Joan Didion - A Book of Common Prayer

“I have to be here when Marin calls.”

“My point is this.” Leonard spoke very carefully. “You don’t know where Marin is.”

“That’s exactly why I have to be here.”

“And if you don’t know where Marin is, then you can’t tell anyone where Marin is. Under oath. Can you.”

Charlotte said nothing.

“If you see my point.”

Still Charlotte said nothing.

“Get in touch with Warren. Tell him exactly what I just told you. Tell him he doesn’t want to hear from her.”

“I guess I’ll just wait here and perjure myself,” Charlotte said finally. “And then hire you.”

Charlotte did not call Polly Orben at Glide. Charlotte did not get in touch with Warren. For the rest of that day Charlotte only lay on Marin’s bed, staring at the black-button eyes of the Raggedy Ann Warren had sent for Marin’s twelfth birthday. Charlotte did not see how Marin could have played any useful role in flying an L–1011 to Wendover, Utah. Marin could not even drive a car with a manual transmission.

Marin could not fly an L–1011 so Marin must be skiing at Squaw Valley.

Marin had called her great-grandmother’s wedding bracelet dead metal.

Marin had been in bed with the flu on her twelfth birthday and as if she were four instead of twelve had slept all night with Warren’s Raggedy Ann in her arms.

When it began to rain at six o’clock Charlotte wrapped herself in Marin’s blanket but did not close the windows. She went downstairs only once, when two of the FBI men came back to ask if she had a recent photograph of Marin.

“I don’t know.” In a drawer upstairs she had three recent photographs that Marin had overlooked but there was some quite definite reason why she did not want the FBI men to have them. She could not put her finger on the reason but she knew that there was one. “I’d have to look.”

She made no move to look.

She realized suddenly that she was still holding the Raggedy Ann, with its dress pulled up to show the red heart that said I LOVE YOU.

One of the FBI men cleared his throat.

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard from her,” he said finally.

“I’m sure you’d tell us if you had,” the other said.

She wanted to slide the Raggedy Ann behind a pillow but she was sitting in one of Leonard’s Barcelona chairs and there were no pillows.

“Actually I wouldn’t,” she said finally.

“Mrs. Douglas—”

“Actually I’d lie. I’d lie to you and I’d perjure myself in court. You know that. You heard me tell my husband that on the telephone.”

The two FBI men looked away from each other.

“Or if you didn’t hear me someone in your office certainly did, you should compare notes down there.” She did not want to talk to the FBI this way but she could hear her own voice and it sounded bright and social and it did not stop. “Someone down there’s been listening to me on the telephone for at least five years, you should know me by now. I’d lie.”

“I’m sure you know that under the law a parent has no special—”

The other FBI man held up his hand as if to silence his partner.

“Maybe you’d like someone to stay with you tonight, Mrs. Douglas. Keep an eye on things.”

“I have someone keeping an eye on things. I have all those people you moved into the apartment across the street. Haven’t I. I mean I didn’t see you move them in, but I know how you operate.” She could not seem to stop herself. It was the Raggedy Ann. She resented their catching her with the Raggedy Ann. “One thing I don’t know. I don’t know if you kept tapes of all those telephone calls.”

Neither man spoke.

“I mean it could be very useful if you did. If you could sit down now and listen to those telephone calls you’d probably know more about Marin and me and Leonard and Warren than I even remember. You could probably figure the whole thing out.”

One of the men closed his briefcase. The other reached for his raincoat.

“You must have six or seven hundred hours on Marin and Lisa Harper alone. Doing their algebra.” Charlotte smoothed the Raggedy Ann’s dress over its red heart and did not look at the FBI men. “Lisa’s at Stanford this year. In case you missed the installment when Lisa got into Stanford and Marin didn’t.”

“We’re not on opposing sides, Mrs. Douglas.”

“Marin cried when the letter came from Stanford. You probably remember that. Marin crying.”

The next morning when Charlotte woke in Marin’s bed the rain was streaming down Marin’s organdy curtains and puddling on the parquet floor. Charlotte knew as she woke why she could not give the FBI a recent photograph of Marin. She could not give the FBI a recent photograph of Marin because any photograph useful to them would show Marin’s eyes, and then Marin’s eyes would stare back at her from newspapers and television screens, and she was not yet ready to deliver her child to history.

Another day passed and still Charlotte did not place a call to Warren. It was not possible to actually “call” Warren: it was necessary instead to “place a call” to Warren, to leave messages at various offices and apartments he frequented around New York and wait for him to call back. Usually he called back between one and three A.M. San Francisco time, or four and six A.M. New York time.

“Where’s your interesting Jew husband,” Warren would say if Charlotte did place the call and he did call back. He would say this if Charlotte had placed the call to say that Marin had a cold and he would say this if Charlotte had placed the call to say that Marin was going to tennis camp and he would also say this if Charlotte were to place a call to say that Marin was wanted by the FBI.

“I’m calling about something important,” she would say.

She knew what she would say because she knew what he would say.

“I said where’s your interesting Jew husband,” he would say.

“Leonard is not Jewish. As you know. I’m calling—”

“There’s nothing wrong with being ‘Jewish.’ As you say. Has he made an anti-Semite out of you along with everything else?”

“I have to tell you—”

“All you ‘have to tell’ me is where the well-known radical lawyer is. Come on. Admit it. He’s at Bohemian Grove, isn’t he. He’s … let me get it right, he’s making the revolution at Bohemian Grove. ”

She would not place a call to Warren just yet.

In any case Warren could not learn about Marin from the FBI because the FBI would not know how to place a call to Warren.

In any case there was no need to place a call to Warren because Marin was skiing at Squaw Valley.

In any case Leonard would place the call to Warren.

Charlotte settled many problems this way.

Leonard flew home immediately but because of an airport strike at Beirut and a demonstration at Orly it took him thirty-six hours to arrive in San Francisco, and by then they had sifted the debris and identified Marin’s gold bracelet attached like a charm to the firing pin of the bomb. They had also received the tape, and released Marin’s name to the press. Charlotte learned about the tape when she opened the door of the house on California Street and found a television crew already filming. On the six o’clock news there was film that showed Charlotte opening the door, turning from the camera and running upstairs as a young Negro pursued her with a microphone. When this film was repeated at eleven it was followed for the first time by the picture of Marin, the famous picture of Marin Bogart, the two-year-old newspaper picture of Marin in her pink-and-white candy-striped Children’s Hospital volunteer’s pinafore. The newspaper had apparently lost the negative and simply cropped and enlarged a newsprint reproduction in which Marin was almost indistinguishable, clearly a complaisant young girl in a pinafore but enigmatically expressionless, her eyes only smudges on the gravure screen. In the weeks that followed the appearance of the picture those two photogravure smudges would eradicate every other image Charlotte had of Marin’s eyes. The day I finally saw Marin I was surprised by her eyes. She has Charlotte’s eyes. She has nothing else of Charlotte’s but she has Charlotte’s eyes.