He drinks too much coffee. That’s what I thought when I first laid eyes on David eleven years earlier. He was juggling construction plans and a pager while he ordered a double-shot cappuccino. He checked his watch, ran his fingers through his hair, and then fumbled through his wallet for a few crumpled bills.
I would later interpret this first impression of David in a much different light. Disorganization and anxiety are two of the early warning signs of bipolar disorder, but on this day, I was immediately drawn to his erratic, discombobulated energy. I thought his lack of bravado was refreshingly different.
I’d slipped away from my job as a reporter for the Portland ABC affiliate, KATU, to refuel for the long night ahead. David was dressed in 501s, a white, organic cotton shirt, and black European dress shoes. His hair was thick and brown, and he was deeply tanned from what I later learned was a month cycling in the California desert. Whatever he said to the barista made her crack up with laughter. His teeth weren’t perfect, and his grin was a little lopsided, maybe a tad shy—infectious.
“Are you a builder?” I asked, nodding at the construction plans he held. We spoke as he was picking up his coffee order.
“Are you CIA?” he replied, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes turning up.
People shuffled around us to get to the cream and packets of fake sugar. “I need a contractor to finish a deck,” I said. “My neighbors are beginning to ask when I’ll be getting the piles of two-by-fours off my lawn.”
“Let me guess: A, your builder went bankrupt; B, your builder walked out on the job; or C, your builder broke up with you.” He smiled and then handed me his card. “It’s always A, B, or C.”
“B,” I said, looking at the card. Mica Construction. “Pleased to meet you, Mica.”
“No, I’m not Mica. That’s my company name,” he said. “David. David Krol.”
I looked at the card again. “Polish?” I could tell by the spelling and by his strong cheekbones and jaw. He was handsome in a way none of my girlfriends would approve of, too manly for them, with a beard that wasn’t trimmed down to the nub and thick brown hair that looked like it could use a good cut. But he was tall and strong, with intense blue eyes. I was tired of dating metrosexuals who had more hair product on the counter than I did. This guy probably got his hair cut at his girlfriend’s house. I checked his ring finger and suppressed a strange bubble of excitement inside me.
He grinned. “You are CIA. Okay, read me my rights.”
I laughed and shook my head, no, no. “Oh, never mind.”
We walked out the door together and stood in the parking lot. The day was good by Portland standards. Sun peeked through budding magnolias. The rain was giving us a break for now. He smelled like Tom’s toothpaste and a kind of soap I couldn’t identify. He drew a breath in, as if he was going to say something important. “Well, I better get going. I’ve got a bid meeting, uh, ten minutes ago.” He laughed, juggling the plans and his coffee while checking his watch.
“Oh, yes, me too. I’ve got a story that needs a really good editor. Know any?”
His eyebrows lifted, his first overt sign of interest. “So you’re a reporter?” he asked. “Who do you write for?”
I moved my shoulder closer to his. “TV,” I said. “I’m a television reporter.”
He looked confused. His phone rang. He lifted his finger apologetically as he turned to answer. My heart sank.
“Okay, so sorry,” he said after hanging up. He held onto the cappuccino cup with his teeth while he placed the phone back in his pocket. “TV, huh?” he said. “I wish I had one so that I could say something relevant.”
I laughed. This man was different. Interesting. Gorgeous. Completely unaffected by my career. It was the first time in years I’d felt this kind of powerful attraction to a man, an immediate and deep connection, uncanny, unexplainable, except to blame it all on a biological burst of pheromones. “Call me,” he said as he got into his car. “I’ll forget unless you do.”
He drove away in a yellow Mercedes that we would later call Old Yella. It would be the car we made out in, argued over politics in, and eventually strapped a baby seat in. We patched and replaced and limped along in that car, treating it as if it were a beloved but aging, and sometimes neglected, member of the family. It was perpetually in need of repair.
I called him the night of our first meeting, leaving the basic information about my deck on his voicemail. He didn’t rush to bid the job. I buried myself in breaking news, but every time I came up for air, the builder was the first thing on my mind. I called him again and left my number at work and home, trying to sound casual. “Uh, hi, David, the deck job is still there if you’re interested.”
Nothing. Why wasn’t he calling? I’d been dating a string of lawyers and doctors who came after me like the flu in February. In hindsight, I might have been less interested if David had been like the others: doting, responsible, nice. It is almost embarrassing to admit that his ambivalence toward me propelled me further. It made me want him all the more.
A week later, he finally called, offering a lame excuse. “I’m busier than I’d like,” he apologized. Still, he showed up the next day to look at the deck. As he stood on the front deck, I smiled at the items he’d brought with him: a tape measure, a bottle of French pinot, a baguette, a section of soft French Brie, and four radishes.
“That’s an interesting bid package,” I said.
“It can make work a lot more tolerable,” he smiled. “Unless you don’t like French wine.”
He showed me the label and then read the name in a perfect accent. I nodded my appreciation.
“I like French wine. But stinky cheese doesn’t really go well with tape measures.” I pretended to block the door.
“This tape measure is surprisingly robust,” he said. “Goes with everything. Can I come in?”
I stepped aside and gestured him in. He had a builder’s build, the kind you get without having to go to the gym. He had to duck through the entryway, which meant he was at least six foot four. He wore the same kind of jeans he’d had on at the coffee shop and a black dress shirt.
I felt like a schoolgirl, standing nervously in the dining room, trying to decide what to do next. I looked down at the floor. The shoes. Yes, the shoes. “Those look well-loved,” I said of his Italian shoes. A.Testoni, I could tell from the natural seams and hand-woven twine.
“Bologna, fifteen years ago. I thought I would die when he told me how much it would be to have them made.” He gazed at the shoes as if he was remembering the smell of Italy.
“But worth it?”
“They weather like hiking boots. Worth every last lira.”
His dialect, I found out, was from Quebec, where he grew up, along with the half-dozen countries he’d adopted as his own. His lips were full and soft. There was a tiny scar that barely showed beneath his moustache. I’d reported on a doctor who fixed cleft palates in children, and the scar was exactly like the ones I’d seen on dozens of pictures of orphans. “It was brutal,” he said, when he saw me looking at the scar. “Seven surgeries later, I still can’t breathe.”
I turned, embarrassed that I’d been studying his face so intimately.
Embarrassed that he seemed to be able to read my thoughts. Within hours of knowing David, I sensed an enormous vulnerability, a part of him that was wounded and in need of care. His strong exterior was so unlike his interior, and his ability to remain coolly aloof, even while talking about his own disability, was already confusing to me. Over the years, David’s feelings of being different would only increase, a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. His favorite saying was “We’re born alone; we live alone; we die alone.” I found it odd that he left out the most important part: “Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”
Over wine, he told of his life and travels: Morocco, Spain, and Mexico, warm countries where a single man and his backpack could blend in with ease. He’d log or pull construction jobs in his home base, Canada, and then travel until his money ran out. He’d been married once, a marriage of convenience, he said, so that he could get a green card in the United States. “We were young, twenty-something, both of us. We met in a traveling circus.”
My eyes widened. “No way.”
“No, really. I’d joined to take care of the Clydesdales, the only horse in the world that doesn’t make me feel gigantic. Jen was doing something more legitimate.” He paused, studying a painting on my wall. “I cheated on her, and she ended up gay,” he said. “We’re really good friends now, though.”
My reporter instinct kicked in. “Cheated” is a big word for anyone to use in casual chat. I suppressed whatever thread I should have followed for an innocuous question.
“And the uh, woman, you cheated on her with?”
“We spent ten years together. The craziest, spookiest, most fucked-up years of my life.” He said it affectionately and poured the last of the red into his glass. “We’re lucky we both got out alive.”
I let the line sink in, unsure of what to make of it. Two long-term relationships, both described in ominous terms. Was he trying to make himself sound like an unlikely partner? Did he care? Years later, a therapist would describe how we, like everyone, followed our unconscious patterns in our seeking out of partners.
That day, however, it simply felt like we clicked. The wine bottle was empty and the sky had darkened before we got around to looking at the unfinished deck. I turned on the lights so he could measure. He hopped from one two-by-four to the next with the agility of a tightrope walker.
“Yeah, we could do this,” he said. “But it would be a couple of weeks before we could get started.” He snapped back the tape measure and gathered his things from the table. “Let me know what you decide.” He looked at me intently, as if he might reach out and brush my hair to the side.
Instead, he walked to the front door and held out his hand. “It was really nice meeting you.”
A wave of electricity went up my spine. My head was light from the wine. I was airy, ethereal. He lifted his eyebrows as if to say, “Are you okay?”
I straightened my blouse. My chest was warm. He scribbled a quote for the work on a piece of yellow paper and drew two exaggerated lines under the number. “Voila!” he said. “Painless.”
I shifted from one foot to the other, hoping he’d ask to stay. He didn’t. When I closed the door behind him, I wondered what was happening to me.
The yellow sheet he’d left wasn’t an estimate at all; it read “sweet dreams” in scribbled letters. I could barely make out the handwriting.
One Sunday afternoon, shortly after I started seeing David, I got a call from Jim, a mutual fund manager I’d been halfheartedly dating for several months. He described a tenderloin he’d lovingly basted for several hours. He went on about the roasted potatoes, garlic-infused leeks, how he’d found the perfect bottle in his wine cellar, just calling to be opened after twenty years. All in all, he said, it was the perfect summer’s evening on his deck overlooking the city. Was I available?
All during the phone call, David was standing on the porch, in a pair of bike shorts and a jersey, waiting for me to set off on a ride. David was not a traditional date who planned and plotted romantic opportunity. Instead, he’d call or pop by unexpectedly, and we’d end up taking long walks around my neighborhood. Today’s bike ride was one of the first attempts David had made to plan something in advance. I had no idea how strongly David felt about me at this point in our relationship. Oddly, his aloofness made him even more mysterious, more desirable. As he waited for me to finish the call, he tenderly checked the health of my hanging basket, squirting water over the magnolias and then deadheading some of the dormant flowers.
“I’m so sorry, Jim. I’m tied up tonight,” I said, lowering my voice.
Jim’s disappointment was palpable. He didn’t speak for a moment. Then he cleared his throat. “Well, how about brunch tomorrow?”
David peeked his head into the door, smiling broadly, his hair pushed back and his eyebrows lifted. “You ready?” he asked.
I lifted my finger—just one moment, I’ll be right there—expecting to feel conflicted and confused. David smiled, miming for me to hang up the phone. He was so charming when he was like this, playful even in a head-butting competition with another man. I felt a weakness, a stirring that was so biologically driven, so unexpected. Imagine children coming from this man, I thought to myself.
But Jim didn’t give up easily. He repeated himself, and I was jarred back to the phone. “You there, Sheila? Are you there?”
David walked toward me, mischievously thrilled to interrupt my phone call.
“Uh-huh.” I nodded as David slid behind me, his arms around my waist, kissing the back of my neck. I didn’t believe in fate. The biological clock was baloney. I’d rationalized a life without children because kids would prevent me from getting to the top of my career. How do you pick up and move to the next big television market with an infant? How do you go to Europe on a moment’s notice with a toddler? I was in my early thirties and hadn’t seriously considered children until now. I made a mental note to myself to remember the details of that day, the heat in the kitchen, David’s purple jersey with “Trek” emblazoned on the back, the way the hair on the back of my neck stood up when he breathed on me.
Jim’s voice became irritable. “Sounds like you’re busy.”
David kissed my earlobe. My palms throbbed. My heartbeat interrupted my own thoughts, whoosh-whoosh.
Jim cleared his throat.
“Hey, Jim,” I said, “I’m really sorry. But yes, I’m uh, um, I’ll call you later, okay?”
Our bike ride ended at David’s house, a bungalow he’d remodeled on the east side of the river. He told me how he’d found it while out one day walking, a home that was in such dilapidated shape that the aluminum gutters had holes the size of golf balls and the deck was rotten. Now, the home gleamed with copper gutters, fresh paint, and carefully sealed hardwoods on the deck. The small yard was framed with healthy azaleas, maples, and rhododendrons. We’d left our bikes on the front porch as he took me on what he described as the “quick tour.”
The living room was lovingly cared for, looking as if a woman might have placed the rugs, hung paintings, and lined the bookshelves with dozens of worn hardbacks. The reading chair in the corner looked like an antique, with long, dark cherry arms and a tattered cushion. I could hang out here, I thought to myself.
In the dining room, a long table was the sole piece of furniture, one of the most stunning tables I’d ever seen, with room for ten. “I made this table from Brazilian hardwood,” David said. The seams of the hardwood table fit together perfectly. It was shined and sealed, with a vase of large lilies placed in the center. We moved through the dining room into a bright kitchen with white tile and floor-to-ceiling deck doors that looked out on a hardwood deck and garden. David slipped through the door. “Come on out here, meet Sunny-Side Up and Tex-Mex.”
David raised chickens! The red coop looked like it had been created precisely for the corner of his garden. This little fact about my new boyfriend thrilled me no end. “The city actually gives out permits for a certain number of coops in the city,” he said.
Through the chicken coop wire I saw two chickens, one with orange feathers, the other with brown and white markings.
David opened one of the pens and held up a beautiful brown egg. “Now, that’s organic.”
He talked to the chickens through the wire as if they were his children, speaking sweetly to them. “Don’t get nervous, girls. Bad for the eggs.” I couldn’t help loving the contrast; this big, six-foot-four man gently stroking his chickens’ egos. “You ready for the best eggs in Portland?” he said after gathering several more eggs in his T-shirt.
I was famished from the bike ride. “Absolutely!”
I sat on the back deck sunning myself while David puttered in the kitchen. Beyond the chicken coop, David had planted a huge garden, with raised beds sprouting starter plants for tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and herbs. The back of his garden was lined with sunflowers. It was so peaceful here. I let the sun sink into my bones. Portland’s long rainy season could leave me feeling so sun deprived; it felt good to let the weekend heat sink deep. David’s cherry trees and rose bushes were thriving. The sound of Leonard Cohen played softly through the windows. I felt punch-drunk, cared for, and connected. I closed my eyes and dozed.
When I woke up, David was coming through the door holding a tray filled with food.
“Your eggs are ready, Madame.” David presented the tray of fresh eggs, toast, and a strong cup of coffee, just the way I like it, made in a French press.
He served the meal with small Italian salt and pepper shakers and a white linen napkin. “I love eggs for dinner,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”
“So are you,” he replied, setting the tray down beside me. It was the first overtly affectionate thing David had ever said to me. He was not loose with his words. He touched my arm, and a current moved through me. He watched me without flinching. I wished I hadn’t just finished a sweaty bike ride.
“I’ve never heard you say anything like that before.”
“Yeah,” David said, poking his eggs with a piece of the toast. “I’m not much of a romantic.”
I started to disagree but then thought better of it. He wasn’t a romantic in the way that other men were, offering trips or jewelry as a showing of their affection. But he was completely authentic. David was his own person, and he appreciated me and my ambition. He wasn’t the richest man in the world, or the CEO of a major corporation. He told me he hadn’t bothered to finish his college education in Montreal, a fact that would later make much more sense. But despite the lack of a degree, he was by far the most intelligent and sensitive man I’d ever met, and the most mysterious. I had the uncanny sense that I already knew him, though, and that his serious, contemplative side could be very good for me.
I leaned over to kiss him. He did not rush me, or hurry me. His lips were full, a sweetheart shape that met my own naturally. I was ready to put down roots with someone. This tender gardener had won me over.
We spent most of our weekends together after that: hiking, skiing, mountain biking. Finally, I was with someone who loved the outdoors as much as I did. We traveled whenever we could both get away. We spent many of our summer weekends in the gulches, arches, and peaks of Canyonlands, hiking and bouldering, then cooling off in the local rivers and lakes. The red rock was millions of years old, as grand as any setting I’d ever known. I wanted David to love it as much as I did, and from the smile that settled on his face in the desert, I could tell he was enthralled.
One night in Capitol Reef National Park—three hours from my childhood home near Salt Lake City—we stayed up to watch a particularly active lightning storm. The strikes could have been miles away, but every time one hit the ground, it electrified the room with bright light and an energy that spooked me. The house where we stayed was owned by a college friend, a geologist who had bought land in the Torrey area before it became unaffordable.
Just as the sky thickened with dark, brooding storm clouds, David threw a jacket over me and said, “Come on, we can’t miss this!”
We both ran barefoot into the storm, a wild, chaotic wind and rain that drenched us in minutes. He drew me in close, held out his left arm, and snapped a photograph of us while the dawn broke and a bolt streaked the sky behind us. Our eyes still held the excitement of those strikes, living so close to something so beautiful. And so dangerous.
The National Institute of Mental Health reports that “unlike most disabling physical diseases, mental illness begins very early in life. Half of all lifetime cases begin by age fourteen; three-quarters have begun by age twenty-four. Thus, mental disorders are really the chronic diseases of the young. For example, anxiety disorders often begin in late childhood, mood disorders in late adolescence, and substance abuse in the early twenties. Unlike heart disease or most cancers, young people with mental disorders suffer disability when they are in the prime of life, when they would normally be the most productive.”
The study quoted above found that in the United States, mental disorders are quite common: 26 percent of the general population reported that they had had symptoms sufficient for diagnosing a mental disorder during the past twelve months. However, many of these cases are mild or will resolve without formal intervention.
According to David’s doctors, his presentation of bipolar disorder was unusual because he had compensated for his illness for most of his adult life without psychiatric medication, counseling, and/or hospitalization.
David’s sister, a psychologist, said David had informally reported periods of depression in his teens, twenties, and thirties. He experienced significant impairment in his forties, affecting his mood, anxiety level, and ability to sleep. Untreated psychiatric disorders can lead to more frequent and more severe episodes and are more likely to become resistant to treatment.
The Early Assessment and Support Alliance (EASA) project has shown unequivocally that early intervention in mental illness works. EASA supports youth ages twelve to twenty-five years old and offers a holistic approach to psychosis. The two-year intervention includes community education and outreach; intensive multilevel treatment that includes medical care, mental health care, occupational therapy, and vocational support; and strong support to keep young people independent, in school, and tied to employment.
Tamara Sale is Oregon’s EASA program development director. “The current system of mental health care in most places in the United States is broken,” she says, “forcing people into long-term crises and government disability by not providing access to services or evidence-based practices. . . . The approach we have taken has been a fundamental cultural shift. Now, there is greater awareness in the community about being proactive and persistent with psychosis intervention.”
A case study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says that the EASA program “has reduced hospitalizations for psychosis, helped young people maintain critical family and social support, and helped keep them in school.” “If a young person starts to develop psychosis in Oregon,” says Sale, “there is someplace to turn.” According to the case study, a person who is hospitalized for an acute psychotic episode is at heightened risk for another episode and typically faces a longer recovery process. Sale adds, “If you can identify people before they’ve lost contact with reality, it is much easier to keep them on track.”