Bruce Wagner - Memorial

(Chester was already gone and would never know any of it.)

SHE went with the lawyer to Golden Grove.

Marj was in high spirits.

She’d just been given a shower — Joan was paying for private nurses, night and day — and Cora came to visit too. The former neighbor brought over a special pillow her “Steinie” was marketing called the Hug, shaped like a cushioned torso.

She left behind a brochure. The Hug was covered in velour, embedded with thermal fibers and tiny motors. It could be programmed like a cellphone so if you happened to be out of town, you could “dial” the pillow and it would hug whoever was on the other end. It even generated heat. The pillow could store “hug messages” that could be picked up later if the recipient missed a call.

Joan tried it out — the Hug trembled against her, and she said, “Sign me up!”

I have to tell Barbet about this. If Amma the Hugging Saint ever goes on disability…

Her mother was more together than Joan had seen her be in a while, which was heartening. Marj said that Cora got a new dog, another King Charles, she couldn’t remember what she had named it but Cora promised to bring him next time. (Golden Grove was pet-friendly.) Joan said, Hopefully we’ll be in a house by then. She was really starting to show and drew Marj’s hand over her belly. Mom slowly began to accept the pregnancy. She shared that for the longest time, she thought Joan was making it up and they had a laugh. It gratified her that such a good thing, a lovely thing, a positive and a plus, was finally sinking in, something that might give her mother fresh hopes and dreams — and joy.

They didn’t speak of the trip to India anymore.

Marjorie had her portrait taken by the “Super Lotto,” after being primped and fussed over by a squad of Hollywood stylists. Joan supervised the session and had a ball. But the winner didn’t seem fully aware of what it meant. Joan knew there was brutal irony in even telling her mother that she was suddenly worth nearly a hundred million dollars — those professional criminals had said nearly the same thing. She began to wonder if it was a mistake to have told her. Every time Joan brought it up — hoping Mom would grow used to it, as she had the advancing pregnancy — Marj smiled a rictus of puzzled agonized frivolity, fascia taut, clamping Cora’s Hug machine to her bony breast and asked Joan what was she planning to wear to

arrive at 10 PM, hair-raising cab ride hilariously perilous, zillions of lamps and lanterns, and it wasn’t until they reached the hostel, which took 2 whole hours from the airport (Laxmi’s dad, Mr Reliable, said it would take only 30 minutes), in that entire time never abeyance or cessation of the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of thousands of lights and people, Chester realized this was India, its heart and spirit and energy, India multitudinous and hydraheaded, he would never have the luxury of space again, or at least not the kinky bad faith luxury of American space, space one could buy, all space had its price, even the air above Manhattan buildings was for sale, not that space was something he’d had his fill of, but rather he’d had his fill of everything American, all things America, the trademarked quality of such space was no longer necessary for his well-being — it wasn’t until they reached the hostel that they learned about Diwali, how the lights were a celebratory manifestation of Rama’s return, and her namesake the goddess Laxmi! a delirious festival of lights and firefly phosphorescence. The pair thought that of great portent.

Laxmi consulted a slew of printed out Web pages. Their boardinghouse was in a district called Breach Candy— how cool was that? — near a famous temple called Mahalaxmi. A fancy hospital and private “swim club” were within view. Tomorrow they would travel to Cumballa Hill, where, at his apartments, Ramesh Balsekar gave darshan or satsang (Chess didn’t have the lexicon down), they would sit at the feet of the retired bank president and one-time student/translator of Maharaj Nisargadatta in the morning, if they managed to awaken. Chess was determined. Laxmi was certain they would, but it didn’t matter, how could it, nothing mattered now. Don’t sweat the big or small stuff. Because what they had was uncorrupted time, sheer time, to become nonattached adherents, students of Father/Mother/Mentor Time, scholars and undergrads of Time and its birthchild Space, they could wash and soak and worship then wring their rags and follow its banks, wormholes, and bends; merge with tributaries, coalescing ghats and Godspeed, time would be their luxury, an even greater luxury than space, Time was Space, time was She the Great Mother, and space, Her imperial guards. The “little ones” had shown him that when Time was mastered, timespace could be entered as bride/groom would a hushed cathedral.

American Time and Space!

(Fell away like dead cells.)

His old life was already a dream.

He wanted a new name.

Maybe Ramesh would give him one.

The instant expats were delusional with fatigue but made comic, cosmic sex from their discomfiture, dislocation, and psychedelic discombobulation. It was a suffocating night and Chess had an apprehension of Indian heat, unlike that of the desert but full, watery, gravid; not the heat of a scavenger’s sandbox but of a banquet hall strung with incense and the incest of wilting roses. Still he fell asleep with a preternatural, childish excitement the headlamps of childhood knowing that tomorrow he would awaken in Mumbai morning light, in

the final signing of executorship. She would manage her mother’s estate and “affairs.” (Legal word.)

She told Barbet she wouldn’t be coming back to ARK but would stay on as consultant. (Which was understood, but they formalized it. Her life had become all about formalizing and witnessing. Joan Hennison Herlihy was formalizing, princess in a prefecture, she was sealing and waxing, embossing and imprimaturing, and felt like a mature woman for the 1st time in her earthy, earthly life.) She was now in charge of some $93,000,000—excluding the 20 soon to be given her by Lew for the care and feeding of the bastard out of (North) California. There were foundations to be tilled, hedges and charities to be pruned and seeded, tax havens to be harvested, analysts and planners to be planted and yanked like weeds. More than anything, she wanted to buy land, thousands of acres of open space, with rivers running through. She would build little, fabulous sepulchral follies, her own fucking Marfa loop, and name it Barfa (Barbet laughed at what he thought was an homage to himself) yet make it a serious venture. Spicey Zorritos, Rimjob K, and Thom Pain would all sit up and take notice — even Lew.

Especially Lew.

SHE phoned her brother, knowing it was time to tell him everything. Joan was at once melancholy yet winsome because of the baby, that almost abstract unwhisperable wildflower tendril of hope which only visited itself upon the unexpectedly expectant, those blessed and trashed and terrified mothers-to-be, the ones who were older or damaged in whatever way the leaves of the world had rustled No to their numb, unmeaning or sometimes superdeliberate bid to create, the Year of the Horse she was, now having the ride of her life, Joan felt an obscene bounty of sanguineous spirit — she would make the call, to the brother she’d so ruthlessly judged since they were kids, her little (that’s how she thought of him) Chess, Mama’s Chesapeake, Daddy’s Chesterfield, fucked-up 1st born who afterall did the best he could, as had everyone — St Joan the Exemplar! She wanted to give him 2,000,000, just like that, drop it right down, to snap him out of whatever place he was in or drive him further into darkness, that wasn’t up to her, only the impulse was, the urge was the only thing she could rightfully own, she would see what it would do, if it could dislodge him from what she knew hadn’t been the best of places, he was worn out, injured, and embarrassed, it was a motherfucker being a man in America, Joan imagined the look on his face when she told him, he’d be able to take care of shit he’d never dared even mention, he would probably throw away the 1st million, what did she expect, none of her business, maybe for that reason she’d give it in 2 hunks of a mil each, let him throw it away, if that’s what it took, she’d put governors on the 2nd installment, contractually lay it out like that, up front and open, she could even invest the 2nd part, buy Chess a ranch in Thousand Oaks or Agoura, there were a hundred ways she and her advisers could go, but all good, fucking supreme, she had no control over the results and could only hope he didn’t nut out and get paranoid and chase after her for the rest of the money, challenging her right to manage the estate, but maybe it’d go the best way, and he could settle down and have a kid or kids of his own. From the legal end, she’d pretty much covered the this-is-Mother’s-money-not-ours-and-I’m-the-caretaker angle, and made it ironclad. But you never knew. She didn’t want her brother going ballistic and eating up a bunch of the trust by challenging her theodicy, she did what she’d had to, using Lew’s very expensive lawyers to make certain: she wouldn’t tell Chess about that until it was necessary, wouldn’t bring out the big guns about his drug abuse and doctor shopping and priors having to do with stealing from their mom — in the last 6 months, he’d forged Marj’s name to checks totaling 35-hundred dollars. No big thing. She wouldn’t go there unless he forced her. There was always the chance he’d use whatever money she gave him to somehow find out about her and Lew, to pester the surrogate paperworked geekdad decoy, maybe causing major/minor problems, but that was unlikely. She caught herself being paranoid and didn’t like the feeling.