay in the condo. He walked toward the lake, three blocks east, fighting the strong wind blowing in from its shores. When he got to the beach, no one was there. It was eleven o’clock and so cold that icicles had frozen horizontally off the pier’s iron rail. Despite the wind and the temperature, Jason walked to the end of the pier, fifty feet from shore, and stood there. His tears froze on his cheeks while he begged God to help Max feel better, to take away any pain that Jason might have caused. He wanted more than anything else to see his friend in person right then. This desire eclipsed all other thought.
As Jason looked out over the water, the sky to his right appeared lit with multicolored lightning. The storm clouds glowed yellow, green, and blue, and the lake beneath them thrashed and burned with fire. But to his left the water seemed calm and serene, full of loving energy. In the distance along the shore, the buildings of downtown Chicago glistened like the Emerald City, and Jason felt a great love for them. For him the buildings were alive, the living products of human intelligence. The world, he suddenly understood, was simply that: pure intelligence, and he was both the creator and the created.
In the distance over the lake he saw a plane heading toward the city. Suddenly the sky was filled with planes, swirling around, shooting past his ears, spinning toward earth. At first he was frightened, but then he understood that these brilliant spirals were new spirits being sent to earth from heaven. God, he realized, constantly sent us new people to love.
A loud voice told him, “Jason, you are all-powerful! You can part these waters! You can walk across Lake Michigan!” Once he had crossed the lake, he would keep walking all the way to New York City. He had to see Max. He had to make amends. He inched toward the concrete edge of the pier and looked down at the bright green, pulsating water, so full of life, so mesmerizing in its beauty. The waves became hands beckoning to him, welcoming him like a mother’s arms.
Just as he was about to step off the pier, another voice said to the first, “Wait! He’s still in his human form! He can’t do it yet!” Upon hearing this, Jason turned and made his way back to the condo, where he called me and told me everything he’d just experienced.
“Jason,” I said, “listen to that voice, the one that understands you’re still human. OK?”
After we’d hung up, I immediately made a train reservation from Maryland to Chicago. (I didn’t have the money for an emergency plane ticket.) Just before I left my house, Jason called on his cellphone from the basement of the John Hancock Building. He was in a bathroom stall, sobbing. “I can’t get out of here,” he said. “I can’t move.”
He’d paid to go to the observation deck of the building because he’d been convinced that he would find Max there. He’d felt that he could literally make Max appear. Of course, when Max hadn’t been there, it had been doubly devastating: his friend had not come, and Jason did not have the power he’d believed he had. In despair he’d made his way to the basement, where he was now hiding in a stall. As we talked, he grew calmer, and then his tone of voice changed to one of sheer awe. “Whoa,” he said, like someone on an acid trip. (He assured me he hadn’t taken any drugs.) “The walls are turning red and orange. The colors are shifting all over the place.”
I thought of calling the police, and I should have, but I wasn’t sure what I would have said to them, or what they’d have done to Jason. I felt confused and helpless. My son was eight hundred miles away and in deep trouble. “I’m on my way, Jason,” I said. “Just get on the el and get back to your place. I’m coming. I’m taking the train. I’ll be there tomorrow morning.” The train to Chicago was an overnight ride.
“Wow,” he said. “You’ll be on a train, and I’ll be on a train. Are you dead, too?”
