Joan Didion - Democracy

The patient was not technically dead, no.

The patient’s electroencephalogram had not even flattened out yet.

Technical death would not occur until they had not one but three flat electroencephalograms, consecutive, spaced eight hours apart.

That was technical death, yes.

“Technical as opposed to what?” Inez said.

The resident seemed confused. “What we call technical death is death, as, well—”

“As opposed to actual death?”

“As opposed to, well, not death.”

“Technical life? Is that what you mean?”

“It’s not necessarily an either-or situation, Mrs. Victor.”

“Life and death? Are not necessarily either-or?”

“Inez,” Billy Dillon said.

“I want to get this straight. Is that what he’s saying?”

“I’m saying there’s a certain gray area, which may or may not be—”

Inez looked at Billy Dillon.

“He’s saying she won’t make it,” Billy Dillon said.

“That’s what I wanted to know.”

Inez stood by the metal bed and watched Janet breathing on the respirator.

Billy Dillon waited a moment, then turned away.

“She called me,” Inez said finally. “She called me last week and asked me if I remembered something. And I said I didn’t. But I do.”

When Inez talked to me in Kuala Lumpur about seeing Janet on the life-support systems she mentioned several times this telephone call from Janet, one of the midnight calls that Janet habitually made to New York or Amagansett or wherever Inez happened to be.

Do you remember, Janet always asked on these calls.

Do you remember the jade bat Cissy kept on the hall table. The ebony table in the hall. The ebony table Lowell Frazier said was maple veneer painted black. But you can’t have forgotten Lowell Frazier, you have to remember Cissy going through the roof when Lowell and Daddy went to Fiji together. The time Daddy wanted to buy the hotel. Inez, the ten-room hotel. In Suva. After Mother left. Or was it before? You must remember. Concentrate. Now that I have you. I’m frankly amazed you picked up the telephone, usually you’re out. I’m watching an absolutely paradisical sunset, how about you?

“It’s midnight here,” Inez had said on this last call from Janet.

“I dialed, and you picked up. Amazing. Usually I get your service. Now. Concentrate. I’ve been thinking about Mother. Do you remember Mother crying upstairs at my wedding?”

“No,” Inez had said, but she did.

On the day Janet married Dick Ziegler at Lanikai Carol Christian had started drinking champagne at breakfast. She had a job booking celebrities on a radio interview show in San Francisco that year, and by noon she was placing calls to entertainers at Waikiki hotels asking them to make what she called guest appearances at Janet’s wedding.

As you may or may not remember I’m the mother of the bride, Carol Christian said by way of greeting people at the reception.

I’d pace my drinks if I were you, Paul Christian had said.

I should worry, I should care , Carol Christian sang with the combo that played for dancing on the deck a Chriscorp crew had just that morning laid on the beach.

Your mother’s been getting up a party for the Rose Bowl, Harry Victor said.

Carol’s a real pistol, Dwight Christian said.

I should marry a millionaire .

It was when Janet went upstairs to change out of her white batiste wedding dress that Carol Christian began to cry. Not to blame your Uncle Dwight, she kept repeating, sitting on the bed in which she had fifteen years before taken naps with Inez and Janet. Our best interests at heart. Not his fault. Your grandmother. Cissy. Really. Too much. Anyhow, anyhoo. All’s well that ends in bed. Old San Francisco saying. I got my marvelous interesting career, which I never would have had, and you got—

Inez, heavily pregnant that year, sat on the bed and tried to comfort her mother.

We got married, Janet prompted.

Forget married, Carol Christian said. You got horses. Convertibles when the time came. Tennis lessons.

I couldn’t have paid for stringing your rackets if I’d taken you with me.

Let alone the lessons.

Forget the little white dresses.

Never mind the cashmere sweater sets and the gold bracelets and the camel’s-hair coats.

I beg to differ, Janet Christian, Mrs. Ziegler, you did so have a camel’s-hair coat.

You wore it when you came up for Easter in 1950.

Mon cher Paul: Who do you f— to get off this island? ( Just kidding of course ) XXXX, C .

Neither Inez nor Janet had spoken. The windows were all open in the bedroom and the sounds of the party drifted upstairs in the fading light. Down on the beach the bridesmaids were playing volleyball in their gingham dresses. The combo was playing a medley from My Fair Lady . Brother Harry, Inez heard Dick Ziegler say directly below the bedroom windows. Let the man build you a real drink.

Where’s Inez, Harry Victor said. I don’t want Inez exhausted.

Enough of the bubbly, time for the hard stuff, Dick Ziegler said.

Excuse me but I’m looking for my wife, Harry Victor said.

Whoa man, excuse me, Dick Ziegler said. I doubt very much she’s lost.

Upstairs in the darkening bedroom Janet had taken off her stephanotis lei and placed it on their mother’s shoulders.

I should worry, I should care .

I should marry a millionaire .

Inez did remember that.

Inez also remembered that when she and Janet were fourteen and twelve Janet had studied snapshots of Carol Christian and cut her hair the same way.

Inez also remembered that when she and Janet were fifteen and thirteen Janet had propped the postcards from San Francisco and Lake Tahoe and Carmel against her study lamp and practiced Carol Christian’s handwriting.

“Partners in a surprisingly contemporary marriage in which each granted the other freedom to pursue wide-ranging interests,” was how Billy Dillon had solved the enigma of Paul and Carol Christian for Harry Victor’s campaign biography. The writer had not been able to get it right and Billy Dillon had himself devised this slant.

Aloha oe .

I believe your mother wants to go to night clubs .

Nineteen days after Janet’s wedding Carol Christian had been dead, killed in the crash of a Piper Apache near Reno, and there in the third-floor intensive care unit at Queen’s Medical Center Janet was about to be dead. Janet had asked Inez to remember and Inez had pretended that she did not remember and now Janet had moved into the certain gray area between either and or.

Aloha oe .

Inez had touched Janet’s hand, then turned away.

The click of her heels on the hospital floor struck her as unsynchronized with her walk.

The sound of her voice when she thanked the resident struck her as disembodied, inappropriate.

Outside the hospital rain still fell, and traffic was backed up on the Lunalilo Freeway. On the car radio there was an update on Janet’s guarded condition at Queen’s Medical Center, and on the numbers of congressmen and other public officials who had sent wires and taped messages expressing their sympathy and deep concern about the death of Wendell Omura. Among the taped messages was one from Harry, expressing not only his sympathy and deep concern but his conviction that this occasion of sadness for all Americans could be an occasion of resolve as well (Inez recognized Billy Dillon’s style in the balanced “occasions”), resolve to overcome the divisions and differences tragically brought to mind today by this incident in the distant Pacific.

“Not so distant you could resist a free radio spot,” Inez said to Billy Dillon.