Shelly, I said on the phone, have you looked outside today? It's a sheet of ice. My car door won't open.
Oh, so you don't wanna go visit my brother today?
I didn't say that. Of course I wanna visit him. But I don't wanna drive. Can you pick me up?
Naturally I felt guilty but since colliding with a schoolbus two years ago in a snowstorm I lost my gumption.
I'll be there in half an hour, she said. I set the timer so I'd know when to watch out the window.
When I got in her car I was relieved to see that in case an icy tree fell on us and we had to await the jaws of life she had plenty of food and drink for us in the backseat. Idly, I wondered if she had a can opener for that can of yummy baked beans.
Her brother lives with two other men in a group home in East Oak Lane. It's literally a beautiful three-bedroom house with lovely paintings on the wall and comfy furniture. The only thing it lacks, which I didn't mention to Ron, the house manager, was a mat when you come in to stomp your feet on.
Shelly & I made ourselves at home. In the kitchen, I plugged in the Mr Coffee Maker & consulting Ron and Shelly, made 10 cups of coffee, Dunkin Donuts Decaf. Shelly cut the cheesecake from Trader Joe's (no, Peggela, it's not half as good as yours) and some holiday apricot kuchen.
We all sat down to eat. The TV was on with a boring football game. In group homes like this the TV is always on. I've probably been in a dozen group homes in my life. The house managers are very important people and have power over people's lives just like parents.
All of the men talk to themselves. Their histories are contained in huge notebooks in the bookshelves which also contain the drugs they take. It's very organized. They all smoke like chimneys. The man I sat next to and tried to converse with had eyebrows that draped halfway down his face. Try as I might, I just couldn't get a conversation going with any of them.
They loved their coffee and finished the entire pot within fifteen minutes. So you know what I did? I made another six cups. Without exception they drank their coffee with shaking hands. Their medicine made their hands shake. Shelly's brother shook so bad he spilled the coffee all over his sweatshirt and onto the table & didn't even seem to notice it. So I went into the kitchen and got a dishcloth and wiped it all up. I cannot stand food messes. I let Shelly wipe his mouth.
Him and another guy lost all their teeth. They also had tardive dyskinesia in their mouths.
When I started working with mentally ill people at Bristol-Bensalem Human Services I always wondered the following: if you put these people on an island all by themselves would they be able to fend for themselves and populate a new nation. I remember thinking this thought when I was sitting in the office of the chief psychiatrist Norman Lamonsoff & looking out the window saw one of the women going off campus into a nearby forest.
Norm, I said casually, one of the crazy people just escaped.
Usually a slow-moving man, Norm got up from his chair, summoned Diana Ice and a posse went out looking for the woman.
That's how I learned the patients were not free, couldn't wander about like I could, and must be kept under suveillance. Yet when they went home on the bus at three o'clock they could do as they liked.
I had two cups of decaf at the group home. We lit Chanukah candles. Shelly and I invited the boys to join us as we said the Barucha but no one could remember it. The candles flickered merrily on the dining room table and the men asked for seconds of everything.
I asked to tour their rooms. One man had a chess set in his bedroom. And shelves filled with books. He was a Temple University graduate who as a young man allegedly had his drink spiked with ecstasy or some other drug which ruined his brain. True? I dunno.
I pretended to myself that I was married to the guy with the long eyebrows. I'd dress him up real nice and bring him out to meet my friends. I'd coach him on what to say and how to behave. He was a year younger than me and looked about 80. I could tell my friends I'd finally met someone who wanted to marry me. But, you know what? No matter how I coached him it would never ever work. The man would do what he wanted to do.
We stayed for what seemed like a very long time but it was never boring b/c Shelly was there. She's a real talker. After we left, she said she found out some good info about how Ron (not his real name) got her brother to do stuff when he didn't want to. "I just tell him" said Ron, "that if he doesn't do it, I'm gonna take him to the doctor."
Well, it's better than telling him, "I'll take you back to Byberry." He'd get beaten up regularly at Byberry when he used to live there. Lost his teeth there. He is the sweetest guy you've ever met. The quality of sweetness resonates from William. Sometimes Scott tells me I'm sweet, but honey, you ain't never seen sweet till you met William.
