All That Was Happy

by M. M. Wilshire

  “I’m glad I came,” Beckie said. “I haven’t had anything to eat all day--I probably wouldn’t have--I can’t really enjoy eating when I’m alone.”

  “I feel like a good scotch and a decent steak,” Beckie said to the waitperson. “Load the potato, oil the salad, burn the T-bone and rock the scotch.”

  “Beckie just got served her divorce papers,” Black explained to the other two ladies in the booth. The women eyed Beckie attentively, their faces suffused with a loving support that put a lump in Beckie’s throat. “After which,” Black added, “she tried to commit suicide.”

  Beckie had to give the group credit--nobody flinched.

  “Beckie, perhaps you’d like to share your story with the group,” Black said.

  The waitperson materialized, slapped down a napkin before offloading a tall, sweating scotch, along with a simple tossed salad. Beckie sipped carefully, feeling the burn, almost not daring to speak.

  “My husband Bernie is the worst person in California,” she said. “After twenty-nine years of marriage, with no warning, he had me served with divorce papers. The only sign something was coming was his failure to kiss me good-bye before he set off to work this morning. I just found out that he’s having a baby with his hot young Irish-Hispanic office manager.”

  This admission, which would, by any normal standard, be a real conversation stopper, instead solicited various comforting cooing responses from the women assembled, the effect of which caused Beckie’s tears to flow freely.

  “I just don’t think twenty-nine years should be written off like that,” she cried. “It isn’t fair--I gave my entire life to him. What was I to him? Just somebody to help him with his laundry and keep the books at his business until he was rich enough to dump me and rob the cradle?”

  “Stop insulting yourself like that,” Scotia said. “Why do you automatically label yourself a loser just because someone else, who happens to be your husband, behaves like an idiot? Going through a divorce doesn’t make you a loser--you don’t have to get off the planet just because somebody tells you to shove off--you have just as much right to be here as anyone else. If somebody thinks they can write you off, so what? As long as you respect yourself, you don’t need to be concerned with others’ opinions.”

  “That was direct,” Beckie said, not looking up, avoiding the psychic intensity of Scotia’s blazing eyes by looking down instead and picking at her salad.

  “I guess I should tell you,” Black said, “the group’s rule of thumb is that when we’re together, we put aside the conventional conversational forms for something a bit more upfront--since women are expected to wear so many masks during their daily walk through the corridors of male power and domination--since we’ve been trained from birth to feel that what we do for men really doesn’t count as much as what they do for us--we find it refreshing to meet once a week to say whatever we really want to say, with the caveat that what we do say is said in love and mutual respect. Scotia is sort of the Patty Hearst of our little group--she just walks in to our emotional bank and starts blasting away--but it’s only out of concern for you.”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for anything like this,” Beckie said. “My wounds are a bit new, and raw. Perhaps I should just go home and go to bed.”

  “You can’t sleep it away, my dear,” Betty said. “I tried that for years--instead of dealing with my jackass producer of a husband, I chose to sedate myself in order not to rock our expensive little boat. I wound up with a sleeping pill addiction and I’ve got the shot liver to prove it. I finally had to throw the bum out and get on with my life.”

  The waiter arrived with a thick T-bone still sizzling.

  “Please stay,” Black said. “It won’t hurt you to at least eat something. And don’t I remember you telling me you were bringing a friend?”

  “I did bring him,” Beckie said. “But I’m not sure it’s appropriate to have a male guest at a table like this.”

  “Well, I’m sure we’d all like to meet him,” Black said. “Where is he?”

  “He’s right here,” Beckie said, reaching into her large straw purse and extracting the salivating handful of tiny canine, who, once at surface level, managed to spring free onto the T-bone and work a corner of it with a mind-blowing savagery.

  “Ladies,” Beckie said. “May I introduce Mr. Boopers? A few hours ago, he saved my life.”

  Chapter 5

  “So what’s your favorite flower?” Scotia said.

  “White Chrysanthemums,” Beckie said. “Whenever I see them, I feel giddy, as if I were on the verge of fainting.”

  “White Chrysanthemums for a girl with white-blonde hair--that’s just perfect,” Scotia said. “You’ve certainly got the looks I wish I had. That long blonde hair and those blue eyes certainly spell out California girl.”

  Scotia, a diminutive waif with a shiny head of short brown curls framing a lightly made-up elfin face, her body wrapped against the wind in a large black leather coat, leaned against the railing of the rudimentary fishing pier which jutted tentatively over the swells and shook submissively as each successive moonstruck foaming breaker contacted the loose-jointed pylons, the whole structure of which hosted the three members of WE who, along with Beckie, after dinner, had broken up into more intimate conversational pairings, having foregone the usual walk along the shoreline in deference to the crashing waves and driving wind, choosing instead the relatively drier platform of the pier.

  “I’m not a true native,” Beckie said. “But I’ll take the compliment. At forty-nine years of age, I don’t get many of them.”

  “You should get the compliments, from the tourists if nobody else,” Scotia said. “You could double for Suzanne Sommers. It sounds to me like you’ve been trapped in the typical marriage, where your husband took you and your looks totally for granted.”

  “I’m just starting to realize it,” Beckie said. “Much to my dismay.”

  “If you’re not a native, where are you from originally?”

  “Believe it or not,” Beckie said, “I’m a native Tennessean. We came out here in the early ‘60’s when I was ten years old--my dad was looking for work. He drove us out in a ‘62 Buick Special. I thought L.A. was going to be this little berg by the ocean--boy was I in for a shock.”

  “You don’t have an accent,” Scotia said.

  “The accent is something you lose when you find yourself the butt of all the hayseed jokes,” Beckie said. “I guess you could say my childhood entry into the multicultural world of the Los Angeles school playground was nothing short of brutal--the kids out here were a lot more sophisticated than I was--they showed me no mercy. For the first year, my only friend was a little girl from Guatemala--an orphan who spoke only broken English. To make things worse, I developed early--by the fifth grade I had pretty much the same body I do now--minus about twenty pounds--and went through pure hell from all the nasty little boys all the way to my Senior year at Van Nuys High School. I’m still not over it. It’s probably part of the reason I married Bernie when I was only 20--just to take myself completely off the market and get the whole thing over with.”

  “How’d you meet Bernie?”

  “Believe it or not,” Beckie said, “Bernie was the step-brother of my best friend Leah’s husband. Leah married her boyfriend right out of high school. I got to know Bernie through her--I think Leah did a little matchmaking in that regard. Every time there was a family event, Leah invited me. Bernie and I had our first kiss inside the pool cabana in somebody’s backyard in Encino while attending a Bar-Mitzvah for one of his cousins.”

  “Are you Jewish?”

  “No, it’s worse than you think--I’m Catholic. His parents hated me. I was Bernie’s blonde shiksa. Bernie’s mother was an ultra-orthodox Jew, and Bernie’s dad did time in a concentration camp--he had the number tattooed on his wrist and everything. I don’t have to tell you how my own Catholic parents reacted to the news of me dating somebody Jewish. Both sets of parents tried to break us up,
so we ran off to Vegas and tied the knot. Needless to say, we totally alienated our parents when we showed up married. My mother never did get completely over it. But enough about my sorry life--how about you?”

  “The short version? I’m single,” Scotia said. “I’m likewise not a native, being a transplant from upstate New York who also went into total cultural shock when I arrived a few years ago. I came out here ready to conquer all, armed with my AA degree in Physical Therapy and my Certified Massage Therapist license. My plan was to use my skills to support me while I tried to get into the movie business somehow, but I wound up working at a day spa in Beverly Hills and I’ve left it at that.”

  “That’s one thing I’ve never gotten used to about this town,” Beckie said. “Everybody you meet isn’t really what they seem--every guy who serves you a hot dog is an aspiring musician or actor--me, I was just a wife who worked for her husband’s tool import business.”

  “What about kids?” Scotia said.

  “We tried,” Beckie said. “Two miscarriages later, at our doctor’s advice, we quit trying--which is probably why I’m where I’m at today--Bernie left me to father a child, because we believed I couldn’t give him one.”

  “You gave him two,” Scotia said. “They just didn’t live very long. But they’re just as real--they still have their role in the universe.”

  “That sounds very Catholic to me,” Beckie said.

  “It’s also very Hindu,” Scotia said. “I was raised Methodist, but I’m exploring something with wider margins at the moment.”

  “Dr. Black was right,” Beckie said. “You are a little firebrand. What you just said about my babies being just as real as the ones who make it all the way to term knocked the wind right out of me. Somewhere, deep down, I’ve never accepted that I wasn’t their mother.”

  “Where are they buried?” Scotia said.

  “Oh,” Beckie said. “No place, really.”

  “They just took them, didn’t they?” Scotia said. “They always do that--they did the same thing to me when I had an abortion last year--I was only having the abortion to please the man I was seeing, and emotionally I was in the wrong zone and I let them get away with it. But since I’ve started working with Maharaji, I’m learning to make some new connections with myself and how I relate to the world. In fact, I think it’s wrong for them to dispose of our fetuses the way they do. What they’re saying is that whatever is inside a woman’s body is nothing but trash to them. But that’s going to change--this coming year, I’m getting a bunch of women together to start a class action lawsuit about that.”

  “This is going too deep for me,” Beckie said. “I’m starting to need a drink in the worst way.”

  “I’m sorry,” Scotia said. “I’ve become something of a combat puncher since I’ve been in town. I live just off Melrose, in Gower Gulch, which is a real psychic war zone--everybody you meet is laying out their psychobabble all the time--it’s probably the most bizarre pocket of L.A. I could possibly have chosen, but I’ve adjusted, somewhat, and I think it’s been good for me--you know what I mean--the way everybody around me is working on their issues and all.”

  “Compared to you,” Beckie said, “I feel like I’ve never talked about anything my entire life except what to fix for dinner, where to go for dinner, or what movie to rent.”

  “I had to learn to be willing to explore the inner world,” Scotia said. “Most of the early encouragement I received, I got from my boss, Vito. He’s a stylist to the stars, but he’s into personal growth and discovery and all that--he finally convinced me that if I was ever going to strengthen the weakness in my aura, I would have to confront the bad karma surrounding my abortion. To make a long story short, I took Vito’s advice and started working with Dr. Black.”

  “I’m sorry,” Beckie said. “I guess compared to your problems, my plain old everyday divorce must seem dull.”

  “Not at all,” Scotia said. “It doesn’t matter what your issues are--the real trip we’re on is learning how to climb up the ladder of fear until we’re on top of the world--until we’re free! That’s what Dr. Black is all about. That’s why she started WE. Do you think you’ll be joining us, Beckie? Are you ready to start climbing the ladder of your fears?”

  “If I look at my life all at once,” Beckie said, “I feel buried alive--but I’m starting to like the ladder idea--the idea that I’ll just take one problem at a time, one fear at a time--my biggest fear earlier today was sleeping in my own bed alone--I cried my guts out at the thought of climbing into that bed all by myself for the rest of my life--after that, I decided to kill my husband and then kill myself. I waited for him outside the warehouse, but I fell asleep and he slipped past me.”

  “Would you have really killed him?” Scotia said.

  “Yes,” Beckie said. “I know it sounds crazy, but at the time, I think I was a little crazy. I was going to give him four shots right in the chest, then reload my spare round and end my own life.”

  “Will you join our little group?” Scotia said. “Will you become a member of WE?”

  “I want to say no,” Beckie said, “because part of me had it all planned out to be a martyr--I’ve spent my entire life serving my husband’s needs. Now that the someone I served no longer needs me, it makes more sense to me to kill myself.”

  “That’s part of the problem all women suffer from,” Scotia said. “We sacrifice ourselves for others--the problem is, in your case, you’re carrying the sacrifice too far. That’s why the universe sent Mr. Boopers in to break up the murder-suicide plot you had going. Mr. Boopers is trying to show you that your services are still needed--that even a quarter pound pooch is worth staying alive for--but you can’t serve Mr. Boopers until you learn to stop punishing yourself.”

  “Wow,” Beckie said.

  “Yeh,” Scotia said. “It’s pretty incredible, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Beckie said. “I wasn’t talking about what you just said. I said Wow because I just saw something in the water. Look down! I just saw a huge fish come up to the surface and go back down.”

  “Oh man, you’re right,” Scotia said. “There it is!”

  “It’s a shark!” Beckie said. “It’s right below us!”

  “Dr. Black!” Scotia yelled. “Betty! Come quick! There’s a Great White in the water!”

  “It’s got something in it’s mouth!” gasped Beckie.

  “A seal!” Black said. “It’s eating a seal!”

  The group assembled on the rail and marveled at the sight of the feeding shark, a creature unconcerned with proper table etiquette, or climbing ladders of fear, and one not needing permission of any sort to behave in whatever way it chose, a creature whose life was spent effortlessly cruising through a kind of liquid eternity, and who contained within its taut muscularity all the energy and resilience of a god, imparting to their collective souls a sense of awe, and a reverence, if such it could be called, for the massive fish which had chosen that precise instant to display itself to them as if to send them the message that life wasn’t all wrapped up, that there still remained within the envelope some room for mystery, and power.

  The excitement of the four women--transmuted to Mr. Boopers through the large straw bag--caused his hairless head to appear and, upon looking down and seeing the impressive poundage and cool fury of the feeding predator in the water, further inspired him to unleash a series of short, sharp barks of which his willingness to do so--to face the necessary but unpleasant task of chasing the evil thing away from his new master--demonstrated clearly to everybody present his considerable loyalty and courage, the size of which was certainly greater than the sum of his parts. With an impressive surge, as if acknowledging Mr. Boopers wishes, the big fish submerged beneath the rolling, foam-backed waves.

  “Oh man,” Betty said. “I was going wading in a few minutes--I always wade up to my knees whenever we come here. I’m going back inside for a drink.”

  “Dr. Black,” Beckie said. “I’m going to join WE--I�
�m going to become a Woman Empowered.”

  Chapter 6

  On the drive back into Santa Monica from Paradise Cove, Beckie stared at nothing for a long time. She’d popped a Tofranil before leaving the Sandcastle and that, plus the small amount of scotch she’d consumed, had helped push back the grief to a place just beyond the fringes of feeling--for the moment. But as she approached the short, curving ramp by which she would ascend from the ocean’s edge to the security of the bluff and Palisades Park, the pain, uninvited as it was, closed back in and the first fear she’d been wrestling with--that of sleeping alone for the first time--began to encircle her guts with strands of what felt like electrified barbed wire. She could draw only one conclusion--going home alone wasn’t going to cut it.

  It didn’t take her long to find a parking space behind Chillers and make her way into the crowded bar, the place in full swing with younger people in tight jeans and combat boots who held good jobs in daylight hours serving their city as civil engineers and environmental planners, many of them on loan from the vast, corn-fed universities of the Midwest, places where nothing ever happened and nothing ever would, places to which they would return upon completion of their internship in this, the largest city in the nation, a city which encouraged them to open more than a few top buttons before they swam back upstream and died a living death in some backwater high-rise.

  He was there, and she went up to him.

  “What’ll it be,” he said.

  “I saw you earlier today,” she said. “I was on the patio with my friend.”

  “I remember you,” he said. “The Banana Banshee. Can I get you another?”