Fear of Dying (23 page)

I had read
Chéri
and
The Last of Chéri
over and over and dreamed of a young lover who would want to wear my pearls—and eventually shoot himself for love of me. Though, of course, it was not love of Léa that killed Chéri, but the impossibility of stopping time.

He was like me. He
was
me—but I had no gun. Gun or no, I would accept age as Léa did and Chéri never did—and move along the down escalator of life.

My phone pinged. It always pinged at the most inopportune times.

“Your phone,” Em said.

“Fuck my phone,” I said.

“No thanks,” she said.

I hugged her. I was not about to tell her about the sexual fantasies my phone transmitted. My parents had been hot. How long had that lasted? A long time, I hoped. But like any daughter, I didn't want to think about it too graphically. I knew my father had frequented happy-endings massage parlors at some point in his later life. I knew because I saw his credit-card bills at that point. What else could “Asian Ending” mean? More power to him! Sex is life—but children don't want to think about their parents doing it.

We went on to the jewelry. Less confusing. Em wanted the big pink pearls. So did I.

“We should call Antonia,” I said.

“She doesn't want jewelry. She only wants money,” Em said.

“But she should have the chance!”

“The hell with her,” Em said bitterly. “She got much more money than either of us—she had the most kids.”

“I never knew it bothered you. You got the store and all the rare books.”

“It was the
least
I could get since my poor dead husband rescued the business from
collapse
!”

“God, Emmy, do you
really
think that?”

“I don't think it—it's a fact. A fact is a fact is a fact. You were off making movies and getting married and married again. She was off being hysterical in Ireland and having babies! And we were
here
taking care of everyone as they deteriorated. We had no life!”

“What? You had the life you wanted—Bibliomania—the books, the autographs, the parental units that went with them. Not to mention the building on Fifty-seventh Street, appreciating in value.”

“Do you realize how many mortgages it had on it? Daddy was a terrible real estate person. By the time it came to us, it had three mortgages!”

“But you sold it for a fortune!”

“A fortune?”

“Well, what
did
you sell it for?”

“Not that much,” Em said.

“How much?”

“Well, if I give you the number, it'll be misleading.”

“The facts, please, Em; you love facts!”

“Well, after the mortgages, the expenses of running it, the share to Mommy and Daddy, the—”

“Come on, Em, I heard you got more than a hundred million.”

“That's a bald-faced lie! Who told you that?”

“I don't remember.”

“But your husband is rich as Croesus, and last time I looked, you had five houses—New York, London, Paris, Aspen, Rousillon, not to mention the yacht, which is taller than most apartment buildings!”

“Have you stood it on end and measured it? You amaze me, Emmy. I never thought you were so astute at counting other people's money!”

“It was just a tiny falling-down building.”

“A tiny falling-down building on Fifty-seventh Street—next to Steinway Hall!”

Em didn't answer but she looked sour. She was not happy about the way her life had worked out. That was the problem. No money could ever cure that. Money may make the world go round, but it can't cure family unhappiness. Or marital disappointment. Or the feeling you have never risked your life for joy.

I supposed she
had
got a huge amount of money for the old bookstore brownstone. I wasn't paying attention. Daddy no doubt got his share, but Em and her late husband had reaped the rest—whatever it was. Sure, there were expenses. There always were—taxes, mortgage interest, lawyers, accountants, the whole megillah. There are
always
expenses to pay, but that didn't mean she got nothing. She just wanted me to believe that, and I didn't. I felt she had stolen my patrimony in exchange for my pathetic fame, and I was mad. I was determined to have the best pearls. I should let go.

Why fight about it? I had enough. At least I thought so at the time. But I was furious. My little sister got my patrimony. It may have been a crumbling brownstone with funny-smelling stairs and more rare books than we could ever inventory correctly. It may have been so rotten as to be unrenovatable, but it had a prime location, and my parents had bought it in 1951! It was the way of my family to always poor-mouth their real estate, to complain about their investments, in order to undo the evil eye of envy. But if you figured that they had started buying rare books and autographs before anyone knew what they were worth, that all their real estate was in areas that went up, up, up, that they had terrific taste and knew all the actors, artists, and composers of their time—you knew that whoever got their stuff would make out like a bandit.

I wanted the pink pearls, goddamnit! And I was gonna have them—as well as my brass balls!

We looked for the pearls. Mother used to keep them in a locked box built into the floor of her bedroom under the mauve Chinese rug.

We searched for the key for hours, found it in a jewelry box in Mother's dressing room, and with held breath opened the floor safe. It was full of those little silk bags and boxes Japanese jewelers used to display the pearls in, but not a necklace was left. There were a few loose pearls—scratched and mismatched—but no necklaces, no rings, no pins, no earrings.

“Where have they gone?” Em wailed.

“Where does anything go?” I said. “Pearls are live substances. They rolled away.”

“
You
took them!” Em said.

“I wish I had, but I didn't.”

Em glared at me the way a pawnbroker looks at a bad risk. “Tell me the truth.”

“I always tell you the truth,” I said. “And you always think I'm lying.”

“Who the hell took them?”

“Anyone could have—a caregiver, a nurse, a cook. Mother had so many people in and out of her life. This happens all the time. ‘Nothing in the safe but a rubber mouse,' my friend Livia told me after her mother died. ‘Her huge canary diamond replaced with glass,' Clarissa said. Happens all the time. Jewels walk away and their gleam was all in your mind. Maybe they never existed—like the diamond as big as the Ritz or the jeweled forests of the twelve dancing sisters.”

“Goddamnit!” Em said. “She should have given them to us years ago!”

“I guess,” I said. But secretly I was exultant. Em would not get them. No one would.

“You can be philosophical—with all the jewelry Asher gave you!”

“Do you want it? Wanna trade it for your First Folio?”

Em looked at me cynically. “Sold it ages ago,” she crowed.

“Let's not do this anymore,” I said. “I'm exhausted.” Why was I fighting about money and jewelry with someone I deeply loved? I wanted to take it all back. Probably she did too.

“Me too,” said Em.

And we locked the empty safe, unrolled the carpet, and left by the front door. One of these days I would have to find forgiveness for and with my sisters. It was my next life challenge.

*   *   *

After we buried my mother, I could not believe she was dead. I'd wake up every morning with a vision of her lying in bed as usual on the other side of the park.

“I must go see her!” I'd admonish myself. And then I'd remember that what was left of her was in the cemetery. But my memories of her changed. Instead of the ghostly centurion lying in bed, she became the energetic mother of my youth. She was ice-skating, dancing, jumping, shouting, full of beans. Though I could not go back in time, it seemed she could. That was the secret to going back in time: You had to be dead to do it.

*   *   *

I felt as if someone had knocked all the foundations out from under me, as if I were floating in space with no Earth to land on. Then I would go to Glinda's house and stare at the sleeping form of my grandson, Leo. Now he was the one who grounded me. He was my rock—small as he was.

We are held to this life by our connections with others—family, friends, lovers. Otherwise we might drift off in space. I wished for Isadora to be there with me, but she had taken off on a long trip to India.

The next time I went to my parents' apartment, I found myself in the midst of a play. The place was filled with movers, boxes, relatives sorting through old photographs, junk dealers, Realtors, painters, floor scrapers, and curiosity seekers. I never thought we'd sell the family dump, but it was too valuable to keep and the money glistened just out of sight. My parents had once rented it for two hundred dollars a month and now it was worth millions. So we had to get rid of tons and tons of stuff—nobody had room to keep it. The photographs were the worst, the trivia of lost lives.

What I really wanted to do was to create a museum for my parents—with walls of photographs, all the portraits of them and their children—us!—a museum that could never be destroyed. And the place for it was obvious: the old Bibliomania brownstone with its strange smells and stained walls. But my sister had sold it. And now we were preparing to sell the apartment. My parents would be reduced to their narrow graves, their last real estate. No museum of innocence or experience would ever hold their memories. Everything would be sold for lack of space. Memories giving way to money.

I wish I believed in God—any god really. Lakshmi, Ganesha, Jesus, Allah. I wish I believed my mother was not just rotting in her coffin in the ground. I wish I believed her life meant something besides giving birth to me and my sisters. I wish there was a golden abacus totting up her worth in heaven or an angelic ascension or transformation into sainthood—something to make her life have meaning as she left it, something besides her fleeting fame and aging children. Why can't I believe in a god or goddess or grace? Why does her life become a heap of dust—and by extension mine? All her joie de vivre, her rage, her talent now rotting in a box. The Italian proverb goes: “After the game, both king and pawn lie in the same box.”

The queen and pawn too. I wish I believed that transfiguration followed death. I wish I believed.

But of course the Buddha believed in neither birth nor death. When the right conditions are present, the being manifests itself. When they are not present, the being remains hidden. My mother was hidden now. Perhaps she would manifest again in another form. She herself had always believed that. She adored flowers and fruits and vegetables and would not have minded being born again as a dahlia, a rose, or a peony. Even a peach. Or a tomato. She knew that everything was connected.

Was that comforting? Yes and no. Birth and death are meaningless concepts in Buddhism. The wave rises to a crest, flows along, then breaks and rises again. We are waves that will rise again, fall again, rise again. We are not solid but fluid. We love the sea because we
are
the sea. A wave is a wave is a wave. Apologies to Gertrude Stein.

*   *   *

I had sent Isadora's pages to my agent and she had gone crazy over them. I knew I was not authorized to share them, so I told the agent that they were written by a friend called Will Wilde. Where I got the name, I cannot tell you. Will for Shakespeare? Wilde for Oscar? Two favorite writers of mine. But who cares? The names matter less than the vision.

My agent sold her book to a movie company for a shitload of money and then it was sold to a publishing company for another shitload.

I got really nervous about telling Isadora. I'd had no right to do this and now it appeared that Will Wilde was about to become a star.

Alone on his asteroid, Will Wilde was preparing for his debut. What the fuck would I do?

 

 

 

 

The most important thing to remember is that life is a comedy. Here I had lost my father, my mother, my dog, and almost my husband, but I was still able to see the absurdity of life. And that was when I received the invitation to India. This was wonderful since we had been planning a trip to India anyway.

Never die without seeing India. Luck was with us because just as we had decided to flee New York for the gorgeous and terrifying subcontinent, a film festival in Goa invited me to participate. It seemed that my hoary old soap,
Blair's World
, had become a huge hit in India. I had almost forgotten it as millions of Indians were watching it and identifying with it.

The most curious thing about our world of indelible media is how far it travels and how lasting it is. Somewhere in another galaxy, aliens are watching
I Love Lucy
and trying to understand what it all means. I can imagine a day when the earth has become uninhabitable but our soap operas are streaming in space. Is this what immortality means?

I had been to India before but Ash had not. Anyway, India is so amazingly diverse and huge that you can hardly know it at all without a thousand trips. You have to live there to even begin to appreciate its aromas and its astonishing diversity. India is a vast cosmos full of colors and smells and wonders and horrors. I had visited Mumbai, New Delhi, and Rajasthan and I knew I had only scratched the surface of the subcontinent. Of course, I was deeply cynical about the possibility of India transforming my life. I hardly believed such things were possible. But I needed a break from all the deaths that had consumed me—and India seemed like the place to go. I had recently read a hilarious and moving book set partly in Varanasi and I thought it evoked the ferocious contrasts of India—spirituality and sewage, holiness and humbug, high civilization and low comedy. I knew Asher and I had to go to India together, but I didn't yet know why. In my adolescence I had read Rabindranath Tagore and swooned. Later I fell in love with India according to Merchant Ivory. Still later I read E. M. Forster's
A Passage to India
relentlessly, musing on which of the characters might have been inspired by his Indian lover. I knew none of these Indias—nor indeed Hermann Hesse's nor Salman Rushdie's nor Kiran Desai's—was the real India. Possibly there was no real India any more than there is a real America. Still, I had to go again. Venice was once the place where Americans and Europeans found a treasure palace of the body and the spirit in the nineteenth century. In the twenty-first century, it is India. We conjure it as an ideal place—projecting our need onto an imaginary India. I was no different than any other deluded dreamer.