Elsinore Canyon

by J. M.

  I wondered if it was all Polly’s idea.

  “You mean my parents put him up to it? No, look at this,” Dana said, clicking on one of the e-mails she had sent to none other than me. “‘I’m sick to death of Costa Rica.’ That’s what it says here, I don’t want to go to Costa Rica. You remember that, right? And then my parents bought me a ticket to Costa Rica! Why would they do that if they’d been reading my stuff and they knew I didn’t want to go? Oh my God,” she moaned, “can you imagine if I’d been online that whole time after my mom died? The things I was thinking. The things I might have written down.” She kept clicking. “But he could have read this one. This, this,” she said as she arrowed and clicked away. “I bet he’s spying on Phil, too.” I tried not to look. No use—poetry, songs, “love,” everything I didn’t want to see. I still didn’t know what was going on with her and Phil. She hadn’t said a word about him, and as far as I knew she had barely seen him all summer. They were next-door neighbors in a long-distance relationship.

  We finally packed up and went to Yanghak’s apartment, a jungle of wires, racks, and boxes that was almost unnavigable for me. Dana sat back from a monitor saucer-eyed, and watched the last frame fade to black. “Wow. Well, there’s one file the son of a bitch won’t snitch.” A stock clip of jittery letters: Fin. “The end, all right,” she said.

  It was midnight. Yanghak mushed his lips around distastefully as he ejected the DVD from a laptop and stuffed it into a sleeve. “Another day would have been nice,” he grumbled.

  Dana had none of his artistic misgivings, and she transferred the DVD with great care to her purse. She made some online bank transfers while Yanghak burned a copy. Done, done all around.

  “Enjoy the rest of the night,” Dana said as she and I headed out.

  “Likewise,” Yanghak said with a ragged wave.

  We climbed into my car sighing with exhaustion and relief. “Yuck, I’m starting to smell,” Dana said. I inhaled noisily. “What, you like that?” she laughed.

  “Like I’d let you diss yourself to me.” I wanted to drive both of us back to Elsinore Canyon—Dana had been up since dawn—but she said she needed her car. I said to leave it in L.A. overnight, but she insisted, so I drove her back to the lot where she was parked. “I’ll be right behind you the entire way,” I said.

  “Put your bluetooth in so we can talk.” She waved, then got into her car and pulled out in front of me. We took off for Elsinore Canyon in tandem. My bluetooth buzzed within thirty seconds. “Horst! Are you listening to the news?” Someone had been shot in Century City right after we left, over a fender bender. One guy in critical condition, another guy in custody. No word about the fenders, she said. Her taillights were two mischievous little red eyes meant for me alone, the headlights of my car pouring into her Volvo and revealing her gesturing bare arms.

  We talked about our mortally principled namesakes, which we knew about in accordance with the requirements of our education. There was no St. Dana or St. Horst, our parents having dedicated our middle names instead to the Catholic calendar and settled on two martyrs. St. Catherine (of Alexandria) had caught the eye of the Roman emperor; he imprisoned and tortured her, then wooed her for marriage unsuccessfully, sentenced her to death on the breaking wheel which horror she escaped via a certified miracle, and finally beheaded her. St. Nicholas (Pieck) had been captured by Protestant heretics who threw him into a dungeon, botched a hanging attempt that left him unmoving on a stone floor, and stuck a burning torch in his mouth to see if he was alive. He was. When he still refused to make the requisite denials, they hanged him for good. “Horrible times,” I said. “Thank God we’ve progressed.”

  “Do you think our saints were such role models?” Dana said. “Not that I’m God, but if you ever have to choose between denouncing me and dying horribly, please denounce me.”

  “Bullshit, baby. Bullshit—”

  “I’ll understand! It’s only words—”

  “I’ll die for you.”

  “Well then I’ll have to die for you back,” she said, turning around in her car and gesturing at me.

  “Hey, watch the road.”

  “I’ll have to d—”

  “I’ll go online first thing in the morning and denounce myself. It’ll get into Google’s cache, so if you’re ever offered the choice between calling me a jackass and forfeiting your life, it’ll be moot.”

  The sight of the Elsinore Canyon turnoff extinguished our spirits. We crept our cars up the drive to the house.

  It was as quiet as a mausoleum. We tiptoed into the media room—a miniature theater, actually—and played a test run of both DVDs with the volume turned low. “Yes,” Dana breathed, “that’s the thing.” Nary a glitch, but we were being cautious. We each took a disk and agreed not to let them out of sight. We separated with a vague intention to go our own ways until zero hour—I had an appointment for a long session of physical therapy the next day, and she expected to have her hands full with Rosie and Gale if they showed up early. So I wasn’t the least bit surprised when there was a knock on my door just as I finished up my hygiene and maintenance routine in the suite she gave me. “Come in,” I called.

  Dana whirled in and started talking before she got the door closed. “I just thought of something.” She was wearing a candy-cane-striped robe over Minnie Mouse pajamas. She perched on a footstool and looked up at me. “What are we doing? Really. What are we doing?”

  I had the answer ready. I looked into her eyes and told her we were as out of control as Polly. I told her we were brats begging to be taken down by Father Henry, that we were running around town in tinfoil hats babbling about ghosts and murders. I told her we were preparing a stupid, creepy cartoon for a bunch of people who probably wouldn’t have a clue what they were watching and wouldn’t give a damn. The whole thing would happen in the three most unremarkable minutes of our lives and then we’d watch the screener of Second Generation and go to bed. Very soon the entire spy-versus-spy charade would exhaust itself, and years from now nobody would mention these crazy days of everyone sneaking around in their own tracks and hatching preposterous schemes. Instead, they’d look back in moments of private shame, and hope the others had forgotten.

  A long silence, and she nodded. “That’s just what I wanted to hear. I guess we’ll see what happens.”

  WHAT IF I’M PREGNANT?

  There’s a type of hell that’s heaven for me. Braces, slant boards, harnesses from which I hang like a bat, electric shocks, and grinding workouts with weights and machines that make me groan. I got out of the house around nine-thirty without seeing anyone and drove to a state-of-the-art rehab center—a bright, spacious, therapeutic torture chamber. At the height of my agony and effort, my disability was a medical condition and not a moral failure. I surrendered to my “special” status and played water volleyball with a bunch of other paras. At times like that I was able to see my loss with detachment, acceptance—even satisfaction. For today, and maybe for another day, severe loss of function neutralized the insane, arbitrary conditions of my existence. I could be a character in a movie about a group of misfits who knew the world wasn’t going to stop just because of their suffering. “So this is my life.” There was always one deprivation, however, that I could not laugh off.

  Back in Elsinore Canyon, Dana had gotten out of bed an hour after me. Family brunch was a Saturday tradition with the Hamlets. With the fateful DVD in her embroidered hip pouch, she tripped down to a closed terrace where hot plates and a small buffet were attended by the ever-placid Perla and Miguel. Had they been recruited by Polly or Dr. Claudia? Dana and I had considered it, not that it would matter after tonight. Miguel greeted her. “Hi, Dana. How about an omelet?”

  “I’ll wait for the others.” She helped herself to coffee and her phone buzzed.

  It was Rosie and Gale, calling from the door. “I’ve got the screener,” Rosie said.

  Dana started the hike to the front door. “Excellent. You’re just in time for brunch.�
�� She tapped her phone off. “Nice excuse, bitches.”

  By the time the three girls got back to the terrace, the rest of the household had arrived. Marcellus was arguing about sports with Oscar, and Dr. Claudia and Mr. Hamlet were snuggling and giggling. He fed her a cinnamon bun and dabbed cream cheese icing on her lips. Polly was making a little butter sculpture on a roll.

  “Good morning,” Dana trilled as she ushered in Rosie and Gale.

  “Look who’s here,” Mr. Hamlet said, dropping his hand over his lap and barely rising.

  Dr. Claudia smiled with a sort of restrained graciousness. “Join the family.”

  Dana lowered her eyes and tucked herself into her chair. Anyone paying attention would have seen the danger signs. “No Phil, I see,” she said to Polly.

  Polly looked significantly at Dr. Claudia and Mr. Hamlet. “No. I had something for him to do in the cottage.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Were you hoping to see him?”

  “I just wish he were here to help out with my Aunt Claudia’s invitation.”

  “Eh. Oh?”

  “To join the family.”

  “I see.”

  “We could use some new blood.”

  Oscar’s lip curled. “Drawing it nicely, Dana.”

  Dr. Claudia signaled him. “We are not doing this again.”

  “No no,” Dana said, “it’s just that we keep recirculating the existing stock. Aunts for mothers, dads for uncles, nieces for daughters.”

  “Eat,” Rosie said to Dana in a bored tone.

  Dana waved her coffee spoon dreamily. “I always marveled at your ‘A’s in Conduct, Rosie—until I realized that you’re simply too indolent to misbehave. You probably don’t understand the concept of not wanting to do something once you’re told to do it.”

  “Then I shall make a suggestion,” Dr. Claudia said, looking at the non-girl side of the table. “How about Mimosas?”

  “Champagne again,” Dana said. “Is there any problem you don’t solve with a drug?”

  Mr. Hamlet started to reason. “Dana—”

  “No substances, okay, Dad? All those sleepless teething nights Mom used to joke about, I’m sure I never got Nyquil in my baby bottle.”

  He looked more hurt than angry. “Not the same thing.”

  “But Mom might have given it a little more thought. I mean, no appetite: check; acting grumpy: check. She was aware of certain other things, too. What if I’m pregnant?”

  Knives and forks clinked onto plates and eight pairs of eyes shifted Dana-wards.

  Mr. Hamlet recovered first. “Not a subject to joke about, honey.”

  “Then don’t joke. What if?”

  Mr. Hamlet got up from the table and moved swiftly to her chair. He reached for her hand. “Let’s go talk for a minute.”

  “Uh-oh,” she said, her voice going ding-dong. She gave him her hand daintily and followed him out of the room.

  He walked her swiftly down the hall, into an unlit corner, and touched her arms tenderly. “Dana, are you or aren’t you?”

  She looked at him through stony eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be? I know how it’s done. Just work backwards or forwards from any point where I always see you and Aunt Claudia—”

  “Don’t drag me and your aunt in. There’s no need. This is about you.”

  “No need? What was the need for you and her—”

  “Don’t finish that sentence. Don’t ask about it. Please just tell me right now if you’re being serious.”

  “I’m dead serious—”

  “Oh, God.”

  “—about something or other.”

  “For Christ’s sakes, Dana.”

  “For the sake of Christ. The son of a virgin. Mary misses a period and claims God got her pregnant, and somehow everyone buys it.”

  “Dana, I don’t want to walk away from you. I want to finish this conversation.”

  She stared at him. “All right then. Before either of us dies, there’s one thing I want you to know. I’m onto you. I was supposed to be your get-out-of-hell-free card, I know that. You live however you damn well please, and you force me to be the good little obedient creature that you would rather die than be. Your stepping stone into heaven. I curl up in some icy puddle of self-denial so you can set your mucky sole on my back and march right up to God’s face. ‘See what I made for you, God? A miserable, scared little virgin, to cancel out all the times I fucked up.’ And the old creep will nod his smug, grey, creepy bearded head and smile approvingly at my freezing, cut-up little body and let you in.”

  “Good God, Dana.”

  “I could thwart your plot and sleep with every guy in town.”

  “How long have you been thinking this way? You rolled that out like—”

  “As long as I’ve also known that you don’t believe a word of this Catholic crap. If you did, I would have heard about God and Jesus and hell before my first day of first grade. But you outsourced it—”

  “Good God, did you read this somewhere, did you write it—”

  “You never taught me yourself about God’s eternal, unbreakable, unbendable law and his gigantic eyes on my every move and his perfect plan for my life. It just got rolled in with Spelling and Arithmetic. If you believed in it, why didn’t I learn about Jesus Mary and Joseph before I learned the bloody alphabet? What could be more important? Instead you turned it over to a bunch of cranks. You couldn’t make those words come out of your own mouth—unless it was in some rote prayer. ‘Our Father who art in the bathroom,’ blah blah blah. What if I’m pregnant, Dad?”

  “I’ll love you no matter what.”

  “Then why did you abandon me? And why did you sleep around on Mom?”

  “Dana. I never betrayed your mother.”

  “How can you expect me to believe that when I can see how you’re betraying her now? Your stepping-stone into heaven is gone,” she hissed, “and now every lie counts. In spite of everything, I still love you, too. And in spite of everything, there are certain things I believe in. I really don’t want to see your immortal soul burn in hell forever.”

  Mr. Hamlet sagged, dumbstruck, over her livid face. How had he missed all this, how long had it been coming? The kid had it all ready, her tongue full, waiting to be laid out, memorized even, where was—?

  Dana had pushed past him, and run.

  Through the house, to a side door, and out, slapping the tears furiously off her cheeks.

  She couldn’t do it, she couldn’t, she couldn’t! This was normal. If she took it all sitting down, that would be suspicious. She would have to stay away from them all, out of the house for a while or she’d do something so crazy they’d cancel the Hollywood Nite and then there’d be all that work for nothing and there’d never be another chance. She was already in danger of setting Aunt Claudia so high on her guard that nothing would faze her. And then Dana would have to live the rest of her life tortured with nightmares and doubts, watching those repulsive petting parties, the only one who knew what happened to her mother while everyone called her pathetic because she wouldn’t shut up about a murder she couldn’t prove. She could never have her own life, her own family, her own mind, with a hole this big in her. “Move on,” fuck.

  She was on the road now, running into a wild, unenclosed easement. Garhh, her heeled shoes were no help—she took them off and kept running, scratched her feet. Scratched feet better than broken ankles. Damn! She fell, tumbled, rolled, banged her knee on that inner sensitive part, Horst would know what it was called, pebbles and stickers in her palms. She picked herself up, dusted off, and clumped through low brush and pine trees and rocks to a spot she knew. The underbrush cleared, and there it was. A watering hole. Soothing. She sat down at the edge. Smaller than a pond, larger than a puddle, it drew the local deer and other animals to its edges. This one had been here long enough to develop an ecosystem of its own, with ferns, frogs, and minnows. She carefully dipped her hand in. It was clear and still with a floor of loose, delicate soil. She could spend hours staring into it�
�had, many times. Thank goodness it was safe from cattle and four-wheelers to trample or plow through it. The pan would be broken and the placid layer of water would be pounded to a murky slick.

  It was cold under the trees, and she had run out of the house in practically nothing. The one time she could actually use her cloak. She limped back out to the road, back to the drive of the main house. Ugh, she couldn’t do it. She turned down towards the topiary garden. It was a scraggly mess, perfect, it suited her mood. The strawberry patch lay ahead. She could go down to the beach. What was that in front of Polly’s cottage, a scarecrow? Oh no. Something else. Something she had been avoiding, but it was too late now. He had seen her and he was walking forward, towards her. Huge, unpayable spiritual debts lay ahead.

  HAVE THEY TRIED TO MAKE YOU, PHIL?

  Down in the cottage, Phil flipped his classic Hirade over and stared at its back. Nothing was coming out. His technique was fine, his instrument was blameless. He cradled it in his elbows again. He could play someone else’s tune if he couldn’t find one of his own. Old-fashioned sheet music, there was a ton of it on the shelf. Find something to go with his mood. Flamenco. He picked a song and propped a few sheets on a stand. He had heard this one sung, in Spanish, but he knew the meaning. To feel your warm curve—to give my soul to you—to talk of God. A dancer, sitting on a chair, would be drawn irresistibly to her feet, out to the center of the floor, where she would cast her eyes down and bang her heels against the beats of his guitar. Face and tongue still, body speaking, delivering the heaven of ecstatic abandon through her body down to the earth. He would call; she would answer. Music to stir her heart; a torrent of submission from her feet.

  He wandered off the sheet music. To start with a touch, a place on earth, then fly upward, and dissolve. To accept the loss that defines your life. To feel the spirit of love, to shed tears under its perfect power and beauty, but never to taste—oh hell, he was starving. He wanted Dana. It might even be nice to blow something up.