“Oh, swell. Do they expect me to wear the suit?”
Neil smiled benignly, refusing to buy into my cynicism. “It’s next Saturday,” he said. “I thought we could make a day of it. I’ve never seen Catalina myself.” He was almost coy about the way he dropped the locale, a frisky light dancing in his eyes while he waited for it to register on me.
“Catalina? The island?”
He nodded.
“They’re having the funeral there?”
“That’s where they live,” he explained, enjoying himself immensely. “In Avalon. Janet grew up there.”
“Nobody grows up there.”
“Janet did.” He widened his eyes at me teasingly. “Ever been there?”
I had to admit I hadn’t. I know the place mostly from a couple of old songs and that line of swimsuits. The island is largely wilderness, I’ve heard, and Avalon is a toy town, a tourist mecca that enjoyed a boom in the twenties and thirties and hasn’t been the same since. They still have glass-bottom boats and salt-water taffy and that huge circular ballroom, the one so often depicted on sheet music, presiding over the harbor. As one of the songs goes, it’s just “twenty-six miles across the sea,” but no one I know has ever set foot there.
Neil was waiting for my answer. “So what do you say?”
“God, Neil. I just don’t know.”
“It would help me a lot if you came.”
“Why?”
“Aside from the pleasure of your company?”
“Yeah. Aside from that.”
“Well…Linda’s gonna be there.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t wanna get stuck with her all day. On an island.”
“What a thing to say about somebody you married.”
“Yeah…well…what can I tell you?”
“How fierce is she, anyway?”
“Not too.”
I gave him a dubious look.
He laughed. “Not at all. It would just help to have someone there.”
“A buffer.”
“No, a friend.”
“A friendly buffer. Is it a day trip?”
“It can be.”
“A boat or something?”
“Or a plane,” he said, “if you want.”
I told him I preferred the boat.
I’m writing this in bed. Renee is out at the movies (Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey) with her friend Lorrie from The Fabric Barn. I feel truly shitty, but it’s nice to have the house to myself, to be able to play my Nino Rota albums without provoking one of Renee’s oh-poo-not-again expressions. There’s a nondescript little breeze stirring my curtains, and the moon has just popped into view, red as a pumpkin. A scoop or two of rum raisin ice cream would lift my spirits considerably, but I’m just too tired—or too drained, maybe—to make the trek into the kitchen and haul out the ladder to the freezer.
Jeff called about an hour ago. We had the longest talk we’ve had in ages. They’ve started shooting Callum’s film, and it’s a closed set, so I think Jeff is on his own these days, except for a few stolen late-nighters at the Chateau Marmont. He seems as smitten as ever with Callum, but he’s surprisingly ungenerous with the particulars. I guess he’s superstitious about blowing a good thing. So to speak.
When he asked about my own schedule, I told him that so far I’d only been booked for a funeral.
“Oh, yeah?” he said blandly. “Anybody I know?”
I explained to him briefly about Janet, identifying her simply as “the woman who was doing my video.” He said almost nothing in response, and I wondered if her death came across as self-indulgent (if such a thing can be said about suicide) in the harsh light of his own experience. Most of the people Jeff knows are just trying to stay alive.
“So what happens now?” he asked.
“About what?”
“The video.”
“Oh, it was pretty much of a disaster already.”
No, I didn’t tell him about my tantrum. Don’t ask me why. Maybe I am feeling guilty.
“Too bad,” he said. “Sounded like a good idea.”
“Well…ya lose some, ya lose some.”
Jeff laughed ruefully. “That’s the fucking truth.”
“Are you writing?”
“Some.”
“That means none, right?” That settled it: he had to be in love. He only writes when he’s in pain.
“Cadence…”
“I’m writing.”
“Good for you.”
“I’ve got a snazzy new journal and everything.”
“So what are you writing about?” He made a real effort to sound pleasant about it, but I could tell he found it impertinent that a rank amateur was frolicking so carelessly in his chosen field.
I did my best to reassure him. “Just…stuff that happens. Nothing really important.”
“Mmm. Well, it’s always good therapy.”
“It is,” I said.
“And how’s your love life?”
“Well…the batteries are running low, but…”
He snorted. “C’mon. You know what I mean. The guy you work with. The African-American.”
I tried not to let him get to me. “He’s not my love life, Jeff. He never has been.”
“Well…”
“He’s not an African-American, either.”
“I thought you said…”
“I did, and he is. But he would never use that term. He’d sound too much like a white liberal.”
That zapped him nicely. He retaliated with a long, aggrieved silence.
I didn’t want to start a fight, so I added playfully: “You don’t even use it yourself. What were you doing? Trying it out? Seeing how it tripped off your tongue?”
He informed me, icily, that he’d used the term for weeks.
Yeah, I thought. Ever since you read that interview with Spike Lee in which “Afro-American” was declared unacceptable. I kept my mouth shut, though. Even in jest, I know not to dick with him when it comes to matters PC.
“I didn’t know he was a sore subject,” Jeff said.
“He’s not. He’s just not what you think.”
“OK, then.”
“He’s a good friend.”
“Glad to hear it.”
I had half intended to tell him about Janet’s funeral being in Catalina—and the trip with Neil and all—but I knew Jeff would just turn it into something it wasn’t. I gave myself a break and avoided the subject completely, rattling on about work and the lousy business we’ve been doing lately.
“Well,” Jeff remarked darkly, “we are in a recession.”
“You think they feel it in Beverly Hills?” I wasn’t being bitter; I really wanted to know. It would be way too easy to blame this career slump on the crappy economy. If my battered little star is finally sinking in the west, I prefer to face the facts and be done with it.
Jeff replied that even rich pigs have to tighten their belts sometimes and that “cutesy birthday parties” would probably be the first thing to go.
“Cutesy?” I protested.
He chuckled. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I believe I do.”
“C’mon, Cadence. Don’t pull that shit. You know you’re better than that job.”
“It’s my career, Jeff. It’s what I do.”
He just scoffed at that. “It’s not your career.”
“Then what the fuck is?”
“Cadence…?”
“What is, Jeff? I’d really like to know. I’m not a real singer. I’m certainly not an actress. After a while you have to look at a few realities, don’t you?” I have no idea where this came from, but it came with a holy vengeance, boiling out of me like toxic waste. “That cutesy little job of mine, as you call it, is what I do. It’s all they’ll let me do. I’d like to be flip about it, but I have to be proud of something, don’t I?”
Poor Jeff was struck dumb for a moment. Finally, he said: “Who is they?”
“What?”
> “They. You said it’s all they will let you do.”
I saw what he was getting at immediately and wanted no part of it. “They, Jeff. Them. The fuckheads who run the universe.”
“Ah.”
“And don’t give me that shit about how there aren’t any thems, because that’s all there is in my life, and that’s all there ever will be. I’ve got thems out the asshole.”
“Nicely put.”
“Fuck you. You know what I mean.”
After a long silence, he stepped in gingerly: “Would this by any chance be…?”
“No, it wouldn’t. I had it a week ago. This is pure unadulterated me.”
In recent years Jeff has developed the nasty habit of attributing everything to my all-powerful menstrual cycle: mood swings, earthquakes, Amtrak derailments…
“Want me to come over?” he asked.
“What for?”
“I dunno. To slap you silly?”
I was glad he couldn’t see me smile. “Just be thankful you didn’t call last week.”
“I am,” he said, “believe me.”
“I could be cracking up, I guess.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I’d like to be. I’d like something to happen.”
“Then something will.”
“No it won’t. Never again. I’m spinning my wheels, Jeff. Not even that; I’m parked. I’m parked in fucking Studio City and the lot is closed and nobody even comes around to kick my wheels anymore.”
“Write that down,” he said.
“Write it down yourself.”
“What about Leonard?” Jeff suggested. “He might have some ideas. Callum talks to him all the time.”
“Yeah, well, Callum is cute and has a pretty dick.”
“Cadence…”
“I only go by what you tell me.”
He let it slide. “Do you need money? Is that it? Because I could…”
“No. Well, I always do, but…”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, Jeff. Thanks.” He’d embarrassed me now, turning so unexpectedly sweet and sacrificial in response to my cattiness. There’s no way he could lend me money. As far as I know, he makes even less than I do. “I’m all right,” I told him. “It isn’t a loan I need, it’s a life.”
A longer life was what I should have said, but I was afraid of the feelings I’d unleash and Jeff’s proven inability to cope with them. Janet’s death, if nothing else, has made me more painfully aware of my own mortality, which is only natural for a little person—or so Mom used to tell me—even on a good day. When you’re a walking bag of organs like moi, you just can’t help wondering how much time you’ve got left.
Suddenly, in spite of myself, I wanted Ned there instead of his surviving partner—big old easy uncomplicated Ned—because Ned would have understood these emotions without having them explained to him. In the last months of his life we spent hours together, playing cards and putzing in his garden and enjoying the unspoken irony that fate had made us equals of a sort. Ned and I treasured each other’s company all the more, I think, because we both knew what it felt like to be living on a deadline.
13
SO FAR, I HAVEN’T TOLD ANYONE WHAT HAPPENED ON CATALINA. It’s not that I’m embarrassed; I just don’t know what to think at the moment, and I’m wary about entrusting such fragile, half-formed impressions to other interpretations—especially Renee’s and Jeff’s—before committing them to paper. With any luck at all, there should be enough room in this journal (the one Neil gave me, appropriately enough) to tell the whole story. If not, I’ll switch to something different.
The boat we took left from Long Beach, so we drove down late Saturday morning in the PortaParty van. The van was a sad sight, conspicuously unwashed and stripped of its usual jolly stock of props and streamers. It had all the poignancy of an empty stage. A cardboard box crammed with plastic beach toys rattled against the back door, but that was the extent of our cargo. I shuddered a little at this visual proof of the troupe’s decline, but didn’t remark on it to Neil, scared of what he might say.
“Are those Danny’s?” I asked, indicating the toys.
Neil smiled out at the white blur of the freeway. “We drove down to Zuma last week.”
I remarked that it was nice there.
He seemed a little surprised. “You like hanging out at the beach?”
“Sure.”
“Same here.” He grinned extravagantly, as if we’d just discovered something rare and wonderful in common.
“Where is he, by the way?”
“Who?”
“Danny.”
“Oh. Staying with the neighbors. Linda’s neighbors.”
I told him I’d hoped I might meet Danny today, that I’d wondered if either he, Neil, or Linda might bring the boy along for the day. It seemed like a great trip for a kid, after all, in spite of the circumstances.
“Yeah,” said Neil. “We talked about that.”
“But?”
He shrugged. “We just weren’t sure how heavy it might get. The funeral, I mean.”
Great, I thought, and suddenly I was picturing Mrs. Glidden again, only this time she had me by the throat of my charcoal crepe de chine funeral frock and was shaking the bejeezus out of me. Do you know what that video meant to my daughter? Do you? Do you have any idea?
“Of course I’d like him to see the island, but…”
“What? Sorry.” I’d lost track completely of what he was saying.
“Danny likes it at the neighbor’s,” he explained. “They’ve got a pool with a water slide.”
“Oh…well…that’s good.”
“Yeah. Gets him outa my hair.”
You could tell he didn’t mean that at all. It was just a man thing, mostly, a false gruffness designed to underplay his obvious devotion to his son. This embarrassment surprised me a little, since I’ve seen him be so unembarrassed around hundreds of children. I guess it’s different when it’s your own kid. “Is Linda taking the same boat?” I asked.
He shook his head. “She flew into Avalon this morning. She thought the Gliddens might need some help.”
I pondered that one for a moment or two, discarding several possibilities, all of them ghoulish. “Help with what?”
Neil smiled at me languidly. “I think there’s a brunch after the service.”
“Oh.” A funeral brunch, I thought. Only in California. As we barreled on down the freeway, bound for God knows what, the event grew more and more surreal in my head.
The dock for the Catalina Express was immediately adjacent to the Queen Mary, the classic thirties ocean liner, now dawdling away her declining years as a stationary hotel and all-round tourist trap. We had two hours to kill before our boat left, so we did the obvious, foolish thing and paid to go on board. The tickets were hideously expensive (Neil put it on his Visa card), and the approach to the gangplank alone nearly did me in. It seemed to wind along for miles, a grueling serpentine, routing us first through Ye Olde Phony English Village, then past a huge circular hangar containing Howard Hughes’s preposterous wooden airplane, the “Spruce Goose.” By the time I finally set foot on board the Queen Mary I was panting like a sheep dog in a heat wave.
“Are you OK?” asked Neil.
I fell back against a wall—a bulkhead; whatever—and swatted my chest several times with my palm. Neil hunkered next to me and offered me a handkerchief. I took a few broad swipes at my dripping brow and handed it back to him.
A squadron of children, accompanied by a haggard middle-aged female, came to a dead halt next to us, enraptured by what they must have taken to be the first of the ship’s exotic attractions. The adult—a teacher, I guessed—gaped at us just long enough to embarrass herself thoroughly, then salvaged what remained of her composure and bustled the children away. I took a deep breath. Then another. Then counted to ten slowly. My heart felt like a small, desperate bird trying to escape from my rib cage.
“Better,” I said at last.
“You sure?”
I nodded.
“Can I get you some water or something?”
“No,” I said. “Just shade. And a place to sit.”
We retreated to one of the big lounges, a calmly elegant space, all curves and gilt and cool green frescoes. Neil hoisted me onto a sofa, then gave the ship’s brochure a hurried once-over. “This was a big mistake, I guess.”
I told him we had no way of knowing that without seeing for ourselves.
“Everything’s so far away,” he said. “Unless…” He looked down at the brochure again.
“What?”
“They have something called The Haunted Passageway. It’s kind of a ghost tour. Like a fun house.”
“Kids in the dark? I don’t think so.”
He smiled. “Good point.”
“What sort of ghosts?”
“Oh…some deckhand who got crushed by an iron door. Back in the sixties. According to this, they still hear him thumping sometimes.”
I rolled my eyes, though I couldn’t help admiring the cold-blooded genius of the marketing strategy. The owners of this enterprise had obviously learned from experience that a pretty ship alone wouldn’t cut it with the American public; true Family Entertainment demands at least a smattering of gore. But that “ghostly” deckhand had been a real person, after all, who was mangled during my lifetime, a guy who probably still has a family somewhere, people who loved him and miss him and remember the real horror. Does it give them the shivers, I wondered, to know that he’s been reduced to a thrilling special effect, a scenic attraction in a spook house? Do they get royalties?
“We could split,” said Neil, reading my mind.
“We could.”
Without further ado, we made our way back to the neighboring dock. The afternoon had turned unseasonably hot, and a gritty industrial haze hung over the harbor. A long queue of tourists, laden with scuba gear and ice chests and plastic tote bags, had already gathered for the Catalina Express. A vein in my temple commenced to throb in smart syncopation with my dread. I was beginning to think I’d made a terrible mistake.
The voyage to the island took a little over an hour and a half. Mercifully, the smog lifted and the temperature dropped as soon as we were out of sight of land. The seats on the boat were airline style, really quite comfy, but the view they afforded was completely lost on me. Sensitive to this fact, Neil led me out to the slippery deck several times, where I clung for dear life to the bottom rung of the railing and made appreciative noises about the color of the water. A whey-faced lady in a sundress and Barbara Bush beads watched this awkward ritual with smug, philanthropic glee, as if I were some midwestern orphan with leukemia catching my first glimpse of the mighty Pacific. “She must enjoy that,” she said to Neil, apparently perceiving me to be deaf as well. For Neil’s sake, I restricted my response to a brief, murderous glare.