Bruce Wagner - Memorial

Joan would be angry with her for sneaking away. Her daughter had been so kind but that hotel was costing too much, had to be. Why were they at a hotel in the 1st place? Joan was acting strange and solicitous, as if Marjorie were a child. She spent money like water on nurses and room service. It just wasn’t sitting well. Joan kept telling Marj she would soon be a grandmother, but she knew that couldn’t be true, Joan was too old to have children, and not even married! Marj didn’t want to say it but she was truly concerned. She thought Joan was and always had been barren, and worried she’d quit her job as an architect too soon.

She rested on a bench and let the buses pass. Then she walked to another hotel, kitty-corner to the vanished Taj — the Regent Beverly Wilshire — also quite lovely. (She remembered having been there with Ham as well, at a bar called Hernando’s Hideaway. There used to be a big bookstore inside, but all that was long gone.) She wandered into a restaurant with black-and-white floors called The Boulevard, they spelled it “The Blvd,” but suddenly had to use the restroom — a young woman pointed the way, though it took a while for Marj to find — and as she sat in the opulent marble-floored fully enclosed stall (reminding, as a certain opulence usually did, of Bombay’s Taj Mahal Palace Hotel), she thought of Bonita and their excursion to Neiman’s. She even imagined retracing their steps yet didn’t have the strength, not today.

She wiped herself then looked for the lever but there wasn’t one — nothing at all! How could such a splendid hostelry have skimped on a basic fixture, installing a toilet that couldn’t be flushed? Perhaps they were on timers; that seemed rather crude. She wondered what to do. She decided she’d go tell someone. Marj stood from the bowl, gathering her skirt around her. She didn’t like leaving all that in the water, it was ugly. A moment after she got up, she heard a flush. Something must be wrong and she still thought she should mention it at the reception desk, but shrugged. The old woman washed her hands with the sweet-smelling soap, glad that she wouldn’t have to share her travail with the staff, who had so much else to tend to.

Maybe the toilet had fixed itself.

She walked to the grand entrance (where the swimming pool used to be way back when) and asked the doorman in the marvelous costume for a cab. She gave the driver the address of her Beverlywood home. As they turned into the street, Marj felt bad because she hadn’t brought anything for Pahrump.

The coachman slowed down, looking for the house. Darkness was descending. She told him this was it, the charred lot (she didn’t say that in so many words), and he made a snorting sound. She said just pull into the drive please and let me out. He was one of those horrid, judgey men from unknowable countries who had an agenda on top of getting their money. Marj gave him a nice tip and he shook his head, ogling her as she stepped to the sidewalk, like she was a crazy person. The old woman was about to investigate the remains of her residence but saw the driver still sitting there gawking, and she looked him straight in the eye until he shrugged and sneered and snorted again or whatever it was he did and put the car in gear and pulled away.

She couldn’t get onto the property because of a wire fence.

“Marjorie?”

It was Cora.

“Hello!”

“Marjorie, what — what are you doing here? Aren’t you at the hotel? Joan said you were at the hotel.”

“Oh yes, we’re still there, but there’s no place like home!”

“But — how did you get here?”

“I cabbed it. Cora, why is there this fence?”

“For safety. The kids in the neighborhood were climbing all around.”

Cora stared at her old friend.

“I am so sorry I haven’t come to see you, Marj — you’re at the Beverly Hills? But, well…you see, I had some bad news of my own. My Pahrump passed away.”

“No! Not Mr P!”

“Yes. Yes, he did.”

The 2 began to cry.

“And there I was for the last few hours wondering what to bring him…oh darling, how dreadful!”

“The doctors said they did everything humanly possible, but it just got to the point where — I thought it was cruel. I put him on DNR. ‘Do Not Resuscitate.’ ”

“He was so brave. Oh, that Mr P! Cora, it was his time.”

“Well, yes, I suppose. He lost his testicles at the end. You know, Steinie said they do prosthetics now, for dogs who get neutered. Just like a breast implant, only down there. But the doctors said the surgery would have killed him.” She smiled that incongruous cookie-jar smile. “Come! Come inside, Marj, it’s cold. Does Joan know you’re here?”

“Oh! I imagine.”

Cora sensed something was wrong. She wanted to get her friend into the house, maybe get some food in her while she called the hotel and told her daughter what was going on. (She had a sneaking suspicion Mrs Herlihy’s whereabouts were unknown.) All she could think was, the poor darling has been through hell.

Cora parked her in the living room. She brought a glass of water and part of a Reuben sandwich from Factor’s that her grandson left, and the maid had wrapped up.

“The most wonderful thing was, just before my Drummer Boy passed, these extraordinary people came and put him on film — he’s a television star! Now they’re going to dedicate the entire episode to Mr P. Oh Marj, let me show you!”

She put on the Dog Whisperer DVD that Stein had “burned.” Marjorie wasn’t sure what the whole thing was about but it did give her a chance to see Pahrump again, and that was fine. There was another dog too, who’d been shot by mistake, so awful, but the animals seemed to be busy making friends. She recognized some of her neighbor’s grandkids. Cora was on the show too, “in the wings,” and Marj thought she comported herself well.

She called the hotel from the kitchen and left a message with guest voicemail saying, “Joan, your mom is here.” When Cora hung up, she realized that in her excitement she stupidly hadn’t identified herself, and phoned again. This time, it took longer to connect her to the room. “Joan? I’m so sorry — that was me! — but I don’t think I left my name. It’s Cora, Cora Ludinsky, Marjorie’s neighbor. Well, she’s here in my living room. I wasn’t sure if you knew, but she’s right here in my living room, right now.” It came to her that she had Joan’s cellphone number somewhere; finding it would be another story. Also, that she probably should have said what time it was.

She went back in — Marj was already standing at the front door. Cora begged her to stay, but Marj was adamant and the neighbor said she would give her a ride back to the hotel. Marj told her it wasn’t necessary, that “Lucas sent a Town Car,” and it was waiting on Robertson because she didn’t want to “put on airs” or suffer the embarrassment of the chauffeur seeing her beloved house in its undignified burned-up condition. Cora knew that was nonsense and wild talk. She pleaded with Marj and tried to stall, saying she wanted to show off some of the new garden furniture Stein had bought. Marj left almost hastily. Cora went straight to the phone to reach her son but didn’t have any luck. She began to look for Joan’s cell number.

The old woman stared through the Cyclone fence at the ruins of her home. It made her think of that ancient city the Travel Gal mentioned, Benares, where Jesus learned the art of healing — where corpses were set on fire and thrown from ghats into the Ganges, the proceedings watched over by Lord Siva, god of Death. (She looked it up in the old Encyclopedia Britannica her father had bought for her Sweet 16th.) The river, between the Varana and Asi rivers, was said to have sprung from Siva’s matted hair. When his girlfriend Parvati died, a jeweled earring fell to earth and landed in the exact place that became the holiest cremation site—“the Manikarnika Ghat.” She was amazed to read that it took 100 kilos of wood to render a body to ashes. All day and all night one could hear the chant, Rama nama satya hai (“God’s name is Truth”). Benares, she read, “is also known as Mahashmashana, the great cremation ground, the final resting place of the corpse of the universe at the end of its vast cycle of life.” Trudy said that Benares was nothing but a “wretched ant farm.”