Still Holding

by Bruce Wagner

  A & E ordered twelve, and while Becca wasn’t in every show, her contract guaranteed she’d be paid for at least six. As yet, only the pilot had been written, but according to the show’s “bible,” Rhiannon’s arc called for at least five more episodes. The agent said that if the stars (and writers) were in alignment, Becca could wind up doing eight or even ten.

  It was great news. Still, she was bummed at not having a Rob Reiner film on her résumé and almost felt worse that she wasn’t going to read with Ed Norton. (She talked herself into thinking she’d have absolutely nailed it.) She sent Mr. Reiner handwritten regrets, as Sharon Belzmerz so classily suggested. Sharon was sweet and said Rob Reiner was an old hitless fogy anyway and that she’d already gotten Becca “a meet” with Brett Ratner and was working on the Coen brothers. Her near miss was still a good story—one of those gripping Hollywood yarns she could share with everyone in Waynesboro next Thanksgiving, a shining example of what her agent liked to call a “high-class problem.” It was also the kind of surefire anecdote to maybe bring up one day during a Conan or Letterman preinterview, as long as it didn’t sound stuck-up.

  Hollywood Palace

  PHILIP HANGED HIMSELF on Halloween night while Lisanne was at the hospice.

  For the last few months, she’d been helping out at Lavendar House, a Victorian-style building over by the VA. A friend from the sangha said it would do her great good. Though Lisanne had abandoned any formal or even informal Buddhist practice, the friend had been right—working at the hospice took her out of herself and put her in touch with what was real. The mundanely majestic drama of life and death.

  She was sitting with a comatose woman when the cell phone vibrated in her purse. It was Mattie, with the news. She went home to Rustic Canyon and sat another vigil. There were bodies all around her now. She felt like that kid in The Sixth Sense.

  • • •

  THE NEXT FEW days were filled with snakes.

  Lisanne heard a paramedic on the radio, talking about the hair-raising adventures of his trade. He spoke of a Korean man who skinned snakes and ate them raw, for health purposes; he swallowed the heads too, but this time a fang sunk into his tongue. The man stumbled into the fire station saying that he had “a problem.” They were able to save him.

  At night, she conjured the Temescal Canyon metta rattler, the one she never told Philip about. In her dream, they stood over it, together. The serpent spoke to them, but when she awakened, Lisanne could never remember what it had said.

  On the morning of his funeral, she read an article in the Times about Amber, an eight-year-old girl killed by the family’s pet Burmese.

  Robert Mountain testified that he was kept awake by the python the night before his daughter was attacked as the snake tried to escape from its makeshift cage.

  Mountain said he applied about four layers of duct tape to hold a screen on the lid in place and checked on the snake before leaving for work the next morning.

  Both he and his wife said they knew Moe had outgrown its cage, a particleboard bin bought from a fabric store, with a hinged clear-plastic lid that Robert Mountain had attached.

  They found Amber on the kitchen floor, the snake coiled around her neck and chest. Lisanne wondered how it would feel to die like that. And what would it be like for the rescuers, to get the snake off her, seeing what they would see?

  • • •

  THEY BURIED HIM in a pricey Westwood mausoleum beside the Bel-Air waste management king, Louis Aherne Trotter, kitty-corner from the drawer Hefner had reserved for himself above Marilyn Monroe. Mattie was gaunt and wobbly, flanked by the stoic Loewensteins, and she pinched a handkerchief to her sopping face as if the fabric itself was her sole source of oxygen. Even Dr. Calliope attended.

  Lisanne was glad to see Robbie and Maxine. He brought their son because Mattie had requested it. Lisanne was holding Siddhama in her arms as she came over. Taking the handkerchief away from her face at last, Aunt Mattie said, “My brother loved that baby so much.”

  After all was said and done, Lisanne knew that he did.

  • • •

  THAT NIGHT, Lisanne stayed with her at the beach house. They watched Mildred Pierce against an appropriately wild-dark backdrop of ocean, and ate pumpkin pie à la mode while thumbing through old family albums. Mattie said that her brother was a “lost soul.” He’d tried to kill himself in college, then again right after Dad died. Lisanne couldn’t believe Philip never told her that.

  She had left her psychosis behind. As she drifted off, pulled closer now by the amniotic rhythm of cold swells that arose and fell like mantras never-ending, shattering so near the Joan Crawford picture window, her body relaxing beside Mattie’s nameless, nearly formless form, Lisanne remembered the loving-kindness workshop teacher’s definition of a meditation practice: it is nothing but the abiding calm a man learns as he carries a bowl of scalding oil upon his head while walking through the rooms of an enormous palace.

  Christmas Eve Day

  AT THREE IN the afternoon, in the patio under freezing refulgent crystal blue heavens, Cela told her man she was going to Rexall Square for a bagful of nonpareils. That was her alibi.

  She blasted an old Bowie CD in the BMX, south on Beverly Glen all the way to Pico, a right to Overland, down to the 10 east.

  She’d done all the major shopping— loved Christmas—and had just about finished this crazy collage thing (corny paper cutout tributes to their love), thinking she was so clever until suddenly realizing what a fool she was for having completely spaced on the mother lode of oldies—a treasure trove of Ulysses S. Grant stuff, photos of Kit with R.J., and God knew what else—that was sitting in storage, gathering dust. Imagining the bounty that awaited her, Cela began to think in terms of actually doing an oversize triptych. That was OK by her. Kit would love it. She’d stay up late like she did when she was little, cutting and pasting, giggling to herself while he chilled in front of the $20,000 slimscreen. She’d have to chase him off if he snuck up to see what she was doing.

  The 10 to Azusa, then north to Badillo toward the Covina U-Stor—down the road from Uncle Jimmy, who’d helped move all her Riverside belongings. She hadn’t seen any of the packed things since (or Uncle Jimmy either), but now and again they spoke on the phone. Cela wanted him to visit the new house, but they hadn’t been there all that long and she thought it better to hold off. (They were phasing out some of the security guys, and it felt nice to have the place to themselves.) Uncle Jimmy wasn’t sensitive—all he ever wanted to know was when was she gonna invite him to a big premiere. He had a thing for Nicole Kidman and kept saying, wickedly, “When you gonna hook me up with Nicole? Time she had a man’s man.” Uncle Jimmy had a heart of gold. He was diabetic, and had had a few scares. She gave him Christmas money so he could spend the holiday up at Russian River.

  She went by his house, knowing he wasn’t there. Wouldn’t it be funny if he was? Then she realized her true impulse, and made the detour, heart beating faster.

  There were tenants in her old place, but it looked woebegone. Cela changed her mind about driving past Burke’s; too radioactive. She grew faintly nauseated. Everything was saturated with sunlit anomie. Neighborhood kids were staring at the BMX. She gunned it.

  • • •

  SHE RUMMAGED among the stacks and laughed: she was Pack Rat Supreme, always had been. (That was always Burke’s joke, whenever they went to Vegas. There was Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, and Cela Byrd and the Pack Rat.) What a sad bunch of shit—broken lamps, fucked-up chairs, dusty file boxes marked COURT, REHAB/JOURNALS, MAMA, LEGAL, TAXES, MISC., SWAP MEET . . .

  —there it was: PIX/YEARBOOKS.

  She pried the carton out from under and took the lid off. Whoa. Better make that two triptychs. Mebbe three. The first thing she laid eyes on was a half-ruined Polaroid of them smoking a doobie in front of a bonfire, age thirteen. Couldn’t remember a thing about it. Blurry, smudged, time-sealed—might be fun to blow up and wallpaper the den with. Or hang on the side
of the pool house, ten by ten, with a special outdoor coating.

  She had planned to throw everything in the car but couldn’t help getting engrossed. Accordingly, she didn’t see the silver Range Rover, the one Kit allowed his father to keep, the good riddance “bone” as Burke called it, quietly berth a few doors down. There was a small crack in the windshield; a few holes had been punched in the passenger door, to fix a dent.

  Cela startled as he sauntered over, framed in the metal roll-up door against the cloudless Covina sky.

  “Hey, babe.”

  “What are you doing here?” She stayed down, kneeling and semisorting, trying to be cool.

  “I rent a unit,” he said, smiling. “For my unit.” Always the salacious double-entendre. “Dr. Phil, is that not OK?”

  “Did you follow me?”

  “Saw you in the hood a little while ago,” he said. “Gettin nostalgic?” She sighed and went back about her business. “A preggers gets mucho hornito. Thought you might be havin an ‘afternoon delight’ moment.”

  “You are disgusting,” she said, coldly.

  “Might just wanna DNA the kid, you know,” he said, lasciviously apprising her belly. “Could be mine. But in order to do so, I may have to serve you with a su-penis.”

  “Can you just leave me alone?” She decided she would motor in about thirty seconds. “We’ve already done this dance, Burke.”

  “Done this dance?” he said, ascerbically. “That’s some shitty dialogue, babe. Right out of a Kit Lightfoot movie.”

  She stood up. “I think you better get in your car.”

  He stepped back, as if in mortal terror. “Mommy! Mommy, you’re scaring me!” A lurid quick change to fawning admiration: “Oh boy, you’ve gotten tough. Wow! You are one tough macha. Wouldn’t want to tangle with you, chola, huh uh. No way.”

  “Burke, I don’t want to do this.”

  “You don’t have a restraining order against me too, do you, Cela? Cause far as I know, my ungrateful shit-heel son is the one who filed. Though I do believe it’ll come out in the wash it was counsel’s idea.”

  “I wonder why someone would have had the audacity to get a restraining order.” Now that she was on her feet, she felt bolder. “Isn’t that outrageous? Could it possibly have something to do with the fact that you beat the shit out of your own kid and broke my fucking face?”

  “You know,” said Burke, “experts will tell you that restraining orders aren’t always a good thing.”

  She got adrenalized. Her brain told her to run, but she walked resolutely past. He spun her around and forced her back.

  “Get your fucking hands off me!”

  “Hey, hey, hey.”

  “I’ll call the police—”

  “Here’s my phone,” he said, jamming it to her cheek. “Call Chief Bratton and tell him you’re being diddled by an armadillo. Who gives a flying fuckito? Listen,” he whispered. “You went with the money and I cain’t blame you. Hell, I admire you. You fucked the money with my come still runnin down your leg. Mo better power to ya. You testified against me at trial. Dragged my name through the mud and left me with squat. I put a lot of bread into that piece of shit rental you were living in, Cela. Put a lotta money into you. Hey: my prerogative and my pleasure. Where you livin now? A fifteen-million-dollar house? Is Catherine Zeta-Jones knocking on your door to borrow sugar, all neighborlike? Bra-vo, baby. You were sucking his dick right under my nose.”

  “I didn’t do anything under your nose.”

  “Cept let me eat your pussy. That was under your nose.” He laughed. “No—that was under my nose. And you let him watch, remember? Cause that’s your thing. Your freak thing. That’s what you’re into.”

  “Stop it.”

  “You cunt.”

  He pulled a gun. She shook—gone bloodless.

  “Take your pants off.”

  “Please don’t—”

  He punched her face and ordered her again. She hunched, dizzy and bloodsprayed, struggling to stay upright. She took them off. He kept the gun on her and flicked the roll-up switch. The iron drape descended with a sickening, inexorable grind. He pushed her face to the cement, unzipping his fly and greasing the cock with a gob of spit.

  She is only worried about the baby. She is determined not to bring it up for sympathy, for she knows he will not respond. It may only enrage him. She is beyond pain, protest, and tears. She is beyond.

  “You coulda stayed with me,” he said, panting as he forced himself in. “He coulda cut us a check. We had a good thing. Why’d you have to go get greedy on me?”

  Absurdly, he riffed on the good times: the barbecues, Bellagio, Sunday Rose Bowl swap petty larcenies. What a team. Riffed on this and that, then popped one off in the tummy. Whoops, he said, with a grin. She looked at him, astonished. Writhed beneath as he dug in deeper. Squealed, gasped, and bled. “Not such a bad way to go, huh?” She made other sounds now. Dire. Rattling. “Though you may have some trouble coming. I know I won’t.” Shot twice more as he came. Who needs Viagra. Her eyes widened. She wheezed and made sounds again. He said, Shake, rattle, and roll. Climbed off pretty quick, clucking and tetchy, recoiling at the mess. Lock and load. Wiped himself with her Levi’s before zipping up, then used the jeans to dam the blood so it wouldn’t run into the thoroughfare just yet. Flicked the clappety roll up. Ducked under it macho-style, then ambled to the Range Rover, sucked in snot, and spat it out while looking first left then right like a badass B-movie bandito—peering down empty conjunctions of deserted asphalt alleys, in unwitting parody of the careful killer.

  He stood catching his breath in the cool air. Had second thoughts. Walked back and triggered the door, ducking out again. It descended, shutting Cela’s body into darkness.

  Clear Light

  . . .

  Like the death of a child in a dream,

  through holding the erroneous appearance

  of the varieties of suffering to be true

  one makes oneself so tired.

  Therefore, it is a practice of Bodhisattvas when meeting with unfavorable conditions to view them as erroneous.

  —FROM THE THIRTY-SEVEN PRACTICES, BY THE BODHISATTVA TOK-MAY-SANG-BO

  The Healing

  HE ENDURED the loss of his beloved, but could not endure being alone.

  As always, the sangha mercifully engulfed him. Monks read aloud to Cela’s wandering soul from long wood tablets of painted Sanskrit. Friends who’d feared to visit during Kit’s own ordeal now overwhelmed with their generosity of heart. Even Viv came to cook for him.

  All around the new zendo (deliberately humbler in construction than its Benedict Canyon forebear), pristine and by nature impervious to the farrago of tabloidal gore, a balm of practitioners did contemplations. Row upon row they lay in Shavasana—the corpse pose.

  They breathed in death.

  In just a week’s time, he was ready to visit the jail.

  • • •

  THE PRISONER was led in, unshackled—that had been Kit’s request. It was agreed that he posed no threat. Besides, there were enough guards in the room.

  The look-alike assailant (who’d consented to the meeting) seemed suddenly intimidated by circumstances.

  Kit measured his own breaths, collecting himself.

  “Thank you for seeing me. I—I have thought about you every day.” His diction was stilted. The slur came back from nervousness. He breathed through it, moving on. “I could not live with your hate—or . . . hate inside. It was kill me. Killing . . . always want—I always wanted to see you. To come to forgive. Forgive and to thank—you. I don’t know why! It is the godly thing. It is karma. My karma and yours. We are the same. You look like me. They pay you to be me! How could I not forgive? So: I forgive you as you forgive me! We do the same. We do the same thing. OK?” The look-alike appeared to nod subtly, dipping his head. “My father is in jail now,” said Kit. “I want to forgive him. I would like to forgive and would like to thank him too! If you see my father, please tell hi
m that I am—that I forgive him. But don’t tell him thank you—not that I said ‘thank you.’ . . . I will do that myself. One day. I hope I will love him enough to thank him. And forgive.” Eyes loose with tears, the trademark superstar smile eked out, in spite of himself. “But not today.”

  Vanity Fair

  FOR A MINUTE, it looked like David Gough and Dana Delany were breaking up.

  Becca was floored when the actor phoned out of the blue, hinting they attend the Vanity Fair gala at Morton’s together. He never really asked—he just seemed to want solace on the rocky Dana front, nervously betraying there was a chance he’d be “solo” on Oscar night. It was the kind of confusing call a girl might get from her older sister’s drunken heartthrob boyfriend. A terrible idea anyway—Annie told her the last thing she needed was to foster bad vibes on the 1200 North set. Set yourself some boundaries, girl. David said he would call back to let her know what was happening but never did. The whole thing seemed like a setup, and she kicked herself for not having had the moral fiber either to express outrage or at least tell him he was a numbskull not to patch things up with Dana because she was amazing and he knew he’d never find another gal like her. Though it was juvenile, Becca realized that her heart had become set on going out with David on Academy Awards night.

  At the last minute, instead of crashing an Oscar viewing party at the Mondrian, she decided to take Annie to the Dunsmores’. She no longer worried about them sabotaging her career and even felt a little sentimental toward the old days. Anyhow, she’d heard that the Cass and Grady Show had been “discovered.” Everyone who used to like to go to Robert Evans’s—Wes Anderson, Nick Nolte, Aaron Sorkin, Robert Downey Jr., Gina Gershon—now had a hard-on for the notorious biweekly bashes on Mulholland Drive.

  • • •

  CASSANDRA GREETED them like long-lost daughters. After standard issue nods to her newfound 1200 North fame, she was chastised for “being such a stranger.” Cass blathered on about how they’d supported and discovered her “when you were still Drew,” and then Grady stumbled in, bestowing hugs and sloppy kisses. He acted like Becca had never left the guesthouse. When he asked if she’d spoken to “Mr. Herky-Jerky,” she said, bemused, “Why would I?” Grady feigned being dumbstruck, before answering back, “Well, you, uh, used to fuck him, didn’t you? I mean, correct me if I’m wrong. You loved him, right?” He laughed, wheezing like a discount devil. “1200 North got you uppity.” He said he needed to go find “Miss Maryjane,” and excused himself.