Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (12 page)

“Get in,”
I hissed
, and David and Aurora
slipped
into the truck, not wanting
to piss
off Viper
Mom
.
Aurora
was fine now, chatting
away
with spirit, the latest incident forgotten
.
For me –
still
marginally sane – the
recent past
still
existed
.
I
formed a desperate plan
, driving across the Valley
and exi
ting at Winnetka.
This
shit
was going to stop.

They
had no idea where they were going
, but I did.
I sw
ung into the driveway of a
small
tract
house
, flinging the truck door open and sprinting like Marion Jones (on
drugs
) toward a wrought-iron gate.
Frantically, I pressed the bell, while dialing three little numbers on my
phone
.

Answer, answer,
I prayed.
Finally, a stylishly-dressed woman approached
from the other side.
She had on a lot of makeup, gold jewelry, and gold stripes down her sweatpants, set off with open-toed
four
-inch heels.

I knew her, as surely as Lucy
knows
the ghostly nun.
It was David’s mother
,
Leah,
she of the doorstep haunting.

“Mrs. Zimmerman, I’m
Amy,
Aurora’s Mom.”
She nodded from
behind the safety of the gate
.
I
didn’t
blame her for keeping it
shut.

“Mrs. Zimmerman,
I know your views, and
you’re right
.
David shouldn't be with us.
He should be home, going
to college and
getting on with his life
.”

She said something in Hebrew.
Being a
good Jew, I didn’t understand a word beyond “Shalom.”

“See?
So you see?” she switched to heavily-accented English.
“
Z
at girl is tw
ouble.
The father told me.”

I
stepped back
.
So she’d been talking to Nigel?
“
Z
at
night,
when police come, he call
.”

My Encino landlord
had
called the cops
on the crazy woman shrieking in
Hebrew
.
How could this
be
tolerated
in a
solidly
Reform neighborhood?

“He tell me about
twouble
.
This girl – your marriage gone!
Why
fuss
?
She do
n’t
come out of you!
”

Mrs. Z. had four boys, all of
whom
had come out of her.
Clearly, s
he
was
not
an advocate of adoption.

Suddenly, I saw her point,
in a kind of
dazed
epiphany
:
why, indeed,
fuss
?
What the hell was I doing, thinking
that
I
could
raise a teenager
, especially one
who could be the next Karate Kid?

“Yes, you’re right.
You’ve been right.
She’s not worth it.
And David needs to come home.”

By this time, the LAPD
had arri
ved, the result of my hasty
call.
There were four of them, in two cars,
approa
ching
in the
blue
uniforms we’ve all seen on
TV
.

“What seems to be the problem, ma’am?”
A pleasant cop in his forties addressed me.
Funny, my first boyfriend had
ended up joining
the force.
I shook away these thoughts.

“My daughter, uh, attacked me on the street.
She has…issues.
”
He nodded, and the Thin Blue Line went over to talk to Aurora.

Now prettily contrite,
she
turned her
hazel
eyes toward the men.
More
a
dept than
Zelig, she told them exactly what they wanted to hear.
She was sorry.
She knew she needed treatment.
She would take her medication.
She would go back into therapy.
The sun would come up tomorrow.

Satisfied, they left, another
domestic
crisis
solved
.
I made David go to his mother.
They had a quiet conference in
Hebrew, and I took Aurora
home.

The next morning, I sat outside at the
Hayvenhurst
Starbucks,
which was
attached
to a giant
Barnes and Noble. This was soon to be
closed and
repurposed as
a CVS. Thank God, since Rite Aid was two blocks away!
 
The density of drug stores in L.A. approximated that of Hollywood drug dealers.

I remember that it was cold – unseasona
b
ly
for L.A. – since it was November and that
should have felt like summer.
I cradled my
dumb
cellphone (
the smart one was
gone
since I
couldn't
afford
it
), and dialed Nigel at home.

“Hello, this is Nigel.”
Like
I was expecting
The Duke of Wellington
?

“Nigel, I’ve been thinking.
I’ve absolutely had it.
I can’t take Aurora anymore – she’s killing me.
I’m tired of living a life filled with police and state agencies.”

It
really
was
getting ridiculous
.
Leah ha
d filed a charge against David
early on,
and the police came,
followed by
the
DCFS
.
Why she wanted to put her own son in jail remains a myst
ery for the ages.
The LAPD had
come when
Leah had paid me her visit
; on the night that my landlord
evicted us
; and yesterday.
Me – a nice Jewish girl from Encino who’d had no contact with
the law
since my house was
robbed
in the 80’s
–
was practically dating the force.

“OK.”
I could hear the excitement
in Nigel’s voice
.
“I’ll pick her up at Seatac tomorrow.”

“But she’s been removed from your custody.”

“Let
me
worry about that.”

“Do you honestly think that Auro
ra will just
hop
a
board that plane
?
She tells me to go fuck myself if I ask her to clean
out
the cat
box.
She has Oppositional Defiance Disorder, remember?
She doesn’t listen.
”

“Right.”
The wheels in his
obsessional
brain were spinning.
“Why don’
t you call the PET
team?”

“
PED
?”

“PET.
The Psychiatric Emergency Team.
They’ll come out, and if they determine she’s a danger to herself or others, they’ll put her in a hospital.
If
you
don’t want her, she’ll have to come back to me!”
He
was as
breathless a
s an absent lover.

“Fine.”
I
just didn’t care anymore. I felt
they could bond over mutual Crazy.

Reader, I called the PET
Team.
I made sure that Aurora was home, so they could sweep her up unawares.
I was committing
her
involuntarily, like my bastard Uncle had done to my
Dad’s mom
when she went a little crazy from cancer.
I’d heard stories fr
om my Dad
about his visits
– I was only two.
She’d been put in Camarillo, the
state mental hospital (now closed – thank you, Ronald Reagan!) and as a young man, he’d been exposed to
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
up close and personal.

I got into my truck.
After ten minutes,
it struck
.
Fifty-seven-hundred years
of
guilt
swam up like a school of gefilta
.
Yes, Aurora was crazy, but not all of the time.
Often
, she could be fine, like when she was at school or
at the mall
.
What if I could get her to take her meds?
See a professional counselor?
Fulfill the potential, as a smart and funny kid,
which
I knew she
had in
side
?
What if
…
gives rise to tremendous stories, but
in
life,
it
can be
delusional.
I called and canceled the PET Team.
And the police came
knocking
again.

By this time, we had moved, to a two-bedroom, two-bath
in the heart of
Canoga Park.
This is the city
mentioned
by the writer
in
The Player
–
who
cares how his movie tests there
.
In other words, it’s a joke.
It is a poorer cousin to Northridge, and, as with all the Valley, the farther north you go, the more Latino it becomes, with signs
suddenly
in Spanish, a plethora of check-cashing and pawn stores, and a grocery (which I frequented)
which
didn’t sell Coke but Jaliscos.
We were pretty far north, and had taken on an extra
terrestrial
:
David.

He claimed
that
he hated his mother, who, granted,
seemed
smothering.
Aurora
worked on me
daily
,
grinding like a drill press,
and, as
I always did back then,
I gave in.
He would share our humble
house, paid for by Yours Truly.
To me, he
was the son I never had, and the child
I
wished
I had
.
He was smart, he was Jewish
,
he
was sane
–
except for his
Aurora
ardor
.

“You should get out,” I would tell him, while she was at school and we were running some errand.
“She’s nuts – it will end badly.
Also, if they find you, you’re going
straight
to jail.”

He nodded, but
as
a nineteen-year-old
man, the
prospect of virgin
pussy
trumped
the threat of Bubba
in the Big House
.
What kind
of guy
old enough to vote
dates
a girl
in her
early
teens
?
One who was himself a virgin,
and young beyond his years.