Bebe Moore Campbell

by 72 Hour Hold

I went into the kitchen, got the bottle of Merlot that was in the cabinet above the refrigerator, and poured myself a glass. I was sipping it and my tears had tapered off when the phone rang for the second time. The area code of the number that was revealed was unfamiliar. But the voice wasn’t.

  “It’s okay. Everything is okay. They went back and worked everything out.”

  “Bethany!”

  “Yeah.”

  As we talked I could feel myself missing her and maybe missing the dream I’d let go of.

  “Tell Brad I said that the hype on Harriet Tubman—the “never run my train off de track, and I ain’t never lost a passenger” thing—that had to be PR spin. She must have lost somebody.”

  But maybe not forever.

  31

  THE CIRCLE OF CHAIRS IN THE BASEMENT OF THE PRESBYterian church was tight and close. Summer was traditionally a slow time for the support group, a season when attendance was sparse. Those who came regularly, if they were able, took off on vacations designed to relieve them of the stress of taking care of mentally ill relatives. Of course, in many cases, those relatives accompanied the caretakers, in which case the word vacation was a misnomer. It would be more accurate to say that those people went on a trip.

  Mattie, Gloria, Milton, and I were not on vacation. It was Mattie who had reminded me of the regularly scheduled meeting. She’d been calling me for prayer almost every morning since I’d returned. Now she held my hand as I sat beside her.

  Right back where I started from. It seemed almost surreal for me to be sitting between Mattie and Gloria, to be surrounded by others with stories ranging from horrendous to unbearable and, of course, the one or two people whose loved ones could be filed under Doing pretty well. Not Flourishing at Brown, not Taking the world by storm. Just Doing pretty well. Regular. Ordinary, as in “The kid no longer breaks windows.” As in “She takes a couple of classes at community college and volunteers at church.” The happy endings were when the Social Security disability checks came through before all the money ran out, when Medicare or Medi-Cal finally cranked up, when there was a vacancy at a decent residential treatment facility, when the shrink or the therapist knew what the hell she was talking about. When the kid took the medication on her own, without being prompted, because she knew she needed it. Listening in the tight little circle, I realized there were many people who were holding steady on the seesaw of mental illness. The pretty well stories had been attenuated in my mind because I’d been looking for another ending.

  I am not alone, I thought, looking around the circle. Not everyone here is sad.

  “Your turn,” Mattie whispered, and nudged me.

  I felt suddenly tongue-tied and foolish. Milton gave me a nod and a smile. “I’ve been going … my daughter and I have been going through a tough time recently. If you recall, she has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Up until a few months ago, she was taking her medication regularly and was talking about going to college in the fall. She was— uh, she was accepted at Brown. But then I think someone gave her a joint, which led to her smoking some more joints, and the next thing I knew—”

  “You were starting all over again,” one woman said.

  I nodded. “You got it. She got very hostile. I’ll spare you the details. So now she’s in the hospital and I’m waiting for a conservatorship trial, which should be coming up in the next few weeks.”

  “Try not to go on a Thursday. Judge Boch is there on Thursdays, and he’s a horrible man,” another woman said.

  Several others volunteered bits of information about their own trial experiences. Don’t be late. Don’t expect too much; just because you have a conservatorship doesn’t mean everything will get better.

  “I feel as though my whole life is crashing. My kid is in the hospital again. My ex-husband, who promised to support me through this, took off for two weeks on some work-related assignment. My trusted and beloved assistant is on drugs after being clean for a long while, so on top of everything else I’m short-staffed at my store. Oh, and my boyfriend is pulling away. Plus I haven’t a clue as to which of the institutes for mental diseases I should place my daughter in.”

  “Not Havenbrook,” someone volunteered.

  “Is that the place out in Pasadena?” I asked.

  “Yes. My son was placed there, and his experience was terrible. Lots of fights. Lots of homeless people. He went there smoking a couple of cigarettes a day; he left smoking a pack and a half.”

  “My nephew was there. It helped him a lot. He got stable there.”

  “What about the Light House?” I asked.

  Another woman shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know about that one.”

  “My brother was there for about three years,” said a man. “It wasn’t a bad place. They took good care of them physically; they got their checkups, went to the dentist regularly. Their best doctor is Dr. Felix. How long would your daughter need to stay there?”

  “I’m hoping no more than three months.”

  “Give her condoms,” another woman said. “They can’t stop them from having sex in there. And not everybody is healthy, if you know what I mean.”

  “Maybe you don’t need to place her in a locked facility. There are plenty of really good unlocked ones, and they’re so much better.”

  “She’d go AWOL in a hot minute,” I said.

  “Some of them are pretty far out. There’s one in Azusa, up in the mountains.”

  “Forget it. The waiting list is around the corner.”

  People called out other facilities where their loved ones had received good care. I took notes. After support group, people crowded around me, squeezing my hand, giving me more information and encouragement. Someone in the group asked me about my insurance coverage, if it was adequate. “It’s good insurance,” I said.

  But not quite good enough, I learned when a hospital administrator called several days later. My insurance paid for only thirty days of mental health or drug and alcohol abuse care per calendar year. When all the hospitalizations were tallied, Trina was closing in on the twenty-fiveday mark. “Mrs. Whitmore, we are going to need to release your daughter,” a sincere young woman told me.

  Release her to where? was my question. They told me that because of the temporary conservatorship, she could be placed in any IMD that would take her. The caveat was that I’d have to pay for it. The county wouldn’t pick up the tab until after the judge gave me complete conservatorship. The IMDs, flawed as they were, cost nearly $5,000 per month. My other alternative was to bring her home.

  “The hospital has to keep her,” Herbert Swanson’s assistant told me. “They try to dump patients all the time.” There was disgust in his tone.

  The hospital social worker didn’t agree. She restated their position: Trina would have to leave when her thirty days were used up. “You might want to think about taking her out today. She has only five more days left. If you use all those days and wind up not getting conservatorship, what will you do if she has to be hospitalized again?”

  How about I bring her to your house?

  I asked Mr. Swanson to call the hospital. Whatever he said worked. Trina was allowed to stay.

  Then things began to fall into place. The shift in luck, the appearance of hope on the horizon, took me by surprise. Clyde returned, three days later than he said he would and feeling guilty enough to make a bargain. He agreed that Trina could go to the Light House for ninety days. The next day Trina received a court date.

  I’d been visiting Trina twice a day in Clyde’s absence. Since her last outburst, she’d been more subdued. She didn’t talk with me much, but she didn’t ask me to leave either. Sometimes we’d watch television together or read magazines side by side. Several times entire visits passed in total silence. But she always let me rub her. My fingers on her skin was our way of communicating.

  “You’ll be going to court in two days,” I told her when I visited her that afternoon.

  “Why?”

  “I’m trying to
become your conservator.” It was the first time I’d broached the subject, and I could tell she was confused. I quickly explained that I was seeking the right to be able to force medical treatment on her.

  “But I’m in a hospital now,” she said. “Why can’t I come home after that?”

  “Trina, we tried that before. You stopped taking your medication and got sick again.”

  “But I wouldn’t do that this time. I swear,” she added.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I’m calm now. I won’t run away again.”

  “Oh, Trina.”

  “I wouldn’t. My thoughts aren’t jumbled the way they were then. I can think clearly now. I just want to come home.”

  “I have to work; Frances is by herself, and I don’t want to leave you alone.”

  “Where’s Adriana?”

  “She left.”

  “Why?”

  “Adriana had some problems, Trina.”

  “Drugs.”

  I nodded.

  “Did you fire her?”

  “I told her she couldn’t work for me until she got clean and sober again.”

  She was silent for a while. “I’ll get better,” she said.

  Mental Health Court was way off my beaten path. Located near Cal State LA in a depressed industrial area, it was an hour away from Crenshaw in traffic. There was plenty of that. Cars were backed up on the 10E as Clyde and I made our way to the court. A hospital official would be bringing Trina. After we left the interstate, it took only five minutes before we were parking in the lot behind a square two-story building. The building overlooked an outdoor courtyard. There smokers congregated, puffing away the recesses as judges decided their fates. Inside, the waiting room was packed with LA’s stepped-over. From time to time, people would drift off to courtroom 95A or 95B, where their fates might be handed over to relatives or the state. There was no talk of greenlighting or taking a meeting with the producers within the walls of Mental Health Court. Here the stories were mostly sad and unfilmable, with a tendency toward running way too long.

  We saw Trina enter with a tall, heavyset man who took her arm, the escort from the hospital. Her hair was combed in a ponytail. She was wearing black pants and a white blouse, which, over the course of her stay at the hospital, had become too tight. Her lips were bright red, and her cheeks appeared rouged. When she saw Clyde and me, she turned her head. Clyde went over to her, but she wouldn’t talk even to him. Later, I saw her go off with her court-appointed attorney, a good-looking, well-dressed Latino. How good was he? What was he saying to her?

  We waited for about an hour before our names were called. When we finally went into the court, the judge had just granted conservatorship of an elderly man in the throes of Alzheimer’s to his daughter.

  When our case was announced, I could feel myself getting tense. Dr. Bellows, Trina’s psychiatrist, underwent about fifteen minutes of testimony. I had agreed to pay him for his time, including travel to and from the court: $450. But he was organized and eloquent, and his testimony about both the extent and the history of Trina’s illness lent a lot of weight to our petition. Clyde, of course, didn’t know who he was until I told him.

  After Dr. Bellows spoke, the judge addressed his questions to Trina. “Trina, do you know why you’re here?” the judge asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And why is that?”

  “My mother wants to send me away.”

  “Trina, I think your parents feel that you need help. Do you know why?”

  “I’m not crazy.”

  “No one said you were.”

  “Sometimes, things start speeding up in my mind, and then everything starts racing. I can’t slow down, and sometimes I do bad things.”

  “Trina, would you be willing to let your parents take care of you and make decisions on your behalf?”

  “I don’t want to go away. My mother already took me away. She put me in this car with Brad and Bethany and Angelica, and they drove Angelica and me far away. I didn’t want to go, and she made me. I’m eighteen. I’m an adult, but she made me.”

  Every muscle in my body froze. I couldn’t feel my fingers. All I could do was stare at Judge Neulander, who was leaning forward, looking from Trina to me.

  “They were going to lock us up,” Trina said.

  I stopped breathing.

  The judge stared at me for what seemed like a year. He cleared his throat and then settled back in his seat. “Would you be willing to trust your parents with your welfare?”

  She looked at Clyde and me for a long time. “I don’t want to go away.”

  Judge Neulander leaned forward again. “Trina, I think you need help, dear. Your parents want to help you, and I’m going to let them. Conservatorship granted.”

  Clyde and I drove to a restaurant not far from the court. He seemed drained as he sat across from me. His face was haggard. I’d noticed his expression when Dr. Bellows was speaking. He looked as though he were watching a car crash. “You’ve really taken care of things,” he said. “You were always good at taking care of everything. I’m sorry I left you hanging.”

  “I don’t think you can help it.”

  He looked at me. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m selfish, always have been. Smart, selfish, greedy. Always wanted a lot. Always wanted more, more, more. You put up with a lot.”

  “She’s my child.”

  “I meant with me. Why the hell did I ever let you go?” Clyde said.

  It was like kissing, the way he held my glance. The funny thing was, I could remember how Clyde kissed and how much I used to like it. When his eyes stayed on me, I remembered the rest, everything I’d been thinking about for years. I hadn’t forgotten. I’d always wondered what it would be like to be with Clyde again. I’d always wondered, but I realized that I never really wanted to know. I looked away first, and the taste of him grew fainter. Maybe I could forgive him for steering his life away from mine, for reaching toward a sun that burned my spirit, for leaving me while I still loved him. “You let me go because you couldn’t live with my grief.”

  He stared at me and didn’t say anything. I felt myself smiling.

  “I need you to pay for everything, Clyde, all the stuff not covered by the county and the insurance.”

  “All right.”

  THAT NIGHT I THOUGHT OF KISSES, THE ONES THAT lingered.

  The phone rang just as I got into bed. The voice on the other end was raspy and thin. “I’m not going to disappear, Keri,” my mother said. “I’m just going to keep calling.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Is something wrong with Trina?”

  “There was something wrong with me, Emma. My whole childhood was wrong.”

  “I was sick then. I’m in recovery now. If something is wrong, I’d like to help.”

  I sighed. “You can’t help, Emma.”

  “Let me try. Please, tell me what’s wrong.”

  I’ll never know why I told her, only that once the words started coming they wouldn’t stop.

  After I finished speaking with my mother, I called Orlando. He answered on the first ring. I could tell he hadn’t been sleeping. “I’d like you to come over,” I said.

  He handed me a bag of French fries as he walked through my door. The bag said Jerry’s Deli. I got him a soda, and we sat in the kitchen. The fries were hot and crispy, with just enough salt. I put them into one bowl, as though they were chips. Our fingers touched as we reached for them. When the bowl was empty, Orlando leaned back in his chair. “I needed some space,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I had just found out that my son is gay, and I needed to sit with that by myself.” His lip trembled, and he wiped his eyes. “I know what you’re going to say: He’s still PJ. I know that. But—”

  “It wasn’t what you were expecting.”

  We didn’t say anything for a long while.

  “You know, I was trying to give you some space too,” Orlando said.

&nb
sp; “Why?”

  “Because I thought you needed it.” He paused. “I saw the way Clyde was looking at you in Sacramento.”

  “What way was that?”

  “The way a man looks at a woman when he realizes he made a mistake in letting her go.”

  “He did make a mistake.”

  “Did you?”

  “Maybe. But that was a long time ago, Orlando. Clyde can’t give me what I need now.”

  “What do you need?”

  Somebody strong. Somebody who will be there. Somebody who’ll stay. I couldn’t say anything aloud. I was trembling too hard.

  “Not some guy who’s chasing the next sitcom, huh?”

  Somebody who’ll stay. Stay. Stay.

  “Let me decide when the party’s over. Don’t try to fix my life. Fix yours.”

  So then we got quiet again. After a while we started talking about PJ and Jibari and Trina. We laughed about them, about nothing at all. Orlando said he was thinking about selling real estate. I told him I was getting back into massage. Then, without even taking a breath, he said he was up for an audition for a pilot. “With the producers,” he said. I congratulated him, as I always do. And then I told him about talking with my mother and how strange that felt. He looked at me and smiled. Later we ran in the dark, with the wind on our faces. And we kept pace with each other.

  32

  THE HOSPITAL TRANSPORTED TRINA TO THE LIGHT HOUSE by ambulance. Clyde and I were waiting for her when she arrived. We had come early to fill out the paperwork that one of the admissions administrators gave us. We walked alongside the assistant who escorted Trina to her room, which was clean but cramped, with two single beds, two dressers, and two nightstands in a space as large as a prison cell. At least there was an adjoining bathroom, as opposed to one on the hall.

  Trina’s roommate, a Latina in her fifties or sixties, was lying in one of the beds. It was nearly three in the afternoon, and she was still in her pajamas. She opened her eyes and looked at us but didn’t say anything. After a little while she turned to face the wall.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Trina whispered. “Please, please, please don’t leave me here. I’ll die in here.” She grabbed Clyde’s hand. “Daddy, why can’t I stay with you?”