Joan Didion - A Book of Common Prayer

“Forget goddamn Marin. Forget goddamn Warren. You did your best. Forget the other one too.”

“He doesn’t want to talk about Marin, Charlotte.” Linda turned off a lamp. “He wants to believe your life is just pluperfect.”

“You turn off another plu-fucking-perfect light, Linda, I’m walking out of here with Charlotte and don’t wait up.”

“Lucky Charlotte.”

“I’m not talking about Marin,” Charlotte said. “I’m talking about when we lived on the ranch.”

“Don’t sell the ranch, Char.”

“I’m not. I’m talking about — do you remember how Nana would always burn the biscuits?”

“The ranch is the only home you’ve got, Char.”

“Oh fine,” Linda said. “Back to Tara. The Havemeyers are off to the races now. If you’re looking for your car keys they’re on the coffee table. Next to the ring from Massa Richard’s glass.”

“Remember the biscuits, Dickie? Halfway through dinner we’d smell them burning?”

“The only thing I remember your famous grandmother burning is every bed jacket I ever took her in the nursing home.” Linda handed Charlotte her car keys. “Smoking in bed. Little holes in every one.”

“You can’t have forgotten the biscuits, Dickie.”

“No good remembering, Char.”

“Of course your sister wasn’t here during that ordeal.”

“Dickie,” Charlotte said. “We used to laugh about it.”

“You and me, Char.” Dickie touched Charlotte’s hair uncertainly and turned away. “Forget goddamn Marin. I say give her a Kraft Dinner and I say the hell with her.”

Charlotte stayed that night in a motel off 101.

She tried to think about the biscuits but they kept fading out. She tried to think about the gold pin with the broken clasp but she kept seeing it on the bomb.

Her grandmother was dead and Marin was gone.

She had never gone shopping with her mother, she had never seen her father on Demerol, the ranch had eight telephones on three lines and Marin was gone.

It was Pete Wright who had told her that her father needed Demerol before he died.

The night she got drunk at the Palm.

She tried to think about Pete Wright in her bed that night but could not. She tried to think about Leonard in the bed of the house on California Street but she could see that bed only as it had been the day she picked up the scissors against Warren. She could see Warren sitting on that bed and she could also see Warren standing in front of her bed in New York the Easter morning after she got drunk at the Palm.

“Look at the slut on Easter morning.”

She had screamed.

Marin had screamed.

She had picked up Marin and when Warren hit her again his hand glanced off Marin’s temple.

She had picked up the kitchen knife.

She had thrown up.

She and Warren had taken Marin to the Carlyle and she had not had enough money to pay the bill. The beautiful principessa , the headwaiter had crooned over Marin. The beautiful principessa , the beautiful family. King of Crazy, Queen of Wrong. The headwaiter did not know that. The headwaiter would see to it that the bill was mailed. Charlotte lay on the motel bed and she thought about the beautiful principessa and about the beautiful family and about all the bills that had been mailed and never paid. She thought about all the unpaid bills and she thought about all the days and nights when she had promised Warren she would never leave.

There was another unpaid bill.

“You can’t drink,” Warren had said that Easter morning and held her shoulders as she threw up. “You can’t drink at all, you never could.” And then he washed her face and he took her to the Carlyle and she did not have enough money to pay the bill. Look at the slut on Easter morning. Marin had a straw hat one Easter, and a flowered lawn dress. Warren gave her his coat.

WHEN WARREN CAME THAT DAY TO THE DOOR OF THE house on California Street Charlotte did not answer.

When Warren telephoned Charlotte hung up.

When Warren stood on the sidewalk outside the house on California Street at two A.M. and threw stones at the windows Charlotte closed the shutters.

When Warren left the note reading “THIS IS THE WORST BEHAVIOR YET” in the mailbox of the house on California Street Charlotte tore the note in half and avoided those rooms which fronted on the street.

When the two FBI men came to tell Charlotte that the boy with the harelip scar had been apprehended on an unrelated charge in Nogales, Arizona, and had hanged himself in his cell Charlotte left the room without speaking. That was on the second day of the sixth week after the release of Marin’s tape.

On the morning of the third day of the sixth week after the release of Marin’s tape Dickie called from Hollister to say that Warren was at the ranch.

“Acting crazy. Irrational. He told Linda that he talked to Leonard in Miami and Leonard said he could stay.”

Charlotte said nothing.

“He yelled at Linda.”

Charlotte said nothing.

“Obscenities.”

Charlotte replaced the receiver and lay down on Marin’s bed.

“You’re aware Mark Schrader killed himself in Mexico,” the reporter said on the telephone.

“Arizona,” Charlotte said. She was still lying on Marin’s bed. The sound of the man’s voice hurt her ear and she held the receiver several inches away.

“About Mark and Marin—”

“Arizona. Not Mexico. He killed himself in Nogales, Arizona.”

“Absolutely. My slip. Would you say that Marin was romantically involved with Mark?”

“Romantically involved,” Charlotte repeated.

“Involved in a romantic way, yes.”

The harelip’s the fresh meat they’ll throw on the trail, they can’t afford him, Marin’s not stupid .

I wouldn’t rely on that .

“You see you’re thinking of Nogales, Sonora,” Charlotte said.

“Absolutely,” the reporter said. “Very good. About Mark and—”

“You don’t have to congratulate me. For knowing the difference between Arizona and Mexico.”

“About Marin and—”

This is the worst behavior yet .

“Fuck Marin,” Charlotte said.

“Because he was married to you,” Leonard said when she called him in Miami. “That’s why I told him he could stay at your fucking ranch. Because you kissed him goodbye at Idlewild and told him you’d be back in a week. Because he was Marin’s father. And because I don’t happen to believe it’s Porter who is dying.”

“ Is Marin’s father, Is .”

“You didn’t hear what I said. I said I don’t happen to believe he’s talking about anybody but himself.”

There was a silence.

“I heard what you said,” Charlotte said finally. “Tell me—”

“Tell you what.”

“Tell me—”

“Tell you if you’re not there when I get back I’ll shoot myself?”

Charlotte said nothing.

“I won’t. That’s his game, not mine. I want you. I don’t need you.”

“If you think he’s dying he’s not,” Charlotte said after a while. “If you’re trying to say you think he’s dying you’re wrong.”

Leonard said nothing.

“Something else you were wrong about,” Charlotte said. “You said I’d leave you the same way I left him. I’m not. I’m leaving you. I’m telling you.”

The rain was light and the dark came early and the traffic moved. By the time she arrived at the turn-off to the Hollister ranch she was just ten months short of the Boca Grande airport. El Aeropuerto del Presidente General Luis Strasser-Mendana. My brother-in-law. Deceased.