The Pisces(55)

“She’s at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Hospital,” he said. “She is allowed visitors from ten to three. I just saw her for the first time this morning and she is doing well, all things considered. But I think she could really use a shred of normalcy right now, and a friend. She really hates it there, but she’s not getting out anytime soon. I’m going to try to get her to go to treatment for drugs and depression following her stay. Apparently she’d been taking pills again.”

That’s not gonna do it, I thought. It’s not the pills or the depression. It’s the sex and love. But you can’t tell a person’s husband, one who probably still very much loves her, about her addiction to other men. You can’t say, Oh, the real problem is in her heart and cunt. Who was I to know what the real problem was anyway? Maybe her real problem was drug addiction, and this love and sex thing was only a poor substitute. But if that was the case then where was my drug problem? And why was she crying for men but never for drugs? Why was it that whenever one of them left or did not give her enough of what she wanted, she dissolved into a disaster? And why was I vomiting on Abbot Kinney last night?

“I’ll go see her,” I said.

I walked and fed Dominic quickly and then I went to see Claire, just like that, no fear of what I would see, no recalling the memory of having almost been hospitalized by the doughnut incident. There was only this person who needed me. It wasn’t a reflection of me that I was seeking, a way to feel good about myself. There was just this human being for whom I could maybe bring some love. For once I could actually do something of service. The thought of getting out of my own mind, and the situation with Theo, made me feel good for a moment.

The psych ward smelled like institutional mashed potatoes and the nurses said that Claire was with a doctor. I wondered if this was where I was going to end up. Or would I end up in a hospital in Phoenix? As the patients moved back and forth, shuffling around the locked ward, I felt very aware of my freedom. One woman about my age sat in a chair, in her gown, digging her nails into her scalp: red sores scabbing all along the hairline. With every few digs she would intently scrutinize the skin she had scraped off and then put it in her mouth. I did not feel like I was a better person than these people, but perhaps stronger, or luckier, or something. Then I felt ashamed of my strength and freedom. I was one of them, only I was out here.



But I wasn’t one of them, was I? I had been alive a long time and had not ended up in one of these places. I had come close but never completely lost my freedom. Didn’t it say something about my ability to make decisions, or at the last moment save myself and evade disaster?

Maybe I could have two lives. Maybe I could be with Theo and also go to group. I had been avoiding them, thinking that the two could not coexist. But what if they could? Why couldn’t I, then, stay in Los Angeles? I could get a job at a library or something. I could live somewhere on the beach in a little bungalow, if cheap bungalows still existed. I could be a woman who didn’t kill herself over her problems, but triumphed. I would be balanced, a measured human being. There wouldn’t have to be any more sadness. I would have love and sanity.

Or, like Claire, would I just keep getting worse? It was so hard to reconcile fantasy with reality. It was hard to believe that something as beautiful as the way Theo made me feel could put me in the hospital or kill me.

Did chasing the light inevitably lead us here? If we didn’t chase the light, did people like us just end up here anyway? If Claire had never left her marriage, where would she be now? She said that she was depressed during her marriage and ended up here once before. And that was before she began her odyssey of love and sex. If you were just going to end up here, regardless of what you did, it seemed worth it to really push things like she did. The nothingness was going to eat you alive anyway. It was going to be mashed potatoes at the end no matter what. So why not just grab for whatever you could get?



* * *



—



“Well, I’ve really mucked it up this time,” said Claire. “I’m back in group therapy now, only here with a pack of sad arses who are completely catatonic—which is maybe actually better.”

She laughed. It was good to see her sense of humor back. Her hair was still greasy, piled on top of her head, but the circles under her eyes had diminished and there was a glint in her eyes again.

“You seem better,” I said. “Like you’re not just staring at the wall.”

“Yes, with my last suicide attempt I woke up completely miffed that I was still alive. But this one was oddly refreshing. Maybe I just needed some sort of sorbet—a life palate cleanser.”

My God, I loved her.

“I get it,” I said. “I mean, not really, because mine wasn’t really a consciously active attempt.”

“No, yours was more of a gesture.”

“Exactly, a gesture. I’m not the suicide pro that you are. But I think I understand.”

“Love, if I were a pro I wouldn’t be here.”

“Right,” I said. “But I mean I’m not as, like, experienced with suicide or whatever. Like it’s not as much a part of my oeuvre. I’m more—I don’t know what I am actually. But I know what you mean by a palate cleanser. Sometimes everything is just so bleh that you need to fucking cut it with a knife.”

I was trying to ask her in a roundabout way if it was worth it. We felt the same nothingness, of that I was sure. But I wanted to see if she knew if we were going to be okay or not. Or, at least, if I was. I was asking life advice, couched in the language of suicide, from a friend in a mental hospital. This was the direction my life had taken.