by Joan Didion
Her mother had died.
Warren had not come home the night she got drunk at the Palm with Pete Wright.
“You don’t need to tell me what Warren acts like.”
“I gather you and Warren have had some misunderstanding, the rights and wrongs of which are outside my purview, but—”
Her father had died.
Warren had called at four A.M. the night she got drunk at the Palm with Pete Wright and she had told him not to come home.
“—I must say I don’t think you’re solving anything by pretending there aren’t certain complications to—”
People did die. People were loose in the world and left it, and she had been too busy to notice.
The morning after she got drunk at the Palm she and Warren had taken Marin to lunch at the Carlyle. Marin was cold.
“I’m trying to talk to you like a Dutch uncle,” Pete Wright said.
Warren gave her his coat.
“I think I fucked you one Easter,” Charlotte said.
For the next several days Charlotte wanted only to eat the food she had eaten in Hollister but she had lost the recipes her mother had written out and Charlotte did not know the number of any couple who would come to the house on California Street and do chicken à la king and burned biscuits. When I think of Charlotte Douglas apprehending death at the age of thirty-nine in the safe-deposit vault of a bank in San Francisco it occurs to me that there was some advantage in having a mother who died when I was eight, a father who died when I was ten, before I was busy.
14
CHARLOTTE DID NOT GET OUT OF BED THE DAY AFTER she met the woman named Enid Schrader.
“Mark spoke so very highly of you,” the woman had said on the telephone. There had been in Enid Schrader’s voice something Charlotte did not want to recognize: a forced gaiety, a haggard sprightliness, a separateness not unlike her own. “Of you and your beautiful home.”
Mark Schrader was said to have been on the L–1011 with Marin. Mark Schrader had on his face, in the pictures Charlotte had seen of him, a pronounced scar from a harelip operation. It did not seem plausible to Charlotte that she could have met a boy with such a scar and forgotten him, nor did it seem plausible that anyone on the L–1011 with Marin had ever spoken highly of the house on California Street, but maybe the boy’s mother was trying to tell her something. Maybe there was a code in that peculiar stilted diction. Maybe Enid Schrader knew where Marin was.
“I think we should meet,” Charlotte said guardedly. “Could you have lunch at all? Today? The St. Francis Grill?”
“Delightful. Why.”
“Why what?”
“Why the St. Francis Grill?”
“I just thought—” Charlotte did not know what she had just thought. She had rejected the house because it was watched. She had hit upon the St. Francis Grill as a place where all corners of the room could be seen. “Is there somewhere you’d rather go?”
“Not at all, I don’t keep up with where the beautiful people eat. Not to worry about my recognizing you, I’ve seen pictures of you.”
“I’ve seen pictures of you too.”
“Before,” the woman said. “I meant before. Pictures of you and your beautiful home.”
Charlotte had met the woman at one-thirty and at two-thirty the code remained impenetrable. The woman did not seem interested in talking about her son, or about Marin. The woman seemed interested instead in talking about a friend who had a decorator’s card.
“You’ll adore Ruthie.” The woman was drinking daiquiris and had refused lunch. “I’m getting you together soonest, that’s definite, a promise. Meanwhile I’ll borrow her card and we’ll do the trade-only places. How’s Tuesday?”
“How’s Tuesday for what?” Charlotte said faintly.
“Monday’s a no-no for me but if Tuesday’s bad for you, let’s say Wednesday. Earliest. Grab lunch where we find it.”
“Listen.” Charlotte glanced around the room before she spoke. “If there’s something to see I think we should—I mean could we see it now?”
“But I haven’t got Ruthie’s card. I mean unless you have a card—” The woman looked up. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t think I know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about taking you shopping.” The woman’s eyes reddened and filled with tears. “Unless of course you’re too busy. But of course you are. Too busy.”
Charlotte touched the woman’s hand.
The last woman Charlotte had known to talk about “shopping” was her mother.
The last time Charlotte had been asked to go “shopping” it had been by her mother.
“Your ex-husband isn’t too busy. I heard him on the radio. He was blotto but he talked to me. I called in to chat, he wasn’t too busy to chat. Although blotto. On the radio. Whatever his name is.”
“Warren.” Charlotte did not want to hear about Warren on the radio. Leonard had once said that Warren could arrive in a town where he knew no one and within twenty-four hours he would have had dinner at the country club, been offered a temporary chair in Southern politics at the nearest college, and been on the radio. Charlotte did not want to think about Warren on the radio and she did not want to think why Enid Schrader was crying and she did not want to think about her mother shopping. Her mother had been shopping the day she died, at Ransohoff’s. “His name is Warren Bogart.”
“Whatever. The little whore’s father.”
The woman gave one last cathartic sob.
Charlotte reached for the check.
“My treat,” the woman cried, her voice again sprightly. “You do it next time.”
All the next day Charlotte could not erase from her mind the first newspaper picture she had seen of Enid Schrader’s son. “They’ll ditch the harelip,” Leonard had said when she showed him the picture. “The harelip’s the fresh meat they’ll throw on the trail, they can’t afford him, Marin’s not stupid.”
“I wouldn’t rely on that,” Warren had said.
Another picture Charlotte could not erase from her mind was her mother alone at Ransohoff’s.
I knew my mother was dead when I saw them carry out her bed to be burned, my father could not tell me. I knew my father was dead when the doorman at the Brown Palace would not let me go upstairs, he sent for a maid to tell me. She brought an éclair and cocoa. I waited for her on a red plush banquette. Unlike Charlotte I learned early to keep death in my line of sight, keep it under surveillance, keep it on cleared ground and away from any brush where it might coil unnoticed. The morning Edgar died I called Victor, signed the papers, walked out to Progreso as usual and ate lunch on the sea wall.
15
“I HAVE A LOUSY TRIP TO PHILADELPHIA, LOUSY FLIGHT back, I watch my own plane blow a tire on closed-circuit TV, I go to my office, I find Suzy in tears because Warren’s camped in her one-room apartment, I come home and I find my wife hasn’t gotten dressed in two days. I finish this call, Charlotte, I’m going to trot your ass over to Polly Orben’s office, this isn’t healthy.” Leonard uncupped the receiver and spoke into it. “Try the other line, Suzy, see if you can keep your finger off the disconnect this time.”
“Why don’t you trot Suzy’s ass over to Polly Orben’s office,” Charlotte said without turning around. She was watching the FBI man in the window of the apartment across the street. “Why don’t you trot Warren’s ass over to Polly Orben’s office.”
“Tell him we’re going to trade off the felony and plead the two misdemeanors,” Leonard said into the telephone.
“Warren and Polly Orben would be good,” Charlotte said.
“And tell him I don’t want any of that boom-boom shit at the hearing.” Leonard hung up the telephone. “Speaking of Warren he says you won’t see him. He says you misunderstand him.”
“The fuck I misunderstand him.”
“Felicitously put,” Leonard said after a while. “In any case I told him to come by.”
“Tell him I’m in Holl
ister. Tell him I’m in Hollister and about how there’s no telephone on the ranch.”
“There are eight telephones on the ranch. On three separate lines.”
“He doesn’t know that.”
“For Christ’s sake, Charlotte, go to Hollister if you don’t want to see him. Go now. Go right now.”
“I can’t actually go to Hollister.”
“Why can’t you, besides the fact that it might entail getting dressed.”
She could not go to Hollister because she was afraid Warren might find her there, alone at the ranch. She could not go to Hollister because if Warren found her there alone at the ranch something bad would happen. This seemed so obvious to Charlotte that she could not bring herself to say it. “I can’t go to Hollister because you have people coming to the house for lunch tomorrow.”
“Tell me who I have coming to the house for lunch tomorrow.”
“Coming to the house for lunch tomorrow you have …” She could not think.
“Coming to the house for lunch tomorrow I have … the leaders of … two dissident factions within … the Haight-Divisadero Coalition. You got a whole lot you want to say to them?”
Charlotte picked up a brush and began attacking her hair in abrupt chops.
“On the subject of day-care versus guerrilla theater? Maybe we could get Dickie and Linda up from Hollister and get their thinking?”
“I don’t know why you put all those telephones on the ranch anyway.”
“I don’t know, Charlotte. Communication?”
“Nobody in my family ever found it necessary to keep three different calls going on that ranch.”
“Nobody in your family ever found it necessary to pay the taxes on that ranch, either. Tell me again why you can’t go to Hollister.”
The hair Charlotte pulled from her brush was dry and wiry and faded.
When Marin was small she had played a game with Charlotte’s hair and called it gold.
“I feel so old,” Charlotte said.
“Tell me why you can’t go to Hollister.”
“I keep remembering things.”
“Most of us do. Tell me why you won’t see Warren.”
“You don’t know what he wants.”
“Of course I know what he wants. He wants you back. You think I make my living being dense?”
“Then why did you ask?”
Leonard lifted a mass of Charlotte’s hair and let it drop through his fingers. “Because I was interested in whether you knew it. You don’t look so old.”
16
WHO CAN SAY WHY I CRAVE THE LIGHT IN BOCA GRANDE, who can say why my body grows cancers.
Who can say why Charlotte left Leonard Douglas.
Maybe she thought it was easier.
Maybe she believed herself loose in the world, maybe she was tired, maybe she had just remembered that people died. Maybe she thought that if she walked back into the Carlyle Hotel on Easter morning with Warren Bogart Marin would be there, in a flowered lawn dress.
“It’s too late,” she said to her gynecologist the morning he confirmed that she was carrying Leonard’s child. “It didn’t happen in time.”
Somebody cuts you.
Where it doesn’t show.
I have no way of knowing about the cuts that don’t show.
I know only that during the fifth week after the release of Marin’s tape Charlotte woke early every morning, dressed promptly, and immersed herself in the domestic maintenance of the house on California Street. She made inventories. She replaced worn sheets, chipped wine glasses, crazed plates. She paid an electrician time-and-a-half to rewire, on a Saturday, two crossed spots on the Jackson Pollock in the dining room. She was obsessed by errands, and she laid it to her pregnancy.
Leonard did not.
So entirely underwater did Charlotte live her life that she did not recognize her preoccupations as those of a woman about to abandon a temporary rental.
Leonard did.
17
PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE LAST EVENING CHARLOTTE SPENT with Leonard Douglas appeared a year later in Vogue, Charlotte showed them to me.
There was Leonard, standing with an actor at the party in Beverly Hills, standing with his head bent, listening to the actor but looking somewhere else.
There was Charlotte, sitting with an actress at the party in Beverly Hills, Charlotte smiling, her eyes wide and glazed and in the end as impenetrable as Marin’s.
She had not meant to go with Leonard to the party in Beverly Hills at all.
She had not even meant to go with Leonard to the airport.
But on the fifth day of the fifth week after the release of Marin’s tape she had opened the door of the house on California Street and found Warren standing there.
“I guess you can give me a drink.”
“Actually I’m just about to drive Leonard to the airport.” She followed his gaze to the limousine idling at the curb. She had not until the moment intended going to the airport. “I mean I’m not exactly driving him to the airport but I’m driving with him to the airport.”
“I guess there’s room for me.”
“Actually you don’t want to drive to the airport, it could take hours.” She had not in fact spoken to Warren since the nights he called from the Beverly Hills Hotel on Bashti Levant’s bill. “This time of day. The traffic.”
“I’ve got time.”
“Hours. Literally.”
“You’re swimming upstream, Charlotte.”
In the car Charlotte had sat on the jump seat and fixed her eyes on the driver’s pigtail.
“While you were upstairs Warren was telling me about this ninety-two-year-old Trotskyist he drinks with in New York,” Leonard said. “This Trotskyist lives at the Hotel Albert. Naturally.”
“Charlotte knows Benny,” Warren said. “You remember Benny, Charlotte.”
Charlotte had not remembered Benny. Charlotte had not even thought that she was meant to remember Benny, whoever Benny was. Benny was only Warren’s way of reminding her that he had a prior claim.
“This Trotskyist drinks Pisco Sours,” Leonard said.
“Sazeracs,” Warren said. “Not Pisco Sours. Sazeracs. Benny always asks about you, Charlotte. You ought to go see him, he’s not going to live forever.”
Charlotte kept her eyes on the driver’s pigtail.
“Neither is Porter,” Warren said. “In case you forgot.”
“Neither is Charlotte,” Leonard said. “You keep this up. Something I’ve never been able to understand is how you happen to know more Trotskyists than Trotsky did.”
“You know more Arabs, it evens out. What am I going to tell Porter, Charlotte?”
“All of them ninety-two-years old,” Leonard said.
“I said what am I going to tell Porter, Charlotte.”
“All of them sitting around the Hotel Albert drinking Pisco Sours,” Leonard said.
“Sazeracs. What do you want me to tell Porter on his deathbed, Charlotte.”
“Personally I want you to tell Porter about this ninety-two-year-old Trotskyist,” Leonard said. “You’re overplaying your hand, Warren. You’re pushing her too hard while she’s still got an ace. I’ll lay you odds, she’s going to see her ace. She’s going to say she’s coming with me.”
“But I am.” Charlotte looked at Leonard for the first time. “I am definitely coming with you. I always was.”
“No,” Leonard said. “You were not ‘always’ coming with me. You see, Warren? Bad hand. You didn’t pace your play.”
“But I always wanted to go with you,” Charlotte said.
“Definitely you always wanted to go with him,” Warren said. “You haven’t met enough Arabs.”
“He’s going to Los Angeles and Miami,” Charlotte said.
“Or enough Jews,” Warren said.
Because Charlotte had gotten on the plane with no bag and because Leonard’s presence was required at the party where the photographs were taken, a $250-a-ticket benefit in a tent behind
someone’s house in Beverly Hills, Charlotte was wearing, at the time she was photographed, a dress borrowed from the wife of the record executive who had organized the evening, a dress made entirely of colored ribbons.
“You shouldn’t have told Warren to keep the car,” she had said as she put on the dress. “He’ll keep it all night. I look absurd.”
“You wouldn’t if you had a tambourine,” Leonard said. “He’ll keep it all week.”
Charlotte sat down. She was very tired. She did not think she had ever been so tired. She did not see how she could finish tying the ribbons on the dress.
“Sometimes I wish,” Leonard said after a while. He began tying the ribbons Charlotte had abandoned. “I don’t know.”
“Sometimes you wish what.”
“Sometimes I wish you could just fuck him and get it over with.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Charlotte. Shit. I know you don’t want to.”
A stage had been constructed over the swimming pool of the house in Beverly Hills and several entertainers auctioned their services, singing and dancing and placing surprise telephone calls to friends and relatives of high bidders. Leonard raised five hundred dollars by dancing the limbo under a pole held by the record executive’s wife, a young woman with pale blond hair like Marin’s and a Brahmin caste mark painted on her forehead, and, at Charlotte’s table, an actress who had visited Hanoi spoke of the superior health and beauty of the children there.
“It’s because they aren’t raised by their mothers,” the actress said. “They don’t have any of that bourgeois personal crap laid on them.”
Charlotte studied her wine glass and tried to think of something neutral to say to the actress. She wanted to get up but her chair was blocked by three men who seemed to be discussing the financing of a motion picture, or a war.
“No mama-papa-baby-nuclear-family bullshit,” the actress said. “It’s beautiful.”
Charlotte concentrated on the details of the financing, the part to be played by the Canadians, the controls exerted by the Crédit Suisse.