Bruce Wagner - Dead Stars

Boundless love.

How heavy the body.

How heavy the body to make them break sweat.

Jacquie occasionally stops to examine the skin, as an appraiser admiring/cataloguing the stitches, patterns & imperfections of a vintage quilt — vaccine scar, birthmark, explosion of freckles, earlobe battered by years of repiercings/infections, a single chronically ingrown pubis hair Jeri always fussed with… the tattoo that surprises her. Rikki said the singer Rihanna had the same, a tiny on the inside of her left ear. The scanning & commenting to her helpmeet busies her mind. Dawn is grateful she can be of service.

A sound comes from Jacquie, a moany o from the O of her mouth as they came to the bulky, cellophaned cotton the RNs used to seal now bloodless Caesarean lips; they would need to cut the dress to get around that. Dawn says she’ll go find scissors but Jacquie impatiently tears the fabric of the Wang. They laugh at the grisly absurdity.

Champagne wishes & cadaver dreams.

A last pass over seams and buttons before pushbutton raising the bed so that she’s half-sitting, half-laying.

Jacquie brushes Jerilynn’s hair.

“Pretty,” she says, on unwitting verge of babytalk.

Dawn takes a step back & watches.

“Pretty, pretty girl,” says Jacquie. “Pretty, pretty girl.”

. .

A nurse brings in the baby, hands it to Jacquie and leaves. She believes the two women are giving the dead girl a chance to say goodbye to the daughter she never touched, heard, smelled.

Jacquie gives the baby to Dawn, then prepares her daughter’s arms. Dawn lowers it down while Jacquie sets up her camera. Dawn supports the baby but realizes she can let go. The baby stays cradled in its mother’s arms.

. .

Rikki, Jerzy & Jim come in. (Photo session over, camera and tripod hidden.) Jim is restrained, the boys gimlet-eyed. Too mindblowing even for heartache. So off-the-charts it’s one of the few predicaments where a so-called normal response might cause them to actually look just as whacked out as they already did. The men wonder what they’re supposed to feel, what they’re supposed to feel.

Rikki’s the 1st to come close, looking confused. He shakes his head and keeps muttering, So fucked up it’s so fucked up.

Jerzy joins him bedside, like a boy band, about to sing into the same mic. He stares at his sister & says Whoa. Flashes on the dead naked body beneath the cool-looking dress before lurching back into the present. “Beautiful dress,” he says. “Good choice. Great choice.”

Not sure what he’s supposed to say or feel but a compliment to Jacquie seems like the right thing. He flashes how if no one else was there he would probably lift up the dress and have a look.

Almost 15 minutes of people— dramatis personae —coming close then backing away, coming close then backing away. Rikki wonders is this a viewing. Is this official? That’s why she’s in the dress? Is this like a last time? Am I acting OK how do you act at a viewing? When is the funeral is there going to be a funeral?

Dawn says, “We’re going to go see the baby. Are you OK?”

Jacquie says that she is.

The men linger a moment, as if leaving on Dawn’s command would compromise their grieving manhoods. When Rikki finally goes, Jerzy follows after. Jim approaches the body a final time; Rikki and Jerzy turn to see that but decide in their whackitude & laziness to let him have his unmalecompanioned moment. Jim looks at her face, closes his eyes.

“It isn’t fair. So young, so young — too young.”

Laconic, clichéd, normal-engineer-type griefy editorials.

Dawn catches her husband’s eye to let him know it’s time to leave her now. They close the door behind them.

Jacquie stares out the window, the very same harmless idle way a visitor stares out the window when the patient is sleeping. You come with gift or flowers but they’re sleeping and you let them because they need to sleep, and also you have things to do, it’s a busy day, you can get more things done if you leave soon and instead just call and tell them later that you stopped by but they were sleeping & you didn’t want to disturb. Tell them that you sat there very peacefully, which would be true, except you might imply you sat there longer than you did. Stretch the truth just a little, what was the harm. The patient is dozing and you turn to look out the window at the world, at life, the dull sun-slanty roar of it. You stare out the window & contemplate the brevity and strangeness, the richness and beauty, the fresh insults and horrors of it.

And then your friend wakes up.

. .

Jerzy & Rikki walk to the van. Jerzy hates the hospital lot & parked off Robertson, just around the corner from the Ivy. His professional stomping grounds. They walk in silence, still in a bubble of intense weirdness.

A kid in Vans sprints by, clutching a camera. Then two more, then another… not kids, but fellow pros. 2 figures come toward them, surrounded by fly swarmerazzi. For once, Jerzy’s happy not to have his camera.

“Leighton! Leighton!”

Jerzy pauses to watch with bemusement — like he’s being given a tour of his life by the Ghost of Honeyshot! s Past.

“Who is it?” asks Rikki.

“Leighton Meester. From Gossip Girl .”

“ReeRee loves that show.”

Leighton gets closer, then fakes out the fotogs & goes lateral, tearing across the street.

“Wow,” says Jerzy, staring at the receding & the pursuing hordes. “Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Her dress — same as Reeyonna’s. The Alexander Wang!”

“So?”

“ So… ReeRee totally rocked it. Leighton looked shitty. I give Ree an 87 % & Leighton a thirteen— a 20 % at most .”

O shit, thinks Rikki, the dude’s into his numbers again.

“87 % of what?”

“Of the vote, nigger, what do you think I’m talking about?” Jerzy hugely smiles. “ReeRee rocked it. ”

BETTER

BODY

AFTER

BABY

MOTHERHOOD CERTAINLY AGREES WITH HOLLYWOOD’S SEXY STARS! HERE’S HOW THESE HOT MAMAS LOST THEIR BABY WEIGHT — AND THEN SOME!

Til Your Hip Don’t Hop Anymore

Bud

read somewhere on the Internet that last year there were 23,000 murders in Mexico. It made him think about his novel; maybe he should take a stab at dystopian sci-fi. He could write about how in the future, 80 % of the world’s population will be murdered annually. How in the future, there’d be no new pop songs, as all melodies/lyrics would be exhausted. In the future, Dolly will be dead too but the interest generated by multiple accounts would live on.

A fear both justifiable and irrational — the fear of falling — seized his mother, preventing her from leaving bed. The occasional diaper Marta taped her into was no longer only for bouts of diarrhea or leaky one-offs, as it had been the last six months or so; it was now her permanent toilet. When the caregivers informed him of this new development, Bud’s first thought was, How can she fall and die if she never leaves the bed? He actually had a lot of guilt over what had become his own obsession — Dolly falling and dying — and spoke about it to a female therapist he was referred to by Michael’s wife. Dr. Pelka said that with adult children, a death wish for one’s elderly parents was fairly normal. (Bud wondered what other cultures would have made of her pronouncement.) She told him it was a common response to “caregiver burnout,” which apparently sons and daughters can have even if they weren’t strictly caregivers.