I’m Losing You (54 page)

He worked at Chasen's for a while—

What could it have been like to live with him? Diantha saw less and less of those she cared for. Corraled by his sickness, she became a mirror, herself house-bound and bizarre. It had never been easy for her to make friends. She lived for Lavinia, grown unsavory and irascible before her eyes; turned to her granddaughter, but Molly was in trouble early on, evaporating around the time of Severin's own manic retreat—all that jail business broke Diantha's heart. His wife would have no rewards; when she passed, Molly had been gone almost five years. Severin kept hoping their grandchild would appear at Diantha's bedside and she did, yes she did, a day late, sores and scabs everywhere, tattoo covering her back, spidery rendering of a woman entered from behind by a skeleton with a scythe. For the last few years of her husband's madness—five, really—well, ten—what Diantha really had then was Lavinia. Overbearing, unkempt, gloomy, abusive Lavinia.

He saw his wife hanging in the air outside the window, a blown out, blighted angel dragged to hell by the gagman's caravan of black humors. Severin came to the Beachwood bedroom once and there she was, rocking, eyes slammed watery shut, hands over ears to evict the scannerbabble.

Didn't even bury her—too busy waiting, and waiting still! Why had he been so indulged? They should have
done
something, rancorous and violent, lacking decorum, caved in his head and smashed his machines, chased him down with wild children and devoured him on the beach.

It was pouring. A thousand gargoyles spat rain at the windows (Diantha gone now) with fatal, mischievous mouths. Severin slept.

Rachel Krohn

Oberon Mall was dead.

Mitch had a flu, and Calliope asked her to come to the service at Hillside Memorial Park. Rachel showered when they got off the phone. She was showering at least five times a day, skin chafed from overwashing. Mortuary parking lot lustrations hadn't been enough “to remove death,” not by a long shot—in fact, the effort was risible. According to the Hebrew Bible, even a mikvah couldn't banish the intensity of the
tumah
of a corpse. This is where the red heifer came in.

The cow would be slaughtered, then burned with cedarwood (the mightiest of trees—HOPE), hyssop (because it grew in crevices—FAITH) and “crimson stuff” (from the scarlet worm—CHARITY) added to the fire. The ashes were to be mixed with living water, not stagnant, then sprinkled over the unclean—all
in addition
to immersion. That's what it took to emerge
tahor
. This particular law of Torah was one of four that remained unfathomable to even the most faithful of interpretants, the others being: marrying one's brother's widow; not mingling wool and linen in a garment; performing the rites of the scapegoat.

She put on the brown Armani her mother had bought for her birthday. To calm herself, Rachel recited the laws. When a wife entered the
niddah
state, she and her husband could not touch. They could not comb each other's hair, nor could they brush lint from each other's clothes. They couldn't even hand objects to one another, a small child being the rare exception. They were forbidden to sit together on a sofa unless another person—or, say, cushion—was set between them. They may not pour each other drinks, nor should a husband eat or drink from his wife's leftovers, though she could eat from his. If the husband didn't know the leftovers were hers, it was all right for him to eat. If someone ate from his wife's leftovers first or the leftovers were transferred to another plate, the husband could eat them too, as long as the wife had left the room. While she was unclean, he was not to sit on his wife's bed, smell her perfume or listen to the sound of her singing….

They drove through a phalanx of paparazzi at the cemetery gate.

This, the green freeway-bound park where her father was laid.

It was Calliope's genius to stage a reunion via this ballyhooed alternative event. The psychiatrist was a public figure of sorts, a bit-player perennial in the media drama—she would upstage the cantor (with a little help from Oberon), as he had upstaged her in that shattered time. She wanted him to feel her feathers as she swept past his table with the VIPs. Yes: it seemed to take forever but now all the bodies were in their proper place. Mother and daughter could have their mikvah.

Donny Ribkin and Zev Turtletaub said hello. They were joined by Katherine Grosseck. Calliope said she was glad to finally meet the real McCoy, and Katherine quickly filled Zev in on the impersonator
scandale
. Then the screenwriter said: How can I be sure you're the real Calliope? “By her hourly fee,” said Donny, and everyone laughed. More jokes were made, belaboring the theme of the double. Before they broke off, Donny said he and Katherine were a couple again. Calliope offered congratulations. Zev said they were together only because Katherine's directing career needed jump-starting.

“Donny Ribkin was a patient of yours,” said Rachel, reiterating what she'd already been told. She felt a bond with the agent, an illicit kinship.

“Not any longer. Not for months.”

“Did he—does he know about Sy…and his mother?”

She nodded. “Just recently. He called to say he found her diaries.”

“Well, didn't he think it a little
strange
? I mean, that you were the
wife
of the man that his mother was—”

“Of
course
, he thought it was strange. It
is
strange.”

“I just can't see how—how you ever could have agreed to see him as a patient, Mother. Knowing that—”

“I made a choice, Rachel. Doctors make choices.”

Rachel felt like making a choice of her own: to kick off her heels and sprint up the hill to the Mount of Olives, where the cantor awaited. She had cedarwood in her purse, and minty hyssop too—a small fire would be kindled at grave. She would perform the rites of the scapegoat while Aztec laborers shut off tractors, respectfully turning away.

Leslie Trott shook hands like it was a collagen convention. Calliope was always pushing her daughter to see him. A few years ago, Rachel gave in, but the emperor was overbooked. She wound up in a distant room, far from Big Star country—the Mount of Olives suite—where a dull colleague cheerily burned off a minuscule nostril wart.

“How long did you see Obie, as a shrink?”

“A year. A very troubled girl.”

“Isn't it…
inappropriate
for you to be here?”

“I don't know where you get your ethical bulletins from, Rachel, but no. I'm a human being. I dance at weddings and I cry at funerals.”

“You haven't cried
yet
. Did you visit her in the hospital?”

“Yes. She couldn't speak. At least, I couldn't understand her. She mostly blinked her eyes. The doctors said she knew what had happened to her—the mind apparently wasn't affected.”

Rachel was startled to learn the Big Star was a Jew. She couldn't help wondering who prepared her for burial. In her mind, she saw the sexpot legs guided through Donna Karan pjs, silken string twisted nine times at the waist, then looped into the letter
shin
, which stood for God—though, at time of death, she was probably already clean as a whistle. When you're rich and paralyzed like that, private nurses were always sponging you down.

“You look too thin, Rachel.”

“I feel fine.”

“But
are
you? I worry—”

Rachel silenced her with a hug. Only a month ago, such a gesture would have been unthinkable for either one.

Calliope pointed out the mother of the deceased, a mountain of a woman who looked slightly deranged. Her enormous bosom heaved in laughter and tears at Leslie Trott's words. Eventually, he eulogized only to her and the grievers blushed to be privy to such intimacies.

They drove to the beach, north on PCH to points unknown. The sky looked like the bottom of an old porcelain bowl. When the rain began, it felt like the end of the world.

Calliope smiled dreamily. “We used to make this drive all the
time, remember? San Simeon, Big Sur, Point Lobos…Do you remember what Sy used to sing?”

“We're off to see the Wizard!—”

“And Simon—what was that crazy song…”

“‘Hit the road, Jack…'”

Together: “
‘And don't you come back no more, no more, no more, no more!'
”

They laughed and sang some more.

“Well, how far should we go?”

“Till we run out of gas.”

“Thelma and Louise.”

“You know, she's a client—or was, for a while.”

“Thelma or Louise?”

“Geena—whichever one she was.”

The rain stopped. They got burgers and fries at a roadside place and crossed to the beach. Calliope had a blanket in the trunk. They spread it on a picnic table and faced the frothy gray-green tubes.

“This is nice,” her mother said.

“Mama,” said Rachel, plaintively. “I can't stop washing—since I found out—about Father…and then there was this—this
horrible thing
—a little girl—this
tumah
—we washed her—and this whole—and, and the red heifer!” She laughed, then sobbed with great embarrassing snorts. “I don't know, Mama! I think I'm going crazy!”

Calliope clasped her daughter's hands and looked deep in her eyes, like a hypnotist. “Rachel, you are
not
. It's just terribly sad and terribly confusing…”

“Well, I've been acting
pretty strangely
lately! Maybe I should—be—on an antidepressant or something.”

“We can certainly investigate that. You wouldn't be the first.”

“I don't know if anything will help.”

“Just
talking
about it helps—a lot.
Believe
me.”

“Oh yeah?” she said, sweetly chiding. “How would
you
know?”

“I have a little bit of experience in that area.”

Rachel shook her head tearfully. “Everything is a
tumah
—”

“What is this
tumah
, darling?”

“Mama, I can't get clean! Haven't you ever felt like that?”

“‘Out, out, damn spot,'” she intoned, like a schoolteacher. “But there
is
no blood on your hands, Rachel! There just
isn't
. You know,
sometimes there's a difference between the truth and what a child perceives to
be
that truth.”

“Mama…did you know there's a moth that feeds off the tears of elephants? Human tears, too—I read about it in
National Geographic
. It pokes the poor thing's eye just so it can drink the tears. What kind of world would have such a thing?”

“Darling, please—”

“And there's a bug—they call it a burying beetle. It digs the ground out from under dead things and buries them. I saw a picture of one, digging the grave for a mourning dove…” Rachel stood, unable to go on. She wanted to throw herself in the water, but her mother chased her down and held fast.

“No, baby! No!” she shouted as Rachel seized with tears, straining toward the maliciously indifferent surf. Calliope steered her back to the car, cloaking the frail, shivering shoulders in the blanket as if she were a princess—a mourning dove—who had launched her dead on a floating litter, toward unforgiving seas.

Ursula Sedgwick