by Joan Didion
24
“YOU DRIVE,” the man had said. “We’ll pick up my car after.”
He was wearing white duck pants and a white sport shirt and he had a moon face and a eunuch’s soft body. The hand resting on his knee was pale and freckled and boneless and ever since he got in the car he had been humming I Get a Kick Out of You.
“You familiar with this area, Maria?”
The question seemed obscurely freighted. “No,” Maria said finally.
“Nice homes here. Nice for kids.” The voice was bland, ingratiating, the voice on the telephone. “Let me ask you one question, all right?”
Maria nodded, and tightened her grip on the steering wheel.
“Get pretty good mileage on this? Or no?”
“Pretty good,” she heard herself saying after only the slightest pause. “Not too bad.”
“You may have noticed, I drive a Cadillac. Eldorado. Eats gas but I like it, like the feel of it.”
Maria said nothing. That, then, had actually been the question. She had not misunderstood.
“If I decided to get rid of the Cad,” he said, “I might pick myself up a little Camaro. Maybe that sounds like a step down, a Cad to a Camaro, but I’ve got my eye on this particular Camaro, exact model of the pace car in the Indianapolis 500.”
“You think you’ll buy a Camaro,” Maria said in the neutral tone of a therapist.
“Get the right price, I just might. I got a friend, he can write me a sweet deal if it’s on the floor much longer. They almost had a buyer last week but lucky for me—here, Maria, right here, pull into this driveway.”
Maria turned off the ignition and looked at the man in the white duck pants with an intense and grateful interest. In the past few minutes he had significantly altered her perception of reality: she saw now that she was not a woman on her way to have an abortion. She was a woman parking a Corvette outside a tract house while a man in white pants talked about buying a Camaro. There was no more to it than that. “Lucky for you what?”
“Lucky for me, the guy’s credit didn’t hold up.”
25
THE FLOOR OF THE BEDROOM where it happened was covered with newspapers. She remembered reading somewhere that newspapers were antiseptic, it had to do with the chemicals in the ink, to deliver a baby in a farmhouse you covered the floor with newspapers. There was something else to be done with newspapers, something unexpected, some emergency trick: quilts could be made with newspapers. In time of disaster you could baste newspapers to both sides of a cotton blanket and end up with a warm quilt. She knew a lot of things about disaster. She could manage. Carter could never manage but she could. She could not think where she had learned all these tricks. Probably in her mother’s American Red Cross Handbook, gray with a red cross on the cover. There, that was a good thing to think about, at any rate not a bad thing if she kept her father out of it. If she could concentrate for even one minute on a picture of herself as a ten-year-old sitting on the front steps of the house in Silver Wells reading the gray book with the red cross on the cover (splints, shock, rattlesnake bite, rattlesnake bite was why her mother made her read it) with the heat shimmering off the corrugated tin roof of the shed across the road (her father was not in this picture, keep him out of it, say he had gone into Vegas with Benny Austin), if she could concentrate for one more minute on that shed, on whether this minute twenty years later the heat still shimmered off its roof, those were two minutes during which she was not entirely party to what was happening in this bedroom in Encino.
Two minutes in Silver Wells, two minutes here, two minutes there, it was going to be over in this bedroom in Encino, it could not last forever. The walls of the bedroom were cream-colored, yellow, a wallpaper with a modest pattern. Whoever had chosen that wallpaper would have liked maple furniture, a maple bedroom set, a white chenille bedspread and a white Princess telephone, all gone now but she could see it as it must have been, could see even the woman who had picked the wallpaper, she would be a purchaser of Audubon prints and scented douches, a hoarder of secret sexual grievances, a wife. Two minutes in Silver Wells, two minutes on the wallpaper, it could not last forever. The table was a doctor’s table but not fitted with stirrups: instead there were two hardbacked chairs with pillows tied over the backs. “Tell me if it’s too cold,” the doctor said. The doctor was tall and haggard and wore a rubber apron. “Tell me now because I won’t be able to touch the air conditioner once I start.”
She said that it was not too cold.
“No, it’s too cold. You don’t weigh enough, it’s too cold.”
He adjusted the dial but the sound remained level. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the sound. Carter did not like air conditioners but there had been one somewhere. She had slept in a room with an air conditioner, the question was where, never mind the question, that question led nowhere. “This is just induced menstruation,” she could hear the doctor saying. “Nothing to have any emotional difficulties about, better not to think about it at all, quite often the pain is worse when we think about it, don’t like anesthetics, anesthetics are where we run into trouble, just a little local on the cervix, there, relax, Maria, I said relax.”
No moment more or less important than any other moment, all the same: the pain as the doctor scraped signified nothing beyond itself, no more constituted the pattern of her life than did the movie on television in the living room of this house in Encino. The man in the white duck pants was sitting out there watching the movie and she was lying in here not watching the movie, and that was all there was to that. Why the volume on the set was turned up so high seemed another question better left unasked. “Hear that scraping, Maria?” the doctor said. “That should be the sound of music to you … don’t scream, Maria, there are people next door, almost done, almost over, better to get it all now than do it again a month from now … I said don’t make any noise, Maria, now I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, you’ll bleed a day or so, not heavily, just spotting, and then a month, six weeks from now you’ll have a normal period, not this month, this month you just had it, it’s in that pail.”
He went into the bathroom then (later she would try to fix in her mind the exact circumstances of his leaving the bedroom, would try to remember if he took the pail with him, later that would seem important to her) and by the time he came back the contractions had stopped. He gave her one envelope of tetracycline capsules and another of ergot tablets and by six o’clock of that hot October afternoon she was out of the bedroom in Encino and back in the car with the man in the white duck pants. The late sun seemed warm and benevolent on her skin and everything she saw looked beautiful, the summer pulse of life itself made manifest. As she backed out of the driveway she smiled radiantly at her companion.
“You missed a pretty fair movie,” he said. “Paula Raymond.” He reached into his pocket for what seemed to be a cigarette holder. “Ever since I gave up smoking I carry these by the dozen, they look like regular holders but all you get is air.”
Maria stared at his outstretched hand.
“Take it. I noticed you’re still smoking. You’ll thank me some day.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m a regular missionary.” The man in the white duck pants resettled his soft bulk and gazed out the car window. “Gee, Paula Raymond was a pretty girl,” he said then. “Funny she never became a star.”
26
“I WANT A VERY LARGE STEAK,” she said to Les Goodwin in a restaurant on Melrose at eight o’clock that night. “And before the very large steak I want three drinks. And after the steak I want to go somewhere with very loud music.”
“Like where.”
“I don’t know where. You ought to know where. You know a lot of places with loud music.”
“What’s the matter with you.”
“I am just very very very tired of listening to you all.”
27
SILVER WELLS was with her again. She wanted to see her mother. She wanted to go back to
the last day she had spent with her mother: a Sunday. She had flown out from New York on Friday and then it was Sunday and Benny Austin was there for Sunday dinner and after dinner they would all drive down to Vegas to put Maria back on the airplane.
“Your mom’s O.K., don’t worry about your mom,” Benny muttered when he and Maria were alone for a moment at the table. “Believe me it’s nothing.”
“What’s nothing? What’s the matter with her?”
“Nothing on God’s earth, Maria, that’s what I’m telling you. You might say she’s a little depressed, naturally your father doesn’t want to talk about it.”
“Depressed,” Maria repeated.
“Nothing, Maria, believe me. Here they come, we’re talking about the zinc boom.” Benny cleared his throat. “I’ve been telling Maria about the zinc boom, Harry.”
“You into zinc?” Maria said finally. She was watching her mother but her mother looked just as she always had.
“We’ve been buying a few rights.” Harry Wyeth began whistling through his teeth.
“Meal fit for the Queen of Spain,” Benny said. “Francine, you could make a fortune in the take-out spare-rib business.”
Francine Wyeth laughed. “Maria and I can always open a hash house. When we get sick of you all.”
“Hash house on 95,” Harry Wyeth said. “Pretty picture.”
“Not on 95,” Francine Wyeth said. “Somewhere else.”
Maria closed her eyes.
“I’m talking about a quantity operation. Franchises, you rent out your name and your receipt.” Benny Austin talked as if nothing had happened at the table. “Franchised services, that’s where the future lies.”
“I don’t want to go back,” Maria said.
“That’s natural.” Harry Wyeth did not look at his wife or daughter. “That’s only natural. Don’t think about it, you’ll be out again in a month or two, plan on it now.”
“She’s too thin,” Francine Wyeth said. “Look at her, see for yourself.”
“She can’t win if she’s not at the table, Francine.” Harry Wyeth threw down his napkin and stood up. “You wouldn’t understand that.”
That night as the plane taxied out onto the runway at McCarran Maria had kept her face pressed against the window for as long as she could see them, her mother and father and Benny Austin, waving at the wrong window.
28
“Helene’s going up to Pebble Beach to spend the weekend with BZ’s mother,” Carter said when he called from the desert. “Why don’t you fly up and meet her there.”
“I can’t.”
“Too busy, I suppose.”
Maria said nothing.
“Or maybe you’re afraid you might have a good time.”
“I said I can’t.”
“Why can’t you, just for the record.”
“She’s not my mother,” Maria said.
29
THE BLEEDING BEGAN a few weeks later. “It’s nothing,” the doctor on Wilshire said when she finally went. “Whoever did it did all right. It’s clean, no infection, count your blessings.”
“The pain.”
“You’re just menstruating early, I’ll give you some Edrisal.”
The Edrisal did not work and neither did some Darvon she found in the bathroom and she slept that night with a gin bottle by her bed. She did not think she was menstruating. She wanted to talk to her mother.
30
“I’VE GOT NEWS,” Freddy Chaikin said after the waiter had brought her Bloody Mary and his Perrier water. “I didn’t want to break it until it was set. Morty Landau, I predicted it, he’s in love with you. You’ve got a guest-star on a two-part Interstate 80.”
“That’s fine, Freddy.” She tried for more conviction. ‘That’s really fine.”
He watched her drain her glass. “It’ll get you seen.”
“Actually I’m not feeling too well.”
“You mean you don’t want to work.”
“I didn’t say that. I just said I wasn’t feeling too well.”
“Maria, I empathize. What you and Carter are going through, it tears my heart out. Believe me, I’ve been through it. Which is why I know that work is the best medicine for things wrong in the private-life department And I don’t want to sound like an agent, but ten percent of nothing doesn’t pay the bar bill.” He laughed, and then looked at her. “A joke, Maria. Just a joke.”
31
THE BLEEDING CAME AND WENT and came again. By late afternoon of her third day’s work on Interstate 80 there were involuntary pain lines on her forehead and she could not stand entirely upright for more than a few seconds. She sat back in the shadows on the edge of the set and prayed that the cameramen would be so slow with the set-ups that the day’s last shot would be delayed until morning. At five-thirty they got the shot in three takes and later in the parking lot she could not remember doing it.
By midnight the blood was coming so fast that she soaked three pads in fifteen minutes. There was blood on the bed, blood on the floor, blood on the bathroom tiles. She thought about calling Les Goodwin—it would be all right to call him, she knew that Felicia was in San Francisco—but she did not. She called Carter.
“Get the doctor,” Carter said.
“I don’t exactly want to do that.”
“For Christ’s sake then get to an emergency hospital.”
“I can’t,” she said finally. “The thing is, I’m working tomorrow.”
“What do you mean, working. What in fuck does working mean. You just told me you weredying.”
“I never said that.”
“You said you were afraid.”
Maria said nothing.
“Jesus Christ, Maria, I’m out here on the desert, I can’t do anything, will you please get to a hospital or do you want me to call the police to come get you.”
“You just want me in a hospital so that nothing’ll happen to make you feel guilty,” she said then, said it before she meant to speak, and when she heard the words she broke out in a sweat. “Listen,” she said. “I didn’t mean that. I’m just tired. Listen. I’ll call the doctor right now.”
“You have to swear to me.” Carter’s voice was drained, exhausted. “You have to swear you’ll call the doctor. And call me back if something’s wrong.”
“I promise.”
Instead she took a Dexedrine to stay awake. Awake she could always call an ambulance. Awake she could save herself if it came to that. In the morning, from the studio, she called the doctor.
“I’ll meet you at St. John’s,” he said.
“I can’t go to the hospital. I told you before, I’m working.”
“You’re hemorrhaging, you can’t work.”
“Oh yes I can work,” she said, and hung up. She had wanted to ask him for more Dexedrine, but instead she got some from a hairdresser on the set. While she was changing she found a large piece of bloodied tissue on the pad she had been wearing, and she put it in an envelope and dropped it by the doctor’s office on her way home from the studio. When she called the next day the doctor said that the tissue was part of the placenta, and that was the end of that. For the first time in two weeks she slept through the night, and was an hour late for her morning call.
32
“YOU WERE GOING to come over and use the sauna,” Larry Kulik said.
“I’ve been—”
“So I hear.”
“Hear what.”
“Hear you’re ready for a nuthouse, you want to know.”
“You think I need a sauna.”
“I think you need something.”
Maria said nothing.
“I’m a good friend to people I like,” Larry Kulik said. “Think it over.”
33
A FEW DAYS LATER the dreams began. She was in touch with a member of a shadowy Syndicate. Sometimes the contact was Freddy Chaikin, sometimes an F.B.I, man she had met once in New York and not thought of since. Certain phrases remained constant. Always he explained that he was �
��part of that operation.” Always he wanted to discuss “a business proposition.” Always he mentioned a plan to use the house in Beverly Hills for “purposes which would in no way concern” her. She need only supply certain information: the condition of the plumbing, the precise width of the pipes, the location and size of all the clean-outs. Workmen appeared, rooms were prepared. The man in the white duck pants materialized and then the doctor, in his rubber apron. At that point she would fight for consciousness but she was never able to wake herself before the dream revealed its inexorable intention, before the plumbing stopped up, before they all fled and left her there, gray water bubbling up in every sink. Of course she could not call a plumber, because she had known all along what would be found in the pipes, what hacked pieces of human flesh.
34
IN NOVEMBER THE HEAT BROKE, AND Carter went to New York to cut the picture, and Maria still had the dream. On the morning a sink backed up in the house in Beverly Hills she looked in the classified for another place to sleep.
“You’d be surprised the history this place has,” the man said as he showed her the apartment. He was wearing a pumpkin velour beach robe and wraparound glasses and she had found him not in the apartment marked “Mgr.” but out on Fountain Avenue, hosing down the sidewalk. “As a writer, it might interest you to know that Philip Dunne once had 2-D.”
“I’m not a writer,” Maria said.
“Excuse me, it was Sidney Howard.” He took off his glasses and wiped them on a sleeve of the beach robe. “Or so the legend goes.”
