A Book of Common Prayer

by Joan Didion

  Charlotte gave up on the scarf. “I can’t deal with Warren right now.”

  “What’s to ‘deal with’? You were married to him, now you’re married to me. You think you’re the only two people in the world who used to fuck and don’t any more?”

  “Not at all.” Another thing Charlotte could not deal with was Leonard’s essentially rational view of the sexual connection. “There’s also you and me.”

  “Not bad. You’re waking up.” Leonard seemed pleased. “Here’s a taxi.”

  “I think I’ll walk.”

  “Then walk,” Leonard said as he got into the taxi.

  Charlotte walked as far as Grace Cathedral and stood for a while just inside the nave in a particular pool of yellow light Marin had liked as a child. When the light shifted on the window and there was no more yellow Charlotte left the cathedral. She intended walking back to the Fairmont to get a taxi but there was one idling outside the cathedral, and Leonard was waiting in it, just as he had been waiting’ in a taxi outside the courthouse the morning she divorced Warren.

  “She had a straw hat one Easter.” Charlotte had taken Leonard’s hand in the taxi but neither of them spoke until the house on California Street was in sight. “And a flowered lawn dress.”

  “Don’t think you have to get yourself pregnant just to prove he doesn’t have you any more, Charlotte.”

  “We took her to lunch at the Carlyle, I remember she was cold.”

  “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can just run it back through the projector, Charlotte.”

  “Warren gave her his coat.”

  Upstairs in the house on California Street Charlotte took off her skirt and sweater and laid them on a chair. She took off the pieces of handmade navy-blue underwear and let them drop to the floor. At the bottom of a drawer she found a faded flannel nightgown and she pulled on the nightgown and she lay on the bed and watched the last light leave the windows.

  “And we drank a lot of Ramos Fizzes. And in the middle of lunch Warren said he had an appointment downtown. And when the check came I didn’t have any money. I didn’t even have two dollars for a taxi, Marin and I walked home.” She turned to Leonard. “She was three. Everybody admired her hat. I think I was never so happy on a Sunday. Why are you bringing him out.”

  “He’s her father, isn’t he.”

  “I can’t handle it.”

  Leonard sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the handmade pieces of navy-blue silk from the floor. They were very plain. They had no lace or embroidery. They had only the rows of infinitesimal stitches. “Maybe I want to see if you can. Somebody in the Azores went blind making these.”

  “Why do you have to bring him out.”

  “Because he gave her his coat,” Leonard said.

  “Somebody in the Philippines,” Charlotte said. “Not the Azores. The Philippines.”

  8

  “THOSE WERE FOUR TRULY WONDERFUL SPECIMENS YOU condemned me to fly out here with,” Warren said when he walked into the house on California Street at nine-thirty the next morning.

  Charlotte stood perfectly still. Warren looked as if he had not slept in several days. His eyes were bloodshot, his chin stubbled. He was wearing sneakers and a muffler Charlotte recognized as one she had knit for herself the winter they lived in an unheated apartment on East 93rd Street, and he was carrying not a suitcase but two shopping bags stuffed with what appeared to be dirty laundry. He was also carrying one red rose, which he handed to Charlotte without looking at her.

  “Four authentic gargoyles,” he said. “Some favor you did me. The four worst people in the world. Climbers. Vermin. Gargoyles. New York trash. Hogarth caricatures. 25,000 feet, no exit. Deliver me from favors. I need a drink.”

  “You repeated gargoyles,” Leonard said. “Otherwise vintage.”

  “The FBI is due at ten,” Charlotte said.

  “What’s that got to do with your getting me a drink. Me no get FBI joke.”

  “I haven’t heard that since it was still ‘me no get Indian joke,’ ” Leonard said. “Which I remember vividly from the night I introduced you to the Maharanee of wherever she was from.”

  “Lower Pelham,” Warren said. “She was the Maharanee of Lower Pelham.” He dropped the shopping bags on the floor in front of the fireplace. An aerosol can of shaving cream and a balled seersucker suit stuffed with dirty socks rolled out. “Get somebody to wash and iron that, Charlotte, all right? The suit just needs pressing.”

  “We don’t have any washers and ironers on the place today.” Charlotte retrieved the aerosol can before it hit the open fire. “Or any pressers.”

  “I can see you’re in one of your interesting moods. Tell me what else you can’t do for me today, Charlotte. You think you can give me a drink? Or can’t you.”

  Charlotte filled a glass with ice and splashed bourbon into it. Her hands were shaking. The veins on her arms were standing out and she did not want Warren to see them. When she finally spoke her voice was neutral. “Who exactly was on this plane?”

  “All friends of yours, I have no doubt. Which reminds me, you look like hell, your veins show.” Warren took the glass and drained it. “This Levant creature, whoever he is.”

  “Bashti Levant controls three out of five pop records sold in America.” Leonard seemed amused. “As you know perfectly well.”

  “Yeah, well, I had some fun at his expense, I don’t mind telling you. I had a little fun with him and this fat castrato he had along to bray at his jokes. This pasty Palm Beach castrato. ‘P.L.U.,’ he kept saying. ‘People Like Us.’ I let him know what category that was, don’t think I didn’t. Fawning capon. French cuffs. Parasitical eunuch.”

  “You didn’t like him,” Leonard said.

  “Palm Beach trash hanger-on. I let the women alone.”

  “The last Southern gentleman,” Leonard said.

  “Not that they deserved it. Two terrible women. Terrible voices, terrible brays. The castrato only brayed when the Levant creature snapped his fingers, but the women brayed all the time. 3,000 miles of braying. Le island. Le weekend. Les monkey-gland injections. Le New York trash.” Warren held out his glass to Charlotte. “I believe one of them was married to the Levant creature. Whoever he is, I have no idea.”

  “That surprises me. Since Leonard just told you.”

  “That surprises you, does it.” Warren rattled the ice in his glass. “You surprise easier than you used to. I suppose this creature is a client of Leonard’s.”

  “As a matter of fact he is.”

  “Leonard’s got all the luck. Arabs. Jews. Indians. Bashti Levant.”

  “Niggers,” Leonard said. “You forgot niggers.”

  “How exactly did this creature come to your attention, Leonard? He rape an Arab? Or is that possible. Actually I believe that’s a solecism. Raping an Arab.”

  “You’ve had that Arab in the wings, I can tell by your delivery.” Leonard took Warren’s glass and filled it. “I got involved with Bashti on a dope charge a few years ago. Involving certain of his artists.”

  “I don’t believe what I’m hearing. Bashti’s artists.”

  “There was a civil-liberties issue.”

  “Of course there was.” Warren choked with laughter and slapped his knee. “I knew there was.”

  “There was,” Charlotte said.

  In the silence that followed she could hear her voice echo, harsh and ugly. She fixed her eyes on the ring Leonard had brought her from wherever he had gone to meet the man who financed the Tupamaros.

  The square emerald ring.

  The big square emerald from some capital she could not remember.

  “Listen to that voice,” Warren said. “Let’s have that tone of voice again.”

  Leonard looked at Charlotte and shook his head slightly.

  Charlotte picked up a cigarette and lit it.

  “No wonder your daughter left home,” Warren said.

  The red rose Warren had given Charlotte fell from the table to t
he floor.

  Charlotte said nothing.

  “All I hold against your daughter is she didn’t catch Bashti Levant with that pipe bomb. Bashti and certain of his artists. That’s the only bone I want to pick with your daughter. Your daughter and mine.”

  “He doesn’t mellow,” Leonard said finally.

  “What did you expect, Leonard? You expect I’d hit forty-five and start applauding the family of man?” Warren drained his second drink. “It’s my birthday, Charlotte. You haven’t wished me happy birthday.”

  “I’ll tell you something I expected, I expected—” Charlotte broke off. She did not know what she had expected. She concentrated on the emerald.

  Bogotá.

  Quito.

  She had no idea where Leonard had met the man who financed the Tupamaros.

  “Today’s not your birthday,” she said finally. “Your birthday was last month.”

  “Your husband expected a humanist.”

  “Leonard,” Leonard said.

  “Pardon?”

  “Her husband’s name is Leonard.”

  “I stole that rose for you,” Warren said. “Off the flight of the living dead.”

  Dwelling on the past leads to unsoundness and dementia, my aunt also advised.

  And, Don’t cry over curdled milk, Grace, make cottage cheese of it.

  And to the same doubtful point: Remember Lot’s Wife, avoid the backward glance.

  “Wish me happy birthday,” Warren said. “Have a drink on my forty-fifth birthday.”

  “Your birthday was October 23rd,” Charlotte said.

  “She doesn’t drink before breakfast,” Leonard said. “It’s hard and fast with her, she never does.”

  “She did on my thirtieth,” Warren said.

  “Which was on October 23rd nineteen-hundred and—oh shit.”

  “Watch your language,” Warren said.

  Avoid the backward glance.

  Until Marin disappeared Charlotte had arranged her days to do exactly that.

  9

  I KNOW WHY CHARLOTTE LIKED TALKING TO THE FBI: the agents would let her talk about Marin. Their devotion to Marin seemed total. They were pilgrims pledged to the collection of relics from Marin’s passion. During the days before Warren arrived in San Francisco the agents had taken Charlotte to see Marin’s apartment on Haste Street in Berkeley. The agents had taken Charlotte to see the house on Grove Street in Berkeley where they had found the cache of .30-caliber Browning automatic rifles and the translucent pink orthodontal retainer Marin was supposed to wear to correct her bite. In both those places the gray morning light fell through dusty windows onto worn hardwood floors and Charlotte had remembered for the first time how sad she herself had been at Berkeley before Warren came to her door.

  “Let’s flop back to one of the theories you were espousing yesterday, Mrs. Douglas. When you—”

  “Let’s flop back to all of them,” Warren said. Warren had been sitting in the same chair ever since he walked into the house and dropped his shopping bags. He had gotten up only to get himself drinks and once, perfunctorily, when the FBI men arrived and Leonard left. “I’m the felon’s father,” he had said to the FBI men. He seemed bent now in a fit of laughter. “I want to flop back to every one of these theories Mrs. Douglas has been espousing. In my absence. I’ve been out of touch, I didn’t know Mrs. Douglas had theories. To espouse.”

  “When I what?” Charlotte said.

  “Flip flop. We need ice, Charlotte.”

  “When you—” The FBI man glanced uneasily at Warren. “When you said yesterday that Marin ‘might have been sad,’ what exactly did you mean? Normal everyday blues? Or something more, uh, out of the mainstream?”

  “Just your normal everyday mainstream power-to-the-people latifundismo Berkeley blues.” Warren was still bent with laughter. “Just those old Amerikan blues. Spell that with a K.”

  “I don’t know what I meant,” Charlotte said.

  “Some theory,” Warren said. “Did you get the K? Did you spell it with a K?”

  “To push on for a moment, Mrs. Douglas, the office raised one other question. Did your daughter ever mention a Russian, name of, uh, let’s see.”

  The FBI man examined his notebook.

  “Those old Amerikan blues didn’t come up the river from New Orleans, they K-O-M-E up the river from New Orleans. Get it? Charlotte? Did he get the K?”

  “He got it.”

  “Gurdjieff,” the FBI man said. “Russian, name of Gurdjieff. Marin ever mention him?”

  “In the first place he was an Armenian,” Warren said. “Otherwise you’re on top of the case.”

  “I’m not sure I get your meaning, Mr. Bogart.”

  “Not at all. You’re doing fine.”

  “Excuse me. The Gurdjieff I’m thinking of is a Russian.”

  “Excuse me. The Gurdjieff you’re thinking of is Bashti Levant.”

  “Warren. Please.”

  “Don’t you think that’s funny, Charlotte? ‘Excuse me, the Gurdjieff you’re thinking of is Bashti Levant’?”

  “It’s funny, Warren. Now—”

  “You used to think I was funny.”

  “Let me try to put this on track.” The FBI man cleared his throat. “Marin ever mention a Gurdjieff of any nationality? Ever mention reading about him?”

  “No,” Charlotte said.

  “Marin can’t read,” Warren said. “She plays a good game of tennis, she’s got a nice backhand, good strong hair and an IQ of about 103.”

  Charlotte closed her eyes.

  “Charlotte. Face facts. Credit where credit is due, you raised her. She’s boring.”

  “I’m not sure this is a productive tack,” the FBI man said.

  “Irving’s not sure this is a productive tack.” Warren rattled his ice. “Hear, hear, Charlotte. Listen to Irving.”

  “Bruno,” the FBI man said. “The name is Bruno Furetta.”

  “Don’t mind me, Irving, I’ve been drinking.”

  “I happen to know you’re not all that drunk, Warren.” Charlotte did not open her eyes. “I happen to know you’re just amusing yourself. As usual.”

  “You get the picture.”

  Charlotte stood up. “And I want to tell you that I am not—”

  “She’s overwrought,” Charlotte heard Warren say as she fled the room. “Let me give you some advice, Irving. Never mind the Armenians, cherchez le tennis pro.”

  10

  “BOO HOO,” WARREN SAID WHEN HE CAME UPSTAIRS AN hour later. “What happened to your sense of humor?”

  Charlotte said nothing. Very deliberately she closed the book she had been trying to read since the day after the FBI first came to the house on California Street. The book was a detailed analysis of the three rose windows at Chartres, not illustrated, and every time Charlotte picked it up she began again on page one. She did not want Warren in the room. She did not want Warren to be in any room where she slept with Leonard, did not want him to see Leonard’s Seconal and her hand cream together on the table by the bed, did not want to see him examining the neckties that Leonard had that morning tried, rejected, and left on the bed. In fact she did not want him to see the bed at all.

  “We don’t have anything in common any more.” Warren picked up a yellow silk tie and knotted it around his collar. “You and me. Leonard won’t miss this, he’s jaundiced enough. You ever noticed? He’s got bad color?”

  “One thing we have in common is that we both agree that as far as having anything in common goes—” Charlotte broke off. She was watching a tube of KY jelly on the table by the bed. She did not see any way to move it into the drawer without attracting Warren’s attention. “As far as having anything in common goes we don’t have anything. In common.”

  “You sound like you had a stroke. You had a stroke?”

  “I happen to have a headache.”

  “You mean I happen to give you a headache.”

  “I mean I want you to leave this room.”

>   “Don’t worry, I’ll leave this room.” Warren sat on the bed, picked up the tube of KY jelly and put it in the drawer. “I don’t like this room.”

  Charlotte said nothing.

  “I only flew out here to see how you were.”

  Still Charlotte said nothing.

  “I don’t like your room, I don’t like your house, I don’t like your life.” Warren picked up a silver box from the table by the bed. The box held marijuana and played “Puff the Magic Dragon” when the lid was lifted. Warren lifted the lid and looked at Charlotte. “I bet the two of you talk about ‘turning on.’ See what I mean about your life?”

  “Go away,” Charlotte whispered.

  “Excuse me. I mean your ‘life-style.’ You don’t have a life, you have a ‘life-style.’ You still look good, though.”

  “Go away.”

  Warren looked at her for a while before he spoke.

  “I want you to come to New Orleans with me.”

  Charlotte tried to concentrate on meeting Leonard for lunch. Very soon she would walk out of this room and down the stairs. She would walk out of this house and she would take a taxi to the Tadich Grill, alone.

  “I said I want you to come to New Orleans with me, are you deaf? Or just rude.”

  She would go in the taxi alone to meet Leonard at the Tadich Grill.

  “I want you to see Porter with me. Porter is dying. Porter wants to see you. Do this one thing for me.”

  Charlotte tried to keep her mind on whether to order sand dabs or oysters at the Tadich Grill. Porter was a distant cousin of Warren’s. During the five years Charlotte and Warren were married Porter had invested $25,000 in an off-Broadway play that Warren never wrote, $30,000 in a political monthly that Warren never took beyond its dummy issue, and $2,653.84 in ransoming Warren’s and her furniture and Marin’s baby clothes from the Seven Santini Brothers Storage Company in Long Island City. Charlotte did not even like Porter.

  Sand dabs.

  No.

  Oysters.