“You wouldn’t be. We’re funded by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, learn about us on our website. LACBAR-I-SP.net. I’m calling about a patient of yours. Zelda Chase.”
“She’s not my patient.”
“Five years ago she was, according to the records, Dr. Delaware.”
“Five years ago I evaluated her son—”
“Ovid Chase. There is no record of official termination.”
“I consulted at the request of Ms. Chase’s psychiatrist, Dr. Louis Sherman—”
“Who is deceased.”
“I’m aware of that—”
“Sherman released the file to Ravenswood University Hospital twenty-seven months ago. You are named in that document as therapist of record.”
“She was treated at Ravenswood?”
“Not at that time, but all this is irrelevant, Doctor. The important fact is Sherman did terminate and you didn’t.”
Two years and some months ago, Lou had died of cancer, lending cruelty to her wording.
I said, “What exactly would you like me to do?”
“See your patient, Doctor. Who did end up at Ravenswood, a couple of days ago, on a 5150 but has been transferred to us.”
Seventy-two-hour involuntary hold.
“What got her committed?”
“She was arrested for trespassing in someone’s backyard.”
“Where?”
“Bel Air. Why would that matter?”
“Trespassing earned her a 5150?”
“She had an overt psychotic episode and was judged threatening to the safety of others.”
Why explain when you can redefine? I said, “Sorry to hear that, but I treat children.”
“Dr. Delaware,” said Kristin Doyle-Maslow, as if my name were a diagnosis. “The patient has requested you. Would you prefer I tell her you’re not the least bit interested in her?”
“Are you a psychotherapist?”
“Pardon?”
I repeated the question. She huffed. “Why is that relevant?”
Because you sure as hell don’t have people skills. I said, “What kind of care will Ms. Chase be receiving from your agency?”
“We’re not an agency, we’re an exploratory program mandated to evaluate and fact-find. That includes the authorization to carry out 5150s because 5150s are evaluative.”
“And fact-finding.”
“All right, then, Dr. Delaware, I’ll tell her you have no desire to—”
“Where are you located?”
“Wilshire near Western. I suggest you come sooner rather than later. She is not a happy camper.”
Chapter 3
Thumb through a five-year-old trash-magazine and you might come across a photo of Zelda Chase in a sexy outfit, a member of a rarefied species: Actressa gorgeousa.
Leggy, shapely, blond, perfectly styled and buffed, camera-ready as she flashed a smile ripe with genetic privilege.
Spend some time with Zelda Chase and all that flecked away like emotional dandruff.
Add a vulnerable child and it got complicated.
I’d done custody consults for years and lots of judges trusted me, but this referral came from Zelda Chase’s psychiatrist.
Lou Sherman and I had cross-referred for years — parents sent to him, offspring to me. When he called me one evening in June, I was expecting more of the same. He said, “This is a little different, Alex.”
“How so?”
“It’s involved. Can we have lunch?”
Lou’s office was in Encino but he invited me to Musso & Frank on Hollywood Boulevard, a shopworn ode to Hollywood glamour fighting to assert itself amid the tackiness, dinge, and danger of what used to be Cinema City.
I arrived on time as I always do, found Lou in a corner booth at the north end of the big, mural-lined dining room, well into an example of the best Martini in L.A.
A small man, he’d enlarged himself in customary fashion: sitting up expressionless and ramrod-straight, head fixed in a slight upward tilt. Maybe a souvenir of years spent in the military. Maybe he just got tired of being pushed around on the schoolyard.
His cinnamon-brown face was round and seamed, assembled around a serious nose. His sunbaked skull was crowned by a few remaining wisps of white hair.
New Mexico — born, half Jewish, half Acoma Indian, Lou was the first in his family to go to college. After three stints in the marines, he’d entered Columbia at thirty-five, stayed for medical school, completed a neurology-psychiatry residency at Langley Porter in San Francisco. I interned there and we attended the same seminars, saw each other at social events and traded jokes. Years later, we found ourselves at the venerable med school crosstown where Lou was already tenured and I was a young assistant prof. There, the rapport between us deepened as we came to respect each other’s clinical skills.
Lou had always come across imperturbable and quietly confident — what you want in a psychiatrist. But the day he told me about Zelda Chase, he seemed edgy. I ordered a Chivas and waited for him to tell me why.
That was delayed until his second Martini arrived with my scotch, followed by Caesar salads delivered ceremoniously by one of Musso’s cranky geriatric waiters.
Finally, crunching a crouton to dust and dabbing his mouth, Lou said, “Five-year-old boy for you, psychotic mother for me. I say you get the better deal.”
He seemed to be contemplating a third cocktail but pushed away his glass.
“Making matters worse,” he said, “she’s an actress. I don’t mean because that makes her histrionic, which it probably would if she wasn’t well past that psychologically. I mean literally, she’s currently working on a TV series and the studio’s concerned. So a lot is at stake.”
I said, “Psychotic but employable. She keeps it under control?”
“Like I said, Alex, it’s complicated. But yeah, so far she has maintained. And who knows, maybe in that business a little looseness is an asset. Zelda Chase. Heard of her?”
I shook my head.
He said, “I figured you weren’t much for sitcoms. Hers is called SubUrban. Two complete seasons shot with a third planned, meaning halfway to syndication and the potential for big bucks. In the interest of clinical dedication, I endured one episode, here’s the gist: Hollywood’s notion of comedic family life, meaning a tossed salad of borderlines, narcissists, and undiagnosables living together for no apparent reason. Along with perverse, poorly trained pets and a laugh-track for moral support.”
“Sounds like the makings of a classic.”
“Shakespeare’s writhing in envy.” Lou twirled the stem of his glass. “You treat a lot of showbiz people, Alex? Or in your case, their kids?”
“I’ve had my share.”
“Care to generalize?”
I smiled.
He said, “Admirable restraint, young Alexander, but I’ll dive right in because I’ve seen lots of them — have insurance contracts with the studios, the reimbursement’s excellent — and the patterns are undeniable. New patient comes in and tells me they write comedy or do stand-up, I can put money on their being profoundly depressed. Sometimes there’s a bipolar element, but it’s always the depressive side that predominates in clowns. With that, of course, comes the self-medication and the addiction and all the shit that brings. The so-called dramatic performers are just that: immature, insecure, look-at-me-Mommy types with blurry identity boundaries. A more mixed bag diagnostically, but if you have to wager, go for Axis 2 issues, I’m talking deeply rooted personality disorders.”
That sounded uncharacteristically pat and cruel for Lou and I wondered if he realized it because he frowned and looked into his glass.
“Maybe I’ve been at it too long, Alex... anyway, Ms. Zelda’s a little more interesting. Signs of mood and thinking issues. But despite that, she’s maintained for forty-plus episodes.”