Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons (9 page)

I thought about that awhile— the other. And wondered why Roger DeCampo hadn’t been more fascinating. The answer was simple, I thought— because we were operating in two separate realities. You couldn’t make a connection with someone like that. Evil— if that’s what La Barre was— was part of all of us, something all too familiar that we never, never for any reason acknowledged in ourselves. And so we gave it so someone else— Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Nixon, whoever was in the neighborhood. You didn’t want to make a connection with it— you just wanted to reassure yourself it was out there instead of in here, and so you liked to get it where you could watch it. I’ve always been suspicious of people who get squeamish when you bring up violent crime— they don’t even want to think it’s out there, which is even scarier. With no evil in the world, surely they couldn’t do any. Such people must have unhappy spouses and children.

“Uh, Rebecca,” said Rob. “Are you with us?”

I’d been staring into space, quietly giving myself the willies.

He said, “We have to get going.”

“I want to talk to Chris,” I said, and turned to her. “Could you take me home in a bit?”

“Sure. I need the company anyway— you two get to go out, but I don’t.” She meant to the wake. Under the circumstances, we’d thought, it was best if she didn’t go.

Rob said, “Pick you up at eight?”

When he’d gone, Chris said, “What’s wrong? You still mad at me?”

“I’d say you were psychic, but you’re only half right. I wasn’t mad until I started thinking it over.”

“And now?”

“Well, I’m not sure I know who you are anymore. I mean, every time you make fun of Shirley MacLaine, you’re a hypocrite.”

“I’ve never in my life made fun of Shirley MacLaine.”

“You haven’t? Yes, you have— I’ve heard you do it.”

“Uh-uh. You’ve seen me trying to titter politely when everyone else is doing it. Matter of fact”— she kicked at her coffee table with a sock-clad foot— “I hate it when people do that. There’s this kind of socially acceptable list of beliefs if you’re college educated and live on one of the coasts. I was at a dinner party the other night where someone said, ‘My ex-boyfriend just converted to Christianity, isn’t that disgusting?’ And nobody said a word. A couple of people just said, ‘Ohmigod,’ like it was the worst thing they could think of.”

“I don’t get it. You’re not a Christian. Are you?” Who knew what she was anymore?

“No, Rebecca, I am not a Christian. I have never been and I will never be a Christian, though I come from a family of devout Presbyterians. I can’t imagine having the least interest in a religion that denigrates both sex and women like Christianity does. But I am still an American, and I’m absolutely shocked at the way people go around attacking each other’s religions. If my ex-boyfriend converted to Christianity, I most assuredly wouldn’t feel free to call it disgusting in public. I think it’s a lot more disgusting that people think it’s perfectly okay to do that. Unless we’re talking Judaism or Zen, of course— if you attacked a Jew or a Zennie, you’d be anti-Semitic or narrow-minded, depending. Definitely not okay to attack the sacred cows. Those two are fine— and Catholicism because Catholics are pretty vocal and they’re a minority in a way. Episcopalianism because it’s so perfectly starched and therefore perceived as hardly a religion at all. Mennonites and Quakers are off the hook because they’re exotic; Unitarians because they’re so intellectual … and that’s about it. Forget it if you’re a Moslem or a Lutheran.”

But I was barely listening. My heart was going like a car engine. My throat was closing. Was Chris anti-Semitic? I thought back to what she’d said: Judaism was a sacred cow. Wasn’t that an anti-Semitic remark? It couldn’t be, because Chris had said it— the same way psychics must exist because she was one. I had to think this over; I had to digest it. And right now I wanted answers about what I’d already thought over.

“You’re as bad as anybody else. You said Roger DeCampo was crazy when all he did was say he had friends who’d seen ETs. And you go around hearing voices!”

“I do not hear voices— that’s clairaudient, and I’m a classic clairvoyant. Roger Whizbang is clearly crazy because he’s obsessed— not because he thinks aliens exist.”

“But you don’t know that. For all you know he had an experience like me— he went around all his life thinking there probably weren’t ETs, the same way I thought psychics were frauds— and then his best friend tells him he’s been kidnapped by little green men. What’s he supposed to do with that? I mean if a sane and rational person told him—”

“Ohmigod!” She put her hand over her eye in that way she has. “You’re right. I am as bad as anybody else. I really am.” She sat quietly for a minute, and then she said, “Thank you for pointing that out.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “I guess I am too.”

“No. You stood up for the guy— I mean, you didn’t fall in love with him, but you didn’t condemn him as a maniac. And I guess I did.”

“It isn’t that— it’s that I haven’t even read Shirley MacLaine. And I’ve probably spent
hours
making fun of her.”

So we cleared the air a little— though I still had food for thought— and ended up with a great big sloppy hug. But I still went home feeling empty and isolated. It was nothing to do with Chris’s diatribe on religious intolerance— and the more I thought about it, I thought maybe she had a point— but everything to do with the loneliness I felt at learning I didn’t really know her.

And it was only exacerbated by the way Rob and I had spent the day— pursuing Jason McKendrick’s secret. It was abundantly obvious he had at least one … more than one. Adrienne was a secret from the Rodenboms, and the fact that she was only his roommate was a secret from Barry Dettman— or else she
was
his lover and that was a secret from us.

Did everyone have secrets? Did Rob? Did Julio?

Did I?

I thought about it. What were secrets about in our society? Sex, usually. We Americans were still as puritanical as the Pilgrims. If not sex, then what? Crime. That was a big one. Embezzling. Insider trading. Cheating on your income tax. Then there was money. Especially if crime was involved. What else? I had to admit Chris was right. Religion. “Weird” beliefs, meaning any that were different from— well she
was
right— from the sacred cows. If you wanted to practice law in this town, you’d better not be psychic. If you wanted to be considered intelligent and taken seriously, you probably shouldn’t get born again. But something nagged at me here— Chris was right about sex and women, too— Christianity did denigrate them. So how
could
an intelligent person be a Christian? I heard a little voice— did this mean I was psychic?— saying:
How’s Judaism on those issues?

No better
, came the answer. And yet you
could
be intelligent if you were Jewish. What if you were something
really
outside the norm? Better keep it a secret.

Other secrets I thought of: Addictions. Eating disorders. Health problems. These were the things you didn’t talk about— unless, in the case of the former two, you were in “recovery.” I realized that I had mentally put quotes around the word— denigrating someone else’s way of talking about his belief system, his life. Chris was
so
right— mocking was second nature. And the realization of it made me feel horribly isolated.

Feeling grumpy and weird (was “weird” a judgmental, isolating word?), I stepped in the shower. Water is a great calmer.

And yet, by the time I stepped out, I was more upset. Near panicked, in fact. Because in the course of my shower, I found a lump in my breast.

I pushed the panic down. It couldn’t be there. I had felt a rib, that must be it. But I was too ragged to make sure right now— I’d do it in the morning. I made that a promise to myself: I’d check it first thing in the morning.

Okay then, I had to get ready to go say good-bye to Jason McKendrick, someone I’d never even known. I wished I had time to play the piano— I knew that would lift me out of the doldrums. But I didn’t. I put some baroque music on the stereo and applied myself to the task of picking out something to wear. I had a new dress that would probably be perfect— ankle-length black crepe. But somehow I’d been meaning to wear it to something more cheerful. If I put it on now it would always make me sad— it would remind me of the day I knew I was going to have a mastectomy, that I was probably going to die…. The music obviously wasn’t working. Suddenly, I just wanted to get out of the house.

I slipped on a pair of black pants, a gray silk blouse, and a tapestry vest. I hoped the effect was sober enough. My mood certainly was.

I waited downstairs for Rob, something I’ve probably never done before, and found the air felt good, the velvet of the night did a lot to still the panic.

Rob was five minutes early. “Am I late?”

“Not at all. I was just restless.” He gave me a funny look, and on the short drive I was aware of his trying to start conversations and of my trying to participate, but I was so unfocused nothing ever really went anywhere.

It was the only wake I’ve ever been to where there was valet parking. It was being held in a sort of dance hall whose proprietors had been friends of Jason’s. The whole idea, it seemed, was for every entertainer who’d ever known Jason to play a song or give a speech in his memory. A no-host bar was doing a good business, and people were milling, talking, only half listening to the earnest performers. It was an eerie scene, frankly. Because of the performances, the place was dark, yet it had the curious quality of a gathering where people had gone to be seen. Some people, anyhow— I saw the mayor there, and a couple of assemblymen.

Everyone I knew from the
Chronicle
was there— and there were plenty; when Rob and I were dating, we’d been to lots of
Chronicle
parties together. And there were other people I recognized, from the society and entertainment pages, from television news. Genuine grief hung in the air along with the scent of celebrity. Jason had been a popular man— this shindig was invitational, though signs had been posted at the
Chron
and backstage at certain theaters. I found myself wishing I’d known him— a person so complicated he could live in filth and poverty and never, I gathered, invite anyone to his apartment, yet be so influential, so well liked that the city’s celestial beings turned out at his death.

Rob went off to work the room, leaving me to do the same if I chose, and I did. It was the surest way of forgetting my own troubles and a golden opportunity as well. I went to get a glass of wine and found myself standing in line behind a man in a suit and a tie with a stain on it, a middle-aged man with a red, sad face and a voice that carried. He had buttonholed the woman in front of him, a stranger from the look on her face.

“Would you look at that?” He pointed to the stain on his tie. “Some asshole just bumped into me, never even said excuse me. Whole drink splattered all over.” The woman shook her head as if to say that was a shame, but she didn’t really want to talk to him.

“Place is full of assholes, you notice that? Nothin’ but assholes, the whole damn place.”

The woman’s smile froze, and she turned around. That made the drunk mad. “Hey! You an asshole, too? Huh? What’s your problem? You too good to talk to a hick from across the Bay?”

I wondered if there was a bouncer. He was getting so loud it was time for somebody to do something. Suddenly I was aware of motion behind me, and a black blur came up on my left.

“Dad! Dad, you’ve gotta calm down.”

It was Adrienne. She recognized me and looked embarrassed, but she couldn’t be bothered with that now. She was stage-whispering to her dad: “You just don’t know how loud your voice is. They’re going to throw us out of here if you don’t quiet down.”

“Goddammit, I don’t care if they do! I didn’t want to come to this goddam thing in the first place.”

“Okay.” She stopped whispering, the urgency gone. Her voice was low and placating. “Okay, Dad, you’re right. Let’s just leave. I’ll take you home right now. Come on now. Let’s just go.”

“I want a drink.” His voice was low also, for the first time, and sulky.

“I don’t know, I don’t think…” But the bartender by this time was asking him what he wanted. Adrienne shrugged and turned to me. “Hi.”

“Hi. You doing okay?” It couldn’t be restful, being holed up in El Cerrito with this character.

“Yeah.” She inclined her head toward her father. “Dad’s fine except when he drinks. It’s good being with him. I cook for him, and I forget Jason for a little while. Things were going so well I forgot what happens— you know.” She glanced at him again. “I shouldn’t have asked him to come tonight. He’s introspective, you know what I mean? Not much of a social animal.”

Downright misanthropic, I would have said, but it wouldn’t have been polite. Besides it was my turn at the bar, and Adrienne had her hands full with her dad, trying to lead him to a corner where there weren’t so many assholes.

I saw Rob talking to a dark-haired woman, very thin, in a black dress that showed her fashionable bod for what it was— a grape stake. She had shoulder-length hair parted on the side and falling in such perfect waves that jealousy was the only sane response. She wore gold hoop earrings and a slash of lipstick— if she had on more makeup than that, it was so skillfully applied no one was the wiser. There was nothing flashy about this woman, no ruby lips, azure eyes, the sort of thing poets go on about. Just a quiet perfection. But for some reason Rob looked desperate to get away from her.

I walked over, thinking to rescue him. “Rebecca, this is Jason’s sister, Tressa Gornick.”

I said I was sorry for her loss, or words to that effect.

“It’s funny,” Rob said, “I was just telling Tressa that Jason never talked about his family much. I don’t think many of us knew he even had a sister.”

“I’m from back East,” she said woodenly, her eye scanning the room.

“Oh? Where?”

She shrugged. Her voice was like ice. “I don’t really feel much like talking about that.”

I understood Rob’s discomfort— the woman was clearly snubbing him, and was now snubbing me as well— yet there was a problem extricating oneself. “Nice talking to you,” in the face of obvious rudeness seemed like a putdown. But what else to do?