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81 Chapter Thirteen Pressures, Explosions Summer 1979 Stephanie’s health had steadily improved. She had been seizure free for more than four years, and the doctors took her off her anticonvulsant medicines . It came quite suddenly when, in May 1979, Stephanie, now fifteen and a half, again began to suffer from minor seizures. The doctors put her on the drug Mebaral. A few years earlier, when he was eleven, Steven had visited Spain and Germany with me. Stephanie stayed home with her father. When he was twelve, I took him on a two-week camping and horse-riding trip through the Cascade Mountains in Washington state, up to the Canadian border. I tried to fill the role of a father, for Marvin was not a man who liked roughing it when traveling and liked horses only when he could bet on them. We had lived through several turbulent years with Steven. Now, in 1979, he was enrolled in Ojai Valley School. In this small town seventy miles north of Los Angeles, artists and seekers of spiritual truths had found refuge from the pressures and superficialities of Los Angeles and other large cities. The school reflected the atmosphere of the town and was located in a rural area. Steven had his own horse to take care of and loved riding in the hills. We visited him every second weekend. Now, three months after Stephanie’s minor seizures began, in August, all four of us were on a plane bound for Chattanooga to attend their cousin Scott’s wedding. We told Stephanie she would not see Bud, Scott’s father and her favorite uncle, until the actual wedding ceremony. He and Farol were getting a divorce. Thinking about this in the plane worried her. She asked, “Won’t Uncle Bud be my uncle anymore?” Before I could answer, she grabbed my arm, and with her teeth chattering, she whispered, “Mommy, I’m so cold, so cold—” 82 Broken Butterfly I held her, rang the stewardess for a blanket, scared that a seizure might follow . The cabin attendant reluctantly brought a blanket. Again I had to trouble the unwilling stewardess for a glass of water, trying to get Stephanie to swallow her Mebaral. Then the shaking began. A full seizure. Oh please God, make it stop; calm her, please. Let the Mebaral work. I held her tight, stroked her gently, and gradually the jolting movements slowed and finally subsided. “Mom, I’m afraid. . .I’m so afraid,” she murmured as she drifted off to sleep. I was terrified. What was happening? Stephanie was going to be sixteen in three months. She was growing into a young woman. Were the seizures this time a manifestation of fear of the future—fear expressing itself metaphorically through the involuntary shaking and trembling of the body? Marvin’s parents were at the airport to greet us. Stephanie, still drowsy from the Mebaral, tottered down the landing steps to the tarmac. I would have liked for us to cancel all plans immediately and board a return flight, but with the entire family assembled in Chattanooga for the wedding, I did not follow my impulse. At Farol’s house, Stephanie met one of the house guests, a seventeen-year-old boy from New York. Jed looked like a blue-eyed Italian. Sensuous lips. Handsome . He flirted with Stephanie and she fell in love. “Mom, do you think I’ll ever get married? Do you think I can find a handsome guy to marry me?” “Yes, Stephanie. When the time comes.” Stephanie didn’t let Jed out of her sight. Later, we all went to see a movie in Farol’s screening room. Jed was seated between Stephanie and her cousin Tracy when the boy put his arm around Stephanie’s shoulders. When he glanced at her, I saw tenderness in his eyes. But when the lights dimmed, he turned toward Tracy and proceeded with some serious necking. Steffi nudged me and whispered she would like to leave. That evening, Stephanie and I swam in Farol’s pond-like indoor pool. A glass wall separated it from the living room, but despite the partition, it appeared to be part of the living area. We stepped into the water, the scene quite unreal, making me feel as if we were on a movie set. Water cascaded over rock walls where cattleyas and ferns grew in niches and fissures, while the moon, visible through a pointed triangle of glass—the roof—spilled...

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