A beat, then: “Candle in the wind.”
Crash Course
THE AWFUL THING was that Rob Reiner wanted her to come back and read with Ed Norton but she had to say no because of a scheduling conflict with 1200 North. Becca said, “When it rains, it pours.” Dixie said, “You mean, it’s either feast or famine.”
A & E ordered twelve, and while Becca wasn’t in every show, her contract guaranteed she’d be paid for at least six. As yet, only the pilot had been written, but according to the show’s “bible,” Rhiannon’s arc called for at least five more episodes. The agent said that if the stars (and writers) were in alignment, Becca could wind up doing eight or even ten.
It was great news. Still, she was bummed at not having a Rob Reiner film on her résumé and almost felt worse that she wasn’t going to read with Ed Norton. (She talked herself into thinking she’d have absolutely nailed it.) She sent Mr. Reiner handwritten regrets, as Sharon Belzmerz so classily suggested. Sharon was sweet and said Rob Reiner was an old hitless fogy anyway and that she’d already gotten Becca “a meet” with Brett Ratner and was working on the Coen brothers. Her near miss was still a good story — one of those gripping Hollywood yarns she could share with everyone in Waynesboro next Thanksgiving, a shining example of what her agent liked to call a “high-class problem.” It was also the kind of surefire anecdote to maybe bring up one day during a Conan or Letterman preinterview, as long as it didn’t sound stuck-up.
Hollywood Palace
PHILIP HANGED HIMSELF on Halloween night while Lisanne was at the hospice.
For the last few months, she’d been helping out at Lavendar House, a Victorian-style building over by the VA. A friend from the sangha said it would do her great good. Though Lisanne had abandoned any formal or even informal Buddhist practice, the friend had been right — working at the hospice took her out of herself and put her in touch with what was real. The mundanely majestic drama of life and death.
She was sitting with a comatose woman when the cell phone vibrated in her purse. It was Mattie, with the news. She went home to Rustic Canyon and sat another vigil. There were bodies all around her now. She felt like that kid in The Sixth Sense.
• • •
THE NEXT FEW days were filled with snakes.
Lisanne heard a paramedic on the radio, talking about the hair-raising adventures of his trade. He spoke of a Korean man who skinned snakes and ate them raw, for health purposes; he swallowed the heads too, but this time a fang sunk into his tongue. The man stumbled into the fire station saying that he had “a problem.” They were able to save him.
At night, she conjured the Temescal Canyon metta rattler, the one she never told Philip about. In her dream, they stood over it, together. The serpent spoke to them, but when she awakened, Lisanne could never remember what it had said.
On the morning of his funeral, she read an article in the Times about Amber, an eight-year-old girl killed by the family’s pet Burmese.
Robert Mountain testified that he was kept awake by the python the night before his daughter was attacked as the snake tried to escape from its makeshift cage.
Mountain said he applied about four layers of duct tape to hold a screen on the lid in place and checked on the snake before leaving for work the next morning.
Both he and his wife said they knew Moe had outgrown its cage, a particleboard bin bought from a fabric store, with a hinged clear-plastic lid that Robert Mountain had attached.
They found Amber on the kitchen floor, the snake coiled around her neck and chest. Lisanne wondered how it would feel to die like that. And what would it be like for the rescuers, to get the snake off her, seeing what they would see?
• • •
THEY BURIED HIM in a pricey Westwood mausoleum beside the Bel-Air waste management king, Louis Aherne Trotter, kitty-corner from the drawer Hefner had reserved for himself above Marilyn Monroe. Mattie was gaunt and wobbly, flanked by the stoic Loewensteins, and she pinched a handkerchief to her sopping face as if the fabric itself was her sole source of oxygen. Even Dr. Calliope attended.
Lisanne was glad to see Robbie and Maxine. He brought their son because Mattie had requested it. Lisanne was holding Siddhama in her arms as she came over. Taking the handkerchief away from her face at last, Aunt Mattie said, “My brother loved that baby so much.”
After all was said and done, Lisanne knew that he did.
• • •
THAT NIGHT, Lisanne stayed with her at the beach house. They watched Mildred Pierce against an appropriately wild-dark backdrop of ocean, and ate pumpkin pie à la mode while thumbing through old family albums. Mattie said that her brother was a “lost soul.” He’d tried to kill himself in college, then again right after Dad died. Lisanne couldn’t believe Philip never told her that.
She had left her psychosis behind. As she drifted off, pulled closer now by the amniotic rhythm of cold swells that arose and fell like mantras never-ending, shattering so near the Joan Crawford picture window, her body relaxing beside Mattie’s nameless, nearly formless form, Lisanne remembered the loving-kindness workshop teacher’s definition of a meditation practice: it is nothing but the abiding calm a man learns as he carries a bowl of scalding oil upon his head while walking through the rooms of an enormous palace.
Christmas Eve Day
AT THREE IN the afternoon, in the patio under freezing refulgent crystal blue heavens, Cela told her man she was going to Rexall Square for a bagful of nonpareils. That was her alibi.
She blasted an old Bowie CD in the BMX, south on Beverly Glen all the way to Pico, a right to Overland, down to the 10 east.
She’d done all the major shopping— loved Christmas — and had just about finished this crazy collage thing (corny paper cutout tributes to their love), thinking she was so clever until suddenly realizing what a fool she was for having completely spaced on the mother lode of oldies — a treasure trove of Ulysses S. Grant stuff, photos of Kit with R.J., and God knew what else — that was sitting in storage, gathering dust. Imagining the bounty that awaited her, Cela began to think in terms of actually doing an oversize triptych. That was OK by her. Kit would love it. She’d stay up late like she did when she was little, cutting and pasting, giggling to herself while he chilled in front of the $20,000 slimscreen. She’d have to chase him off if he snuck up to see what she was doing.
The 10 to Azusa, then north to Badillo toward the Covina U-Stor — down the road from Uncle Jimmy, who’d helped move all her Riverside belongings. She hadn’t seen any of the packed things since (or Uncle Jimmy either), but now and again they spoke on the phone. Cela wanted him to visit the new house, but they hadn’t been there all that long and she thought it better to hold off. (They were phasing out some of the security guys, and it felt nice to have the place to themselves.) Uncle Jimmy wasn’t sensitive — all he ever wanted to know was when was she gonna invite him to a big premiere. He had a thing for Nicole Kidman and kept saying, wickedly, “When you gonna hook me up with Nicole? Time she had a man’s man.” Uncle Jimmy had a heart of gold. He was diabetic, and had had a few scares. She gave him Christmas money so he could spend the holiday up at Russian River.
She went by his house, knowing he wasn’t there. Wouldn’t it be funny if he was? Then she realized her true impulse, and made the detour, heart beating faster.
There were tenants in her old place, but it looked woebegone. Cela changed her mind about driving past Burke’s; too radioactive. She grew faintly nauseated. Everything was saturated with sunlit anomie. Neighborhood kids were staring at the BMX. She gunned it.