Joan Didion - A Book of Common Prayer

“You don’t get any real points for staying here, Charlotte.”

“I can’t seem to tell what you do get the real points for,” Charlotte said. “So I guess I’ll stick around here awhile.”

And when his plane was cleared to leave she had walked out to the gate with him and he had said again don’t you want to see Marin and she had said I don’t have to see Marin because I have Marin in my mind and Marin has me in her mind and they closed the gate and that was the last time Leonard Douglas ever saw Charlotte alive.

The last time I ever saw Charlotte alive was the night two weeks later when I left for New Orleans.

When she pinned her gardenia on my dress.

When she dabbed her Grès perfume on my wrists.

Like a child helping her mother dress for a party.

I don’t have to see Marin because I have Marin in my mind .

I don’t have to see Marin because Marin has me in her mind .

In that dirty room in Buffalo those seemed increasingly ambiguous propositions.

“All right,” I said finally to Marin Bogart. “You tell me. You tell me what you think your mother did in Boca Grande.”

“I think she played tennis all day,” Marin Bogart said.

“She didn’t ever play tennis,” I said.

“All day. Every day. I only remember her in a tennis dress.”

“I never saw her in a tennis dress.”

As a matter of fact Charlotte had told me that she and Marin once modeled matching tennis dresses in a fashion show at the Burlingame Country Club and that because she did not play tennis she had needed to ask Marin how to hold the racquet correctly.

“I’m quite sure your mother didn’t play tennis,” I said.

“She always wore a tennis dress,” Marin Bogart said.

“More than once?”

“Always.”

“Didn’t you play tennis?”

“Tennis,” Marin Bogart said, “is just one more mode of teaching an elitest strategy. If you subject it to a revolutionary analysis you’ll see that. Not that I think you will.”

We sat facing each other in the bleak room.

You were both wrong but it’s all the same in the end .

We all remember what we need to remember.

Marin remembered Charlotte in a tennis dress and Charlotte remembered Marin in a straw hat for Easter. I remembered Edgar, I did not remember Edgar as the man who financed the Tupamaros. Charlotte remembered she bled. I remembered the light in Boca Grande. I sat in this room in Buffalo where I had no business being and I talked to this child who was not mine and I remembered the light in Boca Grande.

Another place I have no business being.

It seems to me now.

“Why did you bother agreeing to see me?” I said finally.

“My stepfather said he was putting you in touch with me because you had something important to tell me. I can see you don’t.”

I remember feeling ill and trying to control my dislike of Charlotte’s child.

“I didn’t understand your mother,” I said finally.

“Try a class analysis.”

I had not come ill to Buffalo to scream at Charlotte’s child. “Your mother disturbed me,” I said.

“She could certainly do that.”

I tried again. “She had you in her mind. She always kept you in her mind.”

“Not me,” Marin Bogart said. “Some pretty baby. Not me.”

“Could I have a glass of water,” I said after a while.

“We don’t have liquor.”

“I didn’t ask for liquor. Did I.” I could hear the fury in my voice and could not stop. “I didn’t ask for ‘liquor’ and I didn’t ask for ‘diet pills’ and I didn’t ask for Saran-Wrap and I didn’t ask for white bread and I didn’t ask for any of the other things I’m sure you make it a point not to have. I asked for a glass of water.”

Marin Bogart watched me without expression for a moment and then stood up and turned to the sink full of dirty dishes.

“Did you like the Tivoli Gardens,” I said suddenly.

“This water runs lukewarm. I better get you some ice, this is lukewarm water and I can at least get you some ice, can’t I.”

As she spoke she opened the refrigerator and took out an ice tray. Her movements were jerky and the tray was not frozen and the water splashed on the floor.

“I said did you like the Tivoli Gardens.”

“ Goddamn people around here, somebody took it out last night and never put it back, I mean I had to put it back this morning, I don’t think—”

She was speaking very rapidly and for the first time something other than her eyes reminded me of Charlotte.

“—Anyone but me ever raises a finger around here, I honestly—”

“Tivoli,” I said.

Marin Bogart turned suddenly, and she put the tray on the table, and her face was tight, and then she broke exactly as her mother must have broken the morning the FBI first came to the house on California Street.

IN THE END THERE WAS NOT MUCH TO TELL MARIN BOGART that she could understand and there was even less to tell Leonard Douglas that he could not have guessed.

It did not go smoothly at all.

Since I was in New Orleans I know only a few facts.

Since I do not entirely trust Gerardo’s version of it I am certain of even fewer facts.

On the first day of what has come to be remembered as the October Violence the guerrilleros finally closed the airport altogether.

The final closing of the airport is what we usually call Day One.

I had flown out the night before, the evening of the day we usually call Day Minus One. I lost the gardenia in the crush at the airport.

The seat next to mine on the plane out was empty.

Charlotte was eating spiny lobster at the Jockey Club.

Day Minus One. Day One.

Day Two.

On Day Two the guerrilleros took over the radio stations.

On Day Three the guerrilleros neared the palace.

Those first three days went more or less as expected.

I have seen the troops on the palace roof waiting to pick off the guerrilleros before.

It was Day Four which did not go as planned. Day Four is supposed to end just after the heavy shooting at dawn, but this time it did not. The guerrilleros appeared not to know that they were on the board only to be gunned down at dawn of Day Four by the insurgent army under Antonio’s “new leadership.” The guerrilleros appeared to have more of everything than anyone except Leonard Douglas had supposed they had. Some say Kasindorf and Riley supplied the excess, some say other agencies. Some say Victor.

I think not Victor but have no empirical proof.

I also think (still) that Leonard Douglas was not involved but again this conclusion is not empirical.

In any case.

GERARDO HAD COUNTED ON A SMOOTH TRANSITION.

Gerardo had counted on dinner at the Jockey Club the evening of Day Four.

By Day Seven Gerardo wanted to get out himself.

“I couldn’t possibly leave right now,” Charlotte said when Gerardo told her about the helicopter in Millonario.

“You don’t realize,” Gerardo said.

“I realize,” Charlotte said. “I do realize.”

“Charlotte. You don’t leave now, you’re not going to leave at all, because Antonio wants Carmen Arrellano on that chopper and not you.”

“Then take Carmen Arrellano. Carmen should get out, Carmen has connections here.”

“ So do you. ”

“No.” Charlotte had seemed vague and distant. “I don’t actually.”

“Charlotte. Remember Victor. Remember me. ”