Perfect Strangers

Looking as if he doesn’t agree at all with this decision, Ernest swings my chair around so I’m facing Edmond. He’s behind his big oak desk again, hands folded over the manila file that I assume contains all the dirt on me there is to dig.

I say, “You didn’t tell me about the warning signs of psychosis.”

“Ah. Yes. Well, typically patients report things like unusual sensitivity to light and noise, memory problems, withdrawal from social relationships, increased suspiciousness or aggression, inappropriate laughter or crying…”

He goes on. I don’t recall any of the symptoms he’s listing happening to me.

Irritated, I interrupt him. “What if there weren’t any of those signs? Could there be something else? Like…like a main cause? A single event that would be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?”

Edmond gazes at me with deep sympathy shining in his eyes. “I know it would be reassuring to have a sole trigger we could point to, but the reality is that the onset of psychosis is typically a slow downward slide, not an abrupt snap. I’ll send a list of symptoms home with you today so your husband can be on the lookout for any unusual behavior. Keep on top of your meds and let your psychiatrist know immediately if you start to feel anything odd.”

He picks up his pen and begins to write on a pad of paper, and just like that, I’m dismissed.

As Ernest wheels me out of the office and back to the dayroom, he starts to sing softly to himself. He has a beautiful smooth bass voice that goes perfectly with the soulful tune of the song.

Still distracted by my meeting with Edmond, I ask, “What is that you’re singing? It’s pretty.”

“Old gospel song. You recognize it?”

It sounds vaguely familiar, but I can’t place it. “Should I?”

He chuckles. “They been playin’ the album it’s from in the lounge every Sunday since you got here, sweetheart.”

So that’s why it sounds familiar. “Who’s the artist?”

“Legendary gospel singer who died about twenty years ago. Name was James Blackwood.”

I close my eyes and let the pain burn through me until I’m nothing inside but ashes.

* * *

It’s gettingdark by the time Chris picks me up in a wheelchair-accessible van on loan from the body shop where he works. It doesn’t belong to the shop: a client left it for repair.

We exchange a muted greeting without meeting each other’s eyes.

The other patients watch from the lounge windows on the third floor as Ernest loads me into the van in the parking lot while a reluctant Chris stands nearby, watching, looking like he needs an airsickness bag.

When I’m securely buckled into the back, my wheelchair strapped down so it can’t roll around during the ride, Ernest leans in and kisses me on the cheek. “Gonna miss you, Miss Olivia. You take care now, you hear?”

“You, too, Ernest,” I say, fighting tears. I wish like hell I could hug him.

Then the back doors are closing. I watch through the third-story windows as a thrashing and screaming Gigi is dragged off by an orderly. A few feet away, Gaspard raises a thin hand in farewell. It’s the first time he’s ever acknowledged me.

He turns and shuffles out of sight of the windows. Chris guns the engine and we pull away.

I don’t break down until later, much later, after Chris is snoring on the sofa in the living room and I’m alone in the dark in the master bedroom, lying on the dirty sheets where he left me, in a soiled diaper that’s starting to smell.

* * *

The next daybegins the routine that passes for what I call “life.”

The caregiver arrives promptly at 8am, startling Chris from a sound sleep. He’d forgotten she was coming.

“Good thing you got here when you did, or I’d be late for work,” he says, scratching his belly as he leads her into the master bedroom. He sends me an irritated glance. “With all the excitement yesterday, I forgot to set my alarm.”

The caregiver, a robust German woman named Maria after Julie Andrews’ singing nanny character in The Sound of Music—I swear I couldn’t make this shit up—has what I call a forceful personality. Meaning that she intimidates the holy hell out of Chris, who starts avoiding her the second after she gives him a vicious scolding for leaving me alone all night in my “state.”

I like her immediately.

When she asks me how I got on before she came, I tell her my husband cared for me. She darkly mutters a few things in German that sound frightening, possibly because they’re in German. Then, in English, she tells me not to worry because Maria is in charge now—as I’ll come to discover, she enjoys referring to herself in the third person—and everything is going to be swell from here on out.

I think that’s an exaggeration, but I don’t call her on it. Right now, I need all the friends I can get.

Maria changes my diaper, bathes me, feeds me, and cleans the house, all with the masterful efficiency for which the Germans are famous. By the time Kelly comes to visit at noon, my home is sparkling, my stomach is full, and I’m—dare I say it?—in a good mood.

Or at least a non-suicidal one.

Kelly takes one look at me sitting propped up in bed and promptly bursts into tears.

“You’re welcome to some of my anti-depressants,” I tell her. “Now please come over here and give me a hug before I start crying, too.”

She drops the bag she’s carrying on the floor and runs to me. I’m engulfed in a hug and a cloud of her floral perfume.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice choked. “I don’t mean to be such a wuss. It’s just so good to see you.”

I know she means it’s good to see me here at home and not in the awful mental institution where she’d been visiting me daily to read me books. Hemingway’s books, because my real life is Opposite Land from my delusional one.

In this life, I love the macho old goat. Go figure.

“It’s good to see you, too. Did you bring it?”