The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness

Lori begins this chapter by recounting one specific and vivid childhood memory that torments her. In her memory, the family dog (a medium-sized black mixed breed) is chained up, and unable to move very far in any direction. She remembers suddenly becoming consumed by rage and beating the dog to death with a golf club. She cannot find a reason for why she did such a terrible thing. Over the years, she has castigated herself in her mind for this heinous act of evil against a defenseless and innocent animal.

There is, however, one problem with this memory: it never happened. According to her parents and her younger brothers Mark and Steven, the family never had such a dog. There was only one family dog: a gray miniature schnauzer who died of natural causes after a long and pleasant life.

Lori intimates that, in the present day, her increasingly-healed mind is inclined to believe that her family members are correct. “The further I progress toward sanity, the more such dark images are fading, letting my real memories of my real childhood peep through,” she writes (10). In these more accurate memories, she finds few signs of the sickness that would eventually engulf her, and no lasting images of darkness and pain. Instead, she remembers a conventional, peaceful girlhood and a life full of “love and comfort, fun and friendship” (10).

Lori was born in Michigan. At the time of her birth, her father, who was from the Bronx, was a graduate student finishing his Ph.D. in psychology at Michigan State. Her mother was the daughter of a successful department store owner. When her father graduated and landed his first job, the family moved to Chicago, where Lori’s first brother, Mark, was born. Five years after his birth, Lori’s father was promoted again, and the entire family moved to Los Angeles, where Lori’s second brother, Steven, was born. The family spent five years in Los Angeles before relocating to New York as a result of another promotion for Dr. Schilling. Lori spends part of this chapter fondly recalling the road trip that the family undertook as a part of the move to New York. Although the trip was full of good-natured bantering and the adventure of sightseeing, everyone in the family was a bit uneasy: they had all adored California and their large, comfortable home there. The foreignness and distance of New York had everyone in the family spooked. However, when they arrived at their new home—a gorgeous, old, white, Colonial-style house with black trim in Scarsdale, a New York City suburb—Lori eagerly investigated it and declared it “cool” (12).

The family ultimately became very happy in their new home. The adults made new friends while Lori and her siblings became comfortable in their new schools and neighborhood. They settled into their new home, which had a large yard for playing with snow and piles of leaves, and a children’s playhouse in the backyard.

Lori states that, in truth, the family would have been happy virtually anywhere. Perhaps due to their frequent moves, they had never really become close to extended family members, and so the word “family” really meant just the five of them. In order to demonstrate this closeness, Lori recounts a time in which her father spoke sharply to her and she began crying. Because she was crying, Steven began crying, and then Mark. Soon enough, the entire family was weeping.

The family even developed their own internal language and vocabulary, understood by only them. After they moved to New York, Dr. Schilling would arrive home from work every night at 6:30. By 6:31, each family member would be in his or her designated seat at the dinner table. Regardless of how busy he had been during the day, Lori’s father would go around the table and have each of his children describe the events of their day to him, as well as ask them to describe the things that they were each thankful for. Although the children fussed about this ritual, they each knew, deep inside, how fortunate they were.

Lori reveals that, during her childhood, she had always felt distinguished and remarkable: she was the oldest and the only girl, and enjoyed having the spotlight. In order to maintain her place, she excelled academically. Occasionally, too, she chose to execute pranks. She loved to perform, using her singing voice and the creation of skits to keep her parents entertained. When she was young, she believed she would become a ventriloquist.

Her neighborhood and school were full of high-achieving children of successful parents, and, although her peers occasionally came home with grades of Bor C, the Schiller parents became upset about anything lower than an A. While other children could have casual hangout time, the Schillers insisted that their children play sports and involve themselves in formal extracurricular activities. While Lori’s father was an obviously accomplished psychiatrist who had come from diminished circumstances in the Bronx and was the first person in his family to graduate from college, Lori’s tall, thin, and pretty mother excelled in everything “from decorating the house to cooking dinner for fifty people, to being a room mother for the PTA” (14).

Lori recalls that her parents always encouraged her achievements, and that she always tasked herself with making them proud of her. Following her stay at Lincoln Farm, however, she tasked herself with a new burden: keeping her terrible secret.

When she arrived home from Lincoln Farm, she had composed herself enough in order to pass off her illness as a bad flu. Because all of the children were away at camp, her parents had gone to Michigan to visit with extended family, and family friends were staying in Lori’s home. Lincoln Farm called her parents, and assured them that she was fine—all she needed was a few days of rest. And so, her subsequent stay in her room for two days seemed plausible and normal. And by the time her parents returned, the worst of the episode seemed to have passed, and nothing about the way she was acting made them feel worried. 

The only person who seemed concerned was Gail, Lori’s best friend—and even then, Gail was only put out that Lori had returned home without phoning her. Lori and Gail were like sisters—sharing all of their troubles and triumphs—yet Lori told her nothing about the Voices. It was the first time Lori had kept anything from her.

Lori did not want to be stigmatized or ostracized as a crazy person. After watching Carrie and Helter Skelter, Lori decided that she would much rather be possessed or in touch with occult forces than mentally ill: “I didn’t need a doctor, I needed an exorcist” (16). She also found herself extremely troubled by The Bell Jar, which she was required to read for school. Even in the relative respite of formulating her illness as demonic possession was not something she could tell her parents—all she ever wanted was for them to be proud of her, and she could not come to them and tell them that she was possessed.

And so, while the Voices intermittently returned to her during her senior year of high school, Lori kept up the veneer of normalcy while privately battling them in order to appear composed. However, the objects around her were beginning to feel antagonistic. When she received prank calls, they felt inordinately menacing because they reminded her of the Voices, and so she grew terrified of using the phone. She avoided using it to the best of her ability, citing shyness as an excuse. In the evening, the TV became frightening. When Walter Cronkite appeared on the screen in order to recite the day’s news, she heard not his actual words, but him entreating her, and her alone, to repair all of the problems of the world. While she wanted to retire to her room, her parents insisted on having the entire family together, so she would lie with her face to the wall.

Lori enrolls at Tufts University. Initially, her new life as a college student is wonderful and exciting. She feels as if she is capable of anything. She and two fellow students, Lori Winters and Tara Sonenshine, become inseparable. When she visits home, she feels like a big shot, and she tries to cheer up her brother, Mark, who seems depressed, by driving him around town.

Although the Voices still intrude on her intermittently, they are much quieter than they were during that summer at Lincoln Farm and her senior year of high school. Instead of screaming at her, they act more like a peanut gallery, chattering to each other about her in the back of her mind. Most of the time, going to sleep helps her to escape them. If she cannot sleep, then she takes deep breaths and tells herself that she is not possessed by the devil, and silently begs the Voices to leave her alone.

Lori decides to go skydiving on a whim. She makes it out of the plane on her third attempt, after being too spooked during the first two circles that the plane makes.

In her second year at college, Lori and Tara move into Wren Hall. Wren Hall is the dorm situated right next to the campus Quad, which is the social hub of the campus. She has a busy social life full of many friends, and also goes on many dates.

However, while she appears to be thriving, she is internally disintegrating. The Voices have become faster and louder—and they sound as if they are coming from her external environment, and not from inside her own brain. They speak to her completely unexpectedly:“[o]ccasionally they [are] friendly, but mostly they [revile her], shouting in their hoarse, harsh tones: ‘Die! Die! Die!’ They [fill her] with anxiety” (21). Lori grows increasingly anxious, and perpetually afraid that she will die.

Once again, she must task herself with hiding the Voices from those around her. When they become too much to bear, she makes excuses about an upset stomach and leaves the room. The most crucial part of her masquerade becomes preventing herself from looking around or whipping her head around to look for the source of the Voices. By and large, most of the people around her seem to believe her cover-ups.

However, her growing anxiety cannot be fully contained. She becomes afraid to make eye contact with her friends, and also fears that they will begin condemning and ridiculing her the way the Voices do. Eventually, she becomes convinced that her friends despise her.

Lori takes a class in abnormal psychology, and sees herself in every atypical symptom described in the textbooks and lectures. This makes her feel both overwhelmed and less alone.

She spends her junior year abroad. Her first semester is in Spain. There, the Voices are softer, although they still speak abusively to her, and sometimes in Spanish. When she moves to London for her second semester, her old friend, Gail, is also in London: “At one time during the semester [Gail and I] cut our fingers and smooshed our blood together. We’ll be friends forever, we said. Blood sisters. Nothing will come between us. Of course it wasn’t true. The Voices were already between us” (23).

When Lori gets back to Tufts, she moves in with Lori Winters, Tara, and another girl. Keeping her secret becomes more and more difficult. Although she keeps up with the other girls and the rituals of their friendship as best as she can, her hands begin shaking uncontrollably. Both the highs and lows of her moods grow in intensity. While she is feeling good, she spends her money recklessly. The Voices speak to her almost all the time. They begin to demand that she hurt other people, and she fears that she will obey them.

Lori Winters begins to see that Lori is struggling. Lori Winters attempts to get Lori to tell her what is going on; all Lori does is sit in Lori Winter’s room, smoking cigarettes and trembling. Lori’s thoughts about suicide and self-harm increase in frequency.

Finally, Lori calls her parents. She tells them that she is having vague “problems,” and that she needs to see someone about them. They unhesitatingly agree with Lori’s proposal that she consult a therapist. Initially, Lori meets with a counselor at her school, and then she begins to see a private-practice psychiatrist. However, she still tells neither mental health professional about the Voices. She writes that she felt it too dangerous to tell someone about them:

The Voices were twisting themselves around me. It was hard to tell where they left off and I began. They threatened me, and I believed them. If I squealed on the Voices, they might kill me. If I ratted on them, the person I told would have to die (25).

During her sessions with her psychiatrist, she feels powerful paranoid delusions about him incarcerating and lobotomizing her if she were to tell him the truth. He prescribes her Valium for anxiety. She takes it and grows consistently more anxious.

In an attempt to escape the Voices, Lori begins to drive recklessly fast in her car, half-hoping that she will kill herself. When a police officer stops her one night, she hallucinates that he has “changed into a fantastic creature with bugged-out eyes and hair standing up wildly on end” (25).

On Saturday, April 25, Tara and Lori Winters surprise Lori with an “all-expense-paid vacation in the company of two people who love you very much,” in celebration of Lori Schilling’s twenty-second birthday (25). They have a lovely, intimate time on the trip. Six weeks later, all of the young women graduate and relocate to New York City. Tara and Lori Schilling move into an apartment together. Lori Schilling remembers the hustle and bustle of graduation fondly.