Cathy had filed for divorce in December 1989, and in May 1990, John Sr. was ordered to pay seventy dollars a month in child support. He never paid a dime, however, claiming that he’d never seen the judgment ordering him to do so, and that Cathy said he didn’t have to—as long as he listed their son as a beneficiary on his life insurance policy.
John Sr. remarried Deanna on September 15, 1990, in Reno, Nevada, as his health problems and the couple’s financial difficulties continued to escalate. John Sr. was working part-time doing deliveries for Pizza Hut that year, earning only $483 a month. He was stopped at a train crossing when a car rear-ended his Datsun 280Z, which added neck pain to his slate of physical problems. These new injuries, coupled with his preexisting back problems, he said, prevented him from returning to work for Pizza Hut until 1994.
Describing himself in court papers in 1996 as “practically destitute,” he said he’d started his own home business assembling tachometers for a small company in Granada Hills, but he had made no more than $6,000 a year at it.
Nonetheless, Cathy wrote in response, he’d rarely tried to contact his son by mail, let alone see him, which, as John Jr. grew older, caused the teenager to question Cathy whether his father was financially supporting him. Cathy stated that her son had been remarking on the fact that his father hadn’t visited him, written him letters or called, let alone paid any child support. In her view, she wrote, John Jr. was trying to “measure his importance” to his father. Trying to persuade the judge to force John Sr. to pay $4,660 in back payments, she wrote, Our son, who is 17 years old, is learning about consequences and responsibilities. Therefore, it is now clear to me that if I do not pursue this, the messages that I give to my son are: 1) he is not that important 2) that responsibility is not that great of a commitment if you decide it’s too much or if the consequence is not that bad.
In response, John Sr. filed papers countering that Cathy had consistently prevented him from visiting his son. He claimed that he’d called countless times, asking to see John, and was told to leave a message. But even after leaving numerous messages, he never got a response.
John Sr. stated that Cathy stopped by his house with their son in August 1995, and when he asked the teenager why he’d never returned John Sr.’s “countless” calls, John Jr. said he’d never received any messages. John is 17 years old now and I believe that it is essential that John and I finally be given the opportunity to spend time together so that we can really get to know each other. John Sr. promised not to keep his son away from Cathy, as she had done to him, because he believed that the teenager would benefit most by spending time with both parents. Since John is so close to attaining legal age, I feel that it is imperative that the court now give us the opportunity to be together as I believe that this will help John’s self-esteem to know that both his parents love him and want to be with him.
John Jr. continued to live with his mother and Dan, hurt that his father didn’t try harder to see him. He began to refer to Dan as “an awesome dad,” and nicknamed John Sr. “the sperm donor.”
Chapter 10
In John Jr.’s early teens, his psychiatrist, Dr. Divyakant “Divy” Kikani, determined that his symptoms were more serious than just ADHD, citing traits of conduct disorder and the paranoia that John had shown since he was ten. Kikani, who saw John as a patient from ages fourteen to sixteen, began treating him for bipolar disorder.
By the time John was sixteen, some of his earlier depression had lifted, but he was still experiencing mood swings, as well as a certain level of mania and euphoria. Although he was easily distracted and could act impulsively, he seemed pretty consistently happy overall. Depending on what was going on in his life and how well his meds were working, he saw Kikani every two weeks or every six months.
In addition to the bipolar symptoms that John exhibited, other typical signs of the disorder include a high sex drive, which can go into overdrive during a manic state, delusions of grandeur and of superhuman powers or skills, false beliefs that can’t be dissuaded away and a tendency toward poor judgment.
At school, John also had regular sessions with a therapist. When John wasn’t progressing in individual counseling, the therapist asked Cathy if she and Dan would be willing to do family therapy. Dan wasn’t, so the therapist conducted joint sessions with Cathy and John, saying they’d made more progress there than in all the previous therapy put together. In these sessions, Cathy told her son that she felt uncomfortable when he cursed and acted out of control, and John told his mother that he felt hurt she was never satisfied with him and was always trying to improve him. He said he didn’t know what else to do but yell when he got angry, to which she countered that she hoped they could discuss what was wrong before it got to that point. John said that he’d tried, but she seemed to have no tolerance for his expressions of anger. Cathy replied that she would work on that if he would work on his anger.
After that, John started going for walks when he felt the feelings boiling up. These walks were even incorporated into his special ed program as a way to dissipate his frustration before he exploded in the classroom.
“His angry tone at home started decreasing, and he started making friends,” Cathy said. “I was just really excited,” adding that she also tried to be less critical and to stop harping on his social skills, which seemed to help him relax, even though he still wasn’t very socially sophisticated.
“I needed to grieve that my son was not going to be normal, and I’d put a lot of pressure on him to measure up to something he wasn’t capable of doing,” she said. “That was a good turning point for us. I really started lightening up on him.”
From the outside, friends recognized how complicated John’s relationship was with Cathy. “One day, it would be the best relationship in the world. They were super close. They could talk about anything,” said Jenni Tripp, who dated John for eighteen months, starting in his senior year. “Then he would change and she would turn into a ‘goddamned motherf---ing bitch.’ There was no change in Cathy—Cathy was pretty much constant. It was John that changed. But it was little things that could spark him off. If she had twenty dollars, [he felt] she should give it to him,” then he’d get furious if she said no.
“It could have been a whole lot better if John could have given her more credit because she worked really hard and she did try to take care of him,” Jenni said. “When there’s that kind of child who needs some structure and discipline, she did what she was supposed to as a mom: She tried to get him to take his meds and do the right thing. I don’t think she tried to control him. I actually think she gave him a lot of freedom.”
“Cathy mom,” as Jenni still calls her, was “a little bit” of an enabler, but “she was always there. I think that Cathy was a good part of his life... . That was another reason I broke up with him. I got tired of trying to mother him.”
After so many years of struggling with emotional crises, John’s life began to improve dramatically. Dan introduced John to hockey, which John found he was skilled at and loved so much that he continued to play even after high school. He also played soccer and baseball and served as manager of his high school’s varsity basketball team, the Fighting Scots, in 1993.
John also started doing better in school. He got an A in the Regional Occupational Program law enforcement course, which tried to match kids with careers. And, for the first time, he found an academic subject that he felt good at: mathematics.
Even though he graduated with career goals of becoming a police officer or a math teacher, his transcript shows that the only A he earned in math was in his ninth-grade algebra course, receiving B’s and C’s in his other math classes. That said, he did earn an academic excellence award for outstanding achievement on the 1996 Golden State Examination in geometry.
“He loved math,” Jenni said. “He wanted to be a high-school teacher, because, I think, he didn’t want to get out of the high school. It was his ticket in—not for girls—just to be a kid... . Once he gets to be fifty, he’ll