Bruce Wagner - The Empty Chair

Little Ricky was of that genus of killers who begin their careers by torturing animals. Now imagine what the man-version of that boy would do to a lamb like Polly, a lamb who barely has its fur. A little lamb can certainly bring out the worst in a Little Ricky. A fellow just did the same thing down in Florida to a gal who was a few years younger than Polly. Went right into the house and grabbed her. Took her home and raped her, then wrapped her in garbage bags with her stuffed animal and buried her alive. I think about her. I think about Polly. I think about these things… Polly’s with her friends, they’re doing their girl-talk popcorn thing, playing music and dancing — safe. Maybe he punched her head to shut her up as they left the house, she’s under his arm, limbs slow-moving like a drugged crab, his adrenaline’s surging, he’s wasted, invincible, can’t believe he’s pulled this off. Drenched in alcohol, pot and meth, barely feels the lamb-crab moving on his hip, a pirate’s pride and booty — I’ll stop. Not from lack of candor, that’s one thing I’ve never been accused of. It’s more, well, you can’t know how far I go into thinking about these things, of inhabiting that sort of evil, examining it from every angle. Particularly of a child’s. It’s just so unpleasant, Bruce, but that’s how I’m wired. My “lingua franca.” If there’s a terrible place to go, I tend to be there. See, that’s what they did to me. I know it’s dreadful but that’s what I do, I conjure the details because I was killed, right around Polly’s age too. And I’ve had lots of time to think about it, I’m a student of murdered children, I inoculate myself. I know that’s selfish… well, the reasons I study them I suppose are two-fold. One is to honor and grieve for them — and honor and grieve for the child I once was before those monsters… I suppose another reason I go so deep is to celebrate that I made it through. That I survived. Because I believed for so many years beyond a shadow of a doubt that I’d be killed by those men. That God could not— would not save me. Because it was He who put me in harm’s way.

It was God who was intent on destroying me…

And if you’re wondering why Kelly didn’t recognize Richard Allen Davis when they met — I mean, from being in the news — well, her mom got sick right around the time of the abduction, that was when she started flying back east. Massively distracted. Plus, she had to stay out there whole hunks of time to deal with the hospice and the home liquidators, and with her brother. She knew about Polly’s murder — we never spoke much about it — knew from the Learys about the Winona fundraiser. But it all happened during this period of difficulty for her and never really landed on her screen.

He looked as if he was going to continue, but grew quiet. He stared out the window. After what felt like 10 minutes, I quietly left to use the restroom. When I came out, the door was open; was he gone? No — just letting in fresh air.

He smiled at me as he brewed some tea and smoked a roach. I declined his offer.

Pardon my trance.

Needless to say, the crimes and misdemeanors of Little Ricky put a dent in Kelly’s mood. But it was more than a fender bender. It was a full-on karma crash.

Suddenly, she didn’t have the stomach for it — who would? But her pride was tangled up. How could she reconcile the mandate of sharing the Buddha’s teachings, of campaigning for the enlightenment of all beings, with the horror and rage she felt toward the animal that slaughtered Polly Klaas? And what about her project? I know the book was on her mind. She didn’t dare broach it because she didn’t want to sound narcissistic. I know that in her hour of the wolf, my wife still thought the book was essential (which I think it was), not just as an expression of her creativity and development as a Buddhist and a woman but as a tool to work through this terrible dilemma. It seemed to be one of those classic at-a-crossroad crises. You know, what doesn’t kill your practice makes it stronger. But how can I face that monstrous piece of shit? That was her most pressing concern. She couldn’t seem to build a bridge from where she was to where she needed to be, knowing what she knew. So she went back and forth between abandoning the book and resuscitating its high hopes.

Kelly sought counsel from her teacher, who, like most roshis in the Bay Area, was a late-sixtysomething Jew from the East Coast. He said that her work with prisoners was a gift. She wanted him to talk about Richard Allen Davis specifically but he deliberately wouldn’t, invoking all prisoners instead. You know, “the dharma doesn’t come with strings attached.” That was the teaching. I thought it was smug and heartless. To me. No compassion, just bullshit. I’m just saying.

My wife continued her lessons with Davis. She was losing weight, puking before and after she saw him. And Little Ricky knew something was wrong. Kelly said she had a parasite, which made her even more disgusted with herself. That she didn’t have the balls to say something, anything —even Go fuck yourself! — was eating away at her. And Little Ricky was concerned , he was filled with metta , he was genuinely worried about her! He told her to make sure she saw a doctor and maybe she shouldn’t come back until she was better. Finally, she got too sick to handle it. She never returned, not to San Quentin or any of the jails. I remember wishing at the time that she wouldn’t go back to the zendo and that phony roshi either.

I read in People that Polly’s favorite book was Little Women . Winona starred in a film adaptation. It had a dedication to Polly at the end.

To all the murdered Little Women—

The halfway point in her sabbatical had been reached.

Kelly decided that her path was to teach “secular” Buddhism in the schools, like her friend. When she told him she was striking out on her own, Dharmabud said he was thrilled. But I learned through the grapevine that he was stung (don’t get me started on the whole sangha jockeying-for-power thing). My wife was on the rebound from the trauma of San Quentin, a colossal failure in her eyes. Now she had other fish to fry. She knew she was encroaching on Dharmabud’s territory, co-opting his shit, and struck a kind of warrior pose to justify her actions. She walked around the house saying it wasn’t possible for her to step on her friend’s toes, how could teaching the fundamentals of meditation to children be a negative in any way? Her argument kind of boiled down to “this town and the job of enlightening it is big enough for both of us.” Dharmabud did a slow burn. He got mad at her, then mad at himself for being so proprietary— attached —in the first place. His teacher (some other Brooklyn-transplant roshi) told him that an assertion of Self was the cause of his suffering. Hence, Dharmabud redoubled meditation and seva . What a farce! He ended the Impermanence Rocks! tour entirely, so Kelly won by default. She began with farther-away schools, ones that had been overlooked by her mentor because of their geographical inconvenience. Gave her time to gain self-confidence, like Sylvester Stallone in training. Impermanence Rocky!

She ran into an old editor-friend at a party. After a few mysterious meetings in the city, Kelly came home with a bottle of wine and an announcement — she’d been given a $20,000 advance from Chronicle Books for a memoir about being a menopausal, bisexual, Berkeley-bodhisattva. She would write about being adopted. She would write about her cancer (six years in remission). She would write about her affairs. She would write about our son. She wanted to write a lot about our son — what it was like to raise a boy with her gay male partner. She was even screwing up her courage to unravel the nasty Little Ricky experience… but she wanted the overarching theme to be Buddhist thought, practice and doctrine. That was where she lived , it was the landscape surrounding the long road that brought her to where she was now: introducing meditation and metta into elementary schools. Kelly wanted to expose herself, warts and all, the trials and tribulations, and the healing. She’d been asked to write a book! She couldn’t believe her good fortune. It was as if the Universe rung a prayer bell, summoning her to put everything on the table for that sacred, invisible tribe— readers.