“A black limousine, license plate JM, you are blocking the alley, you will be cited and towed …”
The second repeat and a couple of good
“Hey, lady, what’s your problem?”
“Just move the car.”
He eyes me derisively. “Gotta get to the sale at J.C. Penney’s?”
I badge him. “No. I’m with the FBI. Now move the car.”
Suddenly he grins. “And I’m a state trooper. Used to be, before I sold out and went Hollywood. See that? Brothers and sisters under the skin. Tom Pauley. Glad to meet you.”
He offers a stubby hand. We shake.
“Can I get you frozen yogurt?”
“No thanks.”
“Here. Have this one. It’s virginal. Never been licked.”
“You enjoy it, Tom. I’m going to catch hell at the office.” I squeeze into my car and turn the engine.
“I understand. Guess I was kind of a jerk, but you should have seen your face. I really should have let you run the license plate. That’s what I do with the cops. Then it’s: Tom, what can I do for you? Tom, can you get me an autograph for my wife?”
“You’re a celebrity, huh?” I jam the gearshift into drive, hoping he will get the hint.
“Anybody who works for Jayne Mason automatically is.”
I have to admit, he got me as he knew from experience he would; that the mention of the name is enough to stop even the most cocky cop in his tracks.
“Where is Jayne Mason — at the yogurt store?”
“Seeing the doc. That’s why I had to park near the back. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
He nods toward the gray door of the Dana Clinic.
“I thought she was at the Betty Ford Center.”
“They sprung her.”
“Cured?”
“Seems to be, but she’s always had a back problem. You’re not going to leak this.”
“Yeah, Tom. I really care about Jayne Mason’s back problems.” Then, curiously, “Is her doctor named Eberhardt?”
Giving me a smile: “You know I can’t release that information.”
I look toward the door as the sweet odor of rotting garbage rolls toward me on the ocean breeze. “So that’s why he kept me waiting two hours.”
“Jeez, I’m sorry. Hanging around like that can fry your brains. I’m used to it. That’s why I went and got myself some lunch.”
The gray door swings open and Jayne Mason strides out. She doesn’t get far before a white-coated arm grabs her by the shoulder. She tries to twist away but the arm holds tight, forcibly turning her around so she’s facing a tall, solidly built man with blondish hair and aviator glasses, wearing a white lab coat.
“Is that the good doctor?”
Tom nods.
Dr. Eberhardt — a nice-looking man with the soft underchin of middle age — keeps the hand on her shoulder so she won’t run away. She is wearing a red sweat suit, sneakers, and a red turban that completely covers her hair. He is taller, younger, stronger; but she is strong too — a dancer and still lithe. He is maintaining an authoritative posture, talking calmly although she seems distraught.
“The whistle blows,” Tom says, tossing the uneaten yogurt into the dumpster.
He positions the limo in the middle of the alley, then, leaving it running, gets out, opens the door, and waits. She doesn’t even have to look in his direction for him to know the correct moment to make his move as she finally pulls away from the doctor with an expression of willfulness so he can be right there to gracefully take her hand and guide her over the torn asphalt. As they approach I can see that her sweatshirt is decorated with a pair of kittens batting a yarn ball. It is a real yarn ball and the kittens are furry with big glittery eyelashes. They pass right in front of me. The actress’s skin is dove white against the crimson knit, reflecting a brilliant smear of color in the immaculate black shine of the limousine door; she is her own annunciation, creating in this smelly alley a moment of startling vivacity that could not have been outdone by a hundred performing troubadours dressed in gold.
The limousine pulls away. Dr. Eberhardt is gone, the gray steel door sprung shut. I wonder if the doctor’s wife knows how intimate her husband is with his famous patient; how he kept his hand on her shoulder the whole time and how, although she was angry, she did not move away as long as she felt his touch.
I pull out of the alley, picturing Claire Eberhardt leaning against the other side of the mahogany door of their home, innocent of this, crying a river of penitent tears over a poor Salvadoran housekeeper.
PART TWO. DESERT CLARITY
SEVEN
IN THE DESERT everything is clear.
It doesn’t hit until you are two hours out of Los Angeles, past the tangled hell of downtown and the protracted ugliness of San Bernardino, beyond the world’s biggest freeway interchange where the 605 meets the 10 in swooping parabolic ribbons of concrete. It starts somewhere out there when the shoulders of the road turn to white sand and there are no more sky-blue town-house colonies popping up in the distant wasteland; when the air, thinned of pollutants, becomes light and transparent and you can see amazing details like rockfalls on the slopes of snow-topped mountains miles away.
Slowing down off the freeway, suddenly quiet enough to hear your very tires chewing over feathers of sand blown across the off-ramp, as the setting sun shoots every tiny needle of every single cactus with scarlet backlight, it hits. Desert clarity. The absence of motion, pressure, traffic, and people. A mysterious monochromatic landscape speckled with life. Your body settles down. The air feels spiritual — that is, filled with spirits that a tacky little town can’t restrain. Rolling down the gamy main street of Desert Hot Springs you want to shout just to hear how your own voice would sound as a loose uninhibited coyote wail instead of the tight pissed-off squeak with which you usually address your fellow man.
Poppy’s condominium is no great shakes for what it cost, set up on a ridge looking west over an empty shopping center with a Thrifty Drug and a Vons market, a KFC and video rental store, all new construction — clean black asphalt without a tire mark and spindly palms in redwood boxes. Carrying groceries to my car (if I don’t buy my own supplies, I wind up drinking Seagram’s at night and gagging on All-Bran in the morning), I enjoy the mild breeze and calculate that by the time the town grows big enough to actually support this overblown supermarket Poppy will be dead and I can sell his condo for a nice piece of change.
I know I am fooling myself with that kind of thinking. We buried my mother when I was fourteen, my grandmother was gone before I was one year old. One more trip to Eternal Valley Memorial Park would finally cut me loose from the already thin thread of kinship like rusty shears operating in the hands of one of those gnarly sisters of fate. It wouldn’t be a clean easy cut, not at all, but a slow severing with lots of fray and lots of pain. I can see my fingers stretching up last minute to catch the end of the line so I won’t fall into space, because without my Poppy I don’t know who I would be.
In fact, when I really look at our family, it becomes as clear as the lucidity of cactus spikes revealed by the blood-red sun that three generations of females have lived our lives not as free individuals but in relation to this one man.
