John Turturro - Stumbling in the Dark

 

My story begins. I am driving my Silver Station Volvo from Brooklyn to my mother's house in Rosedale, Queens, on a hot mid-afternoon August day in 2003. My mother is a widow. My father has passed away from lung cancer 15 years before in 1988. She has not resumed dating. She has sworn off men in no uncertain terms. She has told me that “I am never, ever going to wash another pair of men's underwear again. [audience laughter] I am finished with the species. I'm done.”

 

She's somewhere around 80 years old, but I don't know, for sure, because she's never told me how old she is. [audience laughter] Matter of fact, on my birth certificate, you can see that she has altered her age. [audience laughter] I'm very close with my mother. We have a very tight relationship. We've always had this bond, this complicity, this silent love between us. I check in with her almost every evening to make sure she's okay and to alleviate her loneliness. 

 

One afternoon when I was editing a film and it was around 12:30, 1 o'clock, and I felt this strange feeling in my body as if somebody was tapping me, saying, “Maybe you should check in on your mother.” I just stood up and I told my editor, “I have to call my mother.” I called her up, and she was having a heart attack and she said, “I'm fine. Don't worry.” And she hung up. [audience laughter] I called her back, and I was able to get the ambulance and myself there in the nick of time. 

 

As long as I can remember, I've always been my mother's protector against my father, my brother and the rest of the world. And she also mine. I grew up in a very volatile house. My father was a World War II veteran. He suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, which wasn't really diagnosed in those days. My older brother, who also had problems lived downstairs. As my father got sick from cancer, he lost his booming voice. As his voice faded away, my brother's voice in the basement rose. I could tell that this was not a good sign for things to come. 

 

You know, when we grow up, we all think we're going to get married, we're going to have our own family and we're going to leave the other family behind, our siblings and our parents. But it doesn't actually always occur that way. It's very hard to break those ties from the first family that formed you. 

 

Anyway, we get in the car, my mother, that day, and we're going to visit my brother, Ralph, who no longer lives with my mother. He now resides at the Creedmoor Mental Health State Hospital. He's lived there for the last seven years. It's the Psychiatric State Hospital. That's the one that's located in Queens off Union Turnpike. Now, he's not too happy about living there, but that's where he's been there for the last seven years. He's been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, bipolar, obsessive compulsive, borderline personality. Any diagnosis that's out there, he's got it, okay? This is how it's been. 

 

So, he's also been to therapy. He's had shock treatments. He's had every combination of antipsychotic drugs and all the side effects that go with it, the weight gain, the teeth loss, the tremors, the shaking, the stiffness, diabetes. This is the situation that he's in. When he's stable, we were actually allowed to take him out on a pass. He loves to go out on passes, because we take him shopping and he gets something to eat, because he doesn't like the food there. And he also loves to go to the hair salon. 

 

My brother Ralph's hair is very important to him. He doesn't have many teeth, but his hair has to be done just so. If it's not just so, his emotional state plummets and then we have to deal with that. So, we’re on the way to Creedmoor. Creedmoor was a place he lives in building 40. It's 17 story building. He's in the lock facility on the 11th floor. And Creedmoor, when were kids, we used to pass on the parkway with my father driving. It was a place where the boogeyman lived. It was a place where all the crazy people lived and used to say, “You don't want to wind up in Creedmoor.” And that was what we said to each other. And now, it's my brother's home. This is actually the first time I've ever spoken about it in public.

 

So, we get there, you have to go through two sets of doors, which then you're locked into. I walk to the elevator. I press the button, because it's on the 11th floor. Look at the bank of lights. As we're waiting for the elevator to descend, in the lobby with the security personnel, the lights go out. We don't know what happened. We're all looking around. It's two years after 9/11. Everyone's a little jittery. We're thinking, hey, maybe this could be another attack or something. Most people don't have cell phones. I don't have a cell phone. 

 

About 10 minutes later, they say it's a blackout. It's the blackout of 2003, which affected, I think, 50 million people and knocked out Ontario and eight states here in America. But we don't know this at the time. All I know is that my brother has a pass and he wants to go out and he's looking forward to it. So, I asked the guys, can they call upstairs and talk to the doctor? And they do, and they say, “I can go up there.” So, I asked my mother, I said, “Listen, you wait down here. I go upstairs.” 

 

I start walking up the 11. They're very long flights. It's dark. I'm thinking, What a roller coaster? Mental illness is not just for the patient, but for everyone else involved. It's a sentence that you're given, and it's a life sentence. There's all the things that you have to go through. The doctors, the drugs, the violent outbursts, the destruction, literally and emotionally. The police coming to your house, the shame that you live with. It just goes on and on. It's not like those movies like A Beautiful Mind, where someone reaches out and says, “All you need is love.” [audience laughter] 

 

Love is a given. But it's a war of attrition. It really is. It's a long, endless baseball season that never, ever ends. It goes on and on. Really what it is, it's this grind-- You have to have unbelievable patience and this emotional fortitude to survive. It kills a lot of people. And that's why you see so many people out on the street, because their families flee, and I don't blame them, and they become wards of the state. So, anyway, that's what's going through my mind as I come up and knock on the door. 

 

My brother's happy to see me. I talk to the doctor, and then his friend, this young, thin black man, Isaiah, who draws his life every day. He storyboards his entire existence, comes over and shows me his latest masterpiece. And I said, “It's very nice, Isaiah,” as I'm trying to deal with my brother and the doctor. He whispers in my ear, “Can I come too with you?” [audience laughter] And I said, “Isaiah, listen, I love to. I love to take you, but it's a blackout and I'm going to take Ralph, okay?” [audience laughter] So, the doctor says, “Okay.”

 

So, we go down the stairs. We have to go down slow, because my brother can't see so well, because he had an altercation with a very huge patient who was an ex-prisoner from Rikers Island. And the guy savagely beat him and now he's blind in one eye, so I have to take him down. So, I come down with my brother and my mom, who's getting older, come outside. And of course, we've brought him cigarettes. Now, I'm worried about the time because it was 04:10 when the blackout happened. By now, it's around 5 o' clock.

 

But my brother is in no hurry. [chuckles] I'm worried about the light. Anyway, so, I give him a cigarette. He can't have one cigarette. He has to have one after another and another. He smokes them down to the very tiny bit end. When you give him the pack, you have to open it just so. Everything according to his specifications, otherwise, he will take the cigarettes out and break them. That's how symbolic of my relationship with him. Much of the time, I buy him cigarettes, he breaks them. I buy him a CD player, he rips off the cover. I renovate my mother's house, he burns it down.

 

We get in the car. [audience laughter] He has to sit in the back seat over here, so I can see him in the mirror, because it's precarious. My mother sits here. She's never driven, so she doesn't know that much about driving. But I want to keep my eye on him. So, I'm driving. There are no stoplights. I have to make sure I keep my eye on my brother, who sometimes can punch the window out of frustration. I have to figure out, where am I going. It's a blackout. What are we going to do? I know he's hungry. 

 

So, my mother says, “Why don't you make a left turn?” I'm in the far-right lane. I say, “Mom, I can't go over three lanes like that.” But she seems oblivious. It's getting later. We see the diner that we normally go to. We pull in. There's no one in there, but it seems open. So, we get out and the guy looks at us, we walk in. He's this big Greek guy with a walrus mustache. And I say, “Are you serving?” And he says, “Blackout.” He goes like this. He says, “Blackout.” [audience laughter] 

 

I know it's a blackout. My brother looks at him and goes, “I want a cheeseburger.” [audience laughter] He goes, “No cheeseburger. Blackout. Coffee.” So, my mother tries to alleviate refereeing the situation. She says, “Well, you must have a gas stove.” He says, “Pilot light, electric. Coffee. No cheeseburger.” So, my brother, of course, keeps asking for the cheeseburger. Then he says, “What about French fries?” And the guy goes, “No, no, no.” So, my mother and my brother look at him incredulously. Like, “Look at this guy. What a weakling. There's a blackout and he falls like a cheap suit. [audience laughter] 

 

So, anyway, I'm looking at the clock. It's getting later. I get him in a car. After another cigarette, we're driving. Everything is closed. It's like a ghost town, because people worry when there's a blackout. They remember 1977. The stores are closed. The restaurants are closed. Even the hair salon is closed, which is very upsetting to Ralph. We just keep driving and driving and I'm going, “Okay, it's going to get darker.” We don't know where we're going, plus I have my own family back in Brooklyn, my wife and two kids. 

 

So, finally, I see a little pizzeria on the corner and I pull over and I say, “Wow.” I jump out, it looks open. I run in there and the guy has a wood burning oven and he says, “Yes, I'm open.” He's an Italian guy, of course, so that's good. [audience laughter] So, I get them to come out, we sit outside out on the table, and we order brick oven pizza and warm soda. They come, it takes a long time. I'm looking at my mother and thinking, “Wow, she's getting older.” I'm looking at my brother thinking, “What's going to happen after she's gone? Who's going to take care of them?” I'm the middle child and one of three boys, and I'm the responsible one for good and for bad. I think, well, I'm going to be alone with him one day and it's going to just be me and him. 

 

My brother looks at me-- He's very perceptive when he's calm. He can spot a person's weakness with startling accuracy and speed like that. He looks at me and he says, “You know, you get a lot of material from me, don't you?” [audience laughter] I go, “Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.” [audience laughter] He goes, “Where would you be without me?” [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

Anyway, we have the pizza. Of course, Ralph wants ice cream, but it's all melted by then. So, he has a milkshake ice cream sandwich, which he's happy and wolfs it down. The sun is now setting, so I'm thinking, we got to get back. So, I finally get them in the car, go through the same ritual. We drive slowly. There is no streetlights, there's no stoplights. It's starting to get dark. We finally make it back to this big 17 story, foreboding, ugly, big building with bars. Building 40, the Creedmoor Psychiatric State Hospital. 

 

I pull in. He has some more cigarettes. And then, I come in. I leave my mother in the car and then I help him in. The place is not lit and it's not air conditioned anymore. And so, I really feel torn in all these directions, like, is my mother, my brother, my family in Brooklyn. I go with my brother, help him up the 11 flights. It's always hard to say goodbye to him, but this day, it's even stranger because here he is in this place and he's in the dark, in a dark place. And so, I give him a hug, I tell him I see him soon, come down, get my mother, and I drive on the parkway to her house in Rosedale, which is a long trip. 

 

So, I get her in the house. The flashlights work, I check the refrigerator. The food is actually still cold. And then, she's at the door, I remember that, with a little flashlight and saying, “Be careful, drive carefully.” I get in my car and I make my way back to Brooklyn. I'm thinking in the car, thinking like we imagine that we live in the light. We imagine we know what's going to happen. We imagine we can foresee what's going to happen. We imagine we can control everything. I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do that and the reality is, truthfully, that almost all of us are just stumbling along in the dark, searching, trying to reach some home while we're juggling all these balls, hopefully keeping them afloat. Thank you.