by
Boyd Campbell
Katie Lied is an album by Steely Dan, my favorite musical act. The most famous songs on it are “Black Friday” and “Dr. Wu.”
I wanted to submit a story to Libre because one day, I discovered that Mary, the editor, looked like her mother. Her mother was the most beautiful girl in my high school, and then again in college. If I said she still was, she’d make a face, and Mary would laugh at us both.
Her grandmother was my third-grade teacher. Between cousins and uncles, battles won and lost, songs at midnight, hot summers, secret societies, boiled peanuts, family secrets the whole town knows about, and Ole Miss Football, we share layers of connectivity that are only possible in a place like Mississippi.
– – –
Her name wasn’t Katie. Even though this was a long time ago, a lady deserves her privacy, and you don’t get to know everything. Her name wasn’t Katie, but it was something like that.
Katie wasn’t from Nashville. The Rebel Chapter of the Young Presidents Organization covered several moderately large Southern cities in four states, all more moderately large than Jackson, Mississippi, where I lived. A lady deserves her privacy. You don’t get to know everything. She wasn’t from Nashville, but it was something like that.
I usually don’t ever look at blondes. It’s just not in my metal. Sometimes, they make me look at them, which surprises me as much as anybody. “Have we been in love before?” she said. That got my attention. At fourteen, women are vastly more adventurous than boys when it comes to things that won’t actually break your bones.
I wasn’t a very social teenager. Remnants of my stutter stayed with me most of my life. When I thought about it, it got worse. I thought about it quite a lot. I was much bigger than everybody, including most of the dads.
Since I didn’t really consider myself qualified for the small talk and flirting most teens practice, I had my other obsession to take my time. My father’s business, the Mississippi School Supply Company, carried art supplies, including three different brands of sketchbooks. I never traveled far without a sketchbook.
From the pool at Ponte Vedra Hotel and Golf Resort during our summer retreat, you could see the beach. Hunched over one of the poolside tables with my sketchbook, I looked like some sort of prehistoric beast, but my drawings could be quite delicate.
Walt Disney had just re-released their animated symphony Fantasia, which I saw at the Deville Cinema at the end of a bicycle adventure from my house. Vaughn Bodē, the transgender underground artist who invented the Cheech Wizard comics, had done some drawings of the centaurs in Fantasia. Fascinated by the concept, I decided to try my hand at it, first with pencils and then with pastels. I attracted a small audience of teens and tweens.
“Have we been in love before?” a voice said behind me. “Like, in another life, I mean. Maybe we knew each other in another life and fell in love.”
“I’ve never been in love before,” I said. It wasn’t entirely true. In the movies I watched, the monster always fell in love just before they killed him. I was against it.
Her eyes were enormous and blue. Her blonde hair hung below her shoulder blades, usually in a ponytail. I couldn’t talk at all. She talked quite a lot. We ordered hamburgers by the pool and charged them to our rooms.
Prosecuting a love affair when you’re fourteen and live in different states is done over the telephone. Her dad, where she lived, and my dad, where we lived, were involved with the phone company. The long-distance rates went down after 7:00. By that time, I had moved the children’s line phone into my room and waited for it to ring—usually, a minute after seven.
Katie was in the school choir where she lived and participated in children’s theater, even though she was a whole teenager. She introduced me to the concept of musical theater, which she loved considerably more than she loved me. We talked for hours, even at reduced long-distance rates, and listened to her records. She taught me the stories and the songs.
If ever I would leave you, it wouldn’t be in summer
Seeing you in summer, I never would go
Your hair streaked with sunlight, your lips red as flame
Your face with a luster that puts gold to shame
One day, Katie quit calling. She stopped taking my calls. Her mother was very polite and made excuses for her. Katie wasn’t mad at me; she just couldn’t talk. I’d been expecting somebody in Nashville, somebody smarter, better-looking, better at sports, and better at singing to steal Katie away from me. This was my Waterloo, destroyed at fourteen.
A little more than two months later, my mother told me that “my little friend Katie” had died. Because of my brother’s Schizophrenia, we talked pretty openly about mental health issues in my house. Katie hanged herself. She had Bipolar Disorder and wasn’t responding to treatment. One day, she became non-communicative, then a few weeks later, she was gone, just like that.
My brother’s Schizophrenia was a pretty steady state, depending on his medication. He heard voices. Sometimes they said benign things. Sometimes they said terrible things. Believing the voices over us, he resisted treatment. Sometimes, it got pretty bad. Sometimes, it got awful. One night at dinner, he threw his chair at me. At my size, bringing out the beast was a problem. My mother ran to protect my brother from what she imagined I was going to do to him.
My brother’s illness and other issues began to form cracks in the bond I had with my mother. I was difficult to reach, at best, with anyone. Eventually, my mother quit trying. There were three other children, and everybody at the Community Stewpot for her to worry about. If I wanted to cut myself off, that’d just have to be my choice.
If I’d been there, if I’d known… I was so strong, the strongest kid anybody knew. I could have done something. She was so tiny. I could have lifted her up and pulled the rope out of the hook in the ceiling, and gotten her help, and nobody would have known.
I was very angry with my mother for not telling me in time to go to the funeral. She insisted that she didn’t know herself, which is probably true. Katie’s parents didn’t call the parents of Katie’s friends to let them know what happened. My mother only knew because a mutual friend told her, and she called Katie’s mom to console her and to talk with her about her experiences with her own mentally ill child.
It’d be best if I avoided women, I decided. That worked for a little over a year until the next one started demanding my attention.
The next time I saw Katie’s parents was at my father’s funeral. Daddy died at the peak of his political and economic power. Several of his YPO friends flew in for the occasion, primarily to see my mom. Seeing Katie’s mom, I didn’t know what to say. It’d been almost fifteen years, but she held me very tightly.
But if I’d ever leave you, how could it be in autumn
How I’d leave in autumn, I never would know
I’ve seen how you sparkle when fall nips the air
I know you in autumn and I must be there
At thirteen and fourteen, mental illness isn’t something children understand very well. I’ve read that hormonal changes and rapidly changing social structures can bring issues like Bipolar and Major Depression out in susceptible adolescents and their early teens.
Katie was a child of infinite possibilities. That she should be dead made no sense to me—the first of many unsolvable mysteries in the world, unresolvable injustices.
Besides my learning disabilities, I suffer from chronic and Major Depression. Suicide became an almost regular part of my life after Katie died. From that day to this, there have only been a few years untouched by suicide. Because it’s been such a significant part of my life, I’ve never considered myself a candidate for suicide, even though nearly everyone I knew did.
While there is such a thing as suicide of desperation, nearly all suicides are the product of mental illness, usually Major Depression, but also Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia. Of all the things the caregivers of mental illness keep buried in their own minds, this threat never quite goes away. You cannot love somebody out of it, but it’s worth trying.
losing our grip on purpose 