Bruce Wagner - The Chrysanthemum Palace

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Bertie Krohn, only child of Perry Krohn — creator of TV's longest running space opera,
— recounts the story of the last months in the lives of his two friends: Thad Michelet, author, actor, and son of a literary titan; and Clea.
Freemantle, emotionally fragile daughter of a legendary movie star. Scions of entertainment greatness, they call themselves the Three Musketeers. As the incestuous clique attempts to scale the peaks claimed by their sacred yet monstrous parents during the filming of a Starwatch episode, Bertie scrupulously chronicles their futile struggles against the ravenous, narcissistic, and addicted Hollywood that claims them.

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I kept thinking about Thad and his father. Was I becoming obsessed? I dismissed the notion as merely another cloud. Then others blew in on the horizon: the thunderheaded cumuliform of Clea and her mom… the cirruslike wisp of Leif Farragon — you didn’t need a weatherman (or a guru) to see the sky was filled with spirits. To my surprise I had truly begun to care about Thad, just as I cared for Clea, and Miriam too for that matter. They were the special creatures who had fallen for whatever karmic reason (to use the contagious jargon of the acolytes) into my orbit and I into theirs. I suppose I was obsessed — by making meaning of it all. Perhaps that was foolish. As the wise and ageless sprite spoke, I meditated on the brevity of life’s duration and the significance of the drama that played out on one’s personal stage. I don’t mean to get corny or metaphysical but I couldn’t help thinking I’d be derelict not to further investigate the path upon which my own heart had led me.

On the drive home, I told Miriam about my experience. I talked about finishing The Soft Sea Horse, all the miserable things I’d read that Jack had said about his son, and the crazy ambivalence I’d felt in trying to hash everything through — so very democratic, like an honor student mastering both sides of a debate. She smiled, rather gurulike herself, without entering into the fray; her way of acknowledging I was now a rarefield member of Thadwatchers (or Micheleteers), an adherent of the Inner Circle.

Instead of returning to the hotel, we made love at my house — though it sounds a bit convoluted I think at least part of the reason was to avoid competing with the raw ecstasies of the night before — when Shutters stripped and shuddered, an event whose tomfoolery probably imprinted itself upon the overpriced, designer-seashell-strewn aura of that room for at least ninety days. (A discreetly placed plaque should read: MIRIAM AND BERTIE DIDN’T GET MUCH SLEEP HERE.) A few minutes after we came, in simultaneous, symphonic ciss boom-bah, Miriam fired up a cigarette, sucked in a fog bank of smoke, and set to a little musing herself.

“I was thinking… you know — when you were talking about The Soft Sea Horse. I’m not exactly sure what Thad told you when you were on the train — and I know you’ve read the book, but some things didn’t happen the way he wrote them. Like, he wasn’t in Amagansett — or the Vineyard — when Jeremy died.”

Knowing what I read was “fiction,” I was still bemused. “But it said they came over to the island,” I said, defensively. “After the drowning.”

“That’s what I’m saying. He wasn’t in the States, he was with him in Capri. When it happened. Morgana was busy with a nervous breakdown — they finally put her in Silver Hill. Or somewhere. Lillian Hellman made the arrangements. I think. That’s why Thad wound up going to Europe. What happened was, Morgana thought Jack was having an affair with Sophia Loren which he completely wasn’t, he was screwing two other actresses on that shoot. And the set designer too! The twins were playing in the water…” She closed her eyes, as if projecting a legendarily lost film on the back of her lids. “And his father, that mother fucker, blamed him for it. As usual! I mean, he blamed that little guy if it rained . Jack thought it was deliberate. That was his theory! Some sort of willful act on Thad’s part. The asshole. Bertie, can you imagine? The man was a shitty, shitty father, he never watched those kids, it was criminal, he was — a compulsive pussyhound. Anyway, it was just some creepy literary fantasy of Jack’s, a Henry James thing. And later on, I think he was pissed Thad wrote about it because he was going to, supposedly, but didn’t have the stones. Cajones? And he thought, How dare he! You know, scooping the big genius. Thad would never have been capable of hurting his brother, he worshipped him. But I guess capable and culpable are just a few letters off.

“Anyway, Thad got righteously blamed, and that’s a heavy thing to get laid on you at that age. At any age! Jack just poured out his rage — the rage toward Morgana that he’d always had, I mean way before those kids were even born —they were nothing but… burdens to him — oh right, I know he was supposed to love Jeremy so much —that’s part of the myth, OK? But you know, I don’t even think it was true. Jack had a death wish — for everyone else, not for himself. So when Jeremy died, he probably felt whatever form of guilt he was capable of feeling and then he poured this sick rage on that poor, poor boy. It so breaks my heart, Bertie. It so breaks my heart!”

1Knowing it may be cloying to some, I include the nickname out of breezy verisimilitude. Having gone this far — I think I’ve probably gotten footnotes out of my system, too — I’m afraid there’s just a bit more to be revealed under the irritating file marked TMI: I had taken to calling her that after watching a show on the Discovery Channel, postcoital.

~ ~ ~

THE NIGHT PROVED A TONICall around. On Sunday morning, Thad and Clea looked clear-eyed, luminous, and light of heart. I hadn’t fully digested Miriam’s cliffhanger about the twins being together that ill-fated day in Capri; my plan was to visit the Herrick Library and see what I could dig up. I wanted to hold a bit of fragile yellow newsprint in my hand, something the Internet couldn’t allow.

But first, let me backtrack: we officially got busted.

See, everyone was supposed to hook up at Shutters around noon. The Dynamic Duo awakened early, fled the Chateau, and swung by Clea’s to grab a swimsuit. When there was no sign of Miriam at the hotel, they naturally decided to kill time by dropping over to harass me; as they pulled up, Meerkat was just leaving. They clucked their tongues and said “Aha!” in grandly sophomoric pseudo-revelation.

Our pal had hired a driver, and I wasn’t sure that was a good sign. Miriam wanted to run the Mustang over to Shutters to pick up a suit of her own but Thad insisted we take the Town Car on a “pit stop” then continue to the Colony. Clea was gung ho. She’d never been to my parents’ beach house.

We piled into the Lincoln and, after a few minutes of ribbing on their part and half-assed blushing on ours, settled in for the short ride.

картинка 31

My father bought the place twenty years ago and since then had acquired the adjoining properties (his modus operandi, as by now you know). The structure had endured a multitude of upgrades and add-ons in the Richard Meier mausoleum style—“ad mauseum,” as Gita liked to say, otherwise cattily known as the School of Swiss Sanitoria. “Perfect,” she noted wryly, “for your parents’ mutual invalidism.” The sand castle was a suitable showcase for Perry’s outsized art and ego. I had pretty much left the nest by the time they moved in, and while I’m certain to have secretly — all right, maybe not so secretly — coveted the general idea of a $15 million weekend getaway, I was glad to note that for all its meticulous minimalism, in the end, like an aesthetic black (OK, white) hole, the dwelling consumed itself, and everything in near orbit. When I finally visited — already in Berkeley and on the outs with Perry (Mom was inadvertently tarred with that brush) — I realized for the first time just how much money my father had accumulated through the years. My outlandish disdain was tempered by the fact that Gita loved the beach: sun and sea were therapeutic and rejuvenative. If that’s what money could buy, the house had been worth every penny.

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