Literacy and Longing in L. A. (12 page)

What’s in a Name

“Get stewed: Books are a load of crap.”

~
Philip Larkin, British poet (1922–1985),
“A Study of Reading Habits” ~

H
ave you ever eaten a messy, juicy chili cheese dog smothered with mustard and onions on a soft, steamed bun at two a.m., flush with the excitement of a new lover, slightly hungover and famished from all the sex? I could say that it’s better than sex. It’s not. But it sure caps off a night of sin.

We are sitting on swivel seats at the counter of what is advertised as the most famous hot dog stand in the country. The plaster walls are covered with signed pictures of dead actors and the smell of garlic and chili wafts out the door and down the street. The neighborhood has seen better days, far better. Some say F. Scott
ate here during the dismal time he lived in Hollywood and turned out his three thousand pages of mostly worthless screenplays.

There is usually a line down the block waiting to get in, but right now, it’s just me, Fred, and a couple of off-duty bouncers. I lean on the cracked white Formica counter, which glistens with a thin film of grease. Fred and I are surprisingly coherent considering we have downed a half bottle of Belvedere. Coherent and oddly empowered in the way lovers seem to get when they have totally satisfied one another.

“So Dora, my pet. Let’s get personal. Tell me a secret.”

A secret. And just as I was feeling so relaxed. “You tell me a secret.”

“I asked you first.”

Jesus. I could tell him my father left home when I was eight—no, too depressing. My mother was an alcoholic. I accidentally shoplifted a bra at Victoria’s Secret. Since my separation my credit rating has gone into the toilet or, how about I put Botox in my forehead to keep it from furrowing when I read. Well, for sure, I’m not telling him about the freeway thing. I have to find just the right secret. Can’t be gossipy and petty. Also can’t be too deep or dark or messy or, for that matter, secret. This is giving me a headache. “Okay. Did you know I was named after Eudora Welty?”

Uh-oh. Did I detect a slight slur? Am I a little drunk? What the hell.

He smiles indulgently. “Oh, is that so…”

I know that look. He thinks I’m drunk.

“Yes. It is so.”

“I’m not wild about the Southern women writers, a bunch of screwed-up old maids who lived with their parents and tended to their gardens.”

“Nice, Fred.” What a narrow-minded, chauvinistic, creepy thing to say. I attempt to temper my volubility. “You know, Welty was a brilliant writer. Reading her stuff is like watching slapstick—the timing is impeccable.” I give an exaggerated kiss to my fingertips (the international sign for yeah, baby) and end with a flourish of my hand.

Fred is all insouciance. “I don’t like slapstick.”

“Did you read
The Ponder Heart
or
Why I Live at the P.O.
?”

“Maybe.”

“No, you didn’t. Otherwise, you couldn’t feel this way. Next to Shakespeare, she has the best high comic dialogue I’ve ever read.”

“Shakespeare? Come on, Dora. Let’s not get too carried away here.”

We’re both quiet for a minute while I search for my next line. A-ha! I’ve got it.

“You know what Mencken said about Shakespeare, don’t you…‘All he did was string together a lot of old well-known quotations.’” I think for a minute.

“So, what’s your secret?” I give him a flirtatious, drunken wink.

Not missing a beat, Fred looks at me and says, “My secret is I really dig you, Eudora.”

He laughs as he swivels me around, looks at me, and
plants his hands on my shoulders. I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he takes one of my ten napkins, wipes the chili off my chin, and says, “Now, this is my idea of a hoedown.”

Later that night, when the fun and games are finally over, we crash in each other’s arms too exhausted to speak. Well, not quite.

“Dora,” he whispers. “Can you close the sliding doors?”

“What? Why? The breeze feels nice.”

“I can’t sleep. The sound of the surf. Too noisy.”

“Oh. Okay.”

I get up to close the doors…and think about this…he doesn’t like the sound of the surf…doesn’t like Eudora Welty and he still doesn’t like my friends.

Oh well, nobody’s perfect.

No Reliable Sense of Propriety

“Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books
alone would make a fairly good library
out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.”

~
Mark Twain (1835–1910),
Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World ~

D
uring the next few months, my life settled into a routine. Days I spent in a tired fog, reading novels and running only the most necessary errands, and nights I spent in bed with Fred. I juggled my friends and family, keeping them at bay, conceding an occasional lunch or dinner while I answered their questions concerning my whereabouts with blurry explanations. I wanted to keep my life with Fred completely separate. He had made up his mind that the differences between my friends and his life were irreconcilable, and I was determined not to ruin any more perfectly glorious nights by including them.

Darlene was the only one who crossed the line, periodically joining us for drinks or dinner, which she insisted we split three ways.

The job search went on the back burner. The editor at the
Times
told me he couldn’t hire me right now, but I could freelance and he’d put me on the list for the first opening. He asked me what sort of stories I’d be willing to do and, of course, I said anything.

The evening began, as usual, at seven thirty, at the bookstore. Fred and I were planning dinner and a movie. As I enter, I can hear Fred and Sara squabbling in the children’s section.

“Sara, this will scare the shit out of her.” Fred grabs a brightly colored paperback edition of
Bluebeard
that Sara is holding and shoves it back on the shelf.

“What! I loved this book when I was her age.”

“But you’re warped,” Fred concludes.

“That’s true, but if it was up to me, I’d give her something that isn’t constantly regurgitated by the media.”

“Like what?” Fred asks.

“Like the original
Cinderella,
where the stepsisters lop off their toes to fit into the slipper and birds peck out their eyes in the end.” She grimaces dramatically and then giggles.

“Come on, Sara. I don’t want to spend the whole night doing this.”

“Okay. How about
My Father’s Dragon,
where the kid goes to an island to free a baby dragon enslaved by wild animals, or
The Princess and the Goblin
? But just forget about stuff like
The Little Prince
. It’s so lame. Saint-Exupéry was a total freak—he makes me want to vomit. Sunsets, conversations with flowers, crap words like ephemeral.” She tops it off with a raspberry.

“It reminds me of the books they made me read in Mormon primary back in Utah, right after we baked Jesus cookies with Miss Evelyn and Miss Gwen. Like everyone didn’t know they were gay.

“Oh hi, Dora,” Sara says, and gives me the sweetest smile.

She is wearing a minidress, which she proudly tells me is a cut-off vintage gospel choir gown. It is bright sanctuary blue, has an enormous, starched white collar with an embroidered gold cross, and a friar’s hood, which hangs down her back like a sweatshirt. It is cinched at her waist with a dark brown leather motorcycle belt and her hair, as usual, is a black clump of messy tangles. She smells faintly of mothballs and patchouli.

“You’re from Utah?” I ask.

“Surprised? I grew up in Provo and went to Brigham Young, or Breed’um Young, as we used to call it. Lasted maybe two years.”

“What’s the matter, not enough lesbians for you?” Fred teases.

“No. Just family differences.”

“I can imagine,” Fred deadpans.

“Okay, Dora.” Sara takes over. “Fred needs some books for his six-year-old niece and we’re having a dispute here. He wants to give her
Little Women
and some Disney crap. And I want to get her something more substantial.”

“By that, she means violent and scary.”

“Well,” I interject, “I have to agree with Sara on
Little Women,
but what about the classics?
Alice in Wonderland, Treasure Island, The Black Stallion, The Wizard of Oz, The Secret Garden,
or children’s poetry like A. A. Milne or
The Owl and the Pussycat
.”

“One of my personal favorites,” Fred interrupts. “Edward Lear hooks up a cat and an owl, archenemies, in a wildly romantic adventure. They fall in love, get married, and ‘hand in hand on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon, the moon…’”

Oh shit, I’m thinking. He’s at it again. I melt every time. “Let’s forget the movie,” I whisper.

He gives me a wink and says to Sara, “Okay, let’s wrap this up. What about
Sleepy Hollow
or
Huck Finn
?”

Now, I have a definite opinion on this. “Your niece is how old, six? She’s too young for
Huck Finn
. Most people view Huck as a lighthearted adventure for kids, but every time I read it, it hits me that the book is profoundly serious. I mean, when you’re a kid, you cruise along expecting things to just naturally work themselves out and then all of a sudden, bang, horrible things start to happen. You find out life isn’t one big party but filled with sorrow and pain and people who are stupid and prejudiced and hypocritical. Twain created Huck so he could say all that—a semi-illiterate boy who is funny as hell but whose life on the river is lonely and harsh. Jim is really his only friend, and even that is poignant because Huck believes he is morally wrong for protecting him.”

Sara and Fred are looking at me in the way that people look at you when you’ve gone over the top. Freshman lit 101. Sara breaks the silence…in my favor.

“How old were you when you first read it?” Sara asks.

“I’ve read it lots of times. But the first time I was about eight, shortly after my mother accidentally drove our car off a bridge.”

“Oops,” Fred says.

“We were stuck in the pitch-dark, in the mud, and I was scared as hell. So when I read the part where Twain describes how Huck felt floating down the river on his raft, it was a revelation.”

“I can relate to that,” Sara says, with an easy glance of camaraderie. “My family threw me out when I was a teenager. I used to sleep under the bleachers on the football field. ‘And it sure was dismal and lonesome out there.’” She smiles at me. I know she’s quoting from
Huck Finn
. “I’d make up funny stories to amuse my friends the next day.”

“I can’t even imagine.” I feel a wave of compassion. “I holed up in my room and read. Mark Twain made me laugh, but now I get it. His humor was based on sorrow. I loved his line ‘There’s no humor in heaven.’”

“That’s what I kept trying to tell those missionaries who wanted to save me,” Sara replies.

Fred looks pointedly at Sara. “Hemingway said that
Huck Finn
was ‘the best book we’ve ever had,’ and,” he says, baiting her, “HE was a literary god.”

Sara scowls. “Yeah, he’s just my type, boozing, womanizing, chauvinistic jackass. The poster boy for our patriarchal literary society.”

“Sara, my dear,” Fred says in a condescending tone, “as you get older you will learn to separate the writer from the writing.”

“You know,” I interrupt, “after I read
Huck,
I decided I’d had it with Alcott and Austen. Austen’s books were too much about the upper class and not enough about real people and Alcott said Twain had ‘no reliable sense of propriety.’ I never felt the same about her after that.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute!” Sara butts in. “You never heard of Leona Rostenberg?”

“Well, no, I haven’t,” I say. Fred’s smirking. He knows what’s coming.

“She’s dead now, poor thing. But she was the one who discovered a series of porno novels written by Alcott under a pseudonym. Blood, passion, opium dens, and other way-cool stuff…years before she wrote
Little Women
. What a hypocrite.”

“God, Sara. Where do you get all this stuff?”

Sara is clearly pleased with herself. “I’m a literary sleuth, didn’t you know?”

“So, what about Austen? Any dirt there?” I ask.

“No. She is what she is. Except Twain hated her. I think he said something like ‘Jane is entirely impossible. It seems a great pity they allowed her to die a natural death.’”
^*

Fred lifts his eyebrows, looks at me, and says, “I would’ve thought you’d love Austen. Aren’t you one of those cultlike Janeites? They’re swarming all over West L.A.”

“You don’t know me.”

Fred smiles and gives me a little punch on the shoulder. “I’m working on it. Do you want to come home and meet my mother?”

I laugh. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I’d like you to meet her.”

Whoaaa! Do I want to meet his mother? I don’t think so. How do I get out of this? Would it be rude to tell him I don’t want to meet her? Absolutely. I can’t tell him that. I used to leave the house whenever Palmer’s mother showed up. She was mean and bossy. And she borrowed my books and never returned them. It was always, “Oh, doesn’t Palmer look nice,” and, “Isn’t Palmer brilliant” and on and on. You’d think she’d give me some kind of compliment even if she didn’t want to, but it never entered her mind. She’d stay in our guesthouse for a month every January to escape the cold. I’d pray for a thaw. Palmer used to throw his hands up rather than confront the issue and say, “What do you want me to do?” Throw the bitch out is what I wanted to say but never did. I relented and served her breakfast in her room and dinner on a tray and listened to her scream back at the TV and drove her to her doctors’ appointments and the YMCA, where she swam forty laps (she was as strong as an ox). I hated every minute. Enough!

“I’d love to meet your mother.”

Mother’s Day

“Judge not a book by its cover.”

~
Anonymou
s ~

H
ermosa
means “beautiful.” And it is. A quaint little beach community seventeen miles from Los Angeles, this small town of twenty thousand consists of a fishing pier, a few parks, a volleyball court, some bars and restaurants, a slightly run-down main street, and not much else. Pacific Coast Highway (PCH to the locals) runs through the middle and divides the little town like a caste system. West of PCH are expensive beachfront apartments, condos, and upscale vacation rentals. East of PCH, the hills rise into somnolent middle-class neighborhoods with older, run-down tract homes on tree-lined streets.

As we wind our way into the hills, we pass Ocean View Elementary School, obviously built in the twenties, and then an expanse of trees that all have that slightly askew, weather-beaten look from years of battling the constant ocean breeze. I notice that this is an old-fashioned neighborhood. A few houses down, a woman is watering her lawn in her robe and slippers, and a block farther off, two women talk over a hedge. So different from West L.A.

We pull into the driveway of a small, Craftsman-style bungalow. It looks slightly dilapidated, and probably hasn’t been touched in decades. But in this case it’s a good thing. The window shingles are displaced in some places but there is an earthiness and authenticity to the structure that I find appealing. To the side of the front door is a sleeping porch. Imagine, in this day and age. I live in a security building, my apartment has an alarm system that rivals any bank’s, and still, sometimes in the middle of the night, I hear a noise and feel uneasy.

There is no traffic on the street as we park behind a six-year-old maroon Chrysler. I don’t know anyone besides Hertz and undercover agents who buys this kind of American midsized car. The front yard has a well-tended “do it yourself” look. The grass has been mowed sporadically and on the porch there are unmatched terra-cotta pots with flowering plants and hanging fuchsias cradled in jute macramé holders right out of the seventies.

I pick up the bouquet of yellow jonquils I brought for Fred’s mother and climb up the three wide steps to the porch. The house has large windows and peaked transoms and all of the woodwork, though peeling, has intricate
details and trim. There is a sense of arrival. The doorbell is covered over with masking tape, so Fred knocks a few times on the screen door and opens the unlocked door. Are we in Iowa or what?

“Hey, Bea, we’re here,” he announces.

Ugh! I hate it when people call their mothers by their first names. It always makes me feel uncomfortable, and I know I’m not alone in this. There is something abnormal about it, like the state of motherhood is foreign to them or they dislike their mother or their mother is so vain that she doesn’t want to admit she has a grown son. Even in my dysfunctional family, neither my sister nor I would ever think of calling our parents by their first names.

Bea is standing in the hallway squinting from the bright afternoon sun that is flooding the porch and the garden. The sounds of a muted television float from somewhere beyond the hallway and the smell of roasted meat wafts through the air. Fred gives her a perfunctory “let’s get this over with” kind of kiss, then turns and says, “Bea, this is Dora.” There is a look on Fred’s face I’ve never seen before. And now it comes to me. The other reason people call their parents by their first name is because they’re embarrassed by them.

Fred’s mother is a tall, substantial-looking woman in her late seventies, with a wide handsome face, soft gray-green eyes, and a strong masculine-shaped jaw. She wears scuffed Easy Spirit sneakers, a long pleated skirt, and a crisp white long-sleeved blouse with a Peter Pan collar. Her thick gray hair is brushed back in a tidy bun and her hands are large and covered with age spots, but
the skin is soft and plump, not at all like the skeletal hands of most women her age. The other thing I notice about her is that she smells like lavender, not the dried-out, faint purple lavender that you find in closet sachets, but fresh, wild, sweet lavender, the kind that grows in gardens and scents the air with faint perfume.

When she first takes my hand to say hello I can feel her plush, strong grip as she says, “Well, Dora. I’m so glad to meet you. Aren’t you just a lovely girl.” I hand her the flowers. There is a quiet, self-effacing yet watchful quality about Bea that I like immediately. “How nice. I have the perfect vase.” We follow her into the cluttered, homey kitchen. The counters are filled with bright-colored jars and mugs and the refrigerator is decorated with a child’s drawings held on with magnets. There are three parakeets in a cage in the alcove by the wooden table, and coupons are neatly cut out and stacked in a plastic coupon caddy by the telephone.

As Bea fusses with the flowers, Fred says, “So, where is she?” There is a barely perceptible note of disdain in his voice.

“In her bedroom playing.”

Fred looks at her and says, “You know I mean Lorraine.”

“Well, she didn’t come home last night, but I’m hoping she’ll be here soon.”

“I won’t hold my breath,” says Fred, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Bea looks toward the door. “Hush, Harper’ll hear you.”

“You know she’s going to be disappointed. You never prepare her. We’ve been over this a thousand times.”

“No. She told me she’d definitely be home for Mother’s Day and she told Harper that too.”

“And you believed her? She’ll be home if she happens to need money or her connection splits or she needs a place to crash for the night.”

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“Tell Harper the truth so she doesn’t just sit here waiting for her. Again.”

“She knows the truth. Don’t you know that?”

I quietly back out of the kitchen as Bea looks up sheepishly, embarrassed to be having this conversation in front of me.

I walk down the hall until I see a child’s room to the right. The sun is streaming through the crisscrossed white cotton eyelet curtains and there is a twin bed with a faded Little Mermaid bedspread and an old painted wooden headboard. Harper is sitting on the shag carpet in front of ten elaborately dressed Barbies forming two lines in some sort of processional. In the center is a Barbie carriage with a Princess Barbie sitting inside wearing a white satin wedding gown. A Ken doll sits beside her in a crown but no shoes. Thrown to the side are several nude dolls who evidently haven’t been invited to the nuptials.

Harper is around six years old, with medium brown braids and a shiny pink clip holding back bangs that are half hanging in her eyes. She is wearing jeans and a hot pink T-shirt that has pastel rhinestones across the front.

“Hi! You must be Harper. I’m Dora.”

Harper doesn’t look up. “I know. You’re Uncle Fred’s friend.”

“That’s right. What beautiful dolls!”

Harper still doesn’t acknowledge me. “It’s a wedding.”

I smile. “Of course.”

“Prince Eric and Princess Ariel are getting married.”

“Isn’t that wonderful, and they have so many nice friends.”

Harper’s face brightens as she crawls over to one side of the processional and starts pointing to each doll. “This is Princess Lea and this is Princess Jasmine and this is her little sister, Kelly.”

She introduces me to each doll. They all have names and stories. I ask a million questions and at one point Harper races out of the room to get the Barbie dog that she left in the living room. I tell her, “My sister and I only had Barbie dolls. You’re so lucky you have all this other stuff.”

Harper looks at me innocently. “They had Barbie dolls in the old days?”

“Geez, do I look that old?” I laugh.

“Oh no, you’re beautiful.” She smiles. No front teeth. How adorable. Just then we hear Bea’s voice from the kitchen announcing that lunch is ready.

Harper yells back, “We can’t come now. We’re playing.”

Bea yells back, “Right now, Harper. It’ll get cold.”

Harper reluctantly puts down the dolls and starts to get up. She grabs my hand and pulls me into the dining room.

Fred greets Harper and tussles her hair. “Hi, Cookie, brought you a present.”

“I know what that is…more books!” she says with a grin.

Fred hands her the books and we sit down at the table. Bea starts making small talk, obviously trying to avoid the issue of Lorraine’s absence. Harper doesn’t mention it and neither does Fred, although he is hunkered down in an uncharacteristic sulk. The air in the dining room is stifling and Bea gets up to turn on the fan. A welcome breeze moves through the room.

The lunch consists of brisket cooked in dried onion soup mix, fresh green beans, and old-fashioned whipped mashed potatoes that never come out this way when I do them. Bea has baked a peach pie for dessert and obviously has spent a lot of time and effort on this meal.

“It’s such a treat to have a great home-cooked meal,” I say to Bea.

Bea gives me a deep, low belly laugh and says, “Fred thinks it’s too heavy. But I think it’s comfort food.”

Bea has this way of talking in sentences that end with a sigh or a “my, my, my.” She also uses gospel chorus-like asides such as “amen” or “all right” or “yes, indeed.” At several points during the meal, Harper asks if she and I can be excused so we can “play some more.” Bea smiles at her indulgently and tells her to wait a few more minutes.

I’m amazed that there is still no mention of Lorraine. I say to Harper, “What a beautiful name you have. Were you named after the writer of
To Kill a Mockingbird
?”

Harper looks puzzled and turns to Bea. “Was I, Grandma?”

“Harper, you know how you got your name.”

“Do we have to go into this right now?” Fred asks.

Bea ignores him. “My daughter named her after my profession. I was a Harper Lady.”

I am about to ask her what that is, when the telephone rings and Bea’s shoulders tense. I get the feeling that when the telephone rings around here it’s not good news.

Bea gets up, goes to the kitchen, and answers the phone. It’s uncomfortably quiet as we listen to her side of the conversation.

“Oh, dear. Oh, no. Okay, okay. We’ll come get you.” Fred jumps up and goes into the kitchen. Bea hangs up. We hear Fred’s angry voice.

“I’m not getting her.”

“Please, Fred, I told her we’d come,” Bea pleads.

“Let her take a taxi.”

“She doesn’t have any money and I can’t get ahold of her now.”

“Jesus, Bea. It’s the same old shit around here. How do you expect her to ever get any better if you constantly bail her out?”

I look at Harper’s stricken face. “My mommy must be sick again.”

“Yes, I’m so sorry. Let’s go play some more.” I take her hand and lead her back into her room. She sucks her thumb as we walk. As soon as we get to her bedroom, she grabs her small pink blanket off a chair.

I try to divert her attention. “Is that your special blanket?”

“Yes, Bea calls it my pinky dinky.”

“That’s a good one. I like that.” I look up and see Fred in the doorway.

He motions for me to follow him down the hall. There’s something amiss, that’s for sure. He’s holding a cigarette that has been smoked right down to the filter.

“What’s going on?” I whisper.

“I’m stalling,” he answers with no emotion.

“Are you going to go get her?”

“Of course. It’s Mother’s Day.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“Why would I want you to come with me?”

“I don’t know. Moral support?”

“Yeah, right. Believe me, I’ve done this so many times I could do it in my sleep. I’m in a shitty mood and I’m lousy company. Look, Dora, I’m sorry about all this.”

“It’s fine. Really.”

He softens. “This may take a while. Do you mind waiting here?”

“No problem.” What can I say?

He’s relieved. He kisses me on the cheek and says, “I owe you.”