A Book of Common Prayer

by Joan Didion

  “Not exactly,” Charlotte said.

  “They come to your house? They cook dinner?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Then they’re caterers. Wasn’t that kind of an exceptional thing to do, Mrs. Douglas, telephoning these caterers?”

  “I don’t quite see the exceptional part.” Charlotte wished that the FBI man would not insist on calling the Chinese couple “caterers.” They were not caterers, they were a couple. Under certain circumstances which had not yet arisen they might come to the house on California Street not as cooks but as guests. Charlotte knew a lot of couples like the Chinese couple who did the Peking duck. She knew the Algerian couple who did the couscous, she knew the Indonesian couple who did the rijsttafel, she knew the Mexican couple who were actually second-generation Chicano but who did the authentic Mexican dinner, not common enchiladas and refried beans but exquisite recipes they had learned while vacationing at the Hotel Inglaterra in Tampico. She knew the Filipino couple, she knew the Korean couple. She had recently uncovered the Vietnamese couple. In the kitchen of the house on California Street these and other couples regularly reproduced the menus of underdeveloped countries around the world, but usually for twelve or twenty-four people. Charlotte had never before called one of these couples to cook for fewer than twelve. This time she had. That might be the exceptional part. She began to see calling the Chinese couple to do Peking duck for herself and Marin in a different light, a light not necessarily more revealing but different.

  In this light the gold bracelet she had made Marin take had been too loose on Marin’s wrist.

  In this light Marin had been too thin and pale for a child who skied and played tennis and was supposed to have spent the week before celebrating Thanksgiving off Cabo San Lucas.

  In this light Charlotte had lit the fire and turned on the record-player and called the Chinese couple for the same reason she had insisted that Marin take the bracelet: to keep Marin from the harm outside.

  “I mean a catered dinner for two must be quite an expensive proposition,” the FBI man said.

  “They’re quite reasonable.” Charlotte spoke automatically. “Considering.”

  “Catered dinner for one,” the FBI man said. “Technically. Since Marin didn’t stay.”

  “Marin had a paper to finish before she went skiing, I told you.” Charlotte avoided the blank gaze of the FBI men. “She had a paper to finish for her seminar in I think Moby Dick.”

  The fat FBI man spoke for the first time since the arrival of the others. “She’s not registered as a student, Mrs. Douglas, I suppose you know that.”

  “Actually you should try this couple.” Charlotte spoke very clearly to shut out his voice. She did not know why she had said it was a seminar in Moby Dick. Marin had never mentioned any seminar in Moby Dick.

  “She hasn’t been registered for two quarters, and the quarter before that she took all incompletes, but I’m sure you know this.”

  “I mean if you like Cantonese food at all.”

  Moby Dick had something to do with Warren.

  At nineteen Charlotte had written a paper on Melville and Warren had failed her. Warren had failed her and had rung her doorbell for the first time at midnight with the paper torn in half and a bag of cherries and a bottle of bourbon and they had not left the apartment for forty-eight hours. For the first three she called him Mr. Bogart and for the next forty-five she called him nothing at all and it was not until the third day, when he took her to his apartment and asked her to clean it up and she came across the letter from the department chairman advising him that his contract would not be renewed, that she ever called him Warren.

  Still not looking at the FBI man Charlotte stood up and began placing their coffee cups on a tray.

  “They also do a marvelous Szechuan beef thing.”

  The fat FBI man signaled the others to leave the room.

  “Marin’s father taught a seminar in Moby Dick once,” Charlotte said before she broke.

  After the FBI men left that morning Charlotte went upstairs to Marin’s room. The Raggedy Ann Warren had sent for Marin’s twelfth birthday was on its shelf. The teddy bear Warren had sent for Marin’s fourteenth Easter was on its chair. The guitar once used by Joan Baez was on the windowseat, where it had been since the night Leonard bought it for Marin at an ACLU auction. The embroidered Swiss organdy curtains were as pristine as they had been the day Marin picked them out. The old valentines beneath the glass on the dressing table were unchanged, the tray of silver bangles and bath oil and eye shadow untouched. All that Marin had removed from the room was every picture, every snapshot, every clipping or class photograph, which contained her own image.

  3

  ONE IMAGINES A SWEET INDOLENT GIRL, SOFT WITH BABY fat, her attention span low and her range of interests limited. Marin approved of infants and puppies. Marin disapproved of “meanness” and “showing off.” She appeared to approve equally of Leonard and Warren, and tailored her performance to please each of them. When Warren came to San Francisco she would appear instinctively in the navy-blue blazer no longer required by the progressive Episcopal day school she attended. For Leonard and his friends she would wear blue jeans, and a dashiki which scratched her skin. On principle she “adored madly” the presents Warren occasionally sent, although by her fifteenth birthday these presents still ran to the sporadic stuffed animal in a box bearing the charge-plate stamp of whatever woman he was living with at the time. In principle she was tolerant of Leonard’s efforts on the behalf of social justice, although in practice she often found the beneficiaries of these efforts “weird” and their predicaments “unnecessary.” That Episcopal day school Marin attended from the age of four until she entered Berkeley had as its aim “the development of a realistic but optimistic attitude,” and it was characteristic of Charlotte that whenever the phrase “realistic but optimistic” appeared in a school communiqué she read it as “realistic and optimistic.”

  That was Charlotte.

  Not Marin.

  Marin would never bother changing a phrase to suit herself because she perceived the meanings of words only dimly, and without interest. Perhaps because of her realistic but optimistic attitude Marin was easily confused by such moral questions as were raised by the sight of someone disfigured (would a good God make ugly people?) or the problem of dividing her Halloween candy with the Episcopal orphans (do six licorice balls for the orphans equal one Almond Hershey for Marin, if Marin dislikes licorice?), and when confused could turn sulky, and withdrawn.

  What else do I know about Marin.

  I know that her posture toward all adult women was agreeably patronizing.

  I know that her posture toward all adult men, toward Leonard and toward Warren and toward any man at all who was not disfigured, was uncomplicatedly seductive. Her mind was empty of grudges and hurts and family malice. Her energies were simple and physical and in the summertime her blond hair had the cast of pale verdigris from the chlorine in swimming pools. Charlotte adored her, brushed her pale hair and licked the tears from her cheeks, held her hand crossing streets and wanted never to let go, believed that when she walked through the valley of the shadow she would be sustained by the taste of Marin’s salt tears, her body and blood. The night Charlotte was interrogated in the Estadio Nacional she cried not for God but for Marin. Gerardo told me that. I prefer not to know who told Gerardo.

  4

  “I SEE,” LEONARD KEPT SAYING FROM WHEREVER HE WAS on the day the FBI first came to the house on California Street. “I see.”

  “I don’t see,” Charlotte said. “Frankly I don’t see at all.”

  There was a silence. “You’re calling from the house.”

  “What difference does it make.”

  Charlotte could hear only the faint crackle on the cable. Actually she had forgotten that she was never supposed to call Leonard from the house if she had anything important to tell him. She was supposed to lose any possible surveillance and place the call on what Le
onard called a neutral line. During the Mendoza trial in Cleveland she had called Leonard every day from a pay phone in Magnin’s and once she had taken a room in a motel on Van Ness just to call London and tell Leonard that she missed him, but now that she had to tell him that Marin was said to have bombed the Transamerica Building she was calling from the white Princess phone in Marin’s room.

  “I mean what difference could it possibly make if they’re listening, since I’m only telling you what they told me in the first place.”

  Still Leonard said nothing.

  “I mean,” Charlotte said, “I can’t leave the house.”

  “I want you to leave the house. I want you to stay with Polly Orben in Sausalito. I want you to call Polly Orben right away—”

  “I don’t want to stay with Polly Orben.” Polly Orben had been Leonard’s analyst for eight years. Charlotte did not know what Polly Orben and Leonard had been talking about for eight years but Polly Orben frequently reported that they were within a year or so of “terminating,” or “ending.” She seemed to mean finishing the analysis. “I don’t want to leave the house.”

  “It’s Wednesday, Polly counsels at Glide on Wednesday, call her at Glide—”

  “I have to be here when Marin calls.”

  “My point is this.” Leonard spoke very carefully. “You don’t know where Marin is.”

  “That’s exactly why I have to be here.”

  “And if you don’t know where Marin is, then you can’t tell anyone where Marin is. Under oath. Can you.”

  Charlotte said nothing.

  “If you see my point.”

  Still Charlotte said nothing.

  “Get in touch with Warren. Tell him exactly what I just told you. Tell him he doesn’t want to hear from her.”

  “I guess I’ll just wait here and perjure myself,” Charlotte said finally. “And then hire you.”

  Charlotte did not call Polly Orben at Glide. Charlotte did not get in touch with Warren. For the rest of that day Charlotte only lay on Marin’s bed, staring at the black-button eyes of the Raggedy Ann Warren had sent for Marin’s twelfth birthday. Charlotte did not see how Marin could have played any useful role in flying an L–1011 to Wendover, Utah. Marin could not even drive a car with a manual transmission.

  Marin could not fly an L–1011 so Marin must be skiing at Squaw Valley.

  Marin had called her great-grandmother’s wedding bracelet dead metal.

  Marin had been in bed with the flu on her twelfth birthday and as if she were four instead of twelve had slept all night with Warren’s Raggedy Ann in her arms.

  When it began to rain at six o’clock Charlotte wrapped herself in Marin’s blanket but did not close the windows. She went downstairs only once, when two of the FBI men came back to ask if she had a recent photograph of Marin.

  “I don’t know.” In a drawer upstairs she had three recent photographs that Marin had overlooked but there was some quite definite reason why she did not want the FBI men to have them. She could not put her finger on the reason but she knew that there was one. “I’d have to look.”

  She made no move to look.

  She realized suddenly that she was still holding the Raggedy Ann, with its dress pulled up to show the red heart that said I LOVE YOU.

  One of the FBI men cleared his throat.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from her,” he said finally.

  “I’m sure you’d tell us if you had,” the other said.

  She wanted to slide the Raggedy Ann behind a pillow but she was sitting in one of Leonard’s Barcelona chairs and there were no pillows.

  “Actually I wouldn’t,” she said finally.

  “Mrs. Douglas—”

  “Actually I’d lie. I’d lie to you and I’d perjure myself in court. You know that. You heard me tell my husband that on the telephone.”

  The two FBI men looked away from each other.

  “Or if you didn’t hear me someone in your office certainly did, you should compare notes down there.” She did not want to talk to the FBI this way but she could hear her own voice and it sounded bright and social and it did not stop. “Someone down there’s been listening to me on the telephone for at least five years, you should know me by now. I’d lie.”

  “I’m sure you know that under the law a parent has no special—”

  The other FBI man held up his hand as if to silence his partner.

  “Maybe you’d like someone to stay with you tonight, Mrs. Douglas. Keep an eye on things.”

  “I have someone keeping an eye on things. I have all those people you moved into the apartment across the street. Haven’t I. I mean I didn’t see you move them in, but I know how you operate.” She could not seem to stop herself. It was the Raggedy Ann. She resented their catching her with the Raggedy Ann. “One thing I don’t know. I don’t know if you kept tapes of all those telephone calls.”

  Neither man spoke.

  “I mean it could be very useful if you did. If you could sit down now and listen to those telephone calls you’d probably know more about Marin and me and Leonard and Warren than I even remember. You could probably figure the whole thing out.”

  One of the men closed his briefcase. The other reached for his raincoat.

  “You must have six or seven hundred hours on Marin and Lisa Harper alone. Doing their algebra.” Charlotte smoothed the Raggedy Ann’s dress over its red heart and did not look at the FBI men. “Lisa’s at Stanford this year. In case you missed the installment when Lisa got into Stanford and Marin didn’t.”

  “We’re not on opposing sides, Mrs. Douglas.”

  “Marin cried when the letter came from Stanford. You probably remember that. Marin crying.”

  The next morning when Charlotte woke in Marin’s bed the rain was streaming down Marin’s organdy curtains and puddling on the parquet floor. Charlotte knew as she woke why she could not give the FBI a recent photograph of Marin. She could not give the FBI a recent photograph of Marin because any photograph useful to them would show Marin’s eyes, and then Marin’s eyes would stare back at her from newspapers and television screens, and she was not yet ready to deliver her child to history.

  Another day passed and still Charlotte did not place a call to Warren. It was not possible to actually “call” Warren: it was necessary instead to “place a call” to Warren, to leave messages at various offices and apartments he frequented around New York and wait for him to call back. Usually he called back between one and three A.M. San Francisco time, or four and six A.M. New York time.

  “Where’s your interesting Jew husband,” Warren would say if Charlotte did place the call and he did call back. He would say this if Charlotte had placed the call to say that Marin had a cold and he would say this if Charlotte had placed the call to say that Marin was going to tennis camp and he would also say this if Charlotte were to place a call to say that Marin was wanted by the FBI.

  “I’m calling about something important,” she would say.

  She knew what she would say because she knew what he would say.

  “I said where’s your interesting Jew husband,” he would say.

  “Leonard is not Jewish. As you know. I’m calling—”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being ‘Jewish.’ As you say. Has he made an anti-Semite out of you along with everything else?”

  “I have to tell you—”

  “All you ‘have to tell’ me is where the well-known radical lawyer is. Come on. Admit it. He’s at Bohemian Grove, isn’t he. He’s … let me get it right, he’s making the revolution at Bohemian Grove.”

  She would not place a call to Warren just yet.

  In any case Warren could not learn about Marin from the FBI because the FBI would not know how to place a call to Warren.

  In any case there was no need to place a call to Warren because Marin was skiing at Squaw Valley.

  In any case Leonard would place the call to Warren.

  Charlotte settled many problems this way.
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br />   Leonard flew home immediately but because of an airport strike at Beirut and a demonstration at Orly it took him thirty-six hours to arrive in San Francisco, and by then they had sifted the debris and identified Marin’s gold bracelet attached like a charm to the firing pin of the bomb. They had also received the tape, and released Marin’s name to the press. Charlotte learned about the tape when she opened the door of the house on California Street and found a television crew already filming. On the six o’clock news there was film that showed Charlotte opening the door, turning from the camera and running upstairs as a young Negro pursued her with a microphone. When this film was repeated at eleven it was followed for the first time by the picture of Marin, the famous picture of Marin Bogart, the two-year-old newspaper picture of Marin in her pink-and-white candy-striped Children’s Hospital volunteer’s pinafore. The newspaper had apparently lost the negative and simply cropped and enlarged a newsprint reproduction in which Marin was almost indistinguishable, clearly a complaisant young girl in a pinafore but enigmatically expressionless, her eyes only smudges on the gravure screen. In the weeks that followed the appearance of the picture those two photogravure smudges would eradicate every other image Charlotte had of Marin’s eyes. The day I finally saw Marin I was surprised by her eyes. She has Charlotte’s eyes. She has nothing else of Charlotte’s but she has Charlotte’s eyes.

  5

  YOU NO DOUBT HEARD THE TAPE.

  “This is not an isolated action. We ask no one’s permission to make the revolution.”

  I heard only part of it, on a Radio Jamaica relay, but I read excerpts from it in Time and in Prensa Latina and in the Caracas Daily Journal, excerpts always illustrated by the impenetrable picture of the child in the candy-striped pinafore. I heard only part of the Radio Jamaica relay because Gerardo was at the house the night it was played, and he had arranged the evening as usual to annoy and discomfit everyone involved. I used to think the design of such evenings Gerardo’s only true amusement.