Deborah Shapiro - The Sun in Your Eyes

PD:What set him apart for you, why wasn’t he like all the other guys?

ER:What set Jesse apart was his sweetness. He was just a real sweetheart, like a gentleman, like Cary fucking Grant. Like if Cary Grant were thirty years younger and magic and showed up at your door with powdered donuts and a big bag full of grass and took you to the last place on earth, or California, that had waitresses on roller skates. And he would talk to you like he had to know what you were thinking, no matter how far out it was.

PD:What were you thinking?

ER:I don’t remember offhand, but I could go look in my overwrought diaries for you. It was scintillating, I’m sure. No, but really, Jesse was interested in me, as a person. Not like, what could he get out of me or what could I do for him. He always looked out for me. I remember we were at this party once — I’m not gonna name names here. I don’t like trouble the way I used to. But this pretty famous musician was there, you can probably figure out who I’m talking about, and he comes up to me and he’s doing his thing with his British accent and Jesse, kind of joking, was like, “Hey, slimeball.” And this guy was like, “At your service.” He was a slimy guy. He oozed. Jesse says, “Elise here sure is a knockout.” And Slimy goes, “Will she lay me out flat?” Jesse says, “I expect she’ll lay you however she likes. Or not at all. She leads with her heart.” And the tone of it was like he was saying to this guy, “Know who you’re dealing with, don’t mess with her.” It wasn’t territorial, it was protective.

PD:In a way that you appreciated? It sounds pretty objectifying.

ER:Oh, Patti, c’mon.

PD:I think it’s a fair question.

ER:Well, look, I loved the scene I was in, but yeah, it could be pretty shitty, pretty frustrating as a woman. I didn’t have the perspective I have on it now. But you know, I never burned my bra because I never wore one in the first place. For whatever that’s worth. But with Jesse, at that party, I had this image of him kneeling down in front of me with a sword and swearing his loyalty to me, and I’m in one of those medieval dresses? Like he was my defender, but I was in charge.

PD:Did you ever see another side to him, that wasn’t so sweet?

ER:Sure. I mean, he wasn’t a cardboard cutout. He was an actual person. He could be a jerk. He could be a colossal asshole, too, don’t get me wrong.

PD:How so?

ER:Well, like when he wanted Linda to get an abortion because he thought having a kid was going to fuck up his career. I mean, he didn’t call it his “career.” That’s only how people talk now. I could see how he might feel that way, but he didn’t even go to Linda first to talk about it. He went to his manager. Like his manager was gonna tell Linda not to have the baby? Well, it got back to Linda, of course. I think she was more angry about the manager thing than about anything else. I’m not suggesting she didn’t want the baby, either. But I feel like she kind of dug in her heels after that?

PD:Were you close with Linda?

ER:Oh yes, I loved Linda. I loved her the way I loved young nuns in movies. That kind of sisterly adoration. She used to give me her clothes. We would be lounging on these sumptuous floor pillows — everything was so sumptuous — and all of a sudden she would get up and go to her closet and come back with the most exquisite scarf or some dynamite hat, a flowy white gown she had and she would tell me I had to have it.

PD:The two of you would play dress up.

ER:Patti, what do you want me to say? We would play dress up while the rest of the world was going to shit around us?

PD:I’m just trying to get a picture here.

ER:Well, it’s not like this is all we did. But, yeah, this is how I remember her, us, then.

PD:You were a sort of charity project for her?

ER:No! She wasn’t dumping her stuff on me. They were like treasures she was bestowing.

PD:I see.

ER:The thing is, everything was a treasure because it was hers. She was so real but also just beyond. She and Jesse both. They floored me. And I know I was starry-eyed and maybe I still am. But people say that like it’s a bad thing, like the alternative is better? Give me the stars and their infinite sparkle! The stars and their star child.

PD:What was Jesse like, as a father?

ER:He was a wonderful father, despite everything. Once Lee was born, I mean, there was no question. He was in love.

PD:No question.

ER:Look, you can be ambivalent and still be in love. Story of my life, practically. But I went over there, pretty soon after they got back from the hospital and Jesse was holding Lee, kind of swaying with her. Really sweet, but also he looked a little like he’d just smuggled her in from someplace. Like he’d gotten away with something he couldn’t quite believe. And he was letting me in on it. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. And he said to me, “She’s my girl. Dancing the moment she came out.”

Sometimes I think, if I had a child,” Lee said to Viv, “it would be a quarter him. It would bring him back in a way.”

Lee put on The Garden of Allah because she wanted to hear her father’s voice as she drove. Arresting as those Haseltine photos were, there was something removed and unknowable about them. She had seen pictures like that of herself, in a magazine or two — that was the art of it. No wonder a sociopath like Carnahan admired that quality. But there was nothing inaccessible in her father’s voice. This album was the one she’d listened to the least. She hadn’t wanted to hear her father losing it. But lately she’d come to understand why people — Andy — loved it so much. Andy had told her once that Jesse abandoned it before it was done and that Brian Reiger, the producer, had salvaged it, building and layering instruments and effects that balanced out Jesse at his most caustic and bitter. The production made it bearable. Still, it was painful.

“Yeah. I haven’t really thought about it like that,” said Viv, distracted, as if she’d been caught daydreaming in class. “My child will be a quarter Jonathan and a quarter Natalie. But also a quarter Tim and a quarter Nancy. Do you think that means a quarter of the time he or she will be emotionally distant and a quarter of the time ever so subtly making me feel like I’m not good enough for Andy?”

“I wouldn’t underestimate heredity. Is Andy. . when you talked to him. . is everything okay?”

“I don’t know. I think he understands. About trying to find Marion. The rest — I couldn’t say on the phone.”

Viv was going to have a baby. The great divide. The great multiplication, then the great divide. Viv didn’t follow up. She didn’t ask if Lee really did want to have a child. She didn’t invite Lee into her world. As though this was one place she could go without her, where Lee didn’t belong, or at least a place that Viv had gotten to first. Which wasn’t entirely true, though Lee thought better of enlightening her now. It would only be spiteful and what good would it do. How betrayed would Viv feel, to learn that she and Andy had shared that? But, then, they hadn’t shared it because Andy never knew anything either, that she’d been pregnant. How different would life be if he had? Completely? Not much at all?