Ladies and gentlemen please welcome the wonderful John Turturro
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, and 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. 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. Matter of fact on my birth certificate you can see
that she has altered her age.
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 and
the only time when I haven't called was 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 "You know, maybe you should check in on your
mother" and I just kind of 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. I called the 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 kind of been my mother's protector against my father and 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 and as my father got sick
from cancer he lost this booming voice and 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 and 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 you know how it's been
so he's also you know been to therapy, he's had shock treatments, he's had every
combination of anti-psychotic drugs and all the side effects that go with it
that we gained, the teeth loss, the tremors, the shaking, the stiffness,
diabetes, and this is you know this is the situation that he's in. When he's
stable were actually allowed to take him out on a pass and he loves to go out on
passes because we take him shopping and he can get 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. You know he studied to be a hairdresser, he went to
the beauty institute and he used to practice on me with doing sort of
five-hour haircuts.
Anyway, he likes his hair 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 and Creedmoor was a place he lives in building 40 it's 17-story
building, he's in a locked facility on the 11th floor and Creedmoor when we were
kids we used to pass on the Parkway with my father driving and it was a place
where the boogeyman lived, it was a place where all the crazy people lived
and you used to say "You know 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. And 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 a doors which then you're locked into, and I walk to
the elevator, I press the button because he's on the 11th floor, look at the bank
of lights, and 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 and it's two years after
9/11, everyone's a little jittery, we're thinking "Hey, maybe this could be another
attack or something," and lots of most people don't have cell phones, I don't
have a cell phone, and about ten minutes later they say "It's a blackout," it's the
blackout of 2003 which affected it in 50 million people and knocked out Ontario
and eight states here in America but we don't know this at the time. We know that
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 when they say I can I can go up there. So I asked my mother
said listen you wait down here I go upstairs. I started walking up the 11th
there very long flights, it's kind of dark. And I'm thinking you know what a
rollercoaster 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 and it's you know 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," you
know. 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 and really
what it is it's this grind you have to have unbelievable patience and this
emotional fortitude to survive and love can die also and they can also be
renewed but to survive that, that's what wears you out. And it kills a lot of
people and that's why you see so many people out on the street, because they
become 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 talked to the doctor, and then his
friend, this young thin black man Isaiah who draws his life every day, he story
boards his entire existence, comes over and shows me his latest masterpiece and
I said "It's very good nice Isaiah" as I'm trying to deal with my brother and the
doctor and he whispers in my ear "Can I come too with you?" and I said "Isaiah
listen I'd love to I'd love to take you but I you know it's a black out and I'm
gonna take Ralph, okay?" So the doctor says okay, so we go downstairs, 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 the 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 4:10 when the blackout happened. By now it's around five o'clock but my
brother is in no hurry. 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 and he smokes him down to the very tiny bit
end. And when you give him the pack you have to open it just so, everything
according to his specifications otherwise it will take the cigarettes
out and break them. And that's kind of 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.
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 at a frustration and I have to figure out where am I
going. It's a blackout you know, what are we
going to do? I know he's hungry so my mother says you know "Why don't you make
a left turn" and I'm in the far right lane and I say "Mom, you know I can't
go over three lanes like that." But she seems kind of 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 "It's a blackout." Okay I'm fine I know it's a blackout. And my
brother says, looks down he goes "I want a cheeseburger." He goes "No cheeseburger,
Blackout. Coffee." So my mother tries to you know alleviate, referee the situation
she says "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?" 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 you know. Yhey're like looking, I'm trying to
explain me to mom it's a blackout you know, they're worried. Anyway I'm
looking at the clock you know it's getting later you knowk 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 it's very upsetting to Ralph. We just
keep driving and driving and I'm going okay you know it's going to get darker you
know and we don't know where we're going you know, 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 I said wow, I jumped out, it looks open. I run in there, the guy
has a wood-burning oven you know, huh and he says "Yes I'm open." He's an Italian guy
of course, so it's good. So I get them to come out and sit outside out on a table and
we order brick-oven pizza and warm soda and you know they come, it takes a
long time, and you know I'm looking at my mother and thinking wow she's she's
getting older, you know. And I'm looking at my brother thinking you know what's
going to happen after she's gone? You know who's who's going to take care of
him? And I'm the middle child and one of the three boys and I'm the responsible
one, you know, 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. And my brother looks at me and
he's very perceptive when he's calm. He can spot a person's weakness with
startling accuracy and speed like that you know, and he looks at me and he says
"You know you get a lot of material from me don't you."
I go yeah yeah. He goes "Where would you be without me?" Anyway we have the pizza,
of course Ralph wants ice cream but it's all melted by then, so he has kind of a
milkshake ice cream sandwich which he's happy and
he wolfs it down. I gently, the sun is now setting, so I'm like we've got to get
back. So I finally get them in a car, go through the same ritual, we drive slowly
there's no street lights, 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 of the Creedmoor Psychiatric State Hospital. And I pull in,
he has some more cigarettes and then I come in, I leave my mother in the car
and I kind of help him in. The place is not lit and it's not air conditioned
anymore and so you know I really feel torn in all these directions,
theres's my mother, my brother, my family in Brooklyn. I go with my brother, help him
up the 11 flights and you know 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, you know in a dark place. And so I give him a hug, I tell him I'll see him, you know,
soon, come down, get my mother and I drive on the parkway to her house in Rosedale
which is a long trip and before we get to her house I know she's not going
to want to come to my house because she wants to be at her house, I find a little
drug store that's open and they do have some batteries because I'm worried about
her flashlights and everything because I wanted to be able to see
and I'm afraid she's going to fall, so I get her in the house, the flashlights
work, I check the refrigerator the food is actually still cold, we light a candle
shit there and we talked a little bit and you know I'm thinking well this is
how it was you know for thousands of years. People didn't have electric, you
know. They had a little fire, they talked you know and people invented stories,
they invented religion you know, they did all kinds of thins.
The three major religions you know they're all from the desert. You know
they came out of the desert so uh anyway, I make sure she's okay you know and then
she's at the door and remember that with with a little flashlight and saying "Be
careful, drive carefully," and again in my car and I don't make my way back you
know to Brooklyn and now I'm thinking in the car thinking like you know we 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 you know. And 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 kind of home, you know while we're juggling all
these balls hopefully keeping them afloat and finally I make my way back to
Brooklyn and then I you know walk back to my house and I open the door to the
rest of my life. Thank you.