Breakdown

Chapter 11

Zelda was still in bed, on her back, bedcovers heaped along the wall. Her hair was gray wire, her eyes half closed and hazy.

I stopped a couple of feet away. “Hi.”

Nothing for a moment. Then a smile, gradual, minimal, ambiguous.

I edged closer. “Zelda, I’m taking you out of here.”

She blinked rapidly. Her eyes seemed to be acquiring focus. Then, suddenly, the spark was gone, replaced by stupor.

“We need to leave, Zelda.”

Her head rotated toward me. Her lips formed silent words I couldn’t decipher.

“What’s that, Zelda?

She worked at forming the word. “Can-dy.”

“You’d like candy.”

“Hmm hmm.” Childish pout.

“Sure, we can find some candy. First, let’s get you out of here.”

She rolled away from me.

I said, “I’m taking you to a place you’ve been before. BrightMornings.”

No recognition.

“In Santa Monica, the woman in charge remembers—”

“Mounds,” she said. “Coconut.”

She’d used heroin and junkies crave sugar. But during this lockup, no withdrawal symptoms had surfaced. Ativan could be partly responsible for that but it couldn’t have masked a serious addiction.

Was craving candy a sense memory?

Or she just liked the damn stuff.

She pressed her arms to her sides, stared at the ceiling. The window above her was a pleasant blue rectangle. Pretty day in L.A. I doubted she’d noticed.

“It’s time for you to leave, Zelda.”

She remained inert and mute. But when I began to repeat myself, she raised herself to her elbows, sat up and straightened her spine and positioned herself with the grace of a dancer. Swinging her feet over the bed, she rose to her feet. Moving in stages, each segment slow and deliberate.

Reverse origami, a woman unfolding sequentially.

Without a word, she walked past me toward the door, barefoot.

I got in front of her and held out her shoes. She began to take them but let go and they dropped to the floor. Before I could pick them up, she’d stepped into them with surprising agility and resumed her trudge.

We stepped into the outer room. Kevin Bracht called out, “Good luck, Zelda.”

She continued past him, unresponsive. He began clearing his desk.

Zelda trudged steadily. I kept my steps small, the way you do with a baby learning to walk.

The cubicle area was empty. No opportunity for a “teachable moment.”

Here’s one of our inpatients. We ensure that their needs are met in a clinically responsible manner...

Not that this patient would’ve been much of an endorsement, plodding empty-eyed, totally unmindful of her surroundings.

When curiosity goes, a lot else has already vanished.

The rush of noise on Wilshire jarred me but did nothing to Zelda. I guided her toward the Seville and when I seated her in the front, she bent like modeling clay. As I belted her in, she remained still.

Once she was secure, I waited to see if she’d grow anxious but she didn’t and I got behind the wheel and eased into westbound traffic.

When I drive, I listen to music, switching between an MP3, old-school CDs, even Paleolithic cassettes courtesy the tape deck the car came with in 1979. My preferences fluctuate but I can’t tell you what criteria I use. Sometimes I put the MP3 on random shuffle and serve up a bouillabaisse of Sonny Rollins, Bach, Miles Davis, Santo and Johnny, Vaughan Williams, Patsy Cline, Satie, Gershwin, you name it. Along with sprinkles of street-corner doo-wop and any breed of great guitar music.

No telling how Zelda would react to music but I chanced it, choosing something melodic and soothing: re-press of an old French recording of Ida Presti, possibly the greatest guitarist who ever lived, and her husband Alexandre Lagoya, pairing on Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.”

It’s a few minutes of gorgeous that rarely fails to settle me. I felt my blood vessels expand, heard my heartbeat slow.

Zelda remained unmoving and unmoved. Existing somewhere else.

Soon, she began to slump, ceding control to the seat belt, head bobbing like a dashboard toy. When I rolled over a rough patch of asphalt, her body flopped passively. Had Mike Nehru’s generous feeding of Ativan suppressed her that efficiently? Or was this typical behavior when she wasn’t sneaking into other people’s backyards and scaring the hell out of them?

That kind of extreme fluctuation would fit a variant of bipolar disorder, but it didn’t rule out schizophrenia. Or a combination of the two, as Lou had suggested.

Or some undiagnosed affliction no psychiatrist could classify beyond the ravages of a brain gone haywire.

Whatever the details, no way could she care for a child. Had she been sane enough to realize that and relinquished custody?

Or...

The music ended. Not an eyeblink from Zelda.

I said, “So you like Mounds.”

She said, “Mother.”

“What about Mother?”

She yawned and closed her eyes. By the time I reached La Cienega, her mouth had gated open and she was snoring. By Doheny Drive, the shuffle beneath her eyelids was unmistakable. REM sleep. The dream phase.

What does a madwoman dream about?

In this woman’s case, something pleasant. She smiled all the way to Santa Monica.