Maniacs, and the Women Who Love Them

The face of a maniac.

The problem with maniacs is that you can’t reason with them. They lack perspective and all sense of proportion. They dwell so hard on the small things that the bigger picture gets obscured. I know, because all summer I’ve been menaced by a lunatic who’s gone to extraordinary lengths to rain misery on everyone around him.

Meet Joe, a developmentally disabled alcoholic who’s spent much of his adult life in and out of prison for crimes ranging from multiple drunk drivings to burglary. Joe and my sister were dating and living at my father’s house when I returned from Philly in May. I planned on staying for only a week or two, but when a temporary opportunity opened up at a local paper my stay was extended. Consequently, I became Joe’s housemate.

Things were okay for a minute. Though Joe and I had attended the same high school we didn’t know each other personally. We’re close in age, but he’d been held back several years on account of his developmental problems. I felt kind of bad for the guy. I gave him rides, bought him drinks and smokes, and indulged him as he spoke of his endless marathon of problems.

But the honeymoon was short lived. Within weeks Joe was back to drinking heavily. His friends who owned painting businesses refused to let him work because he’d show up so high on Xanax that he couldn’t hold a paint brush. He and my sister began fighting incessantly. He must’ve been manic because he hardly slept. In the mornings he’d come up from the basement upon hearing me come down from my room and before I even had a chance to wipe the sleep from my eyes he was in my space, inundating me with his many troubles. My patience soon wore thin so I explained that I no longer wanted to hear about his problems, that I make a point to avoid those kinds of problems and was tired of beginning my day with negative news that didn’t pertain to me.

To my surprise, Joe got angry and argued that by virtue of living together I was obligated to indulge him, especially when it came to his concerns about my sister. The more my father and I conveyed to him we just weren’t interested in his problems, namely because they were of his own making, the more Joe burdened us with them.

One day I mentioned seeing an old friend from high school who Joe apparently didn’t like. He thought I mentioned this person to taunt him. (I still don’t know what his beef is.) Then he got it in his head that this person was coming after him. Later that day, while I was at the kitchen table working, Joe became confrontational about this and threatened to “rip out [my] fucking throat.”

His eyes were glassy and lifeless, as though anything human about him had long ago died. There we were, standing in my father’s living room about to come to blows over the mere mention of someone’s name. My sister, in her own drug-induced confusion, basically got angry with everyone for picking on poor Joe and they moved out.

Once they were gone we found more than fifty empty vodka bottles in the basement that Joe had guzzled during his brief stay.

Though we worried about her, Joe’s departure came as a major relief, like finally killing the mosquito buzzing around your ear. But our peace was her nightmare. His drinking increased exponentially as did his paranoia. He became abusive toward her, dragging her from motel to motel convinced that people were after him. He ditched her in Milwaukee late one night, an event that led to his fifth drunk driving and to her being committed to a psych hospital.

The lovebirds reunited a week later. But soon Joe was drinking again and they were kicked out of his mother’s house. After making my sister drive throughout the night so he could sleep without fear of people finding him, they ended up in St. Paul, where she eventually fled into a hospital to escape him. He was taken to detox. Upon learning that I was on my way to pick her up, he threatened to murder her family if she left with me. For the next week my father and I were inundated with calls from Joe, who warned he was going to kill us for interfering with his relationship.

To our surprise, my sister was back with Joe a short time later, popping pills, drinking and shooting heroin. After getting kicked out of a bar one night, he returned with a knife and my sister again came home. Her descriptions of these latest episodes sound like some kind of nightmarish affront to humanity. While he showered Joe made her sit where he could keep an eye on her. When she wanted to call my father he threatened to call the cops on her. And he did, claiming she was threatening to slit her own throat. She came home terrified, having realized this person she cared about was in fact the monster everyone said he was.

The next day I took her to the motel to get her things. Joe was gone, out panhandling for booze money. But within hours I received a text from an old friend saying Joe was looking for a ride to Madison so he could kill me. In Joe’s version reality, he’s protecting my sister from her family. Over the next two nights the cops arrived at our house after Joe called to say my sister was being abused. When that plan failed, he showed up in a taxi expecting us to pay for it. My dad shut the door and called the cops.

The taxi driver told police that Joe said he was coming here to kill us. It was dark and he was dressed in camouflage. Police seized from him a knife and implored us to get a restraining order. The officer said that after speaking with him for five minutes it was clear to her that Joe is deranged. He told the officers he was there to protect my sister from us. Everyone, even his closest friends, have warned her she’s in danger by running with him.

My sister, whose drug addiction has left her unable to see not only her children but any hope of leading a meaningful life, landed in another psychiatric hospital a few days later. Her doctor had rescinded her prescriptions for the pills she abused which only aggravated her opiate withdrawal. But she seemed determined to pull it together, having narrowly escaped the dreadful outcomes of running with a mad man.

To help her stave off the institutional boredom, I brought her last night a book of puzzles that she enjoys doing. The nurse buzzed me in and paged my sister. I told her the nurse had her clothes and gave her the puzzles. When we turned the corner onto her hall there he was sitting in a chair at the end of the hallway.

As he grinned and waved at me I recalled what Albert told Bruce Wayne about the Joker in The Dark Night: Some men just want to see the world burn. Some men like Joe just want to see people suffer.

My heart sank.

It’s her funeral, I thought as I walked out, astounded that someone can so completely abandon her children yet care so much for parasitic loser like Joe. Perhaps she’s a masochist and relishes the abuse. Truth is she’s a vulnerable, lonely addict who’s being manipulated by a vindictive con man and career alcoholic.

It’s only a matter of time before he again terrifies her with threats and abuse. She’ll come running home and again my father and I will become the targets of his deranged thinking. She’s said so herself, “Joe doesn’t want me to have a family.”

She’ll pretend to feel bad about everything and offer empty apologies. And, because she’s family, we’ll play along knowing full well this is how it’ll be until one of them is dead or in jail or until the next loser comes along.