Her Last Memory

by C. A. Wittman

  "Hey, man," Darpan said as they filed out of the car before giving Aarav a brief hug. They were a scraggly looking crew. Aarav wore his best cardigan, a knit rainbow-colored affair that carried a faint whiff of mold, the signature scent of their shack-like house on Maui. Ramani and Serene were both in shorts, t-shirts and flimsy black slippers.

  "Come have a look at the awesomeness we were blessed with," Darpan said, springing up the three smooth, wide cement steps to the front door. A flicker of irritation passed over Aarav's face like a faulty light, a brief dark look followed by a forced smile when Darpan opened the door and beamed a moon-faced smile at him, guileless blue eyes lit with barely restrained joy. They stepped inside. There were still some boxes stacked neatly in the living room, but mostly everything had been put away. Natural light streamed through the many windows. The furniture was Ramani's parents' furniture, most of it vintage 1950s and 60s stuff. A large red and white Persian area rug with some stains covered the center of the dark wood floor in the living room. Another woven rug was rolled up and pushed to the side against the wall. Pictures had been hung, some of them obviously chosen by Darpan. Bruce Lee in mid-kick. Mickey Mouse smoking a joint. These were interspersed with Ramani's collection of gurus, old men with solemn-looking expressions. A cabinet stood in the dining area. Through its glass doors, Serene studied the display of china dishes decorated with sprays of delicate pink roses, a pile of framed pictures stacked carelessly amongst the china––pictures, she assumed, that hung on the walls before Darpan and Ramani redecorated. Aarav looked it all over silently. Ramani gently touched his arm and pointed to an altar under a corner window.

  "I set up your meditation area, but we can move it if you don't like it there." A large framed picture of Bhagwan Shri Rajneesh hung over a low table covered in a filmy bright yellow material. An incense holder sat atop the table. It held a slim stick of incense and a sage stick bound in colorful yarn. Beside it was a bronze Tibetan singing bowl. Aarav gave a curt nod of acknowledgement to this arrangement.

  "Come have a look at your room, man," Darapan sang out, side skipping away and waving his arms in a follow-me gesture. "And your room, too," he said to Serene. Aarav and Serene followed him and Ramani went into the kitchen. At the end of the hall was a medium-sized bedroom with a sliding glass door that led out to a backyard with a large shade tree and two smaller bushy lemon trees. Inside the room there was a bookshelf, a four-poster bed and two large dressers. More furniture that came with the house. The room smelled overpoweringly of Darpan––his armpits, specifically, Serene noticed, and something muskier, tinged with the odor of weed. The bland brown blankets on the bed were slightly rumpled and there were imprints in the pillows from heads that recently rested there. Aarav's jaw tightened and he opened the sliding door.

  "You want to check out the yard?" Darpan asked.

  "Where do I stay?" Serene spoke up.

  "Oh, yeah. Come on, I'll show you.”

  Serene was often an afterthought for Darpan. His utmost allegiance was to Ramani. He groveled at Aarav while often overlooking Serene altogether, which was one amongst many of the reasons why she chose to stay behind on Maui with Aarav. Her relationship with her stepdad had never been good. Still, Aarav's uptight and hypocritical I'm-so-enlightened attitude paled next to Darpan's unabashed childish narcissism. Serene could only take so much of being alone with Ramani and her young husband, who she treated like a spoiled pet and could be disgustingly inappropriate with. They often groped each other in public and gave each other sloppy tongue kisses. More times than Serene could count, these makeout sessions gave Darpan very obvious erections, his penis straining against whatever thin-material pants he happened to be wearing at the time. They'd then disappear into his room, or sometimes Ramani would leave him hot and bothered. He'd just continue with whatever activity he'd been up to, no shame in prancing about with a hard on while gardening or cutting vegetables for a stir fry.

  "Sweet, isn't it?" Darpan said, opening a door to a closet-sized bedroom where Serene would sleep. It was so packed with furniture that she could barely squeeze through to the tiny attached bathroom that Darpan gestured to like a game show host giving away a prize. Ugly green polyester curtains hung over another sliding glass door that opened out to a private walled-in courtyard. "Awesomeness, right?" Darpan took a moment to throw an arm over Serene's shoulder, his damp armpit resting against the back of her neck, its acrid tangy odor curdling her stomach. She ducked out from under him and wiped away at the wet patch on her skin with the back of her shirt. "There's another bathroom too, man, a bigger one," Darpan said to Aarav and showed them. It was next to Aarav and Ramani's room. It had two sinks with hot and cold faucets and a claw foot tub with a small shower head.

  “Suh-weet,” he said, dragging out the word into two syllables in that dopey surfer talk of his. Serene wondered why it had been left up to Darpan to show them around her grandparents' house as if it were his and he was kind enough to let them come stay.

  "So, like, where's your room?" Serene asked.

  "Oh, yeah. We have to go back the way we came.” He sang the last part in a high falsetto and took them back toward the living room and down a different short hall, which was really only there for the staircase that led to the second story.

  * * *

  Upstairs was its own apartment and Serene could see that Darpan had no business claiming this space for himself. Her mother had allowed this blond, twenty-five-year-old hippy with no ambition other than to be a sponge to usurp their life.

  The upstairs held a more modern looking living room, a small kitchen and an enormous bedroom with its own modern bathroom of black and white tiles and a giant shower and tub enclosed in a wall of glass. There was a balcony, too, that overlooked their street.

  "Ramani told me to shack up here, man," Darpan said.

  Aarav's narrow face darkened with repressed rage, brown eyes astounded with Darpan's audacity.

  "She said the three of you would be more comfortable all together, you know. But I'm cool with whatever."

  He'd already made the place his own, though, laid claim by painting the walls bright orange and yellow. His personal pictures decorated the bedroom. Free weights were piled in one corner and hanging mistletoe and spider plants were placed throughout the living room, kitchen and bedroom. Serene wondered where Darpan got the money to purchase these things. Fruit lay on the cutting board in the kitchen, some of it cut up, some of it already tossed in a brand-new fancy blender.

  "Do you want a celebratory smoothie?"

  "Maybe later," Aarav said and made an about-face back down the stairs, Serene behind him.

  "Ramani," her stepfather called out. "Ramani!"

  "In the kitchen." Her mother met them in the hall, holding a beer and grinning. She was as brown as a walnut, her frizzy curls framing her pretty, distinct features in a sexy, tousled way.

  Ramani was heading into her late forties, but she could easily pass for early thirties. Her breasts were still perky, even though she’d breastfed both Serene and Cedar. She did yoga every day and went for five-mile runs. She ate a lot of raw food and drank a lot of smoothies. Ramani also drank a lot of alcohol and smoked too many joints with Darpan. Still, the pot only made her crave things like bananas and blueberries. She wasn't into junk. Ramani was good with her hands; she knew how to build and fix things. Even though she had a license in family law, she didn't practice. She preferred to teach yoga classes and paint for a living. She liked to hike and build yurts and gazebos and furniture. She liked to meditate and chant with Aarav and cuddle with him sometimes and have spiritual New Agey conversations with her first husband, but she preferred to fuck the second.

  "You're mom's not all there, is she?" Serene's best friend Kanani said once, taking in some of Ramani's erotic artwork of ejaculating penises hanging on the wall over the table of their old screened-in kitchen.

  No. Ramani wasn't all there. Had never been, Serene had realized at that moment. After Cedar, though… well,
after Cedar it was like watching a star explode, the bright light still brilliant and visible long after its source has died out. Ramani had died inside long ago. Her brilliance was just an after effect..

  "We need to talk," Aarav said.

  Ramani took a swig of beer and a quick sniff under her left arm, nose wrinkling. "Pungent," she proclaimed.

  "Ramani."

  She glanced up at Aarav.

  "Now. I want to talk now."

  "Sure. Here?"

  "No. In the bedroom."

  "You don't want to get the bags out of the car first?"

  He was already heading down the hall, back stiff. Serene didn't know why he bothered. Ramani always got her way in the end. Her mother followed him, guzzling more beer as she walked. Aarav pushed open the already partially open bedroom door and stepped aside for his wife.

  "Nothing's permanent. We can always change up the living room if you don't like it," Serene could hear Ramani explaining as the door shut behind them and their voices became muffled. From the upstairs apartment Darpan had claimed, music floated down––Enya's Far and Away, muffling the sound of Aarav's rising voice. Serene opened the cabinet with the delicate rose-decorated china and pulled out the haphazard stack of framed pictures. Placing them on the kitchen table, she studied them. Three little girls standing before this very house, holding hands from oldest to youngest, with short bobbed hair and knee-length swing dresses. Ramani in black patent leather shoes, her sisters wearing matching black and white saddle shoes. Another photo captured her grandparents walking down the steps of city hall, holding hands and smiling widely for the camera. Her grandmother in a dark pantsuit cinched in at the waist to accentuate her youthful figure, hair styled in sleek waves to her shoulders and curling toward the ears, the front swept back in a pompadour. Her grandfather in suit and tie, with chiseled, handsome features, holding his new wife close to his side. There were other black and white photos of unsmiling relatives from the turn of the century and more of Clair and Dottie a little older. Another of Ramani as a very young woman, carefully made-up and looking glamorous with sexy kohl-rimmed eyes and long fake lashes. Posed next to a red Mustang convertible wearing a sleeveless, knee-length blue knit dress. A cigarette resting between the fingers of her left hand.

  "It's not right!" Aarav yelled, and something crashed. The silky sounds of Enya's crooning voice grew louder. Serene set down the picture taken of Ramani when she used to be called Brenda and liked things like red Mustang convertibles, black eyeliner and cigarettes. She opened the front door, stepped out and down the cement steps to the sidewalk, and started walking toward downtown Culver City.

  3

  Steve - April 1996

  * * *

  Steve watched the lanky man with longish blond hair from his bedroom window. He was doing a series of poses on the porch of the house across the street. One pose flowed into the next and Steve tried to remember what the exercise was called. Tai-something. The lanky blond man was his new neighbor, and some days ago, Steve decided that he was a complete weirdo. The man never wore shoes, even when he headed out to town, and usually not even a shirt. He owned a collection of pants that reminded Steve of Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves. The new neighbor liked to smoke pot and exercise on the front porch, and sometimes he and a brown-haired woman really went at it in plain view, bold as you please. But that mostly stopped when one of the neighbors called the police. What didn't stop was the curtains peeled back from the windows where you could see them walking around naked and, one night, having sex. Seeing them, Steve had felt helplessly aroused and grossed out at the same time. Mostly, though, he felt regret about the strange couple who moved into the house across the street. He'd known the woman who lived there before. Barbara. She was old––in her seventies, Steve would have guessed, and she'd been his friend.

  * * *

  Barbara Jones was one of the first friends Steve made after his family moved to Culver City from Elkhart, Indiana a year ago. His father Ron Bates had been promoted to president at T&M Advertising. His mother Maggie worked for the same firm as a secretary. She was able to keep her position in the transfer. It was a painless move for all of them. Both Steve and his sister Carrie were excited to come out to California, where the sun always shone and the chance to see movie stars increased exponentially. Carrie was a cool kid. She'd made friends instantly at the junior high school, and Steve fit in seamlessly at the local high school, falling in with a crew of skater and surfer kids. He'd bought a cruiser bike and a mini tanker with money he'd saved from odd jobs. On weekends, Steve and his friends met up to cruise the Ballona Park pathway that led to the ocean and Manhattan Beach, where they surfed El Porto or Manhattan Pier Northside.

  In that first week of moving to Jackson Avenue, he'd noticed Barbara struggling with a box, trying to lift it out of her car. He went to help her and ended up carrying four bags of groceries into her house. Barbara's house was a bit like his grandparents' home with black and white family pictures on the walls and old furniture, some of it antique. They'd chatted politely on that first day. She learned he'd moved from Indiana, he learned she'd lived in her house for fifty-four years. Steve liked Barbara right off. She didn't try too hard like some old women, asking too many questions, calling him honey and sweetheart, and making veiled comments about what a catch he was going to be for some lucky girl. Barbara didn't do any of that. She wore her hair short and left it to its natural grey, not permed into hideous dyed brown poodle curls that most women of her generation seemed to go for.

  The box she'd been struggling with contained a computer—a desktop. Steve was impressed. Most people his age were just getting around to having personal computers and, only last year, a friend had told him about something called the World Wide Web. Barbara knew all about it and invited him to come back and try out the internet on her computer.

  The next time he'd been out mowing his front lawn, Barbara waved at him from across the street and he'd waved back. When Steve finished with his chore, he walked over and offered to mow her back lawn, noticing the long grass from the driveway. She was delighted and offered to pay him. He refused, but she wouldn't hear of him doing it as a favor. Later, they spent two hours on her new computer. Barbara showed him how she had set up something called an AOL account. Through AOL, Barbara was able to do things that Steve had never heard of, like check her electronic mail, talk with people on instant messaging, and access something called a web portal. After that, he mowed her lawn every two weeks, then fiddled around on her computer until he'd finally convinced his dad to purchase one.

  When Steve set up his own AOL account, Barbara became his first online friend and they'd messaged back and forth, talking about all sorts of stuff. She'd been a terrific geek, a Star Trek and Star Wars fan. She’d read all of Steve's favorite books, The Lord of the Rings series, Dune, Stranger in a Strange Land and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sometimes they sat outside in her yard after he was done mowing and drank fresh lemonade she made from the lemons on her trees. He learned that Barbara had three daughters and worked as a fourth-grade elementary school teacher before retiring. The oldest daughter, Brenda, lived in Hawaii, a mother to her own daughter. The two youngest girls never grew up. They'd been killed along with Barbara's husband in a freeway accident on the 405 Northbound near the 10 exit. The years after the death of her girls and husband were the hardest years of Barbara's life.

  One afternoon when Steve stood looking at the framed photo on the wall of Barbara’s little girls all lined up holding hands, she’d said,

  “Brenda was a difficult child before the tragedy. But after the accident, well it felt like I lost her too. She was a daddy’s girl. When she left home at nineteen, that was that.” Barbara had glanced at him, then said, “Sometimes I wish it was Clair and Dotty who lived and Brenda…” She’d stopped herself, and ran her fingers through her short grey hair. “It’s an awful thing to wish. I’m sure you don’t think I’m such a nice old woman anymore.”

  Steve had
n't known what to think. He couldn't imagine his mother wishing for the life of one of her children over the other.

  "You haven't seen Brenda since she moved out?"

  "No. Not one visit. But she writes me letters."

  "Do you write back?"

  Barbara gave a snort of a laugh, a little toss of her head, and waved his question away.

  In the remaining months of Barbara's life, she would tell Steve stories of her girlhood and when she was a young woman. She would reminisce about friends and family long gone, but she never mentioned Brenda again. Barbara was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in January. By March, she was dead. Now it was April.

  Steve assumed that the dark-haired woman who moved into Barbara's house with the weird blond guy was Brenda. Barbara did mention a few times that the house would go to her daughter after she passed away, and there had been no For Sale sign, so the dark-haired woman had to be Brenda. Steve had begun to think of her as Maybe Brenda. He’d never imagined his neighbor's daughter would be a hippy, though. Barbara's most recent picture of Brenda was of a young woman with a bee-hive hairdo posing next to a red Mustang convertible.

  Maybe Brenda was all angles and lean muscle, her walk more like a prowl. When she talked with the blond guy, she had this way of throwing back her shoulders, thrusting out her chest and pushing her pelvis forward.

  While Steve watched the boyfriend do his Tai-somethings, the old Volvo the two of them recently acquired pulled up and a different man and a girl in a t-shirt and cut-off jean shorts got out of the car. Steve rolled up his open blinds, wildly curious now. The other man was older and short with a petite frame. He had a narrow face, a prominent nose, neatly cut jet black hair, and wore an ugly rainbow sweater with blue jeans and velcro sandals. The blond guy gave him a hug and waved at the girl. Maybe Brenda got out of the car, too. Steve's gaze returned to the girl. She was striking. Tall. A massive puff of hair pulled back in a ponytail. He could only catch snatches of her profile: a high cheekbone and a well-defined jaw. Her nose was a bit like the older man's, but more regal looking. He wondered if she was the man's daughter, but then when the girl stood next to Maybe Brenda, he noticed how similar their bodies were. It was hard to place who she might belong to because she obviously wasn't white, like the three adults.