Bebe Moore Campbell (31 page)

GodGodpleaseGod.

“Keri. I got a call from Trina,” Clyde said. “She’s at Somerset Hospital in Sacramento, on the psych ward, acute side. She’s on a seventy-two-hour hold.”

28

THE PSYCHIATRIC WARD OF SOMERSET HOSPITAL WASN’T THE freedom I’d dreamed of, but at least I was no longer wading in the water. I could lay down my burden for a little while. A sign-in sheet awaited me with a cold polite African (Ghanaian? Nigerian?) manning the desk. There was the buzzer to press, a nurse to wait for, a sterile hall to walk down, wandering mumbling patients to ignore. There was fear, my steadfast companion, circumstantially amplified this time:
Didtheyhurtherdidtheyhurther?
And in spite of my apprehension, dueling it, the same old hope began leaping up, entirely unbidden, impossible to quell:
Maybethistimemaybethistimemaybethistime.

Clyde was waiting at the end of the hall. His face was unshaven, his clothes rumpled. He was speaking with a brown-skinned woman in a white coat. She extended her hand when I approached.

“I’m Dr. Natal,” she said. “I can tell that you are the mother.”

“Is she all right? Did they hurt her?”

Dr. Natal put her hand on my wrist. “No one hurt her.”

I heard a high-pitched mournful kind of sound, the kind tired old-school sisters used to make at church, after they’d finished shouting and the nurses were fanning their faces. The way I realized it was my noise was because of the look Clyde gave me, the way he appeared not so much worried as frightened when I began to cry.

“I’d like to see my daughter.”

One request, two voices in sync. Clyde was holding my hand.

“She is sleeping right now. Besides, visiting hours don’t begin until two,” Dr. Natal said to both of us.

Her voice was East Asian and had a lilting quality that turned statements into questions.

I looked at my watch; Clyde looked at his. It was twelve-thirty.

“She called you,” I said, looking at Clyde.

Clyde nodded. “Around midnight from the pay phone.”

Dr. Natal took us into a small cubicle with a desk, several chairs, and no windows, opened a manila folder, and scanned the contents for a few seconds before closing her file.

“Mr. and Mrs. Whitmore, your daughter was brought in last night. She was paranoid and delusional. Has she had mental problems in the past?”

“My daughter was diagnosed with bipolar disorder about two years ago,” I said. “She’s had five hospitalizations since then. Six. The last was a few weeks ago at Beth Israel’s Weitz Center in Los Angeles. She was medication-compliant for five months, and then a few months ago, she stopped. For the last two weeks she’s been taking her meds, but I’m pretty sure she’s been smoking marijuana and drinking for the last twenty-four hours.”

Dr. Natal smiled. “That will do it every time. Is there the possibility that she took other drugs? Never mind,” she said when she saw me faltering. “They have probably already run a toxicology screen.”

“How did she happen to get here? Was it voluntarily?”

Dr. Natal opened the folder again. “No. It was involuntary. Two men brought her in. She’d hitched a ride with them and told them she was going to kill herself. Has she been suicidal before?”

“She’s threatened. To my knowledge, she’s never made any attempts,” I said, glancing at Clyde. He was sitting on the chair, straight and stiff as a brick wall.

“One of the nurses told me the men were on their way here anyway, so they brought her in.”

Clyde coughed.

“They just happened to be coming to the hospital?” I asked.

Dr. Natal shook her head. “We run a day treatment program here, one for people with mental illnesses and one for addictions. There is a dual-diagnosis section for those who have both. The last meeting starts at ten o’clock at night. It seems that the men who brought in your daughter attend the dual-diagnosis program, so they knew what they were looking at.”

“What was she doing in this area?” Clyde asked. “You never told me.”

“I—”

“Perhaps you need to talk,” Dr. Natal said. “There is a café downstairs where you can have a cup of coffee.”

“How did she get here? Were you visiting somebody?”

I looked at him, trying to gauge whether a public place would corral or accelerate his anger. “We need to go outside, Clyde.” I looked at Dr. Natal. “I want to talk with you about getting the hold extended. I intend to go for conservatorship.”

“What do you mean, get it extended?” Clyde asked.

“You both need to talk,” Dr. Natal said. “When you return at two o’clock, ask the nurse to page me.”

We went outside to the parking lot and sat in Clyde’s car. I told him everything. His cell phone kept ringing, but he didn’t answer it. When I was finished, he looked at me for a long time. He seemed in a daze. “I can’t believe you did that,” he said finally. “You actually broke the law and kidnapped Trina. What do you really know about this group?”

“Before I agreed, I talked to several people whose children had been in the program. They all said it helped.”

“Yeah, I guess nobody said that their kid ran away and hitched a ride with strangers while this so-called program was supposed to be on the job.”

“Clyde—”

“There were other options, Keri.”

“You name them. I have exhausted all of them. She is sick. She stopped taking her medication. All hell broke loose. She was completely out of control. So I tried something radical.”

“You could have—”

“I could have what? I did everything I could do. And I was scared and tired. Maybe if you’d helped me more we could have made another decision.”

“Don’t say I didn’t help. She called me, not you.”

“Do you want to know why she called you? Because you’re the daddy with the checkbook. You ignore the problem, so I’m the one who has to pick up the pieces. You put me in that role a long time ago.”

He pushed himself away from me closer to his door. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“I had to do everything: call the mortician, pick out the casket, buy the flowers, write the obituary.”

“I had to work.”

“You
wanted
to work. That was your escape. You never even mourned him.”

“I told you, I don’t want to talk about that.” His voice was raised. His entire body was shaking.

“You left me all alone to cry over my dead son, and you left me alone to deal with Trina. So I’m dealing with Trina. I’m going to get the hold extended, and I’m going to attempt to get conservatorship.”

“What is that?”

“It means I can force her to get treatment. I can have her placed in a locked facility.”

“Hell, no.”

“A locked facility where she will be stabilized on medication.”

Clyde shook his head. “One of those warehouses for crazies. I will never allow Trina to go there.”

“Then what do you suggest? Do you want her to come live with you and Aurelia?”

His body jerked involuntarily. He looked at me, then slowly lowered his eyes.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“She moved out.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes.

“Whenever Trina’s with me, she seems okay,” Clyde said.

“Clyde—”

“Not completely okay, but not bad enough to be locked up.”

“Don’t think of it that way. Think of it as being kept safe.”

“How do you know that? Have you seen any of those places?”

“I wouldn’t put her anywhere that doesn’t seem safe.”

His face said he still needed convincing.

“Look, we can both choose the place, Clyde. ”

“I don’t know.”

Neither one of us was hungry. We sat in the car until it was two o’clock, time to go back inside the hospital. Eighteen years ago, we had both walked down a hospital corridor to take a look at the child we’d created, wishes and dreams in every step we took. Maybe she’d grow up and be an astronaut or Miss America. Everything had been in front of us then. A beautiful, perfect baby: What could go wrong? In this hallway our steps were quieter. We shuffled, weak and weary, our parenthood weighing on us like chains.

But something joyful rushed from us simultaneously, just like the first time, when we saw her. There she is, we thought. Ours.

Trina was sitting alone on a sofa in the visitors’ lounge. There were three sofas and two round tables and chairs in the large room. Several patients were watching a big-screen television set that was tuned to a classic movie: John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. Trina wasn’t watching. She was staring at nothing in particular. Her body seemed swallowed up by the gray hospital robe she was wearing. I could tell she hadn’t bathed. If I got close enough, I knew, she would smell.

“She looks so little,” I said.

She saw us before we walked over. There was a smile for her father, belligerence for me. To never be forgiven wasn’t outside the realm of possibilities. I’d made my choice, and now I’d have to live with the consequences. “She doesn’t want to see me. You visit,” I said. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

I went to the nurses’ station and asked to speak with Dr. Natal. A few minutes later the nurse told me that the doctor would meet Clyde and me in her office after our visit. Clyde emerged about an hour later, looking worn out and sad. “Will she see me?” I asked.

He shook his head. “She thinks you’re trying to have her killed. She said some really crazy things. Did a man sleep with both of you?”

“In the room, Clyde, not in our beds. It was for security, in case Trina tried to leave or got violent. I’ll tell you everything later. We have an appointment with Dr. Natal to talk about the conservatorship.”

Clyde flinched when I said the word. “I’m not having her locked up.”

“Would you prefer her to get locked up for real? She’s already been arrested for shoplifting. Is jail better than a medical facility? That’s where she’s headed, Clyde, down that slippery slope. She won’t get medication or therapy in jail. She’ll just get sicker.”

“Keri—”

My voice rose. “Or maybe you want her to commit suicide. You heard Dr. Natal. Trina told those men she wanted to kill herself. We’ve already lost one child. Do you want to lose the other one, so you can leave me alone to grieve all by myself? Walk out on me because you can’t take the pain?”

I was screaming by then. Two nurses rushed toward me. Beyond them in the hallway, necks swiveled and all eyes were on us. I didn’t care. Something had come loose inside me. I began pounding Clyde’s chest with my fists. He tried to grab my hands, but I snatched them away, so he ended up pulling me to his chest and holding me there while I sobbed. When I got quiet, I could feel something jerking inside him, some kind of hard trembling that he couldn’t control. After a while he said, “All right. We’ll do it your way.”

“Mr. Whitmore, are you all right?” Dr. Natal asked, when we sat down in the two chairs facing her desk. Clyde looked shell-shocked and more fragile than I’d ever seen him.

He nodded.

I glanced at Clyde and turned to Dr. Natal. “I’ve been trying to get a conservatorship of her person, so I can get her stabilized again. If that means putting her in a locked facility, that’s what I’ll do. I need a psychiatrist to support my claim that she’s gravely disabled. Will you help me?” I asked.

“Are you in agreement with this, Mr. Whitmore?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Where do you all live?”

“In Los Angeles,” I said.

“You need someone in LA,” Dr. Natal said. She leaned back in her chair. “Let’s do this. We’ll try to get the hold extended. If we’re able to do that, I suggest that you transfer your daughter to Beth Israel. I have a dear friend there, a psychiatrist also. I’ll give her a call. You’ve been in touch with someone at the Office of the Public Guardian?”

I nodded.

“Okay, let me see what I can do about getting the hold extended.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“Thank you,” Clyde said.

She glanced at her watch. “There’s a support group for parents that meets in about twenty minutes. Perhaps you and your husband would like to attend. The nurse can show you where it is.”

There weren’t many people in the room, maybe a dozen or so. There were several rows of chairs. Clyde and I sat in the back. Rather, I sat and Clyde stood, his brows crowding together over the bridge of his nose, eyes scared, as though maybe he wasn’t supposed to be here, and me thinking, Yes, this was exactly where we were supposed to be. I took his hand and pulled him down to his seat. He looked at me, and then he leaned forward as the speaker’s voice got louder. Her son, she told the group, had done well in his first year at Stanford, and now—and now—

And then Clyde was shaking again, trembling. I took his hand in mine and squeezed it. He tried to pull away, but I held on until his fingers became limp. When I looked at him, there were tears in his eyes. The woman in front of us turned her head and smiled.

“Welcome,” she said, her greeting half grin, half ol’-time religion. Clyde drew back; I leaned forward, toward that blessing. I felt the circle closing. Maybe I was right back where I started. Maybe not. Hallelujah anyhow.

29

MY CELL WAS RINGING BY THE TIME WE REACHED CLYDE’S car. I heard Brad’s angry, anxious voice when I answered. A man was standing at Margaret’s front door looking for me. Orlando somebody. What had I told him about the program?

“He’s there to pick me up. Trina and I are leaving, and my ex-husband is with me now. Actually, I was getting ready to call Margaret to get directions. We were on our way over to get my stuff.”

His voice was liquid acid. “Neither one of them is supposed to be here. You made the agreement, not your ex-husband or some guy. I can’t jeopardize the program by having strangers know our—”

“Look, Brad, Trina and I are leaving.”

“You gave this guy Margaret’s address, and now you want to bring another—”

“They’re not reporting you to the authorities. Damn. They don’t have to come into the house. I just want to get our things.”

“Why are you leaving? We can wait for Trina’s hold to be up. She’ll get stabilized in the hospital. You shouldn’t go.”

“We’re leaving.”

“What happened was a fluke. That wouldn’t—”

“We’re going home.”

I could see his face in my mind, his eyes cloudy with personal failure. Brad hadn’t delivered us safely to the promised land. He’d lost a passenger.

I’d lost something else.

“You did your best. I’m not blaming you. I appreciate all your efforts.” I thought about asking what was happening with the police but changed my mind. If I didn’t have to know, I didn’t want to know. But I did want to speak with Bethany, to tell her good-bye. So when we made arrangements to meet in the parking lot of the mall where we’d searched for Trina, I asked Brad to make sure that she came along.

They were both standing with my bags where we said we’d meet when Clyde and I drove up, but I didn’t see Orlando. The van was nowhere around. I told Clyde to stay in the car, which was my final promise to Brad.

“Where’s Orlando?” I asked. Brad looked jumpy; he moved his body from side to side and kept pounding his fist into his open palm.

“I gave him directions.”

“Why didn’t you have him follow you?”

But I knew. Anyone behind him would see his license plate.

Bethany grabbed me in a tight hug. She looked as though she were coming off a long bender. Her cheeks were sunken, and the circles below her eyes were darker than usual. Her clothes were rumpled, as though she’d slept in them. “Thank God!” she whispered in my ear. “How is she?”

“They didn’t hurt her,” I said, and told her the story, which elicited another “Thank God!”

“Come with us,” Bethany said after I’d finished. I glanced at Brad. He looked awkward for a moment, then stepped away.

“No.”

“Our girls are hard cases,” she said. “Something was bound to happen. It won’t be like that this time.”

I shook my head.

“We started this together.”

“I’m sorry. I’m going back to LA.”

“So you’re going to try the system again? It didn’t work before.”

“I know. You still think this is going to work for you?”

“I’m no good with systems. We’re going to the site this evening. I’ll stay nearby for a while; then I’ll come back in a week or so.”

“Bethany, we need to go,” Brad said.

“How’s Angelica doing?”

“She’s coming down. I can see depression setting in. Wilbur will meet us tonight; he’ll know what to give her.”

“Bethany,” Brad said. He wouldn’t look at me. I was no longer part of his world.

Bethany hugged me again. I ran my fingers over her back, found the knots, and pressed down. Bethany groaned a little. “Come see me when you get back,” I said. “I’ll get rid of them for you.”

“I will.”

Clyde wanted to know why we were sitting in the parking lot. When I told him that Orlando was on his way, he looked a little confused. He’d met him years earlier and had even gone to one of his plays, but they hadn’t seen each other in a long time.

“Is he still your boyfriend?”

I was taken aback, not by the question but because of the frank interest in Clyde’s eyes. He never asked me about my personal life.

I hesitated. I don’t know why.

“You guys have been hanging out for a long time. How come you never got married?”

“How come you get married so much?”

Clyde chuckled. “I’ve been trying to figure that one out myself. I don’t think I’ll be doing it again.”

“I wouldn’t bet money on that,” I said. “You’re the marrying kind.”

“Am I?”

“You like having a wife; you just don’t want to be a husband.”

The words came out before I could stop them. When I looked at Clyde’s face, I knew that I’d cut too deep.

“Why does it have to be my fault?”

“How many times have you done this?”

He looked as though he were doing the math for the very first time. “I did the best I—”

“You’ve never given your best to a marriage. You give your best to making money.”

Clyde’s face contorted. “I’m sick of hearing this shit. All women want a successful man, but they never want to deal with what it takes to be successful in America. And it’s twice as hard for a brother. You don’t have any problems accepting the rewards of my working so hard, but when it comes with dealing with the sacrifices involved, all you do is complain. You don’t know what you want.”

“I can’t speak for the rest of your wives, but I never asked you to go slay the dragon for me. You did that on your own, because of
your
needs.”

“I did it to take care of my family.”

“You left your family, and then you started throwing money at us.”

“We were together a long time after—” He stopped, cleared his throat, and grew quiet.

“Say it.”

“Say what?”

“Say we were together a long time after the baby died.”

He turned his head.

“Don’t look away from me.”

He turned back, and when he did he looked weary and frightened, which infuriated me more. “What do you want from me?”

“Do you think the only way you can leave somebody is to walk out the door? You were never home. Our world exploded, and you didn’t try to help me put it back together. And you didn’t try to help Trina, either.”

“So I’m the bad guy, huh? Because I don’t want to hold on to grief, I’m the bad guy?”

“You didn’t share—”

“I didn’t share what? I mourned our son, Keri. I still do. I just don’t do it the way you do. You mourn forever, and you hold grudges forever. You never want to let anything go.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your mother, for one thing. You were grown up at eighteen, and you’re still in pain about your childhood. Damn. How long ago was that? The woman has tried and tried to make it up to you, and you’re still so damn angry that—”

“I let her back in my life. She’s the one who ran out again.”

“No, she didn’t. She got married. She didn’t make you her number-one priority, and you got pissed off. That’s what happened.”

“I—”

“Listen, if I failed to grieve with you, I’m sorry. But knowing you, you won’t accept that apology, because you like to hold grudges.”

I had a hot retort in my mouth, but Clyde put his head against the steering wheel. I couldn’t see his eyes. And then there was a tapping on the window, and when I looked I saw Orlando standing outside, looking in at us.

It was awkward with Orlando, who hadn’t expected to see Clyde, let alone interrupt us in the middle of an argument. No use trying to act normal when it was so obvious that both of us were upset and one of us was almost out of control. Clyde barely spoke after he rolled down the window. I got out of the car, and Orlando hugged me even though I could tell that he was holding back. He looked exhausted and stressed out. I told him Trina was in the hospital and brought him up to date as quickly as I could.

There were logistics to figure out. Orlando sat in his car while Clyde and I sat in his and decided that we’d both stay to learn if Trina’s hold would be extended. If it was, we’d have her transferred back to the Weitz Center. If it wasn’t, we’d drive her back to LA and either look for a residential treatment program in a remote spot, or call Brad and say I’d made a mistake leaving, or chain up Trina in my garage.

I got out of Clyde’s car and conferred with Orlando in his; he said he’d spend the night and go back to LA in the morning. He called an 800 number for a hotel and found a place that wasn’t too far from the hospital. After we checked in, Orlando and I went to get something to eat. Clyde stayed behind to take a nap. We agreed to meet half an hour before visiting hours at the hospital.

I felt more guilty than hungry as I sat across from Orlando. “I’m so sorry I called you. I didn’t know Clyde was going to be here. I hate that you’re missing opening night. God, Orlando. Are you going to get fired?”

“Nah. I told the director I had a family emergency. They would have postponed it, but tickets had already been sold. Anyway, it’s not that big a deal. Don’t even think about it. The play kind of sucks.” He seemed forlorn.

“Orlando, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m sure the play doesn’t suck.”

“I’m fabulous, but the play sucks. Anyway, I’m here now. It’s good to see you, baby.”

We didn’t talk much. A couple of times when I looked up from my food, Orlando was staring at me.

“I’m okay,” I said the last time. When he kept staring, it occurred to me that I might look as bad as Bethany did. It wouldn’t be the first time Orlando hadn’t seen me at my best.

We took a walk after we finished eating. When we got back to the hotel, there were still a couple of hours before visiting hours started. “I want us to take a nap,” Orlando said. So we got in the bed and slept until it was time for me to meet Clyde.

CLYDE WAS WAITING IN THE LOBBY WHEN I CAME DOWN. His rest had done him good. He seemed more relaxed. We stayed away from discussing anything personal while we drove to the hospital. It wasn’t until Clyde turned into the entranceway of Somerset that I saw his face begin to take on a grim look, and all the lines of tension that the nap had eased seemed more pronounced.

Clyde went in first to see Trina, and I waited outside near the sign-in sheet. He came back after forty-five minutes and said Trina wanted to see me. She looked bedraggled, her hair uncombed, sleep settled into the corners of her eyes; she was huddled in a corner of one of the sofas in the television room. I wanted to hug her, but her eyes allowed me to come only so far.

“Trina, why don’t you give Mommy a hug,” Clyde said.

She shrank back.

“That’s all right. I love you, baby.”

She stared at me with sullen, suspicious eyes. What would it take for that look to recede, disappear?

I didn’t stay long.

“She’ll get better,” I said as Clyde and I were walking down the hall.

Clyde didn’t answer.

“The medication has to get in her system. It’s a process.”

He didn’t look at me.

“You never answered my question,” Clyde said as we were driving back.

“What question?”

“Why haven’t you and Orlando gotten married? Brother drove all night to be with you. Seems like a nice guy.”

“He
is
a nice guy.”

Clyde smiled. “So you’re not going to tell me?”

“I haven’t figured it out myself. Why are you so into my Kool-Aid?”

Clyde opened his mouth, then closed it. “Just being nosy.”

Orlando was in the shower when I got back to the room. There was a bottle of red wine on the dresser, and a bouquet of flowers, the kind vendors sell on street corners. And French fries, still hot. I popped one into my mouth and then another. He’d found Sacramento’s jazz station; the strains of a soft saxophone were coming from the radio. I knocked on the bathroom door, then cracked it. “The flowers are beautiful. And the fries are great. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. How’s Trina doing?”

“You know. It’s day two; she hates me. What can I tell you?”

I heard water running. Orlando came out with a towel wrapped around him. “Your bath is ready,” he said, and kissed me.

There were bubbles in the tub and two lighted candles on the sink. I sank into the water, letting the warmth and the fragrance push back some of the worry and tension. I almost fell asleep, but then I heard soft tapping on the door. “Hey, baby, you’re kind of quiet in there.”

Orlando had already poured the wine by the time I got out. He handed me a glass and held his up. “To better times,” he said.

Clink! Clink!

We got into the bed, then sat up with our heads against the back-board.

“How are the boys?” I asked.

Orlando smiled. “Jabari had his football banquet last week. He was MVP.”

“All right!” I said. Our palms met in midair.

“So he takes off for training in a couple of weeks.”

“That soon?”

“Michigan starts a little earlier than most. You should have heard his acceptance speech. Brought tears to my eyes. Talk about eloquent.”

“Wonder where that came from?”

Orlando grinned.

“How’s PJ?” I asked.

“Well,” Orlando said, “that’s a whole other story.” He looked at me and put down his glass. “Uh,” he said, then stopped, pressed his lips together, and started again. “PJ told me he’s gay.”

His voice cracked when he said the word. I looked at him, saw his lower lip begin to quiver. He began sobbing. I put my arms around him. I hadn’t expected tears. Not from my rock.

“It’s going to be all right.”

“Oh, God.” His head was against my chest, and his voice was muffled. “They’re going to call him a faggot.” He began sobbing harder. “And there’s AIDS. Jesus. Why didn’t I know? What the hell was wrong with me, not seeing this?”

“He didn’t want you to see it,” I said. “What did you tell him?”

He lifted his head and looked at me. “I told him I loved him, that he was my son. What do you think I told him?”

“Did he tell Lucy?”

“We both did.”

“How did she take it?”

“You know how emotional Lucy is. But she did say that she loved him.” He looked at me. “Did you know?”

I nodded. “I haven’t known all that much longer than you. It was easier for him to tell me. I’m not his parent.”