He thought about that for a moment and said, “I know.” Then he zipped his bag, hefted it and walked out of the room. He turned at the door. “If you need me, just call my cell. I won’t abandon you, but I have to stop this now. Before I go totally crazy.”
“But, George,” she cried, running to him, grabbing his shirtsleeve. “You want me to change? I can make changes! We’ll compromise!”
He just looked at her. “Sonja, you can’t change this. And you haven’t heard a thing I’ve said in ten years. You need to just carry on, be yourself and let me go.”
And then he left.
* * *
Gerri walked out of her house at the crack of dawn, holding her coffee cup. Andy emerged from across the street at about the same time. Sonja had not been early; Gerri made a mental note to thank her for that. Sonja was go, go, go all the time; she seemed to see it as her mission to keep her friends in shape, moving all the time. Gerri and Andy met in the middle of the street. “Where’s little Mary Sunshine?” Andy asked.
“Sleeping in?” Gerri asked with a short laugh.
BJ came out of her house down the street and the women waved at each other. BJ began stretching for her run while the other women wandered up Sonja’s walk.
“We could sit on the planter box, finish our coffee,” Andy suggested.
“Yeah, but I’d rather get this over with,” Gerri said.
“You doing okay?” Andy asked.
“Ach,” she said with a noncommittal shrug. “I think I’m doing what all women in this position do. Half the time I want him killed, half the time I just want him back.”
“Bryce must be a real loser,” Andy said. “I’m pretty miserable, but I don’t want him back. I just want the kitchen finished and some energetic young stud to come over a least a couple of times a week, then leave quietly.”
“You’re disgusting.”
Andy laughed at her. “Really? You’re just bitter. Not that I blame you, but I hope you can work this out. I love Phil. I know he has to be punished, but I love him. If I didn’t love you more, I’d take him off your hands.”
They approached the door. “He watches himself brush his big, beautiful teeth, splatters all over the mirror and everywhere. He snores like a locomotive and farts in his sleep. He blows his nose in the shower and poops three times a day.”
“Oh, he’s regular, that’s good. That’s one of the things I’ll be looking for in a man,” Andy said with a laugh. Then she knocked on Sonja’s door.
“Knowing what you know, you could not have a man like Phil.”
“Sister, if I could get a man down to one infidelity per twenty-five-year marriage, I’d think I was queen of the universe.” Andy knocked again.
“I’m not ready to laugh about this yet,” Gerri informed her. “Where the hell is she? She’s usually pacing outside my door at least five minutes early. Hit the bell.”
“I don’t want to wake George. He doesn’t get up before six.”
“I wonder how he gets away with that, being married to the hyper one. Ring it, anyway.” When there was still no answer, Gerri pounded on the door. “What the heck,” she muttered. “Andy, see if you can see in the garage windows, see if there’s a car in there.”
Andy handed off her coffee cup and jogged to the front of the garage. She had to jump up and down to get her eyes up to the windows in the garage door. Then she stopped and turned toward Gerri. “Just her car,” she said. “You think they went out for a whole night somewhere?”
“She would’ve scheduled that with us three weeks in advance,” Gerri said. Then she pounded again and yelled, “Hey, Sonja! Sonja, come on!”
“They’re not home,” Andy said.
“She would’ve called. You know her—she’d pull herself off the operating table and call to say she’s running a little late because of major surgery.” She pounded and yelled again.
“You’d better get in there,” a voice said from behind them. They turned to find BJ standing on the front walk. BJ shrugged. “She’s never missed a morning. She’d never be a no-show. She’s relentless.”
Andy and Gerri exchanged looks, knowing how true that statement was, wondering for only a split second how BJ, who didn’t know them at all, would read the situation so accurately. So quickly.
“Don’t you women have keys to each other’s houses? Because something’s gotta be wrong. If she’s not in there, maybe she is in the hospital. But you’d better find out.”
“What could be wrong?” Gerri asked herself as much as the others.
BJ shrugged. “I don’t know. But she’s wound a little tight.”
Again, Gerri and Andy exchanged glances. Then Andy bolted across the street to get the key to Sonja’s house that she kept in her desk. She ran back across the street, leaving her front door standing open.
Gerri opened the door slowly, peeking in. The house was still. Quiet and dark, all the blinds drawn. She stuck her head in and called, softly, “Sonja? George?” Then turning she said, “I don’t think anyone is home.”
Suddenly BJ was there, brushing past them and striding purposefully into the house. She paused in the great room, looked right and then left, then headed down the hall toward the bedrooms. Gerri and Andy followed a bit more slowly, unsure if searching the house was the right thing to do, even under these circumstances. Then BJ yelled, “In here!”
Whatever visions Gerri and Andy might’ve had as they raced to the master bedroom, nothing could have prepared them for what they found. Sonja sat on the floor between the bed and the bureau, her back against the wall. She wasn’t wearing her usual perfect, colorful walking togs but rather a skimpy little outfit, the type she’d wear to her yoga class. BJ was kneeling in front of her, then backed away as the other women came closer, letting them in. Sonja’s hair was limp and stringy, her face red and damp as if she was sweating, her eyes glassy. Her breath was rapid and shallow; she was hyperventilating. She almost smiled when she saw her friends, but instead, put one of her hands out toward them, showing nails gnawed down so severely they were nipped into the skin, pink and sore. “I bit them all off,” she said weakly.
“Sonja! What’s the matter?” Gerri asked. “Are you sick?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “I just need to move pretty soon. I have to get up,” she said, yet made no effort to rise.
“Maybe she had a seizure or something,” Andy said.
“Ask her if she took anything,” BJ said from behind them.
“Sonja, did you take something? Medicine? Maybe a whole bunch of your magic herbs?”
She shook her head, remaining against the wall.
“Where’s George, Sonja? Has he gone to work?”
“George,” she said, shaking her head. “Poor George.”
“Sonja, what? What about George?” Gerri demanded.
“Get her to the hospital,” BJ said from behind them. “She’s having some kind of psychotic break.”
Gerri turned and looked at BJ. She was shocked that BJ would catch this before her, with her master’s in psych. But looking back at Sonja, it was obvious. Everything was all wrong—she wouldn’t have put on yoga clothes to walk in the morning, but she did have an afternoon class three days a week. She might’ve been like this since yesterday. But where was George? And the torn-up nails, the sweating face and greasy hair...
Instead of asking any more questions, she said to Andy, “Get your car. Pull into her drive. Let’s go.”
“Maybe an ambulance?” Andy asked.
“Get the car. Right now!” Then to BJ she said, “Help me here,” and they each took one arm and slowly lifted Sonja to her feet, urging her to walk. “You’re going to be okay now,” she murmured to Sonja, leading her out of the house. “It’s going to be okay—just come with me.”
BJ left them to take their friend to the hospital. Gerri sat in the back with a Sonja she couldn’t even recognize. She asked her questions all the way to the hospital, but didn’t get any answers. Sonja would sigh softly
or whisper, “Poor George,” or just shake her head and turn unfocused eyes toward Gerri.
It took quite a lot of confusing explanations at the emergency room before they put Sonja in an exam room. Gerri called her house and Jed answered. “Listen, I didn’t walk this morning, I’m—”
“I know, Mom,” he said. “Some lady came to the door and said you had to rush Sonja to the hospital. But she didn’t say what was wrong. What’s wrong?”
“We don’t know, she hasn’t seen the doctor yet. It’s like she’s drugged or something. I have to find George. Get my address book out of the kitchen drawer and see if his cell number is there. Look under Johanson. I know I don’t have it in my phone.”
“Sure,” he said. “Want me to get Jessie and Matt to school? I can be late for class.”
“Please. I should stay here until—”
“Here it is,” Jed interrupted, reciting the numbers.
“Thanks, honey. You’re in charge. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I won’t go anywhere else without calling your cell or leaving a note at home.”
“Want me to run your purse and phone by the emergency room?”
“Could you? That would help.”
It was a long, tense hour before George entered the E.R. and went directly to the nurses’ station. He produced his insurance information, asked questions, answered, nodded solemnly. Gerri crept closer to listen, but it didn’t take long for the nurse to pull George away from the desk just as a doctor was exiting Sonja’s exam room. Gerri would have liked to sidle up to them and eavesdrop, but the doctor was speaking in low, private tones, so she shrank back.
“Mom?”
She turned to see Jed standing there, holding her purse. “Oh, honey,” she said. “This is so good of you.”
He shrugged it off. “You know anything yet? Like what’s wrong with her?”
“No, we—” She stopped talking as George approached them, his head down. She turned her attention on him, touching his arm. “George, what’s wrong? What happened to her?”
He took a breath. “It’s a little complicated. The doctor has called for a psych consult. They’re going to be keeping her for a while. I’ll go see her in a minute. They’ve given her something to calm her down, but—”
“Calm her down? She was almost catatonic!”
“Not on the inside,” he said. “Her brain was on overdrive. She needs medication.”
“She won’t like that. Maybe they should tell her it’s herbs. George, where were you? Aren’t you usually home in the mornings?”
“Yeah, well that’s the complicated part. Sonja and I have separated. I left our home yesterday. It must have come as more of a shock than I anticipated.”
“What?”
“I imagine we’ll divorce, Gerri. Don’t worry—I’ll take care of her. It was never my intention to abandon her. I just can’t live in that loony bin any longer.”
Gerri got in his face. “You left her?” She felt Andy and Jed each grab hold of one of her arms, keeping her back before she launched on him physically. “Did you talk it over with her first? Air your...your... Did she know?”
“Oh, I talked, but Sonja never listened. Do you have any idea what it’s like, living in a temple? I thought I had prostatitis, I was peeing so much—but it was just all the goddamn fountains and waterfalls in the house. The candles, the meditation music, the herb-infested meals that tasted like lawn clippings...”
“She did all that for you!”
“I’m sure she thought so, but I asked her not to. There’s more stimulation on a mountaintop monastery in Tibet,” he said. “Really, I did my best. Sonja’s kind of nuts.”
Gerri was straining against the hold Andy and Jed had on her. “You know she can’t take that sort of thing! You should have given her a list to work from or a date to deal with! You can’t just leave her! She’s too fragile for that!”
“Mom,” Jed said, pulling on her arm. “Jeez, Mom. There are people...”
“I have to make arrangements for her,” George said. “Maybe we’ll talk later.” And he turned away from them.
“Jesus, Mom!” Jed admonished. “Calm down. People are watching.”
Gerri turned abruptly and sat down on one of the chairs against the wall. Her cheeks were flushed. She threaded her fingers into the short hair on top of her head, kneading a little wildly. How could George know so little about his own wife? Didn’t he realize Sonja clung to all that stuff to keep her steady? She had to have her bag of tricks to get through the days. It was her life raft. And organization, planning, they were her religion. She couldn’t cope with a shock like suddenly losing her husband, her marriage.
And then Gerri realized it was she who couldn’t cope with that. Her reaction to George was more about Gerri feeling her own marriage was gone, suddenly and without warning. Just as Sonja relied on all her woo-woo stuff, Gerri had always relied on Phil, on their marriage. “God,” she said. “I’ll apologize. I was emotional. Scared.”
She took a few deep breaths and put her hand on her son’s knee. “Go on to school, honey,” she said. “I’m not leaving till I see her.”
“Maybe I should hang around in case you...you know...”
“Nah, I’m fine. I’m not going to lose it. If I go berserk, I’m sure they can give me something.”
“You sure?” Jed asked. “I mean, you’ve been a little rocky lately.”
A huff of laughter escaped her. “Ya think?” she asked. Not only was her life falling apart, the whole neighborhood was hitting the skids. “It’s been a rocky few weeks. But we’ll be okay.”
“Okay, then. Andy, keep an eye on her.” Then he leaned over and gave his mother a kiss, something he never did in public and was loath to do in private.
“Whew,” was all Gerri could say, leaning back in her chair to wait.
Two hours later, the nurse let them in to see Sonja. She was lying back in the bed with her eyes closed, her arms relaxed at her sides. They stood there for a second, looking down at her. She looked fifteen, lying there. Small and vulnerable, weak and pale. Not their perky Sonja. While her energy and zeal drove them both crazy, this image was far more unsettling.
Sonja opened her eyes, saw them, but didn’t move a muscle. Gerri picked up one of her limp hands and said, “Oh, honey.”
A tear gathered and ran slowly down Sonja’s temple into her hair. She whispered something and Gerri leaned closer to hear. She whispered again. “He said I made him feel like a Chia Pet.”
four
GERRI AND ANDY left Sonja in the late morning, went home and then to their respective jobs. Sonja was going to spend at least a night, maybe two in the hospital, but she was becoming more lucid by the minute, back in reality again. Still, a break like hers was going to require supervision at the least, medication and psychiatric follow-up at the most.
Paperwork had been piling up on Gerri’s desk, with the distractions and crises in her personal life, and she called Jed’s cell phone to ask if he could get the kids home from school so she could stay late to tackle some of it. She was more than a little conscious that if she didn’t have her oldest son stepping in to help so agreeably right now, she’d be completely lost. She also took note that he was coddling her, trying to warm her up, get her more reasonable toward his father, as though all this inconvenience was her doing, not Phil’s.
By the time she got home, it was nearly eight. Phil’s car was in the drive and when she walked in, the first thing she saw was his briefcase and laptop on the table in the nook. Then he walked into the kitchen from the family room.
“What are you doing here? Did the kids call you?” she asked.
“Jed called, said you had a really bad day,” he said. “Is Sonja all right?”
“She scared me pretty good, but I guess she’ll be okay. You got the story?”
“I did,” he said. “Kind of feels like the whole neighborhood is coming apart at the seams. You okay?”
“I’ve been better,” she said,
going straight to the refrigerator. “Kids eat?”
“Jed took care of that. He got takeout—their choice. I reimbursed him and gave him an extra forty bucks in case he has to do that again. Listen, it’s not working out, me staying in the city. I’m going to find something around here, closer to home, in case there’s some emergency. I don’t want to be so far away through the dark hours, when the goblins come out.”
She felt a smile threaten. The goblins, they called them—the problems kids had. The last-minute school assignment that was already late, a fight with a girlfriend or boyfriend, a ride that didn’t show up to bring them home, a disaster of any flavor. “Is that in their DNA?” she asked Phil. “Our children have never had any problem in their lives before ten o’clock at night.” She pulled out a bottle of cold white wine.
“Probably your DNA. You used to stay up late, get yourself all worked up over some problem with a coworker or family at risk and poke me at about three in the morning to work it out with you.”
“I’ll take the blame for that one,” she said. “Are you leaving right away?”
He eyed the wine and said hopefully, “I don’t have to.”
“Good,” she said. She grabbed two wineglasses out of the cupboard and headed for the door. “Hang out here for them if you can. If they ask, tell them I’m home, but had an errand. I shouldn’t be long.”
“Andy’s?” he wanted to know.
“Actually, no. A neighbor I barely know helped us with Sonja today. It’s reasonable to say that if she hadn’t stepped in, we might have left Sonja alone there, out of her head, for days. I think I should say thank-you, maybe try to get to know her better. If you have to go...”
“I can wait around awhile.”
“Because if you have to go, just let me tell the kids I’m home and where I’ll be. They stay alone all the time—they’ll be fine.”
“I’ll wait for you,” he said. “You sure you’re okay?”
“Work’s piling up,” she said. “You just can’t get separated, go to counseling, have medical emergencies and all that without some fallout.” She was about to leave, then turned back. “Are you going to counseling?”