Minnesota Magazine
September-October 2004

Dream Crusher

By Meleah Maynard

It's a warm summer morning and Martin is in my office again talking about his motorcycle. "It's made of cardboard," he tells me, "even the engine." I nod, acknowledging that I've heard him. But I don't say anything so he continues, telling me how he's been working on the bike for nearly two years and that it's almost finished.

Martin knows that I know all of this. He even knows what I am eventually going to say. Yet several times a week he knocks on my office door, sits down in the chair beside me, and tells me this same story. "When it's done, I'm going to ride it up and down University Avenue in front of Porky's drive-in," he says.

As if on cue I tell him, "You can't ride a cardboard motorcycle. For one thing," I say, "there's no way that a cardboard engine is going to actually work." Before I can finish, Martin is out of his chair, standing over me. He's frowning and his eyes are heavy and sad. "It only needs to run for two seconds," he yells, pointing a finger at me before jerking the door open and stomping out.

These conversations took place more than five years ago, but they are as vivid as if they happened just last week. I was working as a mental health counselor at a Minneapolis day treatment center for people with serious mental illness, usually schizophrenia. About 40 clients attended the center each weekday. A handful came by city bus. But most arrived in vans dispatched to shuttle them from their group homes to various appointments.

Martin was clear-headed enough to navigate the bus system, and he was one of the fortunate ones who lived with family instead of in a group home or nursing home. He liked to sleep late, so his dad or his cousin would drop him off in the morning wearing a rumpled T-shirt and jeans he'd clearly slept in. "Good morning," he would call in a booming voice as he ambled into the common room where everyone was gathered for morning check-in.

We started each day with check-in. Seven staff members and all of the clients pulled chairs into a circle around which we would pass an object, maybe a mitten or somebody's keys. When the object reached you, it was your turn to say how you were doing or tell a joke, sing a song, read a poem, or whatever you felt like. It was a way for everyone to receive a bit of undivided attention and for the counselors to get a quick read on how each client was doing.

Martin usually had a hard time sitting still in his chair. At well over six feet tall and close to 300 pounds, he looked imposing but had the demeanor of a friendly cartoon bear. It was rare to see him without a Mountain Dew in one hand and a bag of potato chips in the other, and he happily shared his bounty with whoever was sitting next to him.

Other clients liked him. But they couldn't relate to him. His excited chatter about the video games he played with his cousin and the dinners he'd enjoyed with his dad at a neighborhood steakhouse were as foreign to them as their experiences were to him.

While counselors and clients worked together to convince Sue to stop wearing a nun's habit and telepathically communicating with the Pope, Martin did as she asked and deferentially referred to her as "Sister." And when Jim struck himself in the ears until they bled in an attempt to quiet the voice of the devil, Martin would cringe, asking aloud how Jim could possibly think the devil was in his head. The others understood exactly how someone could think such a thing. Almost everyone had heard voices at one time or another.

Martin experienced none of these things. His case file was three inches thick and filled with differing diagnoses by a host of doctors dating back to when Martin was a toddler and didn't seem to be bonding with his parents. Autism, Asperger's syndrome, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, no one was sure what the problem was. But it was obvious something was wrong.

Building a motorcycle out of cardboard was just one of Martin's delusional thoughts. A talented pianist with a passion for George Gershwin, he often rushed over to the piano in one of our group rooms and burst into song. The tune was always easily recognizable as Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," but the lyrics were unfamiliar.

"Gershwin wrote these words but he preferred the instrumental version," Martin told us, grinning as he sang. Occasionally, the tune would produce a wave of emotion that forced him to his knees. Eyes on the floor, he would wail, "I'm a failure! I'm 36 years old and I've never built a piano!"

As day treatment counselors, we helped clients cope with and manage their illnesses. The disturbing thoughts and hurtful voices might never go away, but if they could learn to live with them they could perhaps enjoy a better quality of life. A standard tactic for accomplishing this was the "reality check," during which counselors and clients would often work together to try to help someone sort out what's real and what's delusional.

Most of the time, reality checking seemed to give people some relief from their illnesses. But the strategy did nothing for Martin. Probably because he seemed fairly unscathed by his version of reality. In fact, he quite liked it. We could point out that "constructing a piano was no easy feat; in fact, most people will never build one" all we wanted to. Martin would listen, but when we were through he'd go right on believing what he believed.

After several months of trying to set him straight on the cardboard motorcycle, the piano, and a number of other delusions, I began to question the value of reality checking. I was never all that comfortable with being the arbiter of what is real and what is not, and Martin's presence at the center only intensified my discomfort with that role.

Some days I worried that I was losing it. I began to wonder what was real. And more than that, I questioned whether always adhering to reality was so gravely important. Martin seemed pretty happy in his own world. Who was I to mess with that?

I wasn't the only one with such questions. After work, over a beer or on a walk around the lake, many of my colleagues spilled stories of similar struggles. Spend your days interacting with people who are seriously mentally ill and you will eventually begin to question lots of things in life. Even the consulting psychiatrist at the center once remarked that it was uncanny how many mentally ill people believe they are religious figures, usually Jesus, sent to Earth to help us find our way. "Doesn't it make you wonder sometimes," he said in a low voice, "if they all really do know something we don't?"

I wanted to grab the doctor's arm and shriek, "Yes! I wonder about stuff like that all the time!" But I didn't. I also didn't tell him that I was having doubts about the term "counselor" and was considering a more accurate job title for myself.

In the end, it was Martin who gave me a new title. He was sitting in my office telling me about his desire to have plastic surgery so he could look like Brooke Shields. Unshaven and dressed in a grimy T-shirt and baggy shorts, Martin unfolded and handed me a tattered copy of People magazine, pointing out the actress's photograph. Gesturing with one hand, Martin gently outlined his cheekbones. "Don't you see a resemblance?" he asked.

I genuinely wanted to just give in and say, "Why, yes, now that you mention it, I do see the resemblance."

But I did my job and firmly explained that plastic surgery to look like Brooke Shields was just not realistic. Martin scowled at me and snatched the magazine from my hand, slamming my office door behind him as he left. I was about to follow him when he opened the door again. "Dream crusher!" He shouted. "Your job is to crush people's dreams!"

I make my living as a writer now, but I think about my former job all the time. Working with people with mental illness put an end to my tendency to think of things always in black-and-white terms.

Martin and I eventually agreed to disagree on the Brooke Shields thing and went on to work together for several years. But a few weeks before I quit working at the center, Martin walked in one morning and announced, "People don't realize this, but Gershwin had several alternate endings for 'Rhapsody in Blue.' I would be happy to play them for anyone who would like to join me at the piano downstairs during lunch."

When the noon bell rang, I grabbed my cheese sandwich and headed for the music room. I've always liked Gershwin.

Meleah Maynard (B.A. '91) is a Minneapolis freelance writer. People's names in this essay have been changed.

© Meleah Maynard