Four Friends

  BJ shrugged. “Just take care of her.”

  When Gerri got to the master bedroom, Sonja was sitting on the edge of her unmade bed wrapped in a towel, looking at her knees. Her hair was dripping onto her lap; she hadn’t gotten all the soap out of her hair. “Okay, my little La-La,” she crooned. “I’m going to help you with your hair. Come back to the bathroom.”

  “Oh, just never mind it,” Sonja said. “I should probably just lie down for a while.”

  “No, honey,” Gerri said, pulling her hand. “We have things to do. Come on.”

  She led Sonja to the bathroom and let her sit on the closed toilet lid while she brushed and dried her hair. Gerri could see bald, scabby spots here and there on Sonja’s scalp, and before she could finish, tears were streaming down her cheeks. But Sonja, so catatonic, didn’t notice.

  As Sonja continued to sit passively, Gerri went in search of clean clothes. There was a big pile of dirty clothes right in the middle of the bedroom floor, but fortunately Gerri was able to dig out some clean underwear from a drawer, and she found a fresh smelling and comfortable sweat suit. It was probably the only reason they hadn’t noticed how badly Sonja was falling apart—maybe she wasn’t showering, but she was putting on clean clothes now and then. Once dressed, she stood Sonja in front of the mirror. “Want a little lip gloss or something?” Gerri asked.

  “Naw, forget it,” Sonja said. “I should probably—”

  “We have to talk now,” Gerri said. She sat Sonja back on the closed toilet seat and knelt on the bathroom floor in front of her. She held her hands. “Sonja, you’ve been feeling pretty awful for the past couple of weeks, haven’t you?”

  Sonja shrugged. “I’m fine,” she said, looking down.

  “You’re not fine,” Gerri said. “You’re pretty sick right now. You haven’t been taking your medicine, you’ve been pulling out your hair,” she added, her voice cracking. She felt the tears well up in her eyes and her throat ached. “You need a little help to get back to your old self. I’m going to take you to see the doctor.”

  Sonja looked up. Her face contorted. “No,” she said in a barely audible breath. “No, I go to the counselor. I go all the time....”

  “I know, baby, I know. It isn’t counseling you need right now. The doctor has to talk to you, check you over. You have a chemical imbalance, that’s all. But we have to get it straightened out before it gets worse. I want you to come with me and I want you to let the doctor help you.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head, and her face twisted in a painful and miserable grimace as she squeezed Gerri’s hands. “Please, no. Just let me be. I’ll be okay, just let me be.” And then her shoulders shook as she began to weep.

  Gerri was frankly glad to see a little emotion, but hoped she wouldn’t have to hog-tie Sonja. She shook her head and ran a gentle hand over her shiny clean hair. “No, honey. If I let you be now, it would just get worse. I want you to come with me. I want you to trust me. I’ll stay with you until the doctor decides what’s best. Okay?”

  “No. No. No,” she cried, great tears rolling down her cheeks. “No, please.”

  “It’s going to be all right, Sonja. You have to trust me, come with me. The doctor is waiting for us.” She wiped the tears off her friend’s face. “You’ll be safe. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

  Gerri stood and pulled Sonja up. She put an arm around her shoulders and led her out of the bathroom, through the family room. She grabbed her purse off the counter and said, “We’ll take Sonja’s car. Sonja, where are your keys?”

  BJ and Andy exchanged looks, standing back. Sonja didn’t even acknowledge them. She was completely focused on either Gerri or the floor. Andy reached over to the hook mounted on the wall by the back door and handed Gerri the keys. Then she hugged Sonja. Sonja hugged her weakly.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Sonja said, crying.

  “Nothing to be sorry about, honey,” Andy said.

  Gerri pulled Sonja out the door. “Let’s go now. I’ll take care of you—everything will be all right.”

  “Need help?” Andy asked.

  “No, we’ll be fine. I’ll call when I can. I’ll come back when I can.”

  Gerri put Sonja in the passenger seat and backed out of the garage. Then she held her hand all the way to the hospital, steering with the other hand. When they got to the hospital, they took the elevator up to the clinic where Dr. Kalay was meeting them. When they were out of the elevator, Gerri stopped and, with her hands on Sonja’s upper arms, looked into her eyes. “Sonja, listen to me. I love you. I want you back in my life. You tell the doctor everything she wants to know. Tell her about eating, sleeping, how you’ve been feeling. I want you to get better. Sonja, promise me?”

  Sonja nodded weakly and Gerri pulled her into her arms, holding her for a moment. “Please, baby—please tell the doctor.”

  When Gerri pushed open the clinic doors, the place was dark and deserted. They didn’t have clinic hours on Sunday, of course. But an attractive and smiling Pakistani woman in a pair of khaki slacks and a lightweight sweater was standing in the dimly lit reception area, waiting.

  “Ah, Sonja, hello,” she said. “Not feeling so well at the moment? How can I help?” she asked, taking her out of Gerri’s care, leading her away to an office.

  Gerri sat in the waiting room, in the semidarkness. It was several long minutes before it occurred to her that Dr. Kalay could have met them in emergency where there was always a crowd, always fast movement and a lot of action, usually tough to find a bed. But the doctor had used a personal key to open up the mental-health clinic, saving Sonja the stress of all that. She must have done that because she took Gerri’s description of the situation very seriously, and for that she was so grateful.

  During the first hour, sitting in the quiet, dimly lit room, Gerri couldn’t help but picture what the past two weeks must have been like for Sonja, the nightmare of not being able to cope, feel nothing but darkness and pain. She’d been completely self-destructive, possibly there were bad dreams or even hallucinations.

  During her second hour of waiting, Gerri thought about her husband, her kids. And her friends—all in such transition, all in danger of collapsing around her. Yet, she was not falling apart. Oh, she was crying too much, lonely too much, furious too much, but even with a twenty-five-year marriage on the ropes and three teenagers testing her sanity, she was somehow hanging on. You can never tell about a person. Gerri didn’t think of herself as strong. Sonja, on the other hand, who seemed to know every trick—how to calm nerves, listen to her body’s messages, alleviate depression, help sleep, stimulate herself, how to level out and maintain serenity—was coming apart. Sonja—who always seemed to have an answer, a cure—was losing it.

  Two full hours and change passed before Dr. Kalay came into the darkened reception area. Her expression was serious. “Thank you for bringing your friend to the hospital,” she said with just a slight accent. “Sonja is going to be admitted to Glendale Psychiatric for a little while. At least a couple of weeks, perhaps a month. You were right, of course. She’s clinically depressed and needs treatment.”

  Gerri’s eyes flashed. “Her husband walked out on her a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I know this. But of course, that’s not the cause of her depression. A trigger, perhaps, but the cause is medical and we may or may not get to the bottom of that. You’re a psychologist, you say?”

  “I’m a social worker with CPS. But I have a master’s in clinical psychology.”

  “Ah, well you’re very smart and we’re so lucky you noticed. But please don’t suggest to Mr. Johanson that he caused his wife’s depression.” Then she reached out and put a hand over Gerri’s. “I’d like you to go now. I’ve given her a very heavy sedative and will have her transported as soon as arrangements with the insurance company are complete. It won’t take long and I won’t leave her in the meantime.”

  “But I didn’t pack a bag for her. I didn’t even bring h
er purse.”

  “Perfect,” Dr. Kalay said. “She doesn’t need anything and the purse would be taken away from her during admission, anyway. I’m going to suggest she not have visitors for about ten days, then we’ll reassess, but you’re welcome to call me to inquire about her progress any time you like.”

  “Is she going to be all right?” Gerri asked. She’d had clients admitted to psychiatric hospitals before, but this felt so personal, so emotional, it left her shaken.

  “I’m optimistic. Sonja is forty and has been functional for many years. I believe once she benefits from medication and therapy, she’ll be functional again.”

  “And happy?” Gerri asked. “Because she was always happy.”

  Dr. Kalay smiled kindly. “I’m counting on that. But please be patient. It’s a process that takes some time. And so much is up to Sonja.”

  “I know,” Gerri said in a breath, afraid she had seen Sonja giving up. “Did I tell you everything? About her packing up all her feng shui and meditation and natural food stuff? Her relaxation CDs? Her little fountains and—”

  “Yes, Gerri. You told me.”

  “And that she hadn’t bathed? That she was pulling...pulling out her hair?”

  Dr. Kalay nodded, that soft smile still in place. “Can you please leave her in my hands now?”

  “Yeah,” she said, running her hand through her hair again. “But I did promise her I wouldn’t leave her....”

  Dr. Kalay shook her head patiently. “She’s not aware of any promises right now, it’s all right. You can go. I can take it from here. She’s safe with me. Trust me.”

  “I asked her to trust me,” Gerri said softly, hanging her head. She turned to go, but at the door she turned back. “Thank you. Please take good care of her.”

  “I’ll do everything I can,” the doctor said.

  “Will you call her husband? I understand it’s not really his fault, but I don’t want to call him. I don’t think I can talk to him.”

  “I’ve already spoken with him twice. The insurance, you know. He’s aware. If it’s any consolation to you, he’s being extremely helpful.”

  “He’d better be. Because it might not be his fault, but she was fine before he—”

  “It’s so much harder to be objective when it’s a loved one,” Dr. Kalay said, cutting her off. “I know you understand how this often works. If not the separation, perhaps an accident, an illness, a death in the family, a financial crisis. There is so often a precipitating factor that is not the cause. I think I should get back to Sonja now.”

  “Yes. Of course, yes,” Gerri said, though it was very hard to leave. She heard the lock on the clinic door slide into place behind her and it sounded so like the crashing closure of prison-cell doors.

  Gerri drove back to Sonja’s house and parked the car in the garage. She found Andy and BJ just finishing up and they’d done far more than surface clean—they had the place just about up to the old Sonja standards in record time. She filled them in while they worked together to fold a final load of laundry and run the vacuum around the master bedroom. She reassured them—Dr. Kalay was very kind, very sensitive, and Sonja was safe and could begin healing. In fact, Gerri was more convincing to them than she was to herself. Gerri kept having visions of Sonja sitting on the couch, blankly staring at the TV while biting off her nails and tugging on her hair for two long weeks while her friends assumed she was simply responding to new medication with grogginess, lethargy. It must have been such a lonely, frightening time for her.

  Finally Gerri went home, emotionally depleted.

  When she walked in the front door, she was met with complete silence. She walked farther into the house—no one seemed to be around. She went through the kitchen and found Phil in the office he’d only visited for the past several weeks. He was using the computer rather than his laptop. He swiveled his chair around to face her as she stood in the doorway. “Where is everyone?” she asked him.

  “Jed’s at Tracy’s for a while. We talked for an hour this morning—he’s repentant and maybe one degree smarter. Jessie was up for a while, had something to eat and went back to bed, and Matt’s down the street playing ball with his friends. You get everything taken care of at Sonja’s?”

  “Not really,” she said, shaking her head. “Oh, the house is clean now. Laundry done. But I had to take Sonja to the hospital. They’re admitting her for a couple of weeks, maybe a month. She’s...she’s...” Gerri dropped her chin, looking down.

  Phil stood and came toward her. “What happened?”

  She lifted her eyes and a large tear spilled over. “She cracked. Went completely over the edge when George... God, Phil.” She gasped with sobs that begged to be torn free, that when facing the best friend she’d had in her lifetime she could no longer rein in. “She was tearing out big hunks of her hair.”

  “Oh, honey,” he said, pulling her into his arms.

  She leaned against him and cried hard tears and he pulled her back into the room and down onto his lap. He held her and for a few minutes all she did was cry against his shoulder, his arms around her, reminding her so painfully that this was where she’d always found safety and ballast. Because of that, she started to wrestle free. “I can’t do this, I can’t.”

  But he pulled her back. “It’s okay, Gerri. It’s okay to do this. It doesn’t commit you to anything to let me comfort you a little.”

  “Oh, God,” she said, crumbling against him. “Oh, God, you’ll just confuse me.”

  “Stop it,” he said, holding her. “You were never confused about this. I come to you when things are bad, you come to me. That’s how it is with us, no matter what else is happening.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s not the same as it was.”

  “Stop it,” he said. “This is the same as it was. Honey, I’m so sorry about your friend.” She felt his hand stroking her back while she cried and she remembered. She had always depended on him in her very worst moments. And he’d never let her down. Even when there had been someone else.

  But she forced that out of her mind and stayed right where she was, burying her face into his neck, smelling him, feeling him. And he did what he’d always known how to do—made her feel that everything was going to be all right. Given her state, she decided the illusion was worth the risk.

  seven

  AFTER SPENDING MOST of the day at Sonja’s house Andy had to rush around. She’d done her own housecleaning, but not her primping and cooking. She felt strangely nervous and the whole time she was showering, choosing clothes, fixing her makeup and hair, she had one thought. It’s just Bob.

  But it was also Beau. Surely he’d know it was okay to bring Beau. And while it hadn’t been very long since she’d seen Bob, she was positively elated that he was coming back to take pictures and join her for dinner. They would tell stories and laugh and hopefully he’d be in no rush to leave.

  She couldn’t quite figure out what it was that had her so completely enchanted by him—he certainly wasn’t her usual type of man. But, she hadn’t had a real male friend in longer than she could remember. There was something about a man’s perspective on things. Not just any man’s perspective, but Bob’s. He was so deeply honest and guileless. He seemed innocent, but he was not. He’d certainly shouldered some of life’s harsher blows—he’d lost a woman he loved. Yet he was the most understanding and forgiving man she’d ever known. Conversations with him were soothing and warm and exactly what she needed. But there was something she couldn’t put her finger on—spirit, maybe. Or soul. He was so right with himself. He was alone with only that one brief relationship to report and had every reason to be grumpy, bitter, but he actually appeared grateful he’d had his wife in his life. Anyone else would’ve been hurt and angry. Andy wanted to know how he did that. How did he turn his heartaches into blessings?

  She was very careful with how she staged the evening. Casual place settings, plenty of light and no candles, hearty food for a hearty man. She didn’t want him to get
the wrong idea. She was absolutely going to make a play for him—but for his friendship, nothing more. This was Bob, just an ordinary guy and not some young stud. She wanted to keep him in her life because he made her feel so full when he was around, but it would be cruel to mislead him, have him question her motives. He must not feel seduced. If that happened, they’d have to talk it out, get their boundaries back and she knew she might lose him in the process.

  But when she opened the door to him, she hugged him. She was so startled by her own reaction, she jumped back before he could return the hug. “Well,” he said, grinning, “wasn’t that nice.”

  “I’m sorry. I think I really missed having you around.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Been a while since a pretty young girl hugged me.”

  “Bob.” She laughed. “I’m not a young girl. I hate to admit it but I’m actually a middle-aged woman.” She crouched down to give Beau a proper welcome, scratching behind his ears. “Oh, thank goodness, I was afraid you might not bring him.”

  “I thought about leaving him home. But then, he pouts when he’s left behind and he does like it here. He’s had dinner.”

  “I’d have been so disappointed if you hadn’t brought him.” She straightened. “Hurry up—take your pictures so we can just relax.”

  He came in, saw that the kitchen table—not the formal dining room table—was set for two. “Aw, you couldn’t get an appointment with your boy?”

  “Oh, I started out with a commitment from him, but his life went to hell in one night and he ran scared,” Andy said.

  Bob looked at her, lifted his eyebrows and waited.

  “He was here last night, got together with his best friend and they smoked a couple of joints in the park. The police cited them and Noel came home stoned with a ticket in his pocket.”

  “Oh, boy,” Bob said. “He’s nineteen, right? Isn’t it amazing that nineteen doesn’t make them all that much smarter than seventeen?”