Mr. Miller had dragged his reluctant wife in for the evaluation. It had been clear to me from the moment the introductions started that Mrs. Miller did not want to be in my office. Her demeanor had reminded me of a child who would gladly promise never, ever to eat candy again if she could only avoid the dentist’s drill this time. All that was absent was a foot stomp.
My clinical antennae were further tuned by her appearance. Any professional who has spent enough hours with people suffering acute mental illness would have recognized that Mrs. Miller’s physical appearance was just the slightest bit off. Her hair, her makeup, her clothes-everything was just a degree or two away from ordinary. My session with the Millers was on a lovely Indian summer September day, and Mrs. Miller came dressed in a wool suit, carrying a straw bag, and wearing scuffed white pumps. On her eyes she wore big, bright Jackie O sunglasses. All the pieces, individually, were fine. Acceptable, at least. But together on a fine autumn day they totaled a sartorial sum that I guessed only Mrs. Miller could fully comprehend.
For his part, Mr. Miller was in something close to full-blown denial about the extent of the daunting challenges he faced. He appeared to have convinced himself, at least temporarily, that a few heart-to-heart sessions of some old-fashioned talking therapy would be just the trick to help lead his wife away from the middle of the field where she’d been aimlessly wandering and ease her back onto the straight and narrow marital tracks where she belonged.
Where exactly was Mrs. Miller doing her figurative wandering?
Into another man’s bed? No. Drugs? Alcohol? Nothing so pedestrian.
Mrs. Miller, it turned out, attended weddings. Usually two or three ceremonies a month, but during prime nuptial season she would do more. “Ten one month,” Mr. Miller had reported to me over the phone when he’d called for the initial appointment. “That’s her record. This past June. The truth is she’d do ten a week if she could fit them in.”
She dressed elegantly for each one of the ceremonies. Her collection of wedding outfits numbered in the dozens, and she had an enviable assortment of spring and summer hats-Mr. Miller called them hats; Mrs. Miller referred to them as “my bonnets.” She bought nice gifts for every one of the happy couples. Many of the outfits and all of the wedding gifts were purchased from cable TV home shopping channels. She stayed away from registries-“Who needs to be told what to buy? My Lord,” she asked aloud during our session-and apparently her gifting tendencies leaned toward ceramic figurines of animals. Puppies and kittens mostly, but occasional angels and young children.
The wedding presents were always pricey things. “It’s her only vice,” Mr. Miller had said in admirable defense of his wife’s largesse. During one particular month of nuptials every newlywed couple received-after a one-hour this-is-it closeout sale on QVC-a beautiful shiny chrome home espresso machine from Italy. The piston kind. The total tab for the machines was almost two thousand dollars.
The UPS guy and the FedEx lady who drove the routes that included the Millers’ home were on a first-name basis with everyone in the household.
Other than the sheer number of weddings, and the accumulating expense, what was the problem? The problem was that Mrs. Miller had never been invited to any of the ceremonies. None. Still, she fervently believed that she was an honored guest at every one of them, and if challenged could concoct an elaborate though ultimately nonsensical explanation for her attendance.
Her typical pattern was to arrive at the church or synagogue with some breathless flair just moments before the festivities began. She’d edge herself into a prime seat for the service, usually in the second or third row right behind the family, always on the bride’s side, center aisle, and she’d smile and wave at the other guests as though she knew them quite well.
She always cried during the vows.
On more than one occasion after the nuptials were complete she’d exited the church along with the bride’s family and joined the wedding party for the limousine ride to the reception.
Psychotherapists are trained to ask the question, “Why now?” Why is this man, or this woman, in my office seeking help today? Why didn’t she come in last week, or last month, or next week, or next month? The answer to the question yields what we like to call the “precipitating event.”
For the Millers the precipitating event for seeking psychological assistance was crystal clear. The previous weekend Mrs. Miller had, at the insistence of an irascible groom and an implacable bride, been removed from a festive wedding reception at the Hotel Boulderado by the police. The immediate precipitant for her removal was Mrs. Miller’s dubious decision to break into the celebratory dance between the newlyweds and politely, but firmly, demand her turn to waltz with the groom.
“Excuse me? I think you forgot your dance with me,” she’d said to him with a sad smile as she tapped the groom on the shoulder. “You’ll excuse us?” she’d added for the benefit of his befuddled bride. Then Mrs. Miller held up her silk-draped arms, waiting her turn to be swept away.
The groom, it turned out, was a Boulder sheriff’s deputy. Half the guests at the wedding were Boulder sheriff’s deputies. Not one of them recognized the woman in the yellow silk dress. Most importantly, the bride, who knew the detailed logistics of her wedding day as intimately as a chef knows the contents of his larder, didn’t recognize the woman in the yellow silk dress.
Later that day, at the police department across town, the authorities released Mrs. Miller to Mr. Miller’s custody with the strong suggestion that a mental health consultation might be in order.
Enter moi.
My appraisal?
Based on the brief history the Millers provided, Mrs. Miller’s descent into schizophrenia had been gradual. By history, I was guessing that she’d suffered her first psychotic break at around age twenty-three-she and her husband had celebrated their own wedding when she was twenty-two-and she had begun to display more intransigent symptoms of psychosis shortly after the birth of her daughter. Mrs. Miller was twenty-four at that time. The symptoms worsened once again after the birth of her son two years later. I suspected that over the intervening years her family had consistently minimized her growing list of eccentricities, and that the reclusive behavior she demonstrated-reclusive when she wasn’t attending weddings, that is-had been rationalized away one way or another. Evidence of her frank psychosis had, at times, been blatantly denied by everyone in her limited orbit.
The severe mental illness was Mrs. Miller’s. The conspiracy to pretend it didn’t exist, however, was most definitely a family affair. Her husband, Bill, was a nice guy. After five minutes in my office, I realized that he was a relentless cheerleader and a determined advocate for his wife. “Whatever I can do to help, I’ll do,” he said. “Anything.”
It was my unpleasant task to suggest to Mr. and Mrs. Miller that before they focused on issues in their marital relationship-perhaps-Mrs. Miller should seek some individual treatment for the difficulties she was having distinguishing things that were real from things that were not.
“Is it that bad? Really?” Mr. Miller said in mutual self-defense after I’d asked how he felt about what was going on in his marriage. “I love Rachel. In the grand scheme of things this is a small problem, right? I mean, we’re talking weddings. It’s not cancer. There are many, many times when she seems just fine.”