A Book of Common Prayer

by Joan Didion

  “He did what.”

  “He did ramble.”

  The message for Charlotte and Marin had read only “you were both wrong but it’s all the same in the end” and Leonard did not mention the message.

  “Not a letter really,” he said. “A note. On the back of an envelope.”

  “This is where I work,” Charlotte said. “I’m quite late now.”

  She looked directly at Leonard as she spoke and then she turned and walked inside and down a corridor and into an office. When he followed her into the office she was standing at the window smoking a cigarette and staring out at the blank wall of the adjoining building and she did not turn around.

  “Would you go to the desk for me,” she said after a while. She did not turn from the window. “Would you tell them I can’t see anyone for a few minutes. Twenty minutes.”

  “I’ll call.” Leonard picked up the telephone and jiggled it. “How do you call?”

  “You don’t. The switchboard’s out. Or something. Since the bomb.”

  He stared at her.

  “You had a bomb here?”

  “Or something.”

  “When was the bomb? Or something.”

  “I don’t know. Yesterday. No, it was the day before, because I still had the curse, I was changing a Tampax when it went off. Would you please go to the desk?”

  Leonard put the telephone down and watched Charlotte crush her cigarette on the ledge outside the window.

  “I want you to come with me,” he said after a while. “I never told you what to do but I’m telling you now. I want you to come with me to the airport. Now.”

  “Actually I can’t.” Charlotte said, and then she turned abruptly from the window. “Didn’t Marin come.”

  “She couldn’t have, Charlotte. I told you. The FBI were there. Naturally the FBI were there.”

  “Did you tell Marin.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she want to come.”

  There was a silence.

  “I don’t know,” Leonard said.

  “Tell her she was wrong,” Charlotte said. “Tell her that for me.”

  13

  “AND WHAT ABOUT THIS FUCKING BOMB,” LEONARD Douglas said to me.

  He had finally drunk his second drink and then a third and a fourth. He was in no way drunk but he gave off the sense of a man who normally had one drink, maybe two when politesse required it, a man who prized control and had been pushed in a single week almost beyond it.

  He had found Marin Bogart in an empty room in Buffalo.

  He had buried Warren Bogart in an empty grave in New Orleans.

  He had come to save Charlotte from an empty revolution in Boca Grande and Charlotte was not listening.

  He had found his way to me and in my house there were flowers in the vases and ice cubes in the carafes and clean uniforms on the maids. In my house it did not seem so empty and I was listening.

  “ ‘A bomb or something,’ she says. Don’t miss the or something. I look around, I discover the back wing of the building blew up three days ago, I find four people died outright and the fifth’s dying now, peritonitis, this fifth one got caught on the table, the doctor jumped and punctured this one’s fucking—”

  Leonard Douglas seemed to have rendered himself temporarily mute.

  “Uterus,” I said. “I heard there was a bomb. Before you came. I asked Charlotte about it. Charlotte said—”

  I broke off. Charlotte had said that when the bomb went off she was in the bathroom and she had forgotten about her Tampax and had spotted blood all over the clinic without realizing it.

  That was all she had said.

  “She said it wasn’t near her office,” I said.

  “Never mind where it wasn’t. Because she goes charging in where it was, the ceiling’s still falling, she gets three people out, she’s a heroine, she’s mad as hell, she’s shouting ‘Goddamn you all’ the whole time. They tell me that. Charlotte doesn’t. All Charlotte remembers about this bomb is it went off while she was changing her fucking Tampax.”

  “She bled.” I did not know what else to say. “She remembers she bled all over the clinic.”

  Leonard Douglas looked at me a long while.

  He loosened his tie and closed his eyes.

  It was just sundown and I could hear the DDT truck outside.

  “Yeah,” he said finally. “She remembers she bled.”

  The DDT truck was gone before he spoke again.

  “You didn’t know about Bogotá, did you.”

  “No.”

  “I shouldn’t have told you. It upset you.”

  “I should have known.”

  “She should have known too.” Leonard Douglas stood up and picked up his jacket. He did not seem to be talking to me at all. “It wasn’t the way she thought it was either. I wasn’t the way she thought I was and Marin wasn’t the way she thought Marin was and Warren wasn’t the way she thought Warren was. She didn’t know any of us.”

  “She remembers everything,” I said. “You said she remembers everything.”

  “No,” Leonard Douglas said. “She remembers she bled.”

  14

  A FEW DAYS AFTER LEONARD DOUGLAS LEFT BOCA GRANDE Charlotte told me that he had “passed through” but had left before she could “arrange an evening” for him.

  “An ‘evening,’ ” I remember saying. An evening for a man who had just found her child and buried her child’s father. An evening for such a man in an equatorial city under martial law and rigid curfew. “What kind of ‘evening’ exactly did you have in mind?”

  “An evening to meet everyone. Of course. I particularly wanted him to meet you.”

  “He did meet me,” I said after a while. “He spent three hours here in this room. He told me about Marin. He told me about Warren.”

  She looked away before she spoke.

  “I know he did,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Charlotte stood up then and walked out onto the terrace and across the lawn to where the roses grew. I remembered her walking across the lawn the night she met Gerardo and I remembered Elena and I remembered Ardis Bradley and I remembered Carmen Arrellano and I wished suddenly that Charlotte had gone to Paris.

  You smell American.

  I wonder what American smells like exactly.

  Norteamericana cunt.

  When Charlotte came back inside she did not look at me.

  When Charlotte came back inside she was already talking and her voice was low.

  Charlotte wondered if she had ever told me about the night Marin was born. Marin was born at Flower-Fifth Avenue Hospital in New York. Warren hit the head nurse on the maternity floor. The head nurse brought assault charges but later dropped them. Marin weighed six-eight at birth but only six-two by the time they took her home. Charlotte supposed that was normal. Warren was afraid to hold Marin in the taxi going home. Charlotte supposed he had been drinking. Instead of holding Marin he held his hands an inch or so above the soft spot on her head to protect it if the taxi bumped and he said over and over again that he did not want her to go to Smith and marry some eighth-rate ass from Sullivan and Cromwell.

  “And I don’t guess she ever will,” Charlotte said finally. Her voice was devoid of expression. “I guess he got that wish.”

  There was a silence.

  “Now you can see her,” I said.

  “No,” Charlotte said. “I can’t exactly.”

  “But you know how to reach her.”

  “She’s always known how to reach me,” Charlotte said. “If you want to look at it that way.”

  I said nothing.

  “So in the first place it’s not even Marin.”

  I think she meant that it was not the Marin she remembered.

  There was nothing to say.

  “Marin would have found Warren. Marin would have found me.”

  Tell Marin she was wrong. Tell her that for me.

  Goddamn you all.

  She r
emembers she bled.

  15

  ON THE AFTERNOON I WENT TO THE CARIBE TO TELL Charlotte that she and I were leaving for New Orleans, that the last planes were getting out, that Tuck Bradley was closing the Embassy, Charlotte only shook her head.

  “Not just yet,” she said.

  She was sitting in the lobby of the Caribe staring at a television screen which for days had shown only the emblem of La República de Boca Grande, with military music played over the emblem.

  “Charlotte. Look at me. You plan to wait until they announce it on television?”

  “I just want to see what happens.”

  “All that happens is that people get hurt. People get killed. You’re maybe going to get killed if you stay here.”

  “Don’t be operatic, Grace, I’m not staying here. I’m just not leaving tonight.”

  I said nothing.

  “In the first place I don’t like New Orleans. In the second place, take my word for it, it’s going to be a very tedious flight with Tuck Bradley aboard. Carrying his flag.”

  “Charlotte. I’m going tonight.”

  “Of course you are. Remember to tell Tuck when you land, he’s supposed to get off with the flag showing. Folded. Under his arm. But showing.”

  “I promised Leonard I’d take you out with me.”

  “I promised Leonard.” Her voice was all gentle reproach and I never heard the steel in it until after she was dead. “I promised I’d see him very soon. There was no call for him to worry you. We talked about it.”

  She was still gazing at the television screen.

  “In any case you’re not to worry,” she said without looking up. “I told Leonard what I was going to do.”

  I had asked Victor to make her leave and Victor had said he had no authority.

  I had asked Gerardo to make her leave and Gerardo had said he would get her out.

  I had asked Antonio to make her leave and Antonio had said norteamericana cunt.

  Before I left for the airport that night Charlotte came to the house with presents for my trip: a travel-sized vial of Grès perfume, a gardenia for my dress, and all the latest magazines and papers. She was on her way to the Jockey Club for dinner.

  16

  IN FACT SHE HAD.

  Told Leonard what she was going to do.

  She was going to stay.

  Not “stay” precisely.

  “Not leave” is more like it.

  “I walked away from places all my life and I’m not going to walk away from here,” is exactly what she said to him.

  She had said it to him at the clinic and she had said it to him at the Caribe and she had said it to him for the last time the night he left, while they waited for his flight to get clearance out.

  I did not know the exact words until after she was dead.

  I walked away from places all my life and I’m not going to walk away from here.

  “You have to pick the places you don’t walk away from,” Leonard had said that night at the airport. The waiting room was empty and the runways were lit up with crossfire from the hardware that the guerrilleros were not supposed to have had. “This isn’t one of those places. It’s the wrong place, Charlotte.”

  “I think that’s a song,” Charlotte had said. “ ‘The wrong place, the right face’? Is that how it goes?”

  “Charlotte—”

  “Sing it for me. No.” She touched his lips with her fingers. “You have a terrible voice. Tell me about the terrific dinner we’re going to have the next time we’re in Paris.”

  “What about Marin.”

  “Get that big suite at the Plaza Athénée.”

  “Marin wants to see you.”

  “And get—she didn’t say that. Did she.”

  Leonard said nothing.

  Charlotte took Leonard’s hand and she kissed each finger, very lightly, very precisely.

  “I knew she didn’t say that,” she said then. “Another thing I knew, I knew you wouldn’t lie to me. You lie for a living but you never lie to me.”

  “You don’t get any real points for staying here, Charlotte.”

  “I can’t seem to tell what you do get the real points for,” Charlotte said. “So I guess I’ll stick around here awhile.”

  And when his plane was cleared to leave she had walked out to the gate with him and he had said again don’t you want to see Marin and she had said I don’t have to see Marin because I have Marin in my mind and Marin has me in her mind and they closed the gate and that was the last time Leonard Douglas ever saw Charlotte alive.

  The last time I ever saw Charlotte alive was the night two weeks later when I left for New Orleans.

  When she pinned her gardenia on my dress.

  When she dabbed her Grès perfume on my wrists.

  Like a child helping her mother dress for a party.

  17

  I don’t have to see Marin because I have Marin in my mind.

  I don’t have to see Marin because Marin has me in her mind.

  In that dirty room in Buffalo those seemed increasingly ambiguous propositions.

  “All right,” I said finally to Marin Bogart. “You tell me. You tell me what you think your mother did in Boca Grande.”

  “I think she played tennis all day,” Marin Bogart said.

  “She didn’t ever play tennis,” I said.

  “All day. Every day. I only remember her in a tennis dress.”

  “I never saw her in a tennis dress.”

  As a matter of fact Charlotte had told me that she and Marin once modeled matching tennis dresses in a fashion show at the Burlingame Country Club and that because she did not play tennis she had needed to ask Marin how to hold the racquet correctly.

  “I’m quite sure your mother didn’t play tennis,” I said.

  “She always wore a tennis dress,” Marin Bogart said.

  “More than once?”

  “Always.”

  “Didn’t you play tennis?”

  “Tennis,” Marin Bogart said, “is just one more mode of teaching an elitest strategy. If you subject it to a revolutionary analysis you’ll see that. Not that I think you will.”

  We sat facing each other in the bleak room.

  You were both wrong but it’s all the same in the end.

  We all remember what we need to remember.

  Marin remembered Charlotte in a tennis dress and Charlotte remembered Marin in a straw hat for Easter. I remembered Edgar, I did not remember Edgar as the man who financed the Tupamaros. Charlotte remembered she bled. I remembered the light in Boca Grande. I sat in this room in Buffalo where I had no business being and I talked to this child who was not mine and I remembered the light in Boca Grande.

  Another place I have no business being.

  It seems to me now.

  “Why did you bother agreeing to see me?” I said finally.

  “My stepfather said he was putting you in touch with me because you had something important to tell me. I can see you don’t.”

  I remember feeling ill and trying to control my dislike of Charlotte’s child.

  “I didn’t understand your mother,” I said finally.

  “Try a class analysis.”

  I had not come ill to Buffalo to scream at Charlotte’s child. “Your mother disturbed me,” I said.

  “She could certainly do that.”

  I tried again. “She had you in her mind. She always kept you in her mind.”

  “Not me,” Marin Bogart said. “Some pretty baby. Not me.”

  “Could I have a glass of water,” I said after a while.

  “We don’t have liquor.”

  “I didn’t ask for liquor. Did I.” I could hear the fury in my voice and could not stop. “I didn’t ask for ‘liquor’ and I didn’t ask for ‘diet pills’ and I didn’t ask for Saran-Wrap and I didn’t ask for white bread and I didn’t ask for any of the other things I’m sure you make it a point not to have. I asked for a glass of water.”

  Marin Bogart watch
ed me without expression for a moment and then stood up and turned to the sink full of dirty dishes.

  “Did you like the Tivoli Gardens,” I said suddenly.

  “This water runs lukewarm. I better get you some ice, this is lukewarm water and I can at least get you some ice, can’t I.”

  As she spoke she opened the refrigerator and took out an ice tray. Her movements were jerky and the tray was not frozen and the water splashed on the floor.

  “I said did you like the Tivoli Gardens.”

  “Goddamn people around here, somebody took it out last night and never put it back, I mean I had to put it back this morning, I don’t think—”

  She was speaking very rapidly and for the first time something other than her eyes reminded me of Charlotte.

  “—Anyone but me ever raises a finger around here, I honestly—”

  “Tivoli,” I said.

  Marin Bogart turned suddenly, and she put the tray on the table, and her face was tight, and then she broke exactly as her mother must have broken the morning the FBI first came to the house on California Street.

  SIX

  1

  IN THE END THERE WAS NOT MUCH TO TELL MARIN BOGART that she could understand and there was even less to tell Leonard Douglas that he could not have guessed.

  It did not go smoothly at all.

  Since I was in New Orleans I know only a few facts.

  Since I do not entirely trust Gerardo’s version of it I am certain of even fewer facts.

  On the first day of what has come to be remembered as the October Violence the guerrilleros finally closed the airport altogether.

  The final closing of the airport is what we usually call Day One.

  I had flown out the night before, the evening of the day we usually call Day Minus One. I lost the gardenia in the crush at the airport.

  The seat next to mine on the plane out was empty.

  Charlotte was eating spiny lobster at the Jockey Club.

  Day Minus One. Day One.

  Day Two.

  On Day Two the guerrilleros took over the radio stations.