by Susan Kandel
I fell asleep the minute my head hit the pillow. My ex was always amazed at how I could do that. If he got to talking about James Fenimore Cooper, I could fall asleep even before my head hit the pillow.
I’m a deep sleeper. Comatose. Known to drool. So when the phone rings in the middle of the night, it isn’t a good thing. Call it my morbid temperament, but I always assume it means someone has died. The only thing I hate more is being woken up by the doorbell. This means that not only do I wake up frantic, but I have to compose my features into some semblance of normality, and before coffee. It’s inhuman.
The doorbell chimed. It was going to be one of those days. I bolted upright and peeled my eyes open. I was wearing the contacts you were supposed to be able to leave in for a week. Another case of false advertising. I pulled on my robe, cursing. It wasn’t until I stumbled toward the front door, patting my hair down from its Don King state, that I realized it was not, in fact, the middle of the night. According to the kitchen clock, it was 9:05 A.M.
After looking through the peephole, I opened the door to the woebegone figure of my son-in-law, clutching a pair of plush pink slippers in his large hands.
“Hi,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I woke you up,” he said.
“No, no. I’ve been up for hours, cleaning,” I replied quickly. An obvious lie, given the state of the living room, but I expect he appreciated the courtesy.
“Come on in,” I said. “I’ll make us some coffee.”
Wrapping my robe tighter around me, I strode purposefully into the kitchen. The prospect of caffeine gave me strength. I knew this wasn’t going to be easy.
Vincent followed me like a puppy and sat down at the table, still holding the slippers.
“These are Annie’s,” he explained. “She puts them on the minute she wakes up. Her feet get cold. I knew she’d miss them.”
“I’ll give them to her when I see her,” I said gently, pouring what was left of the Hawaiian Hazelnut into the filter and flipping the switch.
“Where is she?” he asked, looking toward the hallway. “Isn’t she here?”
“No,” I answered with a half smile. “She went to Lael’s.”
He smiled back. “Oh, that makes sense. It’s no big deal. She probably just didn’t want to upset you, that’s all.”
It was classic Vincent. Here he was offering me a shoulder to cry on instead of the other way around.
“You’re sweet to say so, Vincent. But I’m more concerned about the two of you. What is this all about?”
Vincent fidgeted uncomfortably. I could tell he was torn between the fear of being disloyal to Annie and the need to talk.
“Listen, Vincent, Annie and I spoke on Friday, but none of it made sense. I love my daughter, but I don’t understand why she’s acting like this. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“What are you talking about, Cece?” he cried. “She’s not acting like anything! Annie isn’t that kind of person! You of all people should know that!” He jumped to his wife’s defense with a ferocity that was pretty surprising given she was sleeping with another man.
Vincent picked up his coffee, poured in unholy quantities of cream and sugar, and walked over to the couch, trying to regain his composure.
“Look, you obviously don’t get it. I’m the one who’s responsible for everything that’s gone wrong. I’m the one who’s a liar, a fool, and a coward. I’m the one who’s ruined our lives.” He looked up at me, his eyes filling with tears.
I wasn’t expecting dramatics. Not from him. Vincent was calm personified, the Buddhist monk type. Once, I had called Vincent and Annie in the middle of the night, hysterical, convinced my house was being taken over by a colony of enormous, prehistoric rats. Vincent came over with a broom and talked me down. I was a city kid—how was I supposed to know those were opossums?
“What are you talking about, Vincent? You’re scaring me,” I said.
“I scared your daughter, too. That’s why she turned to someone else, and then just left. I can hardly blame her. She thought she knew me, and then she found out I was somebody else.”
“Okay,” I said, playing along for the moment. “Who are you?”
“I’m the father of a kid who’s never laid eyes on me, that’s who,” he answered, and walked out the door.
I poured my cold Hawaiian Hazelnut down the drain and headed straight back to bed.
I woke up for the second time that day just before noon, when my gardener rang the bell.
“Cece, four dead snails!” Javier exclaimed, shoving the evidence in my face. I was finding it hard to revel in our triumph at just that moment, given my empty stomach and the news that I was sort of a grandma.
“Wonderful, Javier,” I said.
“No problem,” he replied, though I had clearly burst his bubble. “I thought you’d be happier. Say,” he said, grinning, “were you still sleeping?”
“Oh, you know us creative types. We can work in our pajamas if we want to. You should try it sometime.”
He didn’t much like the joke, which came out nastier than I’d intended. It was just that I didn’t appreciate his insinuation that I was sleeping the day away, which, of course, I was. But no more. I felt like hell. But this, too, would pass. I took a deep breath. I reached way down into myself. I straightened my spine, sucked in my gut, and produced a horrific, pageant-worthy smile. I turned on the shower. I could do this. I could trust Annie and Vincent to work it out. I could try living my own life for once. And it was a gorgeous day. A perfect day, in fact, for a drive to Ventura.
Half an hour later, I was spanking clean and bedecked in a powder-blue 1940s halter dress and matching patent-leather ankle straps. They gave me blisters only that first time. I opened a can of food for Mimi, poured out a bowl of Buster’s low-fat kibble, and emerged into the dazzling sunlight. Without being asked, Javier stopped pulling up weeds and moved his truck out of the driveway. I was off.
It was bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way over Laurel Canyon—me and a phalanx of Valley folk heading for the fabled land of hospitality and convenient parking. It took about twenty-five minutes to get to the 101, but from there it would be a straight shot to Ventura, an hour and a half, max. I’m not exactly a Formula One driver, but I am an old hand at the 101, thanks to a torrid affair I had a while back with a beefy LAPD detective who, like so many of his buddies, lived in the nether reaches of Simi Valley. When I asked him why they were willing to put up with that kind of commute, he said the guys wanted out, way the heck out, after a long day of cleaning up other people’s messes. And I’m talking messy messes. Still, there were all those bored skinheads out in the exurbs. I preferred the local gangbangers, not that I was friends with any, of course.
I drove past the San Fernando Valley’s endless gated communities, with their faux-tile roofs and faux Spanish names—El Petunia Gargantunita, Los Picadoritos Machos, etc. Then I hit Calabasas, where the horse people live, then Thousand Oaks, home to a passel of big box stores—Ikea, Best Buy—and not much else. From there, it was on to Oxnard, where the air smells like fertilizer. Lots of lettuce in Oxnard.
Just when I started to get that desperate, been-in-the-car-for-too-long feeling, the Pacific Ocean came up on my left, a bolt of blue stretching as far as the eye could see. That meant the next stop would be Ventura. I took the Main Street exit, veering away from the ocean toward the historic downtown district, located at the base of the foothills between the Ventura and Santa Clara Rivers. Once, those hills had been covered with sprays of gray sage, blue lupine, and, east of town, golden mustard. It must have been something. Passengers arriving by stagecoach back in the 1860s and 1870s would have been lured by the area’s great beauty, the promise of rich soil and balmy weather, and business opportunities ripe for the picking.
Me, the girl in the silver Camry, I’d been lured by the possibility of answering someone’s prayers.
8
It was the Spanish colonizers of Alta California who, ea
rly in the eighteenth century, gave Ventura its name, which derives from the Spanish word buenaventura, meaning “good fortune” or “good luck.” So how come it always took me forever to find a parking space? Good luck was definitely on the wane these days. In fact, as I ambled down Main Street I encountered a world of pain, with every possible disease or misfortune represented by a thrift shop of its own: Child Abuse and Neglect, Pet Abandonment, Battered Women, Disabled Veterans, etc. Not to mention it was freezing, which isn’t exactly a plus in late summer in a beach town. I hadn’t come equipped for the elements, so I slipped into a shop and bought a sweatshirt with a duck in sunglasses on the front. You should’ve seen the ones I didn’t choose.
Aside from the thrift shops, Main Street boasted your usual assortment of souvenir shops, stocked with suntan lotion and other good-weather paraphernalia; a few high-end garden shops selling marble sundials, hand-painted trellises, and cutesy signs that said things like, I’M THE KING OF THE CASTLE UNTIL THE QUEEN COMES HOME; and some genuine oddities, like the American flag and cutlery shop. I spent a while in the angel store, mesmerized by the wall full of angel-embossed Post-it note prayers. It was amazing how many people had sons in jail.
Erle Stanley Gardner, however, was the growth industry around here. If I had deeper pockets, I could have stocked a library full of first edition Perry Masons in five minutes flat. Storefronts were plastered with posters advertising Erle Stanley Gardner walking tours and Erle Stanley Gardner guidebooks, and if you were so inclined you could even buy something called “Podunk” candy at the local chocolatier, made from Erle Stanley Gardner’s very own recipe. It stuck to your teeth, just like honeycomb.
As important as ESG was to Ventura, Ventura had been to ESG. Though he’d lived there for only fifteen years (from 1915 to 1917, and again from 1921 to 1933), it was in Ventura that he’d established his law practice and encountered many of the offbeat characters and bizarre situations that had worked their way into his mysteries. It was in Ventura that he’d developed the talent for cross-examination for which Perry Mason would become famous. And it was in Ventura that he’d written his first stories for the pulps, pounding them out with two fingers in a back room at his house on Buena Vista Street.
In Ventura, too, Gardner had met Jean Bethell, his second wife, the original Della Street. According to the story, he used to like to go to the Pierpont Inn, on Sanjon, to celebrate his courtroom victories. Jean had been working as the dining room hostess when he’d come in with a crook he was defending. Immediately smitten, he’d asked her if she’d like to be his secretary. She’d said she already had a job, but that her sister, Peggy, needed one. Peggy wound up going to work for Gardner, and so did another sister, Ruth. Jean eventually followed family tradition. Later, she broke it by marrying her boss.
I pulled out my steno pad. I’d arrived at my destination, the gray Renaissance Revival building located at the corner of Main and California. According to the brass plaque affixed to its exterior, this was HISTORICAL POINT OF INTEREST #86. Constructed in 1926 at the height of the Ventura oil boom, it was the tallest building in town and had the first elevator in the entire county. It was also the birthplace of Perry Mason. Well, just about. The first draft of the first Perry Mason book, The Case of the Velvet Claws, was narrated into a dictaphone at Gardner’s house, but it was here, in the third-floor law offices of Orr, Gardner, Drapeau, and Sheridan, that it was actually typed up. It was important I get things like that right. One slip could mean dozens of letters. Hundreds, if I was lucky enough.
I decided to go in and snoop around. My trusty editor, Sally, kept insisting the book needed more “picturesque details.” Fine.
The foyer was short on charm. There was dust everywhere and piped-in Muzak, but the walls boasted some choice memorabilia: a Xerox of a 1961 issue of Look magazine, promising to “spill all” about TV’s Perry Mason, and a framed photograph of ESG himself, looking remarkably like a bespectacled Raymond Burr.
Burr had originally been asked to read for the part of the district attorney. But Gardner, who happened to be on the set the day of Burr’s audition, had taken one look at him and gasped, “That’s Perry Mason!” Gardner later complained that Burr was “cow-eyed” instead of “granite-hard,” which I thought was tremendously unfair. Cows have nice eyes. And there was no getting around the fact that it was Raymond Burr who made the show a megahit. Like no one before or since, he embodied the notion that there were jobs worth doing and doing well. Plus, he drove the newest, shiniest cars, thanks to the succession of Detroit automakers who sponsored the series during the course of its nine-season run.
I scanned the building directory. These days, the offices in question were occupied by a La-Z-Boy rep and a multimedia company. Sounded like picturesque detail to me. I made my way up the narrow, twisting wooden staircase, admiring the pebbled-glass doors framed in wood, with their old-time transoms above. The third floor appeared deserted. And dustier than the foyer.
I started scribbling. This was unmistakably the template for Perry Mason’s legendary setup: the corner of a suite of rooms that included two reception areas, a law library, a stenographic area, and a pair of private offices. The only difference was that first thing in the morning Perry would toss his fedora onto a bust of Blackstone, while ESG was said to have settled for an ordinary hatrack.
“Hello,” I called out. “Anybody here?” No answer.
There wasn’t much in the main reception area except a scratched wooden desk and a swivel chair with a stack of Ventura phonebooks piled on its torn leather seat. I put them on the floor and sat down.
“Oh, Perry,” I said, channeling Della. “Another courtroom triumph! Let’s go out for dinner and drinks, shall we? I’ll just straighten the seams on my stockings, and we’ll be off. Oh, Paul Drake? Your unrivaled man on the ground? I’m afraid he won’t be able to join us. He’s got a headache.”
I was blushing, in character, when all of a sudden I heard a crash. I leapt up, sending my steno pad flying. Then I heard a scream. I ran for the stairs like the coward I was.
“Dear me, I didn’t mean to scare you,” said a voice from out of nowhere.
I turned around. An older gentleman had poked his nose out of one of the back rooms.
“Those La-Z-Boy catalogs get heavier every year. Dropped one on my toe just now. Didn’t mean to be yelping like a pup.”
That was my cue to go. It was seven P.M., getting dark, and I was exhausted. Nobody was expecting me back home, so I decided to find a cute little inn, the kind you read about in the Sunday travel section. I’d have a glass of white wine, snuggle under the down comforter, and watch a cable movie. And no one would be around to chasten me about raiding the minibar. To hear my ex tell it, my minibar proclivities were more deleterious to our marriage than his sexual infidelity and emotional abuse combined. Go figure.
As luck would have it, there was a room with a courtyard view at the Beau Rivage, a small, European-style hotel tucked around the corner from ESG’s office building. The clerk was a sweet kid who couldn’t wrap his head around the fact that I didn’t have a suitcase. Spontaneity was apparently dead in Ventura.
As soon as I got up to the room, I threw my clothes on the floor and flopped onto the bed naked, but only after having stripped off the attractive floral coverlet. My mother had once told me that hotel cleaning people took special glee in wiping their dirty shoes on the bedspreads, which they never washed. My mother was full of urban legends that, sadly, I seemed unable to expunge from my consciousness.
Buster and Mimi. I almost forgot about those guys. A quick call to the ladies would take care of that. They knew I hid a key in a flowerpot in my front garden. “They” being the ladies, not the pets.
“Where exactly are you, dear?” asked Marlene, who had been known professionally as Hibiscus. Her voice sounded shaky. I suspected that cocktail hour had begun.
“In Ventura, doing some research on the book.”
“Oh, Ventura. How I adore the sea air.
Now, don’t you worry a thing about your babies. Lois and I will take care of them.”
“Thanks so much, Marlene. See you tomorrow.” Hibiscus and her sister, Lois, a.k.a. Jasmine, were on the job. Now for the minibar.
With visions of Toblerone dancing in my head, I got up, idly took a look out the window, locked eyes with a little boy in a dark suit, and dropped to the floor. A mere twenty feet below, in the bougainvillea-draped courtyard, a wedding party was under way—ring bearer, bride, groom, string quartet, the whole shebang. Why hadn’t that front-desk kid warned me?
Slowly, I rose to my knees and peeked out the window. I was clobbered by pink. Pink roses, pink tablecloths, a towering pink cake. The ring bearer was whispering something to a mother-of-the-bride type clad in pink brocade. She looked up to my second-floor window and saw me. I gave her a sheepish little wave, but she was not amused. The wedding planner had not prepared her for the naked woman. That was supposed to happen at the bachelor party.
Time to learn that things don’t always work out.
At my wedding I was supposed to wear a sarong and carry fuschia orchids tied with raffia. There was going to be tiki music and torches and a suckling pig with an apple in his mouth. It may have been a bit fey for Asbury Park, I can see that now. In any case, I was vetoed. I carried a tight ball of white roses and wore a white gown that poufed in every conceivable direction. White represents purity, and the mothers had a point to make.
I sank back down to the floor, crawled the rest of the way to the minibar, and opened it. God help me, it was filled with healthy snacks: protein bars, electrolyte-enhanced H2O, gorp sorts of things, the stuff you put in backpacks when you’re hiking and swear never to touch once you’re back within spitting range of a 7-Eleven. Catching sight of my thirty-nine-year-old body in the mirror, I decided I needed nourishment of any kind like I needed a hole in the head. I crawled back to the bed, slid between the sheets, and fell fast asleep. I dreamed I married Perry Mason.