He dried her eyes till they shone again.
As they climbed the stairs — black marble — sumptuously costumed guests and impeccably mannered staff passed by, the latter bearing luggage and parasols and giftboxes and elaborate trays of spices and foodstuff. The water submerged the lobby and she realized her father’s words about the ballroom already being underwater were probably true. That made her sad but she tried to remember you could breathe in it and that the elephants were busy on their rescue missions. Still, she looked down from his arms at the rising tide and he saw she was afraid and said, “Joanie!”
Why is he calling me that?
“We’ll be safe, little one — safe and dry!”
Marj said she was worried about the elephants and he said don’t you dare. They protect, that is their job, that is their role in this world. That is Ganesha! They know how to take care of us. So stop your crying Miss Morningstar. You don’t want those tears to add to all the water around here, do you? Now that will make things harder for our long-nosed friends.
She nodded, closing her eyes as they ascended: up and up the spiral staircase through the inordinate, comforting bustle, she could hear the excitement of guests from the warm perch of her father’s arms, hear the rushing of water too but knew that he was right, the magnificent Taj Mahal Palace and its brigade of turban’d Ganeshas could never, ever let anything happen to them…a lifetime of climbing until they reached the capacious suite where food was laid out on silver platters. Perfumed lodgers from other rooms, some of whom were countesses draped in pearls, kundan and ariya, joined Maharajahs in breastplates and tunics bearing insignias of their various kingdoms, the royalty mingling while servants came and went, aristocratic children underfoot as well, stunning-looking well-mannered boys and girls her age; the girls with noses pierced by 22 karat gold. A Nizam and his retinue rose to greet her father who afterall was an extremely popular man, Marjorie’s mother was there too, she struggled from Papa’s arms to get to her, he set his wriggling daughter down but before she could make any headway the moppets ferried her aside to inform in hoarse whispers: The elephants are dancing tonight! After they rescue the last of the drowning people, they are going to dance! This is what the children told her. There was another ballroom, here, not in the basement as her father had said, but here, on higher ground! And off they went to
the headstone. Ray’s girlfriend was to be buried in Calcutta, come hell or high water — that was what Joan gathered from the industrious diligently sweethearted women he always called “the cousins,” one of whom it turned out was actually the dead woman’s sister.
Joan told them her father said Ghulpa wished to be buried here in the States, at Forest Lawn, in a plot already purchased, and that was when the Artesian brood confided there were “difficulties”—that the “spousal relation” was not “sanctified,” that the deceased was in fact not a legal resident. Joan understood.
She asked nothing more.
THERE were a host of stones to choose from.
“Do I have to pick it now?”
“No, no! This is just a selection.”
“Could something — can something be built? I mean, a design of some sort?”
“Do you mean a mausoleum?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. I’m an architect…”
The woman smelled money.
“That depends on the amount of space you purchase. I can check in the particular area your father—”
“No, it’s all right.”
“In terms of ‘design,’ did you mean a photo?”
Joan was uncomprehending.
“There is a wonderful technology that allows us to etch a photographed image of the loved one into the surface of the stone.”
“I see. OK. Let me think about all that.”
“Take your time! And, of course, we’ll eventually need to know what you’d like to put on the stone.”
“On the stone?”
“In memoriam. Usually the simplest is best. ‘Less is more.’ You know, we actually had that epitaph. The man’s name was Les and the family wrote, ‘Les Is More.’ Quite clever. But you can do, well, anything that space allows. It could be a poem. Or a thought.”
“Oh — right! When do you need to know by?”
“Absolutely no hurry. The stone can be put down without a legend and engraved at a future time. Heavens, we have people think about it for years.”
On her way out, the words slowly surfaced—
Full fathom five thy father lies; of his bones are coral made; those are pearls that were his eyes. But doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
— so beautiful but seemingly too fancified for the man she’d only begun to know.
Then, opening the car door, it came: the most perfect memorial she could imagine.
Joan rushed back to the office so she wouldn’t lose the courage. She wrote it for the caretaker:
RAYMOND RAUSCH
1930–2006
Father
There are some things Joan would never know, just as there is much in and of the world that can never be known, but the things that would remain unrevealed, were, in the scheme of mysterious gifts which had been tardily gathered, rather small.
As an example, she would never learn that the woman who abandoned this earth with Ray’s dead child — Joan’s sibling — had once worked as Pradeep’s nanny, and had fled, not through unhappiness, not entirely, but because it had been her fate, unlikely as most fates are, to meet a kind old man at the end of a pier one blustery Santa Monica day, an old man who would love and be lionized by her, who would live to see her death before he himself departed for other realms.
Joan had Friar Tuck in the car while driving to Cora’s to give the faithful woman a small keepsake of her mom’s. (A copper Buddha.) She thought it a tidy plan to adopt Raymond’s pet but had been bitten and was having 2nd thoughts; he cowered and low-growled, soaking the backseat towel in urine. When she arrived, Nip jumped from the open window and rushed to the neighbor’s new King Charles, given to her by Stein, her thoughtful Steinie, and the pair sniffed and shimmied and licked each other as if lifelong friends. Cora gave a hug then squinted downward, asking how far along Joan was. She stood back and blinked, but not at Joan’s tummy: it was something in the off-kilter gait of her 4-footed friend…Wasn’t this the terrier who costarred with Mr P on the Whisperer show?