Chapter 17: We Have Therapy Tomorrow
Jennifer Aniston drove into Malibu like a bat out of hell, the top of her sports car down, shades on to shield against the glare of the sun. In the dog days of summer, she was trying to ignore the insanity that was happening on the presidential campaign trail and focus instead on where she was heading in her career: The Morning Show was on track creating its fourth season, production on which had just started the previous month. Alex Levy was shaping up to be her greatest television role since…. well, Rachel Green, and there was no sign this new train was slowing down. At her age and with the credentials she had acquired, there was very little that could faze her…
… except for the announcement that had dropped that morning in her inbox with the force of a hydrogen bomb.
The ramifications of this communiqué had very quickly become clear with how a certain text thread in her phone had blown up with the others spontaneously discussing amongst themselves, though one notable voice was missing.
…. No, not that one. And Jennifer had to mentally remind herself to, Stop. Don't go there. Her concerns had only been compounded when a certain godchild of hers had called in a panic. Having a freak-out wasn't at all unusual for Jennifer's goddaughter – the girl got that tendency from her mother. But the freak-out was nevertheless enough to send alarm bells ringing through the Emmy-Award winning actress's mind, and compel her to jump in her car and fly down the Pacific Coast Highway.
Never mind that she had just been in Malibu days, maybe a week or so, earlier, for Matty's posthumous birthday party. Jennifer had never had any children of her own, though to offset that unanswered prayer, she had been blessed with beautiful godchildren.
And when one of those godchildren called in distress…. Well. Jennifer's mama bear tendencies kicked in.
She pulled up to the pristinely kept mansion, leapt out of her sports car and ran up the front steps. She had barely knocked on the door before her god-baby was opening the door for her, looking frazzled.
Coco ushered her godmother in with no words, leading Jennifer through the foyer, into the spacious living area and up the steps to the second floor.
"Where is she, baby girl?"
"In her room, asleep. She finally, well…. cried herself out." Coco winced as she silently pushed back the door to the master bedroom.
The two women stepped inside. Curled up in the fetal position, on top of the made bed, was Courteney, lightly snoring. Jennifer circled the mattress and peered closer: there was the trace of tear marks along her best friend's face, blazing a trail to splotches on the pillow, splotches that were still damp to the touch.
"What happened?"
"I don't know. She called me at school, and it sounded like she was…. having a panic attack. Hyperventilating. She was barely making sense." Coco cringed. "It…. well, it took me back to that day. 10/28. I didn't think; I just jumped in my car and came straight here."
Jennifer grimaced at her goddaughter's application of a post-9/11 shorthand to a certain now-significant date. Though, as she now considered it, she supposed that the final Saturday in last October had been in some ways their found family's own personal 9/11.
"I get to her room, and she was curled up like this, weeping and rocking back and forth. I sat with her until she fell asleep." Coco now appeared deeply scared. "Auntie, do you have any idea what this is about? Mom's computer was open, so I wonder if she saw something on there that upset her, or…."
Her voice trailed off as, wordlessly, Jennifer pulled out her phone, opened her inbox and handed the device to her goddaughter. It was a good minute or so before Coco had skimmed through the entire email body and she glanced up, horror-struck.
"They're not even asking you if you want to enter a negotiation. They're…. telling you that you're…." Coco began to shake. "Aunt Jenny, they can't make her do this! They can't make any of you do this!... I don't care if it's the 30th anniversary!" She rapidly talked over when her godmother started to open her mouth.
"Baby…. It's history."
"Screw history! Let the dead bury the dead! Let the poor man rest in peace and be done with it! If you could refuse to do a tribute for the Emmys back in January, why can't you refuse this?"
Jennifer brushed back an errant strand of hair from her face and sighed. "Because when you've been a part of something as big as this, there are certain…. expectations placed on you – particularly when it involves a post-mortem context. Coco bean, very little about being a performer, especially a famous one, is glamorous… and even if you succeed, it's a hard life." She straightened her shoulders. "I've had to do things that aren't easy in my career, that I'm not proud of…. No, not that!" she pre-emptively assured when she saw a slightly sick look starting to come over Coco's face. "Nothing like that."
"But why go through all this?" Coco pleaded, near tears now herself. "You all already paid tribute just after his death. You laid him to rest, paid your respects. Why does it have to be out in the open? What more do they want?" She pointed to her forlorn, sleeping mother in the bed. "She can't handle it! Hell, can any of you? You're all still grieving, no doubt! I wouldn't want my pain to be trotted out for public display and consumption!"
Jennifer gave Coco a wry, sad smirk. "Well, then, if you want to be an actress, my little one, you're going to have to be prepared to guard what little privacy you have and keep it private."
Turning to her mother's computer, Coco brought it out of sleep mode. She ignored her godmother watching her as she logged in and proceeded to pull up the email Jennifer had just shown her. The missive, sent just this morning, not only had arrived with not that much notice (the 30th anniversary of Friends' premiere was a little over a month away), but it was almost certainly what had sent her mother into a downward spiral.
Closing the laptop, Coco sighed. "All right…." she turned to her surrogate aunt. "Now we really have to get her in to see someone…."
"Coco…." Jennifer sighed. "You can't make someone go to therapy…."
"Yes, you can! It's called an intervention!"
"It doesn't work like that, sweetie. Believe me: we tried it with Matty when attempting to combat a very different, harder issue. It didn't work then. This won't work now. Your mother has to be the one to seek out that help."
"The help she has sought isn't working!" Coco stressed. "Talking to his picture and sometimes talking to nothing at all! Watching all his old movies! Sleeping half the day away because she's convinced her dead, fake TV husband comes to her in her dreams! Auntie… it's not healthy – and we can't wait on the whole 'the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem!' It won't come to Mom organically unless we push her there!"
"The only pushing we might succeed in doing is pushing her away," Jennifer pointed out grimly.
Coco took a deep, steadying breath. "You told me, and we agreed, the night of the movie marathon, to watch her. Well, I have, and there's been no change! If anything, there's been a regression in how she's mourning. Doing some dog-and-pony-show TV special, waxing on and on about her lost love, isn't going to help any! We have to get her into therapy!"
"So talk to her about your concerns."
"I have. She won't listen to me! She definitely won't listen to Dad. At this point, I doubt she would listen to Johnny…. But she might listen to you and Aunt Lisa. David and Matt." Coco was wringing her hands, biting her lip. "I'm all for finding any excuse to get out of this… grand production of a tribute in which everyone is going to eagerly watch for you all to come apart on national TV! But until we can get out of it, or even if we can't, we have to get Mom some help. And if we have to drag her into a shrink's office… well, then, so be it!" Her wince deepened. "I'm not trying to tell her, or any of you, how to mourn, but I want to help you guys mourn in a way that's healthy for all of you. Couldn't you round up the other Friends and just talk to Mom?"
Worrying her bottom lip, Jennifer finally, reluctantly nodded. Coco smiled weakly and circled the bed to embrace her godmother.
"Thank you."
Jennifer just grunted. "Don't thank me yet."
Later that afternoon, Courteney came to with a woozy groan. Her vision slowly clearing, she was startled to find four different pairs of eyes staring down at her with concern.
Sitting up, she sniffled, her blue eyes darting from face to face. "What's…. what's going on, you guys?"
There was no reply, beyond David calmly delivering a clipped and simple order: "Get her."
Much as they had all jumped Rachel to forcibly give her eye drops once upon a time, the gang now jumped Courteney, tackling her, surrounding her and herding her out of the bedroom, down the stairs and out of the mansion. It was a struggle all the way, filled with panicked scampering and thrashing on the part of the kidnapped prisoner and bumbling and shouting on the part of her intervening loved ones. If this was a citizen's arrest, it held more of the chaos reminiscent of the Seven Dwarves forcing Grumpy to take a bath.
"LET ME GO, YOU IDIOTS!" Courteney howled.
"Get her over to the car! Get her into the car!..." David was coaching, attempting to play ref. "No, no! – Don't crowd her! And don't hurt her!"
It took the combined strength of Jennifer, Lisa and Matt to force Courteney into the car and strap her into her seatbelt. The girls flanked their dear friend on either side in the backseat. Courteney frantically tried to unbuckle, but Jennifer held the red compressor down, throwing out an arm to block Courteney from attempting to vault into the front seat while the boys took their places: LeBlanc riding shotgun, Schwimmer at the wheel.
Jennifer shared with Lisa a startled look. "Should we be worried about letting the boys drive?"
"Yes!" Lisa declared emphatically, her eyes tinged with panic, but it was too late as David put the car in drive and the vehicle shot out of the circular stone driveway.
Swerving and weaving through LA traffic, Lisa felt the need to bawl: "Damnit, Schwimmer, we're trying to save her, not kill her!"
Matt LeBlanc, for his part, seemed to be having a gay old time. "Yeah, all right, this is great! We should have pulled a stunt like this when intervening with Matty!"
"That would have gone over well…." Jennifer laughed tightly. In truth, she had thought her and Courteney's bright scheme to install an exercise bike backstage of the studio, to help Matthew work off the hangovers, had been a fine idea in retrospect. And she'd believed that her one stern talking to with him had gotten through to him.
But this…. this was quite drastic. Yet, it was also becoming, to Jennifer's mind, more and more necessary.
"Why are you doing this?!" Courteney wailed.
"It's for your own good, CC…." Lisa declared, patting her dear friend's arm with concern.
Schwimmer finally pulled up to a counseling office frequented by some of the most A-list celebrities in Hollywood. It actually helped that Courteney was already in the practice's files as a patient, though she hadn't gone in quite some time.
If this was supposed to make Courteney feel better about being essentially kidnapped out of her own home, the peeved look on her face quickly dispelled that notion. "Really? You want me to go in there? The last time I was in therapy, my partner broke up with me!"
"For like all of five minutes…." Lisa snorted.
"It was more like several months, Floosh!" Sucking in a breath, Courteney's bottom lip began to tremble. "Matty…. Matthew actually helped me during that time… when…." Letting loose a sob, her chin dropped to her chest like a bird and her shoulders began to shake from her tears.
Jennifer and Lisa glanced to each other from where they were positioned on either side of Courteney. If they had had any doubts that this was the right course of action, those were gone now.
"She needs this," Lisa stressed. "In the event that we can't get out of this tribute special, she's going to have to be ready. We all are."
Turning all the way around in the front seat, Matt glanced between the girls. "Maybe…. we should all go in? It might go a long way for Court if she sees we're all doing it too."
Jennifer stared at her cast mate. "When have you ever needed therapy?" Matt cast his eyes down but kept silent, embarrassed. Expression softening, Jennifer stroked his arm. "I'm sorry, sweetie. I didn't mean to belittle… Really. It's OK." Matt glumly nodded, but didn't glance up.
Glancing to where her best friend was still weeping, Jennifer bit her lip and made a decision.
"Come on, honey. I think it might be good if you talked with somebody…." She turned to the others. "I'm going in with her. Anybody who wants to join us is welcome."
And stealing an arm around Courteney, letting the other woman lean her head on her shoulder, Jennifer led her best friend into the therapy clinic….