“I’ve found keys in the lock. Or the back door open. Today’s the sixteenth. I always pay her on the first of the month.”

  “Just pay the same as always,” Julie said. “I’m not familiar with her financial doings. I don’t know the landlord.”

  “I do,” Lina said under her breath. “You won’t even know we’re here.”

  “No offense,” the boarder said, “but it’s just too much responsibility.”

  “I can sleep on the couch,” Julie said. “We’ll take it one day at a time.”

  Book 2

  A Moral Treatment

  22.

  Walter never fully understood how it happened, but from the first phone call with Julie after his mom went into the hospital, he never again felt he should be where he was. What he couldn’t figure out was where he should be. Home, he thought, but then Julie told him not to come, not yet. There had to be jobs he could apply for, but when he reached this point in his thinking, he pressed his hands to his temples. The sweetness of the night his sister and brother slept in his attic room had dissolved. For three hundred fucking dollars they’d left her alone. Because Lina couldn’t admit the truth about their dad.

  What he’d pieced together was that his mom had been with Julie, who’d tried to make a party out of things they used to like. But his mom had asked for her kids. Julie offered a movie on TV. She had food ready. His mom told her to leave, get out of her house. Julie retreated to the living room after Diane slammed the bedroom door and shoved a dresser against it.

  Julie thought of her cats, she said. If Diane didn’t want her, she would just as soon go home. “But I’d promised the kids I’d stay.” She had no way to reach them.

  Julie had awoken in the living room at dawn. She hadn’t thought to close the drapes the night before. She pottered in the kitchen, letting Diane sleep. At nine o’clock she knocked. By then she was worried. She pushed at the door until the dresser moved and when she saw his mom, she panicked. Diane looked more out of it than someone asleep. Julie knew the difference. She tried to wake her with a wet towel, but Diane slumped like a rag doll.

  Julie didn’t know what to do, so she dialed Learhoff. Was that what people did in emergencies? Call their bosses? Walter wondered. Ambulances cost over a thousand dollars—Julie didn’t know how much Diane’s insurance would cover. Learhoff didn’t pick up; her call went to the service. She dragged Diane to the kitchen; she got her sitting up at the table and managed to brew coffee. She held the cup to her lips and Diane let the coffee dribble out. Julie knew then that she must have taken something. Diane in her right mind would spit, not dribble.

  Julie took apart the sheets. She found an empty canister. Barbiturates.

  Then she called the ambulance, price be damned. You’re careful all your life for the once you have to spend.

  “I’m not going to say anything about the pills to your sister and brother,” she said. “So don’t you either, maybe.” Julie followed the ambulance in her own car to UCLA Neuropsychiatric. They asked Julie whether she was next of kin. On all the papers where it asked for a signature she signed, and in the box for relationship, she wrote Friend. While they were pumping his mom’s stomach, Julie called Learhoff again.

  At nearly midnight he finally arrived. A young woman doctor was in the room asking if Diane had had any unusual trauma.

  Julie let Learhoff talk. Nursing, he said, was demanding work. Patients relied on Diane. They asked for her in particular. Julie was surprised he knew that. Patients did ask for Diane, but he was never there to hear.

  The young doctor recommended a hospital commitment. She believed in something called moral treatment, which was already a century old. The idea started with doctors in France. Then Quakers in the English countryside opened a retreat, using rest, conversation, and manual labor for their cures. A period of slowed-down life to take apart the patient’s system of habits and to learn new ones. She asked about Diane’s insurance. A nurse checked her chart. Learhoff didn’t say anything about the insurance running out; Julie took this as a good sign that he’d keep her on the books. Learhoff wasn’t known for generosity.

  The young doctor said Diane couldn’t stay at UCLA for more than seventy-two hours. There was a new law Governor Reagan signed: Lanterman-Petris. His mom was on something called a 5150—involuntary. She could maybe get a 5250, saying she was a danger to herself, but the best thing would be to go in as a vol—voluntary. To the state hospital in Norwalk.

  “Do you really think a big state hospital is the best?” Julie asked.

  Did she have family members who could take care of her? Julie told the young doctor that the family members were seventeen and thirteen years old. What about me? Walter thought. Didn’t Julie think he could take care of his mom?

  The young doctor knew the superintendent at the state hospital. Learhoff had bent down and kissed Diane’s forehead. Walter didn’t like hearing that. He couldn’t say why.

  Julie stayed until five in the morning and then went home to feed the cats. She drove to the bungalow to get Walter’s number. Walter smiled thinking of that patch of wall with the numbers written on it. But that morning, Diane woke up in the hospital and she didn’t like it one bit. They told Julie she hit a nurse. “I don’t believe it. And if she did, the nurse wasn’t hurt. I’ve been hit by agitated patients. Bitten, too.” By the time Julie got there, they had his mom in a geri-chair and they’d given her Haldol. A terrible drug, Julie said. She called Learhoff to say they had to get her out. He agreed, saying there was nowhere worse than an urban acute care unit. Diane wasn’t in any state to talk to about where she was going. And now the nice young lady doctor was nowhere to be found. Julie stayed all day waiting for his mom’s spasms to wear off. By around dinner, Diane was calm, but in a flat, bad mood, as if she’d seen the ugly workings at the back of everything.

  “Do you know me, Diane? It’s me, Julie.”

  “I know who you are,” she’d said.

  “Listen, let’s talk about what’s best. To get you back to being yourself.”

  “Oh, I’m myself all right.”

  “The doctor here thinks you should go to a place called Orchard Springs, in Norwalk. It’s on a big piece of land like a park.”

  “I bet they want me out of here.”

  “Well, we all want you out of here. Don’t you want that, too?”

  “Where are the kids?” she asked, after a while.

  “Walter is at college, Donnie and Lina are on the way.”

  “Lina wants to get her hands on my skirt. Or maybe you’ve already given it to her.”

  They went around and around. They had been friends for such a long time that Julie knew Diane wasn’t herself, but she was a little herself, and there’s only so long you can take meanness when it’s pointed at you. She finally went to the bungalow to wait for the kids. The poor cats had had nothing to eat since dawn.

  “I meant to call you then, but after all that emotion I just fell asleep.” She’d pulled the drapes shut this time. She woke up when the kids clomped in. She thought maybe they could talk to their mom, but Julie didn’t want them to see her in the psych ward, not in that chair. Norwalk was the countryside, at least. The hospital had to release her tomorrow and they needed to know to where.

  “I don’t want to tell the kids about the pills,” Julie said again. “But, with them not knowing, they’ll want her home.” That’s why she was calling him. “You’re the only one she’ll really listen to.”

  “Julie, what do I know? You’re there.” Still, he was glad she thought he was the one his mom would trust. “Where do you think she should be?”

  “I think she has to go in somewhere. She hasn’t gotten better.”

  He told Julie he’d hitch down. He’d be there in ten, twelve hours.

  But that wasn’t soon enough. Julie said he had to talk to her on the phone. Now. She’d drive over to the hospital and hold the receiver up to his mom’s ear.

  Okay. He would try. And he’d come down tomorrow.

  But she didn’t want him then, either.

  “Let’s just get her in and settled. They won’t let her have visitors right away.”

  * * *

  —

  It wasn’t really a conversation.

  “It’s me,” he said. He heard a thump on her end and knew she recognized him. Then she began crying. She was ashamed, he could tell. “It’s going to be okay,” he said.

  “Really?” she asked in a small voice.

  “Yes, but now, you should tell them you’ll go to that place. You need rest to get better.”

  “Even with Lina and Donnie?”

  “Julie’s there. They’ll be fine.” It was bittersweet that she didn’t worry about him.

  She would be transferred the next day. Julie sounded relieved. But Walter didn’t know where that left him. He thought he needed to get home.

  Julie promised to call in a day or two.

  * * *

  —

  Cathy asked again and again what was wrong. He told her his mom had had a breakdown. That she was in the hospital now. He had never before seen a person’s mouth drop open, as if from a busted hinge. Clichés are true, he thought. They come from life.

  “Was she normal before?”

  “Normal for me.”

  “That’s hard to believe.”

  He didn’t know how to explain. “Then don’t.” He couldn’t deal with her now, thinking about his mom and sister and brother in LA.

  He became vague about his schedule. She left two messages at the co-op, then showed up at the archive.

  He wrote her a breakup letter in a hurry: You’re a great person, and slid it under her apartment door, late at night. Her roommate’s Labrador barked and he ran down the cement steps, three at once, his heart knocking.

  He told his bosses he’d need time off, but when? He was waiting to be called home. Maybe they would fire him. But as soon as Julie told him, he would hitch down. He didn’t know how long he’d be gone. People missed classes for no reason, joked about sleeping in. College teachers didn’t even take roll.

  He told Ken the least he could. “My mom’s in the hospital. I have to get home.”

  “Rory and Cub can fill in your jobs. I’ll go with you.” No one had ever offered anything like this, but what would he do with Ken there? Melinda sometimes talked about her father’s long illness. Mental problems were different, though. They smudged the sufferer. People didn’t offer food or flowers. They lowered their voices, as if discretion was a kindness.

  At first, Julie told him, his mother fought. Even after she’d agreed, she went back and forth. She wouldn’t sign the paper to be a voluntary admit. Finally, she did.

  23.

  Lina lingered in her mother’s bedroom. They’d rented the bungalow furnished and painted the rooms where she and her brothers lived. They’d never gotten to this one. The flocked wallpaper would have had to be scraped off. But they could have at least moved out the owner’s twin bed frames and ancient drapes. Julie had opened a window, so the room was cold. Her mother’s bureau had been moved back to where it had always been, with a cloth on the top and her hairbrush. What was her mother doing in Norwalk without her hairbrush? Lina took it in her backpack to bring. They couldn’t visit for two weeks. Julie now thumped into the bungalow late at night. They saw her mornings on the front couch, with her clothes on, under a thin blanket. They understood that they were allowed to stay in the bungalow because of her.

  They went to school on not enough sleep. Twice, Lina was called on and didn’t know the answer. She liked the ice-cream store better now. Scooping spherical balls was absorbing—she forgot about her life for minutes at a time.

  On a Wednesday morning, day 11, Julie said, “Let’s play hooky and just go.” Julie wasn’t a hooky sort of person, but she drove, her hands light on the steering wheel, her fingernails surprisingly pink. Lina had never before noticed Julie’s hands. “I thought Norwalk was more in the country,” Julie said. “But I suppose California doesn’t have much country left.” She kept up a running patter.

  Lina tightened her arm over her backpack and felt the bristles of her mother’s hairbrush poke through. They were passing the generic development that gave LA a bad name: stucco buildings in no particular order. Back east, Lina thought, then felt guilty.

  “The place isn’t all I’d hoped,” Julie was saying, “but it won’t be for long.”

  “What exactly does she have?” Lina asked.

  “I haven’t heard a diagnosis. Everyone says she needs a rest.”

  A rest. That didn’t sound bad. But hadn’t she already been resting?

  * * *

  —

  Behind a high chain-link fence, they saw trees. They rode in under an arch made of greened copper letters spelling the hospital’s name: Orchard Springs.

  “We’ll see her and then after, we can try to find the downtown and get something to eat.”

  Norwalk’s downtown! Did Julie think they were sightseeing? But in eleven days Lina had learned to quell her sarcasm. Julie cared about their mother. Who else did?

  A girl on a bike flew in front of them, making Julie slam on the brakes. The girl pedaled standing, red hair bouncing on her back. Lina remembered a picture of her mother young, leaning on handlebars. This girl had the same coloring Lina’s mother had always hated on herself.

  “Most of the people here have bigger problems than your mom,” Julie said. “But your mom knows, hospitals have the acute and the chronic, and at first, your eye goes to the worst.”

  Julie got out of the car, saying, “Wait here a minute,” leaving her bag on the seat next to Lina. Their mother would never have chosen a purse this drab—Julie must have bought it on sale, a color no customers wanted, like the hide of a mouse. Poking out was a yellow legal pad.

  Lawyer—temporary guardianship?

  Call my nurses’ retirement fund. Need to wait till 65 or can I withdraw?

  Diane’s landlord

  Lina didn’t know how much nurses’ retirement money was, but it had to be more than three hundred dollars.

  When Julie returned, they stepped outside and the sun lay on their arms like thin weights. In the distance, orange trees weighted with fruit stood behind a white house, under a high, pale blue sky. Julie told them they were going to the library and they followed her across the grounds. The library turned out to be a high-ceilinged brick building that had once been the hospital’s kitchen. There were two tables of smudged, used-looking novels and a dozen standing shelves holding journals. No librarian sat behind the metal desk.

  They waited a long time and then she was there, their mother, walking slowly up the ramp. They ran to her like younger children; Donnie gasped, even Lina felt a choke—“Mommy” escaping from her throat. Their mother seemed already different; the clearest thing wrong was what she had on: they’d put her in someone else’s mismatched T-shirt and pants, brown and blue, with a faded pink sweater too small for her.

  After their initial clinging, they stood in the empty, echoing room, trying to think of what to say. They’d never had to make conversation with their mother. Julie asked if she had gotten some sleep. “Mm-hmm,” she said, as if she weren’t convinced. That was the only word she’d said so far.

  It took them a moment to register another person, a woman with stiff curls wearing lipstick, who nudged them all outside onto a path. They passed a young man, with his arms outstretched, walking as if on a ledge. He made a buzzing sound. The building she took them to was old, with a gabled roof. Lina noticed that what looked good in the distance was not quite right here up close. The lipsticked woman, whose name was Shirley, showed them around the ward where their mother lived. She opened the door to a sitting room, where the only furnishings were scattered wicker chairs and a television. A thick-bodied woman stood doing an elaborate hand game with the wall. They followed Shirley through a dormitory, each bed with an arched white metal frame, to their mother’s small alcove. The shabby stuffed elephant from her bed at home was on the pillow. Julie must have brought it. Lina wondered why her mother had her own room. That seemed like a good thing.

  In the small dining room, a smell of long-cooked food came in waves. A woman wearing a hairnet scooped mashed vegetables onto a plate next to gray chops, the bones showing bloodstains. Lina’s stomach twisted. In the high school cafeteria, she limited herself to black coffee. She stood up to get a cup here.

  Donnie ate with his head close to his plate. He shrugged, as if this was where they belonged, here at this institutional table. “Better than it looks,” Julie said. Was Lina the only one who wanted to scream? Their mother held her silverware delicately, the way she always had, pushing a limb of broccoli under some mashed potato. Shirley reached over to cut her meat. Her curls looked shellacked. Lina would never be able to explain this day to her friends at school. She had a revelation: if this was going to be her life, it really didn’t matter what she scored on the SAT.

  Women shuffled in line, all wearing the same white cotton booties that her mother had on. Many moved stiffly. One woman had symmetrical features and a pretty hairline, but then all of a sudden she winced, making a horrible face. Lina watched her, expecting it to happen again. After an interval, it did.

  Their mother didn’t say anything besides “Mm-hmm.” She seemed to be aiming her gaze at them particularly. Shirley showed them a sheet of paper with colored blocks. Her schedule. “She told me she likes flowers. When she’s settled, we’ll take her to the garden. Someone will have to sign permission. Do you know who has power of attorney?” The three of them looked at each other.