“Wow—he died in ’52…he lived that long. That’s, like, during Elvis,” Michelle blinks.
“Wait, I’ve got a scene,” Stacey says: “It’s 1952. We start in the daughter’s apartment,” she acts out. “California sunshine streaming through Venetian blinds. A TV plays in the corner. An OLD MAN, 84, lifts a slat of the Venetian blind to gaze at traffic on the street outside. A THUNDERBIRD goes by. (50’s right? those BIG FINS?) A CADILLAC. Followed by a PONTIAC. The names of Indians—THUNDERBIRD, CADILLAC, PONTIAC—turned into CARS! Seeing this, the OLD MAN grabs his chest, falls down, has a heart attack and dies. The OLD MAN is actually Edward Curtis! Then—FLASHBACK: YOUNG CURTIS (the handsome one) on horseback, his CAMERA on a packhorse, on THE PLAINS. TIPIS in the middle distance. He rides in. What do you think? It’s kind of Citizen Kane meets Dances with Wolves.”
“—Citizen Kane?” I repeat.
“—oh: hey: oh, my god: isn’t there even an Indian reservation that’s called ROSEBUD?”
I look at Jon. Jon looks at me. “I’m curious to know how you fell back in love with him enough to write the novel,” Jon asks.
“Because of this,” I say.
I draw out a Polaroid and lay it on the table.
“What is it?”
“Read the stone.”
“—oh my god it’s Curtis’s grave. You went there?”
“I went everywhere I could. I went up to Seattle to find the buildings he and Clara lived in—I went out to the reservations. I went to the Smithsonian, the Morgan Library. Then finally I drove to Forest Lawn one day. And sat down next to him.”
“—our Forest Lawn?” Alison asks.
“He’s buried in Glendale. You should go. Before you make your movie.”
“—why?”
“Because that’s where the story is.”
She tilts her head, looks at the photograph, then back at me: “I need more.”
“He was an absent husband and a disappearing father,” I explain. “A shit to everyone who loved him all his life.”
“Geniuses always are.”
“Well, you can believe that if you need to.”
“—don’t you?”
“For a long time, I couldn’t figure out if there was anything that Edward Curtis ever loved.”
“Why did he have to love something?”
“Because it makes a better story.”
“Well then—he loved taking photographs of Indians.”
“—then why did he stop?”
“You tell me.”
“I have. That’s what my book’s about.”
The room goes suddenly astonishingly quiet. It’s almost like a stunned reaction to my saying That’s what my book’s about. It’s frightening. You can hear a pin drop. It’s as if every sound has been sucked out of the room and then I feel A PRESENCE loom and a beautiful tanned hand falls on Stacey’s shoulder. Don’t mean to interrupt, the car is waiting for us, and there He is. Like a vision. Probably the most beautiful human I have ever seen and Stacey is saying You know Jon and Jon is shaking hands with Him and Stacey is saying And this is Marianne who’s going to write the Curtis project for us and He flashes me a smile and extends his perfect hand in my direction saying I’m really looking forward to hearing your ideas, and I lift my hand and slide it into His, look up into His eyes and tell Him, “Ga.”
Thousands of women have probably said exactly the same thing to Him since He was twelve so He fields my stupefaction with impeccable grace and then Stacey tells Jon she’ll call him to confirm a meeting for next week and she tells me that she’s looking forward to reading The Shadow Catcher on the weekend, then they’re gone and Jon and I are left there all alone, at the table, in His life-altering absence.
“Ga?” Jon asks. “—that, and being fifty minutes late,” he summarizes. He picks up my Polaroid of the Curtis gravesite. “Worth the trip?”
“Did you know He was going to be here?”
“He’s been living in hotels. Since the separation.”
“You might have warned me.”
“So you’d come on time? Or so you’d come with better hair. I meant this. Is-it-worth-the-trip-to-Forest-Lawn? I’m curious what you found there. ’Cause it’s not in the novel.”
“I thought I owed it to him.”
“And, so…what?—he spoke to you?”
“They did.”
“The…Indians?”
“His children.”
“I thought they were dead.”
“—and buried. Right there. All four of them. Two on either side of him. Not even with their own spouses. It’s as if they thought they might finally get his attention. For all eternity.”
“They idolized him,” he estimates.
“There must have been something wonderful about him, for all four grown-up kids to want to be there.”
“My daughters won’t want to be buried by my side, and I’m pretty wonderful.”
“Yeah but, you haven’t disappeared.”
“—those adventuring types: I’ve always been suspicious. What are they running from? Do any of those guys who discover the North Pole ever have a wife and kids?”
“Sure, but the archetype of THE COWBOY is a loner. Man, a horse, the open country—that’s the movie these birds want to make. I could tell them fourteen different ways it’s not the story of Curtis’s life, they’ll still want to make a cowboy movie out of it.”
He walks me out and pays the valet and sees me to my car. “Know where you’re going?”
“I’m gonna stay on Sunset to the 405.”
“I’ll call you when I know something,” he says. “Take care,” he adds.
I start the car, he backs away.
I wave.
And suddenly he signals, STOP.
“On second thought—” he calls out:
“—take Sepulveda!”
reds
The 101, which you have to take from the 405 to get to where I live (unless you take Ventura Boulevard), runs North to South from Ventura County toward Los Angeles, but then as it passes through Los Angeles, it doglegs inland in a true West-to-East direction, even though the signs still say 101 North and 101 South. So when I’m driving home from downtown L.A., from anywhere in the basin or from the other side of the hills, I’m always driving WEST, which in the afternoon means I’m driving toward the sun or, to put it another way, into the infrared. Into the western sunset, into the RED of western sky. Sunset where I live is only rarely red—it’s generally burnished rose or fatty salmon-colored—but I understand the Newtonian inarguables of Earth’s refraction and the truth that: at the close of day the world goes red. This fact of life is even more stunning if you happen to be in one of those places on Earth where the exposed rock is of the Triassic era, a time in Earth’s history when it’s believed there was more oxygen in the atmosphere than in previous eras, owing to the lack of plant life on the surface. Superoxidation, it’s believed, produced the kind of ferric red you see in rocks containing iron in places like Red Rock Canyon, for example. Or Sedona, Arizona. Or the Utah flats. Or around the Solway Firth in Scotland, for that matter. Red earths, red rocks, the color of dried blood. Earthly redbeds everywhere are a symptom of Triassic time, and anywhere they surface on Earth’s skin, as if on a living body, their color is the same: blood. It’s said that red was the first color hu mankind could differentiate. I don’t know how this could be proven but I suspect it has to do with Newton again and probably with the shape of the human eye as it evolved in the human skull, perhaps being, prismatically, more bullish on the carmine wavelength. I collect these little facts about the color red because my daughter is a redhead; and because my Greek grandmother’s maiden name was KOKINOS (the Greek adjective for RED). She, herself, was not a redhead, although her twin brother Sam was reported to have been one, which I find confusing. RED is associated with ALARM (no doubt because it’s the color of mammalian blood), and it is officially the most alarming color on the current Homeland Security Alert color cha
rt. If I had to choose the human hair color that I find the most beautiful, it would be red because it’s frankly stunning and alive and volatile (besides my daughter, Da Vinci was a redhead; so was Jefferson; and so was Curtis), but outside the spectrum of human beauty, I don’t particularly like the color. I don’t particularly like garnets or rubies (or strawberries for that matter.) I don’t wear the color well, having a high complexion, anyway; and I don’t even grow red-colored flowers, with the exception of three explosive bougainvilleas that I inherited when I bought my house. I went through a red period in London when I decorated with Moroccan carpets and Turkish kilims, but here in California I don’t have a single piece of crimson fabric in the household. So when I come home from the meeting at the Hotel Bel Air and the red light’s flashing on my answering machine, it’s noticeable right away, even from the doorway. For me to have 9 MESSAGES in a single afternoon is (here it comes:) a red letter day:
1—“Miss Wiggins? This is Emily Rosen of Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada. My number is 702-731-8112. Please call me back when you get this message. It’s an urgent matter. Thank you.”
I play it back again, to make sure I’ve taken down the number right. Vegas—where the odds are always stacked against the future and the biggest cons are played. Where identity is mutable. And fortunes bleed into the RED. The antithesis of all Nevada’s ghost towns—fastest-growing city in the nation. Sound my country makes when she is making her escape:
2—“Miss Wiggins, it’s Emily Rosen again. 702-731-8112. Sunrise Hospital. Please return my call.”
3—“Miss Wiggins, Mrs. Rosen again. If you’d call me, please, at—
And suddenly the phone rings. Startling me.
Hello—?
Miss Wiggins?
—yes.
Marianne Wiggins?
—yes.
Miss Wiggins, this is Mrs. Rosen from Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas, Nevada.
(I recognize her voice.)
I’ve left several messages for you, already, today.
(I say nothing.)
Miss Wiggins, if I may just confirm: you are the daughter of John Wiggins?
What is this about?
John F. Wiggins?
(I don’t answer.)
Born third December nineteen twenty?
(I answer, slowly, but suspiciously: affirmative.)
Miss Wiggins, your father was brought in late this morning in cardiac arrest. He’s in our Cardiac ICU at present, but he’s still unconscious. I’m sorry.
Well, you should be. My father died more than thirty years ago.
John F. Wiggins, born December 3, 1920, in Quarryville, Pennsylvania? Social Security Number one nine six, one oh, eight two one six? I’ve got his Nevada driver’s license right here in my hand.
If this is a prank, you oughta know I’m reporting this to the police as soon as I hang up—
I assure you, Miss Wiggins, this is not a prank. There was a newspaper article about you in his wallet, which is how—
OK, that’s it.
(I hang up.)
And immediately dial 411, ask for the general telephone number of Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas to compare it to the number this Rosen lady left. The area code and first four digits are the same. I dial the general number, ask for Cardiac ICU.
Cardiac, hello?
Hello. To whom am I speaking, please?
Nurse Furth. To whom am I speaking?
Ma’am someone purporting to be from your hospital has been calling my home in Los Angeles all day long, regarding a patient who was brought into your unit this morning? John Wiggins?
I’m not at liberty to divulge patient information over the telephone.
Well, can you tell me if someone called Emily Rosen works there?
Oh yes—she’s in Admitting. Are you the daughter we were trying to find earlier?
(I’m too stunned to form an answer.)
I tried to find a number for you earlier, when your dad came in. We’ve got him stabilized, but I think you’ll want to get here a.s.a.p.
Ma’am: my father’s dead.
Oh god, is that what they told you—? Oh lord no, no, Mr. Wiggins is still unconscious, but—
Mr. Wiggins is dead. My father is. My Mr. Wiggins. I don’t know who your so-called Mr. Wiggins is, but my Mr. Wiggins died in April 1970. So this is some mistake.
Well I apologize, Miss Wiggins. But I don’t see how that’s possible.
—you don’t? It’s not like JOHN and WIGGINS are low-probability NAMES. Don’t you run I.D. checks? Go online. Check the Social Security Death Index. My father’s facts are in there. Anyone with reading skills and a computer could have stolen his identity.
Well only if they’re eighty-four years old.
(She’s got a point. Absurd as it may sound.)
How old does your guy look?
Eighty. Eighty-ish. Plus he had a Universal Donor card in his pocket with you listed as his next of kin.
(I stare out my kitchen window at the sunset. And blink a couple times.)
Miss Wiggins—?
Yeah I’m thinking.
Let me transfer you back to Mrs. Rosen so she can run that DMF for you.
(I wait. DMF, I know, stands for Death Master File. I know this because I logged onto it, myself, researching Curtis.)
—Miss Wiggins?
(I recognize Rosen’s voice.)
I apologize for hanging up on you before, Mrs. Rosen, but I needed to verify your call.
I’m running that DMF check right now—yup. Well golly. Here he is. Just like you said. JOHN F. WIGGINS. Died April 1970. Sorry about that. We don’t normally check to see if someone’s already dead when they come in with valid I.D. and a warm body. Don’t know how this happened. I’ve never had a situation quite like this.
Are you going to notify the police? I’d appreciate knowing who this imposter is—how he got his information. You say I’m listed as the next of kin? Was mine the only name?
Yep.
—because I have a sister and she should have been listed, too.
Well, Identity Theft. There’s no explaining how it works. It’s everywhere. I don’t suppose…? there’s any chance…?
(What?)
That your father had a twin?
No, Mrs. Rosen.
—or that he might still be alive?
None.
—had to ask.—alrighty, then.—let’s stay in touch.
(I check the time—eight thirty on the East Coast, in Virginia. I dial my sister, and she answers.)
—hey, little bird (I say.)
—hey! I was just thinking about you!
Am I interrupting?
Heck no we’re just crashed out in front of the TV.
(It’s unusual for me to call her at this hour, during family time, and she intuits something.)
Listen—something weird just happened: I got a call from a hospital in Las Vegas. They say they’ve got an eighty-year-old man who claims he’s daddy.
You’re joking.
No. Someone’s posing as him. Swear to god. Some eighty-four-year-old with daddy’s name and Social Security number…And the thing is—(We both fall silent. Until J-J asks:)
Why are you doing this?
This isn’t my idea, J—
Somebody’s using his old I.D. So what?
Some eighty-year-old-man. I think I oughta go and see.
Thirty years, and you’re still—
—don’t you ever wonder?
No.
Well I do.
Well you shouldn’t.
Don’t you ever dream that—I don’t know—he went somewhere?—instead? I dreamed once he showed up and told me he’d been living in another city all this time. It was really strange. I woke up strangely…confused…but sorta happy.
(She doesn’t answer, but it sounds like she’s breathing funny. Then finally she says,) That’s a childish fantasy.
I know, but—
Please don’t do this, Cis.
/> —we never saw the body.
Marianne—
Uncle Nick went to identify him. You probably don’t remember. And I think Nick took George or Mike or Archie with him. Now they’re all dead.
—just stop this, will you?
(I stop.)
It’s morbid.
(She may be right.)
I mean, Las Vegas! (she says, as if that, in and of itself, should settle any argument.)
I think I should go find out what this guy’s story is (I say.)
( J-J doesn’t answer.)
What do you think? (I finally ask.)
You know what I think, (she says.) I think this is all some hoax you’re buyin’ into. For whatever reason.
You’re not curious?
I didn’t get the so-called call. So I’m not so curious. But you do what you hafta do.
Well, I’m gonna drive to Vegas.
—you’re going to drive?
I think that’s the point.
—how far is it?
Five, six hours.
—you’re gonna go alone? Take someone (she argues. My sister’s version of directions.)
“I’ll be fine, don’t you worry.”
“Call when you find out. Call me—promise.”