She thought a revolution was going on and knew who was in it and how they were doing it. The first time we went to see her we couldn’t. The orderly there told us she was heavily sedated and didn’t want to see anyone. She thought she wasn’t a person, he said, and thought no one else was one either.
A month later we still hadn’t seen her but she was better and could talk over the telephone. The first thing she said was that it was nice there, really nice, that everyone there was nice too, well, almost everyone, but too monotone, everything was too, too monotone, way too monotone, that was why she was talking in a monotone voice, could we tell she was talking in a monotone voice? Then she said but she was reading again, reading all kinds of books, that there were so many kinds and she was going through it all very slowly, very, very slowly, and that was right, wasn’t it, wasn’t that right?
She called often after that, gradually becoming more vibrant, more excited about things, and on the first day after her release we all went for a drive and a walk, going up Sunset near the Whiskey to show her the new shops and to see who was playing.
We parked down Sunset from the Whiskey and walked up the street. She was very cheerful and bright, and I asked her if she wanted to go inside when we got there and get a drink, but she said no, she didn’t want to go inside, she liked it outside, but she didn’t like the smog.
Lea and I looked at each other. There wasn’t any smog. The Santa Anas had been blowing all day and we both thought that’s it, she’s going out again, but we looked out across the city to see if we were wrong, and there was smog, a faint brownish haze barely visible behind the new skyscrapers over in Century City. We looked back to tell her she was right, but she wasn’t there, wasn’t anywhere on the sidewalk or over across the street.
We hustled up the street, going past the Scientology offices, there was a parking lot with some cars in it, then the corner, and then there she was, standing partway up the sidewalk that continued up the hill, facing down an alleyway, looking toward an older building of dirty white stucco.
As we walked up to her, she shuddered. I looked at Lea. Lea didn’t know either. We looked where she was looking. Inside a window was a darkened apartment, a stand-up lamp dimly on next to an old TV on against a back wall. I didn’t know what she was seeing. Then back in the dark, sitting off to the side on a low couch, I saw two old women, both in housecoats, both very large, their legs out slack before them, facing the TV, its picture a dull, flickering blue.
“Oh, God,” she said, “I know what they’re doing . . .”