“Yes, I think, yes, I would really like that.”
50 THE SONGS OF SALOME
The Collector
I want to be grateful — my son’s stardom and wealth unshackled me from Collier Layne and Billy Bickley Jr. But I’m not. Do not condemn me yet.
For almost three years I wandered in the haze of grainy, bleachy fumes caused not by the fire but the embalming fluids of a “new” psychotropic concoction that clouded my mind. I was Lady Tiresias trapped in asphodel, visited by stygian visions of the first son undead, the descent of Nathaniel, and Alchemy’s death by envy.
When Ruggles finally reconfigured my drug regimen, I emerged from my exile. Alchemy appeared with the guttersnipe Mindswallow in tow, on their way to L.A. We’d missed celebrating Alchemy’s twenty-first birthday. I was so thrilled to see him.
Unfortunately, the immediate joy was tempered by the mention of Billy Jr., who’d “summoned” Alchemy to a meeting. Alchemy told me that after the Lively box cutter performance, as part of the deal not to prosecute me (which everyone had hidden from me) and put me in Collier Layne, Greta had appointed Bickley Sr. as my official guardian and trustee. She wanted no more to do with it.
Nathaniel’s marriage proposals now made sense. If we’d married, instead of the Bickleys he could’ve attempted to become my guardian and keep me out of Collier Layne.
Bickley Sr. died in 1989, after my incarceration and just before Greta’s death. Evil Billy Jr. became my guardian and trustee, so he controlled the dispersal of funds. He and Ruggles successfully completed Alchemy’s army hardship discharge. Ruggles hoped that freeing Alchemy would be healthy for me. But during their meeting, Billy Jr. explained that with the discharge papers completed, when Alchemy turned twenty-one and was no longer in college, there was no legal obligation to give him another cent, and besides, he needed to conserve the money to keep me in Collier Layne. And then he almost giddily added that if the trust ran out of money he’d personally drive me to a “public dump.”
After he dutifully relayed the bad news, we spent the afternoon laughing and reminiscing about good times. Those precious few hours with Alchemy brought me such joy. As we walked to the lobby, he sensed my onrushing despair and promised to return to rescue me.
Good to his word, Alchemy used his signing bonus to sic the Sheik’s lawyers on Billy Jr., and my son became my guardian and gained control of the trust. He moved me to L.A. I lived in his newly bought home for a bit. Nathaniel took a sabbatical and joined us when the Magnolia semester ended, and we (and the first of many “nannies”) moved into a small rented house in Silver Lake.
From the first time I visited L.A., the town’s ballyhooed clichés of eternal sunshine, apocalyptic winds, and lemming-like pursuit of froth and fashion spoke a language of living that eluded my sensibilities. Its soulsmell of a smoldering surfboard, drive-thru ice cream, and tattoo and gun parlor sensated me with intestinal panic.
I tried to live my life as Salome the artist, not as mother of superstar. I thought about finally exhibiting the Baddist Boys collages, but my psychopomps’ undulating warnings whispered, “Too soon, too soon.” I listened.
I prepared a smaller exhibition for the Grand Dame of the L.A. art scene, Lily Fairmont. As the title of the show, I truncated the Diogenes quip, “It’s not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours,” into My Head IS Different. Using the garage in the Silver Lake house as a studio, I painted a series of portraits of other Collier Layne vacationers. I defined them with quasi-abstract squiggly profile lines, color, and brushwork. I can’t say I made one intimate friend during any vacation. I never had a single violent or sexual interaction with any other guest. I only watched and listened. I’ve purposely refrained from detailing the barbaric and profane treatments of group therapy, electroshock, and mind-raping drugs given to others. It is not my right to tell their story. I wouldn’t want any of them to reveal their version of mine.
Some days after the opening, Lily called. Her voice dripped with her sardonic tone, “Honey, two not at all amusing elderly gentlemen want to buy some pieces.” I asked her to describe them. They were standing right there, so she held out the phone. I heard the unmistakable voices: Lively’s slow-winding-lariat-snap drawl and Teumer’s strident Teutonic grumblings. Lily, the anti-Gibbon, agreed that certain people should not have my work. I asked her to put them off and have them return the following afternoon.
The next day, nurse-nanny number one drove me to the gallery. She waited in the car.
I arrived before them and hid in the back room. I watched as she denied them the paintings. Teumer was bloated, rounder, and no longer even vulgarly sexy. Lively, hulking as ever, appeared uneasy. Teumer kept trying to change Lily’s mind and she kept insisting, “Honey, there’s not a chance.”
Unexpected reinforcements arrived in the form of Absurda, Mindswallow, and Pullham-Large, who had missed the opening — not that I cared. They were dropping by before going to a recording session.
I uncloaked myself and emerged from the office. I mouthed to Lively and Teumer, “Stay there,” while I draped the others with histrionic hugs. Absurda and Pullham-Large perused the pieces in the back of the gallery. Mindswallow leaned against the front wall, drinking a beer; art interested him about as much as football did me. I turned to face my nemeses.
“Pig meat sweat! I smell pig meat sweat fresh from the inferno.”
Teumer sneered at me. “This is how you welcome your old friend and lover?”
“Malcolm, if I could undo only one night of fucking, I’d undo the night alone with you.”
“Oh, it was more than one night. And our offspring lives here in Los Angeles. Would you undo that, too? Perhaps we should go visit him.”
The repressed vision of our son alive arose from the foggy years I was under Ruggles’s drugs. I almost believed him. I stared at Lively. “He’s lying.”
“ ’Fraid not.”
“Mr. Mindswallow?”
“Yo.”
“Do you understand the piety-filled corrupt language of liars? It’s the language of those who reek of pig meat sweat.” I heard my voice nibbling at the edges of hysteria. So did Teumer. Expecting me to hit, spit, or tackle, he slid back next to Lively. I edged toward them. Teumer raised his right arm. In a flash, Mindswallow snatched his wrists and arched his arms behind his back. “Not a smart move.”
Teumer whined, “Let me go!”
“I ain’t into hurting an old man, but I let you go and you try something, I’ll hit you so hard it’ll knock your gonads into your mouth.”
Lively pacified the situation. “No need, son. Let go of my friend, and we’ll be on our way.” Mindswallow released his grip. I stood between Lively and Teumer, put one hand on each of their arms, and walked them to the glass doors. “Never a pleasure doing business with you two.” I turned and smooched Mindswallow on the lips. “Absurda, you’re a lucky woman to have such a chivalrous killah bee by your side.” Mindswallow yawned.
Nurse-nanny drove me to the ocean. After a stroll on Venice Beach, on the way back to Silver Lake we detoured to the Sunset Boulevard recording studio. Pullham-Large paced nervously outside the control room. Without my asking, he fetched Alchemy.
Alchemy, smoking, looking displeased, slowed his walk from harried musician to concerned-and-in-control son as he approached me. “Mom, you all right?”