Breakdown

Chapter 3

Thumb through a five-year-old trash-magazine and you might come across a photo of Zelda Chase in a sexy outfit, a member of a rarefied species: Actressa gorgeousa.

Leggy, shapely, blond, perfectly styled and buffed, camera-ready as she flashed a smile ripe with genetic privilege.

Spend some time with Zelda Chase and all that flecked away like emotional dandruff.

Add a vulnerable child and it got complicated.

I’d done custody consults for years and lots of judges trusted me, but this referral came from Zelda Chase’s psychiatrist.

Lou Sherman and I had cross-referred for years — parents sent to him, offspring to me. When he called me one evening in June, I was expecting more of the same. He said, “This is a little different, Alex.”

“How so?”

“It’s involved. Can we have lunch?”

Lou’s office was in Encino but he invited me to Musso & Frank on Hollywood Boulevard, a shopworn ode to Hollywood glamour fighting to assert itself amid the tackiness, dinge, and danger of what used to be Cinema City.

I arrived on time as I always do, found Lou in a corner booth at the north end of the big, mural-lined dining room, well into an example of the best Martini in L.A.

A small man, he’d enlarged himself in customary fashion: sitting up expressionless and ramrod-straight, head fixed in a slight upward tilt. Maybe a souvenir of years spent in the military. Maybe he just got tired of being pushed around on the schoolyard.

His cinnamon-brown face was round and seamed, assembled around a serious nose. His sunbaked skull was crowned by a few remaining wisps of white hair.

New Mexico — born, half Jewish, half Acoma Indian, Lou was the first in his family to go to college. After three stints in the marines, he’d entered Columbia at thirty-five, stayed for medical school, completed a neurology-psychiatry residency at Langley Porter in San Francisco. I interned there and we attended the same seminars, saw each other at social events and traded jokes. Years later, we found ourselves at the venerable med school crosstown where Lou was already tenured and I was a young assistant prof. There, the rapport between us deepened as we came to respect each other’s clinical skills.

Lou had always come across imperturbable and quietly confident — what you want in a psychiatrist. But the day he told me about Zelda Chase, he seemed edgy. I ordered a Chivas and waited for him to tell me why.

That was delayed until his second Martini arrived with my scotch, followed by Caesar salads delivered ceremoniously by one of Musso’s cranky geriatric waiters.

Finally, crunching a crouton to dust and dabbing his mouth, Lou said, “Five-year-old boy for you, psychotic mother for me. I say you get the better deal.”

He seemed to be contemplating a third cocktail but pushed away his glass.

“Making matters worse,” he said, “she’s an actress. I don’t mean because that makes her histrionic, which it probably would if she wasn’t well past that psychologically. I mean literally, she’s currently working on a TV series and the studio’s concerned. So a lot is at stake.”

I said, “Psychotic but employable. She keeps it under control?”

“Like I said, Alex, it’s complicated. But yeah, so far she has maintained. And who knows, maybe in that business a little looseness is an asset. Zelda Chase. Heard of her?”

I shook my head.

He said, “I figured you weren’t much for sitcoms. Hers is called SubUrban. Two complete seasons shot with a third planned, meaning halfway to syndication and the potential for big bucks. In the interest of clinical dedication, I endured one episode, here’s the gist: Hollywood’s notion of comedic family life, meaning a tossed salad of borderlines, narcissists, and undiagnosables living together for no apparent reason. Along with perverse, poorly trained pets and a laugh-track for moral support.”

“Sounds like the makings of a classic.”

“Shakespeare’s writhing in envy.” Lou twirled the stem of his glass. “You treat a lot of showbiz people, Alex? Or in your case, their kids?”

“I’ve had my share.”

“Care to generalize?”

I smiled.

He said, “Admirable restraint, young Alexander, but I’ll dive right in because I’ve seen lots of them — have insurance contracts with the studios, the reimbursement’s excellent — and the patterns are undeniable. New patient comes in and tells me they write comedy or do stand-up, I can put money on their being profoundly depressed. Sometimes there’s a bipolar element, but it’s always the depressive side that predominates in clowns. With that, of course, comes the self-medication and the addiction and all the shit that brings. The so-called dramatic performers are just that: immature, insecure, look-at-me-Mommy types with blurry identity boundaries. A more mixed bag diagnostically, but if you have to wager, go for Axis 2 issues, I’m talking deeply rooted personality disorders.”

That sounded uncharacteristically pat and cruel for Lou and I wondered if he realized it because he frowned and looked into his glass.

“Maybe I’ve been at it too long, Alex... anyway, Ms. Zelda’s a little more interesting. Signs of mood and thinking issues. But despite that, she’s maintained for forty-plus episodes.”

“Something changed to bring her to you.”

“Her agent called me,” he said. “Don’t ask for a name or what the connection is, it’s sensitive. The presenting problem is a few nights ago Zelda ended up at the door of an old boyfriend, making a holy ruckus and terrorizing his family. He hadn’t seen her in years, is happily married with kids.”

“Also an actor?”

“Nope, a cameraman she dated back when she was doing bit parts. You treat any kids of ancillaries — grips, stuntmen, lens guys?”

“I have.”

“Solid, working-class types, right? They get a big check, it’s three Harleys, not a Mercedes. That’s what this fellow is like. I called him and he was a nice guy, no genius but salt of the earth, has himself a nice little spread in Sunland, horses, dogs. Apparently not guard dogs, because in the wee hours, our Ms. Zelda climbed a fence and started pounding on his kitchen door, shrieking for him to stop being a coward, come outside, she knew he still loved her, it was time to reconnect.”

“That makes her psychotic?”

“You’re thinking I’ve missed the mark and it’s erotomania or some other stalker-type syndrome. And if that’s all that happened, you’d be right. Unfortunately she also displayed post-event stereotypic body movements — rocking, blinking — and stretches of elective muteness followed by some of the most intense flights of ideas I’ve ever heard. Including the unshakable delusion that said boyfriend had been creeping into her bedroom every night for years to have sex with her, after which he’d brutally rape her anally then pour champagne and propose marriage and the two of them would jet off to Europe. So I have no reservations calling her crazy — oh, yeah, there are command hallucinations as well: When the cops busted her, she told them her mother’s voice had ordered her to ‘finally make an honest woman out of herself.’ A mother she won’t identify other than to call her a movie star, which is obviously delusional. After that she tried to bite one of the officers on the hand.”

“I see what you mean, Lou.”

“Whether all that’s schizophrenia or a severe manic phase, I’m still not sure. Could even be both, you know how fuzzy diagnosis can get. Meanwhile, there’s pressure on me to come up with the right meds because she’s under contract for a third season and they can’t write her out without ‘messing up the story arcs.’ Reason I’ve called you in, is her son. Who, unbelievably, she’s managed to raise alone, daddy unknown. Now, obviously, something needs to be done for the poor kid while I evaluate Mommy and hopefully come up with the right serotonin-boosting cocktail. Another issue is her fitness as a parent. If you could have a look at the boy and make some recommendations — do a bit of social work if placement’s called for — I’d be eternally grateful. Compensation’s no issue, production company’s insurance is paying me portal-to-portal at a very generous level and I’ll make sure you get the same.”

“Okay.”

“Just like that,” he said. “You’ve always been an agreeable type, I knew I could count on you. Okay, how about another mood-glossing cocktail?”

Later, walking to the parking lot where his white ’61 Jaguar XK150 was protected by cones in the VIP section, he handed the valet a twenty and said, “Thanks again, Alex, we’re not talking cure, just management, but maybe we can do some good. I’ll call you tomorrow and give you the details, meanwhile here’s another tidbit: Her given name’s not Zelda, it’s Jane. She won’t say why she changed it but I’m wondering if she admires F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife. And you know about her.”

“She went crazy,” I said.

“Oh, yeah.”