The Diamond Lane

by Karen Karbo

  Mouse felt by turns exhausted, angry, doomed, deprived. A familiar feeling. Documentarius interruptus.

  Thousands of dollars, hundreds of days, dozens of arguments. She was hot and sticky. She could smell herself. The river looked inviting. But sixteen years in Africa, and a doc she’d done for the World Health Organization on bilharzia, had taught her a sweet brook like this one was teaming with invisible organisms, evil micro-water polo players, treading water with their cilia, waiting for an unsuspecting human to happen by so that they might launch their offensive. So that they might bite her, shit on her, lay their invisible evil eggs upon her, sprint up her most private orifices, where they would snack on her vital organs. She would remain oblivious until, one week or twenty years later, she would die from a horrific, disfiguring, lingering, utterly incurable disease.

  But wasn’t she a taker of ridiculous risks? Wasn’t this what she excelled at? What she got paid for? She’d already had malaria, amoebic dysentery, the green fingernail fungus.

  “I’m going for a swim,” she said, standing. So I die, she thought. We could film it. Do a thing on the young (ish) documentary filmmaker who risked getting a gruesome tropical disease for Her Art. The problem was, if she went swimming, that wasn’t exactly in the line of duty. She wasn’t swimming in infested waters in order to get the shot of a lifetime, for example. She paused.

  For the past week, while they’d been in Ibonga waiting for Marie-Claire’s wedding – strategizing on how they would cover it, planning lighting, following Marie-Claire around with an empty magazine, pretending they were filming, so that she might get used to the camera – they had lived in a tent by the river. When they didn’t join the BabWani for manioc bread and bananas and monkey, they cooked food in freeze-dried packets on a butane camp stove.

  “I’m going swimming,” she repeated. “Don’t stop me. Here I go.”

  Tony sat on an overturned kerosene can by the tent, hunched over his notebook, writing on his infernal screenplay. He wouldn’t tell her the subject. She suspected it was some cop thing. Several months before, one of their friends in Nairobi had gotten Beverly Hills Cop through the diplomatic pouch. Tony and the friend recited lines back and forth from the movie until Mouse threatened to move out. Even their night watchman, a cinephilic Kikuyu with his own VCR, rolled his eyes when he saw Tony launch into his Eddie Murphy impersonation.

  “Nn-hn,” he said. He scratched along the page, nodding and smiling at the notebook balanced on his knees, as though it was telling him a great joke to which he already knew the punch line.

  “Any ideas what we’re going to do?” said Mouse. She sat down next to him on a piece of tarp. She watched while two dung beetles rolled a piece of goat dung into the bush. She thought they looked like a small pair of animated black patent leather shoes.

  Tony sometimes annoyed her. The same kind of even temperament that made him a good co-producer made him a lousy partner in misery. “Two weeks the rainy season starts. We won’t be able to get back here until next spring. We need this ceremony. I didn’t realize it until it looked like it wasn’t going to happen. The Bantu and the Pitishi are so similar. We really needed this one for balance. And the camera loved Marie-Claire. She would have been great. All that great red makeup.”

  “C’est le documentaire.” He sung it to the tune of “C’est la guerre.” “I don’t suppose you’d consider staging something.”

  “We could get them to go through the ceremony for the camera. It’s completely ethical. Even if Marie-Claire isn’t getting married this time, she will eventually, and this is what her wedding will be like, when she does.”

  “Try explaining that. We want you to go through it, but it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not real. You aren’t really married. These things are sacred, Tony. More sacred than a film they’ve halfheartedly agreed to participate in.”

  “’Fraid we’re sunk, then. How did Ovumi phrase it? Wedding off?”

  “Dead,” said Mouse. “Wedding dead.”

  Tony wrote it in his notebook.

  “Don’t go losing any sleep over this.”

  Tony looked up. He put the cap on his pen and closed his notebook. “I’m terribly frustrated, Mouse, just like you.” He pinched his blond eyebrows together in what he hoped was sincerity. From the inside the expression felt dangerously close to scowling.

  He was lying. Or not lying. He wouldn’t say it was lying. It was a matter of degree. He cared. Yes. Of course. It was just, face it, the films meant more to her than they did to him, they always had. He wanted them to be good. Yes. Of course. But if they weren’t good or if, as in this situation, unexpected and uncontrollable events conspired against the production, it was no skin off his soul. It was simply part of his African Experience. After London Film School his father, a retired officer in the British Foreign Service, had pulled strings to get him on at the BBC in Nairobi. Grip, assistant editor, location sound man. Without too much effort he’d worked his way up, and finally out, finding a niche as a co-producer and sometimes director of less prestigious documentaries made by penny-pinching foreign governments, universities, corporations that either wouldn’t or couldn’t attract the attention of the much-hallowed BBC, the much-envied National Geographic. This rankled Mouse. She said it made her feel like the tray under the toaster that captured all the crumbs.

  “We should have seen this coming and lined up another wedding in another village,” said Mouse.

  It was nearly dark. The night shift of sounds in the canopy relieved the day shift. Caws and screeches segued into singing chirps and buzzing. Tony laid his hand, Pope-like, on the top of Mouse’s head. He slowly stroked her thick hair. He wished he had an answer, something to cheer her up. He hated to see her so blue. And that crack about noted marriage expert. That was brilliant.

  Somewhere a tree hyrax screamed. It sounded like someone being murdered in an overwrought horror film.

  “God,” he said, “that noise.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I thought that was you.”

  He pulled her hair. She reached up and pinched his wrist.

  “We could shoot the wedding not happening,” said Tony, only half sure of what he meant.

  “Yes,” said Mouse. “Yes. Like Herzog. The volcano thing. What was it called? He goes to shoot the volcano erupting, but it never does. He shoots the steam seeping out of the cracks. He shoots the old guy – remember that old villager? – who refuses to leave. But never the volcano. This is great.” She leaped to her feet. “We could get up early and interview Terese, Marie-Claire. Talk to the villagers. And how about the groom? Does he even know?”

  “– it’s the last minute and the bride’s uncertain. The groom has fled – we don’t have to say that’s part of the wedding ceremony do we? We do, I know, I know, it was just a thought – anyway he’s rather a jerk. She’s been going along with it all this time to please her family –”

  “Of course! I’m sure that’s a common thing among the BabWani. It happens all the time in western culture. People live their entire lives to please their mothers.”

  “Can’t imagine you’d know much about that. Tramping about Africa with a man you’re not married to, exposing yourself to AIDS and malaria and God knows what else.”

  “You forgot political uprisings and possible hostage situations. Maybe we can get the groom just as he’s finding out. He comes back from his outing with the other guys, expecting his bride to be there waiting for him –”

  “That’ll spice it up a bit.”

  “This is great,” Mouse yelped.

  “Sorry I snapped at you earlier. That marriage expert business.”

  “That’s okay. This is great. This’ll make the film even better.” Mouse stood in front of Tony, playfully bouncing her knees against his, slapping at mosquitoes.

  “I love you,” said Tony.

  “You are so brilliant,” said Mouse. “You know what it’s like?”

  “What?”

  “This! Our lives! You know tha
t saying about you can only be happy when you realize that the object of life is not happiness? What it should be is, doing docs you can only be happy when you realize the object of documentary filmmaking is not happiness. We wanted this to be easy. Straightforward. But that’s the whole point of doing films like this, isn’t it? I mean if it was just talking heads, just boring professorial types yakking in their book-lined studies what would be the point?”

  He ran his freckled hands up the side of her legs and under her T-shirt. “Let’s think.” He rested his forehead against her stomach.

  “…IT WENT BEAUTIFULLY,” said Mouse. The call had finally come through from the Office of Native Affairs.

  Next to the bench there were two cubicles equipped with old black rotary-dial telephones. The telephones sat on a low, narrow shelf. There were no stools, so you were forced to choose one of two tortuous positions: squatting or standing bent over like a swimmer preparing to spring from the starting block. Mouse preferred the latter.

  Tony slouched on the bench, cleaned his fingernails with the nailfile on his Swiss Army Knife, listening to wisps of the conversation.

  “…rethink the African view of marriage. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Marie-Claire wanted something more for herself…”

  Mouse talked as though Marie-Claire was setting about to become Zaire’s answer to Betty Friedan when all the stupid girl really wanted was to hitch her wagon to someone less repulsive.

  “…we’ve come up with ideas for other projects, particularly, I was thinking, the dilemma of the tribal teenager…”

  He finished with his nails, closed up the knife and, on impulse, offered it to the circle of children. One of them pounced on it, and the rest pounced on him. Their shrieks awoke the snoozing sentry, who chased them off. Mouse had given him that knife, on his thirty-fifth birthday.

  “They were very pleased,” said Mouse, rejoining him on the bench. She threw her arms over her head and stretched noisily.

  “I gave my Swiss Army Knife away to those kids,” he said.

  “Great,” she said, patting his knee.

  “You gave that knife to me for my birthday. Have you forgotten?”

  “I know.”

  “Christ, you’re a hard nut.” That was it. She was a hard nut in an iron glove. He reached into his back pocket for his notebook.

  “Me? You’re the one who gave the knife away.”

  “Mowz FitHenry? Mowz FitHenry?” The operator yelled from behind the counter. “Number one.”

  “Here it is.” Mouse took a deep breath before returning to the cubicle. “Hello?”

  “Solly, get off the phone! It’s my sister in Nairobi!”

  “Hello? Mimi? I can hardly hear you. It’s Mouse.”

  “Mouse! It’s Mimi!”

  “I’m in Kisangani.”

  “Kissing who?” said Mimi.

  “What’s going on?” said Mouse. “I can hardly hear –”

  “It’s Mom!” yelled Mimi. “She has a, there’s been an accident. They’re doing surgery this morning, drilling some hole in her head.”

  “Oh God. Is she, will she be all right? We’re in the middle of this film on tribal marriage customs, and I –”

  “You are? You must be thrilled. I remember how I felt –”

  “– it’s really hard for me to come home now. How serious is it?”

  “It’s a hematoma thing she’s got. They’re drilling a hole in her head. You got to come home, Mouse. It’s bad.”

  3.

  SOLLY HAD A MEETING AT COLUMBIA AT FIVE, SO MIMI snuck out early, hoping to get over to the hospital before traffic started. Alyssia said she’d cover the phones. If Solly called in for messages she’d say Mimi was in the bathroom. If he called in twice, she’d say Mimi had cramps. This always worked. Men like Solly never knew what to say when confronted with a gynecological excuse.

  Anymore, there was traffic from early morning until late at night. Morning rush hour began at six and went until ten, when Early Lunch rush hour took over. Evening rush hour began at three, half an hour after Late Lunch rush hour ended. This went both for freeways and for popular side streets. The diamond lane, the car pool lane on the freeway, didn’t help. Single drivers whizzed up the diamond lane all the time and never got caught.

  Normally Mimi didn’t mind the traffic. It gave her a chance to listen to National Public Radio. It was the only time she paid attention to what was going on in important places in the world to which she had no desire to travel: Israel, Libya, Pakistan.

  She bumper-to-bumpered over Laurel Canyon. It was late September, still light outside. The sky was red at the bottom, yellow at the top. Sad sooty twilight. A sticky breeze blew in from Santa Monica. On the radio was a story about a couple who recently got married. The groom was in a minor plane crash on his way to his wedding in Florida. When he finally arrived he found out the wedding had to be postponed; the church had been wiped out by a recent hurricane. What were the odds of this happening? What were the odds of a father dying at the bottom of an on-ramp, run over by a two-ton converter gear, a mother permanently brain damaged from getting bonked on the head with a ceiling fan? Big, those were the odds. And how come it never worked the other way around? How come you didn’t win the lotto in the morning, meet the man of your dreams that night?

  Mimi was anxious to get to the hospital, anxious to see Shirl. Anxious to get it over with. She wished Mouse was home. Mouse would arrive just in time to help out with the boxes of candy, toss out the flowers sent to the hospital.

  Dr. Klingston, the neurologist, said Shirl should be out of surgery by seven o’clock. He said it was a standard procedure. As if getting a hole drilled in your head could ever be standard procedure. She idly wondered if she couldn’t accidentally drive off the edge of the narrow canyon road, nothing fatal. Just something where she’d be fed by tubes for a couple of weeks, lose a little weight. Then Shirl would be forced to recover and come to visit her.

  Mimi turned off the AC and rolled down the window. She had read that air conditioning uses up gas. She ticked off her monthly expenses, a habit she had when she was driving, the awake equivalent of counting sheep. Rent, Hair Care, Gas, Food. Hair Care included cut, color, and perm. Rent she shared with a roommate. Food she tried not to waste money on. There was no way to get around Gas. Outside it smelled of eucalyptus and exhaust fumes and going back to school. Except there was no school to go back to. Except How to Write a Blockbuster at Valley College, but that didn’t really count.

  Crawling through Laurel Canyon at this time of day reminded Mimi of the time Shirl took her and Mouse to see the Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. Shirl hated to drive. She had never driven on a freeway in her life. She never drove faster than thirty-five miles an hour. She never parallel parked. If the choice was between parallel parking and not going to the grocery store, the dry cleaners, the craft shop, she gave up and went home. But she had driven Mimi and Mouse to see the Beatles. Over the hill, she drove them, through the Cahuenga pass. In traffic. In the dark. That was the kind of sacrifice Mimi hoped to be able to one day make for her daughters. If she had daughters, if she had children. Not that she was interested in getting married. Although she wouldn’t mind having a boyfriend who wasn’t. Married, that is.

  It had been nineteen sixty-eight or –nine. Along with pierced ears, Shirley thought the Beatles were barbaric, except “Norwegian Wood,” and any other song that could be successfully translated into Muzak. She got dressed up in a black and white op-art dress and dangling red plastic earrings she’d found at Pic ‘n Save. She had her hair frosted.

  It was close, the Hollywood Bowl, just over the hill, but it seemed like such a trek to them, then. The Cahuenga Pass, Laurel Canyon: it was all wilderness in nineteen sixty-eight or –nine. There were no streetlights. In the summer there were scorpions and coyotes. People who were hippies before there were hippies lived there. They lived in shacks, with steep twisty narrow driveways. Now you couldn’t touch a place there for less than a mi
llion.

  Mouse and Mimi were thirteen and fourteen then. Shirl justified spoiling them with this because they had no father. It was a cold night, a freezing night. Their seats were in the next-to-the-last row, All they could make out onstage were four bouncing, clothespin-thin figures with hair. All they could hear were other girls their own age shrieking and crying. They didn’t care. They shrieked and cried, too. It kept them warm. Shirley sat in her op-art dress with her hands clamped around her prickly elbows. Shirley had very dry skin. “You’ll remember this one day and thank me,” she promised, her teeth chattering between light-pink lips. When Paul McCartney sang what they thought was “Yesterday,” even she had cried.

  Mimi rested her forearms on the steering wheel and sighed. It was happening already. She knew how it went from when Fitzy died. Everything and anything remotely related to Shirl would now remind her of how it was before the Accident. She would be unable to look at a jar of Cheez Whiz, Shirl’s favorite snack, without being racked with sadness. She would be unable to drive through Laurel Canyon or any of the passes. They would all remind her of Shirl and the Beatles.

  SITTING IN A hospital waiting room waiting for word of someone you love, someone whose head was just drilled into, someone who’s been beaned with a ceiling fan.

  It was seven-fifteen.

  Mimi sat in a loveseat, her chin hovering inches above her knees. The waiting room was done in sea blues and lavender. Two loveseats and a square glass coffee table, National Geographics like thin fallen dominoes. Fiber wall-hangings and a framed poster of a tan, non-brain damaged couple strolling on a luscious beach. It was a nice waiting room. It reminded Mimi of the inside of an airplane.

  At seven-thirty she hauled herself out of the loveseat and approached the nurse at the desk. The nurse had thick wrists and a crooked part, a wide white river bisecting the brown crown of her big head. The nurse would not look up. She was making out wedding shower invitations in a tight, hostile hand. Mimi asked the crooked part when she could see her mother.

  “Mrs. FitzHenry is out of surgery and resting comfortably. Dr. Klingston will be with you when he can.”