Memorial

by Bruce Wagner

Where was she where was her mother why haven’t they—

  “Well, I’m glad she finally realized her dream. She was gung ho on that place ever since I knew her. Went there with her dad, but you already know that. Ghulpa’s from Calcutta, did I tell you? Mother Teresa country. I’ve always wanted to go—not necessarily to Calcutta—but India itself. Marj would find that a surprise, but people change. Ghulpa isn’t very keen on the place just now! That’s how it is sometimes with ‘natives.’ They’ve had enough. But maybe things’ll be different once the baby comes. Boy, she’s been on a tear talking about ‘man-eaters’—the Bengal tigers. The doctor says it’s more to do with hormones, but that should go away soon enough. Sure would be nice to travel. I’m a little tired of this scenery. I think LA does that to you. Any city with a hundred freeways and a concrete river is gonna do it to you. Now the Ganges—there’s a river! Do you have any children, Joan?”

  Why is he doing this? Why is he doing this now—

  “I—no. Not yet.”

  She wanted to get off.

  She needed to get back to Barbet.

  She needed to get an update from the PI.

  She wanted to call Pradeep—

  “I don’t mean to get personal, but there’s just so much to ask, to catch up on—my fault, not yours. Guess I’m feeling chatty tonight; the pills they give me for my heart put my jaw on overdrive. Either make me dopey or make me into a ‘talkaholic.’ I suppose it’s easier for me over the phone. I don’t mean this in the wrong way, Joanie, but it’s a little hard to look at you. But that’ll pass. That’ll pass. In time. We can talk at a later date, darling daughter.”

  She surely thought he was going to sign off.

  “It’s just—I don’t really know anything about you! Would you…would you like to have children?”

  “I—well, sure! Yes. Yes, I think I would.”

  “You’re 34?”

  “I’m 38.”

  Today, Dad. Today’s my birthday.

  “Does Chester have any?”

  “No. Um no, he doesn’t.”

  “Did your mom have any more?”

  “No. He—her husband—had 2 from another marriage, but they were somewhat estranged.”

  “Everybody’s ‘estranged.’ Why does everybody have to be estranged, Joanie? I have no business talking. I guess I was pretty much the worst example. Worst of the worst. I could understand if you decided not to have any kids. I was a pisspoor role model.”

  “No—”

  “I meant, I could understand. I’m nervous about having this one myself, let me tell you! But I’d like to do it differently this time. And I don’t mean—I don’t mean it to sound any other way than it sounds.”

  “I understand, Dad.”

  “It makes me so happy and so sad to hear you call me that! Mostly happy though. I—I would truly like to get to know you, Joanie—you and your brother—just a little more, if that’d be all right. Life isn’t short—what I mean is, life is short! You really feel that—when you’re my age, and you find yourself in the hospital like I was. But I think the Lord might have blessed us with a period of grace to get to know each other a little better. That we know each other at all is some kind of miracle! Big Gulp (that’s what I call her, cause in the summer that’s all she drinks) has this wonderful saying: ‘When you’re born, you cry, and everyone around you is laughing; when you die, you laugh, and everyone around you cries.’ ”

  Joan held a hand over the phone so he wouldn’t hear her weep; Raymond did the same. The crying game.

  “Marjorie and I had a song—‘Save the Last Dance for Me.’ She ever tell you that? We used to go dancing at the Biltmore. ‘Darling, Save the Last Dance for Me’ was our song. But we loved the one about the lion—

  “Do you know what? She’s—Ghulpa’s singing it right now! Now isn’t that funny. And you know I just can’t get her to

  LXXXIII.

  Chester

  tell anyone where they were going, not that their itinerary was firm. That was the last thing he needed; to be tracked by Interpol should Maurie of a sudden awaken and recall the bedside confession that Chester to this day was unsure of having made, though as the event of his friend’s catastrophe grew dimmer (which it did, surprisingly, gratefully, mercifully), so too did the murkiness of his own memory, swaddled in the Chronic leafiness of what both Remar and his smalltime dealer called “the trees,” camouflaged by the extra-pyramidal exuberantly potentiated depressive fog of pain/insomnia war: Neurontin, Ambien CR, Vicodin, Well-butrin, Lyrica, Motrin, Sonata, Haldol, Seroquel, fentanyl, et alia.

  He picked up the check during law office lunch hour, happy not to run into the chrome-domed, congenial killer fag who left word with his secretary that Chess should hang until he got back, so they could at least say hellos and goodbyes. But Chester Herlihy was a man in a hurry, all up in the trees, and waited for no one. Naw—Remar was OK. Good people. Just doin his job; in this case, the client had made it hard. Fact was, if not for the “complications,” Counselor DeConcini mighta got 15 times the settled amount. Probably thought Chess was a pussy. And dumb on top of it.

  But karma and expedience had dictated otherwise.

  There were factors beyond factors…

  He grudgingly put the money in the bank, having attempted to make a futile arrangement to circumvent the notorious 10 day hold. It was the Era of the 10 Day Hold: 10 Days That Would Not Shake Your World. You couldn’t move your bowels without someone holding onto your shit for 10 business days before flushing. It was a Friday—he’d have to wait 2 full Fridays for the check to clear. (Chess sensed that Remar knew he was skipping town. The lawyer probably thought he was going to Vegas; no doubt he had witnessed everything that anyone in throwing distance of white trash could possibly do with a windfall, and it wasn’t pretty.) The motherfuckering banks were all robbers, he still felt Wells must have had something to do with the draining of his mom’s account. Also—he had to visit Marj before he split and that wasn’t going to be fun. Kind of an official unofficial goodbye. He would need a story to tell Joan too. No biggie. He’d say he was gonna go see Laxmi’s family in Vancouver or whatever. She looked like someone with family in Vancouver.

  EVERY time he thought of Marj he entered that mushroomy space again—he was entering that space a lot lately, tripping on elephants and India and the Great Mother that was Time and Space. He thought of the mushroom’s tears and how She had warned him that a single drop could break his back. The experience was so heavy and unexpected and indecipherable that Chess felt somehow transformed, like a soldier who made it through his 1st firefight, but it was beautiful too, warfare could be beautiful (from what he had read), awesome and terrible and beautiful, and he realized that as long as he paid proper obeisance, as long as he never became arrogant toward She, the 5-and-infinity-starred general who had informed and saturated his presence on ecstatic battlegrounds, as long as he remained steady and humble, then he would be forever welcome in Her army, a rider on the storm, grateful conscript to the anagogic anagalactic weddingtrained outskirts of the legion of tusky gods who helped protect that which needed no protecting.

  CHESS had to get rid of the stuff in his apartment. Donate to Goodwill or just throw it away. Buncha crap anyhow. Still, he needed to be fairly meticulous, not lazy about it, so as not to raise any flags. He would just rent a pickup—he’d done it a thousand times before.

  He went to see Don Knotts’s daughter. He said his mom was sick and he was going to move in and help out till she got better. Karen was so sweetly empathetic, such a wonderful woman, she could have used the moment to talk about her father’s death, her own experience, the way people do, but graciously let Chess have his time. He felt like a cad, or whatever. She told him she would return his last month’s rent and security deposit (another 24-hundred or so. In India, that would take a year to spend). She even asked after Laxmi. Chess said they were still “going out” but Laxmi was back in school at Northridge and might have to go see her father back ea
st. And oh, he’d be scouting in Colorado for a few weeks. As he heard himself talk, Chess thought he should have had a better story, maybe keep the Vancouver thing congruent so he wouldn’t get caught in a lie but it didn’t matter, it wasn’t like anything sounded suspicious or like his soon never-to-be-seen-again landlord was going to sit around trying to put the non-pieces of a nonpuzzle together. He saw his paranoid days fading, and the need to make up stories as well.

  He only had a few lies left in him.

  HE went online to check out one-way tickets to Bombay. The cheapest way seemed to be through Frankfurt.

  While Chess was doing his thing, the mailman shoved a rubberbanded sheaf through the slot—a couple of local Thai restaurant flyers. Another student-loan dunning notice. Oh, fuck you. A brochure about 2 old guys “coming soon to Anaheim & San Bernardino!!!!!” One of the dynamic duo wrote a book, The Millionaire Next Door, and his buddy penned a “bestseller” called $elf-Made Millionaire$. Call NOW and you get in free—the events were guaranteed to sell out. Yeah right. Sold out but they’ll let you in free cause it’s like U2 picking you out of a fuckin mob.

  The phone rang. No one on the line. Chess’s heart jumped; he flashed that it was Maurie. Stop being crazy.

  It rang again.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr Herlihy? Hello? This is World Pharm calling about a refill on your recent order for—um, Oxycodone?”

  He was going to hang up but decided to place a final script and have it FedEx’d. One for my baby and one more for the road. His plan was to detox once they got to India but it never hurt to have a transatlantic stash. Might come in handy during that skinhead rally in Frankfurt.

  The idea was to hit Bombay and visit this old guru Laxmi was into. Some of his philosophical writings were in the Bodhi Tree stash she’d given him—the screed about having your head in the tiger’s mouth—and Chess struggled through a few random chapters without hooking onto anything. (He was way more into the Karma Sutra.) “Ramesh” was almost 90 years old, a rich guy with his own apartment building, a former bank president who gave talks from his living room each morning. Laxmi called it satsang or some such sanskrity shit. Then they’d take the A-train to Nashik and Trimbakeshwar, swing on over to Aurangabad, shuffle down to Ratnagiri and Goa (which from all accounts was this fucking amazing half-Portuguese beachtown where you could live on the cheap, raving on hasheesh and Ecstasy at night and getting your liver drycleaned by day. The Goans were renowned for their healing colonics, which would be great for his detox.) Thus far Chess had resisted doing any Lonely Planet–type research; that stuff put him to sleep. Much groovier to just get on a plane, no preconceptions, and learn as you went. You didn’t really have a choice, any way you cut it. It was sink or swim.

  HE rode over to the Beverly Hills Hotel.

  Parked on a sidestreet and knocked on both bungalows’ doors. No answer. Joan never gave him a key and for some reason that suddenly pissed him off. Now don’t get all rattled. Just chill. He took 5 vikes and 3 Klonopin. Thought of approaching the front desk and announcing who he was, asking for entry, but didn’t feel like undergoing the embarrassment of getting shot down.

  So he sat in the lobby and waited, mulling shit over. He decided to tell his sister he was leaving—on a scout somewhere in Mexico, for David Fincher or Doug Liman or one of the Scotts. Probably be away awhile. A big production, a hundred-and-50,000,000 dollar movie. Or maybe he’d say he was doing an indie, something under Ang Lee or Soderbergh’s banner, something small and intimate, whatever, funding came through and he was finally producing a long-gestated pet project—not Maurie’s, he didn’t want to drag Maurie into it—he was going to Costa Rica or maybe even Vancouver. That way he’d kill 2 birds because he could still use the visiting-Laxmi’s-people story. Yeah, maybe that was a better way to go. Vancouver, plus a film of his own: something with a little pizzazz and prosperity. He was sick of everyone thinking he was a loser.

  He passed the Polo Lounge and took the long, wending path to the bungalows. Hotel staff stepped aside and bowed heads, as if he were royalty. Maybe Joan and his mother had returned from chores or wherever, or he’d bump into them in the midst of Marj’s daily constitutional with one of her 7 fucking caregivers. He still couldn’t figure out where the money was coming from. Maybe Ham left her more bread than he thought. Or maybe the fire insurance had come in and his sister was drawing on that, with plans to downscale Mom into a care home.

  The more he thought about it the better the idea of his having stumbled into a prestigious, paying gig seemed in terms of something to tell Joan and his

  LXXXIV.

  Marjorie

  nattily dressed woman who after 2 hours asked where they were and the kind fat black female driver said, “Long Beach. End of the line,” asking if she needed any help but the old lady smiled and said she’d be fine, and God Bless.

  Marj felt buoyant and alive.

  Unencumbered.

  She intuited the presence of Hamilton—as if somehow guided by him, her actions sanctioned.

  It was dark and as she walked she caught her reflection in the windows of closed shops. Long Beach was such an empty, pretty place. Occasionally the quiet cool of the night was interrupted by stinging sounds or shouts. Someone in a passing car yelled, “Raggedyass bitch!” and threw empty cans out the car. Probably just kids. Marjorie smiled—there was nothing anyone could do to dampen her spirits. She was in upbeat missionary mode, and it was about time!—back to the girlish days when she dreamed of spiritual repatriation, an Indian pilgrimage to give succor (and red peonies) to the destitute and dying (and be succored by them as well), to be lifted up and ennobled, oh she had loved Mother Teresa so, heart filled with respect and admiration for this frail giant of incalculable courage and resolve who sought out the poorest of the poor, to love their very diseases and rotting limbs, a saint who wished only to feed them and touch them and wash their wounds. In other words, a true Christian. Was there such a thing as a true Christian anymore? In these, the last years of her life, she was finally ready. She would work from the Taj Mahal Palace, in nurse’s whites, rent an entire floor for homebase, she would use the monies from the fire sale of her land, the Travel Gals could arrange it, Joanie too, she said she would come if her pregnancy didn’t interfere but Marj still wasn’t certain she was pregnant, maybe it was a ruse, another excuse to back out, but no, she didn’t think so, her daughter really did want to come this time, it didn’t matter if she did, Marj was doing this for herself, and in a strange way for Ham and her father, she wanted to be a true Christian, this was the time of life such plans came to fruition—just like that socialite from Beverly Hills who went to live in a jail in Tijuana, Marj Herlihy could make a difference, but without fanfare, no books written about her, this was her time to give, and give back, so many moribund beggars and stunted needy children all within a stone’s throw of the Gate of India—she’d seen them again in that marvelous Judy Davis movie—that was where she was needed, not some fancy Sunset Boulevard hotel. Had not the burning of her beloved home been a sign? In the middle of the night, she’d been pulled from the flames by a mother of mercy, angel in white, the flames hadn’t frightened but instead filled her with longing for the great Indian festival of lights, Diwali, the one she’d been so privileged to see with her father, millions of lanterns and butterlamps, was it not the good Lord’s way of showing that her time as missionary had arrived? The Beverlywood conflagration was like that which surrounded Kali in her picturebooks and the articles in the Britannica as well. There was nothing left, her children were grown, they were independent people leading independent lives. They didn’t share much with her and that was all right, they were basically damn good kids, even if Marj didn’t approve of everything she knew (and didn’t know) about them, that’s how it was supposed to be, they’d left the nest long ago and now stood on their own 2 feet. Her parents and husband and children were gone and it was time. Even poor Riki’s death—wasn’t he from Calcutta, like dear Mo
ther Teresa? no, maybe Mumbai—even his brutal murder had illumined her path.

  Suddenly came a stabbing pain and she had to use a powderroom. The streets looked desolate. The old woman grimaced as she looked in all directions. She saw something distant, a brightly lit intersection, and made her way. Her angular, half-dancing gait was comical and she knew it and tried to laugh at herself—how I must look!—the only way she could walk to hold it in. Marj realized she’d been riding around all that time without “going,” unusual for her, she’d been lost in thought, she distracted herself with images of the journey, as she got closer to the bright Conoco lights she conjured the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers, how soon she would be going, with Joan, it seemed like her daughter talked about it every day! they even sat in the hotel watching the DVD Nigel gave her (Marj felt bad for not having yet returned it) and she wondered again if Joanie was telling the truth about that baby (if she wasn’t, why on earth had she lied?), the insistent story of impregnation by a rich man, she had watched her belly with discreet diligence but it never seemed to get any rounder, when Joan pulled up her blouse to show, sometimes it was distended but that was probably just the food she was packing away, every time you turned around hordes of room service brought pancakes, club sandwiches, Waldorf salads, banana split sundaes, and what have you, Marj winced again at what it must be costing, still, she didn’t think her little girl would actually invent something like that, so drastic, just to cover up a weight gain, not unless she was planning on going to hell in a handbasket and putting on 50 pounds, no, that wasn’t her, Joan wasn’t crazy (not like her brother), she was a professional woman, with a respectable architectural practice, she was vain, and didn’t tell lies all the time like Chesapeake did, not that a falsely claimed pregnancy was a badge of honor, but if Joan was going to gain a few pounds it was more in her character to let it all hang out, that’s how she was, not one to conceal such a thing, especially some extra padding, she was almost 40 years old, common enough for a gal her age, you start to thicken up at 40 and there isn’t much you can do about it, those silly diet books don’t work, you could run on a treadmill to your heart’s content just like Mr Pahrump did before he died but at that age no matter what they say it doesn’t help one iota, anything you do only works a few months then you bounce right back to whatever weight you were struggling not to be. (Even those surgeries didn’t help, where they stapled your tummy, and besides, before you went that route you had to be truly obese, even afterward the people who had it done still looked fat.) But maybe her daughter was pregnant and that’d be divine—wouldn’t it?—in which case the trip to India would have to be postponed, at least on Joanie’s end (if they didn’t leave right away), but Marjorie dug in her heels, she would not be derailed, she’d take steps if Joan tried to prevent her—the way everyone had been treating her like a child lately anything was possible—get a lawyer involved if need be, she would have her freedom, she’d call Ham’s old friend, the one who had helped with the term life policy, but was certain that wouldn’t be necessary, no no, closer now to the Conocolights the old woman would just go straight ahead without Joan, Joanie couldn’t stop her, she wouldn’t dare, like it or not, Marj Herlihy was going straight ahead with her missionary work full-steam and Joan could catch up when the baby was old enough to travel, the work was too important, yes of course she wanted a grandchild, but the work was the thing, at this stage of her life, and she would use the Taj Mahal Palace as homebase. Once her “offices” were set up she’d send for them—Joan and the baby—not that India was the best place for an infant, that would be up to Mommy, but plenty had done it, plenty of wealthy, intrepid folks had raised their kids in all kinds of places, my God, Africa or even remote parts of America, if Joan didn’t like the idea than Marj would tell her to just stay put—in Beverly Hills—but Joanie was headstrong…like someone else she knew! Once her daughter set her mind to something she was hard to sway. So if she wanted to come, that would be that. Plenty of room for everyone. The Taj Mahal Palace and Towers could handle just about anything! You could see that from the DVD, if they could handle President Clinton after heart surgery they could certainly handle Joan Hennison Herlihy (who’d informed in an aside that she was keeping the Herlihy name, married or not) with a newborn. The hospitals were marvelous—she’d watched the 60 Minutes rerun with Mike Wallace and oh! that young man Nigel had been so right, even Cora saw the segment about the woman who went to Delhi for a hip replacement and stayed at a special post-op spa. It was paradise. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if the Taj was included in one of those surgical packages…you had your operation, then recuperated by the pool. And not at “pink bungalow” prices!