by Bruce Wagner
Dear Mr Chester Herlihy,
As a responsible citizen, you’ve paid taxes most of your life, and that’s why I think you have a right to be profoundly concerned by what I’m about to tell you.
Until recently, there was considerable confusion over who pays the high cost of nursing home care…Medicare, Medicaid, or you??? With the passage of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, our federal government made it clear who is primarily responsible for the cost of long-term care, and it is you!
Don’t take chances with your future!!!!!!!!
You were pre-selected to receive this special long-term care insurance offer from Mutual United Evergreen Capital Assurance Company—
XXXVI.
Marjorie
“YOU look so thin. Have you been eating enough?”
“I’m fine. I’m sorry I didn’t make it last week. I had to go up north—the Memorial. How was the desert?”
“The desert?”
“You left a message. La Quinta.”
“Oh! No—I didn’t feel like driving.”
Joan raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t like the idea of you driving to Palm Springs, Mom.”
“Cora’s dog got sick. That’s why we couldn’t go.”
“The little King Charles? What happened?”
“I think he has cancer.”
“Poor thing!”
“She said leukemia but her son said a tumor. Joanie, I didn’t think dogs got leukemia.”
“They can. But promise you’ll never drive to the desert, OK? It’s too far.”
“I promise. He’s being treated by some pretty good doctors though.”
“What’s his name again? The dog?”
“Pahrump. I hope I get that kind of treatment!”
“God forbid. So how ya doing, Mom?”
“Oh! Not too badly. Not too badly. A little lonely but pretty well. Pretty well.”
“I wish we could see more of each other.”
“Oh! We can! I know how busy you are. We had a terrible thing happen here.”
“What?”
“An Indian gentleman—a lovely man—someone shot him in his liquor store.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Just around the corner.”
“Where you buy your lottery tickets?”
“Such a ghastly thing. A wonderful, wonderful man. The neighborhood was really shaken.”
“Mom, maybe we should move you elsewhere.”
“Oh, that’s silly, Joan!”
“Maybe Century City—that gated place. It’s close to the mall. You wouldn’t even have to drive.”
“That place? Oh, it’s like a prison! This sort of thing can happen anywhere. The police had a meeting with all the neighbors. They said it was unusual. I don’t think we have much of a gang problem, and there hasn’t been a burglary in any of these houses for as long as I can remember. Except maybe kid stuff. Vandalism.”
“That is so scary. I mean, just a block away.”
“Oh! I clipped something from the paper that I thought was cute.”
“What is it?”
She handed her daughter the article. Joan scanned it.
“Well,” said the old woman. “The CEO of Domino’s Pizza went to India for the opening of their hundredth store. I didn’t even know they had pizza shops in India! They landed in Delhi then chartered a helicopter to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. Just like something Hamilton would have done! And when they got there, a whole herd of elephants was waiting with ‘Domino’s Pizza’ painted on them in red and blue.”
“How disgusting.”
Marj ignored the remark. “The elephants were a big help in the tsunami—they have a 6th sense like you wouldn’t believe. Maybe you could use them as part of your design.”
“That’s a good idea, Mom, but I think the client wants something a little less representational. I don’t think he’s an ‘elephant’ kinda guy.”
“Well, I thought you’d be tickled.”
“It’s very funny. Those CEOs really know how to live.”
“Joanie—I was thinking that when—if you have the time—when you finish your project—I was thinking we could maybe go see it.”
“I don’t know if we’re going to be chosen, Mom. But if we are, of course we’ll go up. It’ll be a pretty big deal.”
“No, no—I meant the Taj Mahal. Do you remember how I used to read you the captions from that picturebook? So did your father. I always thought you became an architect because of that building. Was I wrong?”
“I think that probably had something to do with it,” said Joan, with generosity.
“You used to talk about how beautiful it was. You called it a cream puff. Or a Foster’s Freeze. I can’t remember which.”
Marj brought out Mumtaz of the Taj Mahal, which she had stashed nearby in anticipation of the visit, a worn portfolio of paperdoll cutouts—the ornate costumes of Shah Jahan and his favorite wife. The pages were well scissored, each clipped getup stored between bindings with a curator’s fastidiousness. Joan was touched that her mother had treasured the childish keepsake.
“I haven’t seen this in 30 years.”
“One Halloween, Raymond dressed you like Mumtaz.”
“Kinda morbid!”
“You were darling, absolutely darling. You had a little sequin stuck on your forehead. A bindi.”
“You never got India out of your system, did you?”
“Oh! I don’t see how one can! The hotel we stayed at in Bombay was like a palace. In fact, it is called the Taj Mahal Palace to this day.”
“Yes, Mother, I know. I’ve been hearing about it since before I could walk.” She saw that the stupid remark had wounded her. “You know,” said Joan, “now that you have the time and the money, I think you should go. I really do! You’re in great physical shape—probably better than I am!—and a trip like that would do wonders.”
“Well…I did stop off at the travel agency.”
“You’re kidding!” Joan got morbidly excited by the idea of being let off the hook. She didn’t want her mother driving to the desert but somehow it was all right for her to go to India on her own. “Mom, I think it’s an amazing idea.”
“But do you want to go?” said Marj, eyes sadly glinting. “You’ve worked so hard, Joanie. And I have plenty of money…we could use Bombay as our base! I have all the brochures Nigel gave me—he knows everything about it. We could ride elephants! I’ve always been frightened of that, same as I am of horses. When Ham and I went to Israel and Egypt—long ago, when it was safe—you couldn’t get me on a camel for my life. But when I saw that little girl being saved by the baby elephant—”
“What little girl?”
“The one I was telling you about—I saw it on CNN.”
“You didn’t tell me…”
“She was going for a ride on the beach. On the morning of the tsunami. Was it Thailand? On a baby elephant. What is that place called where the tourists—you know, that in all the newsreels…”
“Phuket.”
“Phuket! She was going for a ride—her parents were still sleeping. And suddenly, the elephant turns and races to the hills. It knew a big wave was coming. Sensed it. The dearest thing. And ever since I saw that, I’ve had the picture of both of us atop an elephant! The Kipling Girls!”
“It’s a really lovely idea, Mom, truly, but I’m not sure how practical it would be for me to go on a big trip like that. It’s like 24 hours just to get there, no?”
“Nigel said you can stop in England or Germany to rest.”
“Not 2 of my favorite places.”
“Or Tokyo—we could stay in Tokyo, if we go the other way. A 3-day lay-under!”
“Layover. I don’t know, Ma. It’s kind of mega.”
Marj didn’t know what she meant.
Her mother smiled and grew quiet. Joan handed her the book. Marj tucked the colorful illustrations—Mumtaz in an orange sari, carrying a rifle to assist the shah
during a tiger hunt—back inside.
“Are you hungry?” asked Joan. “There’s a great Indian restaurant I read about in the Weekly. Gitanjali, on Crescent Heights. Do you feel like Indian, Mother?”
XXXVII.
Joan
THAT night, she dreamed of elephants.
Her father was in there too, face a blur—she really only knew it from a few old photographs. There was an image of them standing by a windmill on a miniature golf course. Jesus. The kiddie golf course, just south of Cashio.
She wondered about him awhile.
She carried the awareness of herself as one of those adult children with a parent who had disappeared. Los desaparecidos. Sometimes she thought she could still feel herself in his arms. He had read to her from that Taj Mahal book—the Taj, her first memorial, Koranic verses tattooed upon its delicate devastating sandstone skin, watery, Foster Frozen tomb everlasting. Emperor and wife. Shah Samuel and his Esther. Where was the difficulty in all this? Why was she such a cunt? Why was it so hard to envision traveling with Mom? The woman who wished her everything? How many years did she have left? She felt like one of those amphibian worms Barbet told her about that eat the skin off their mothers’ backs. The looking-for-daddy thing was so trite, especially when she-who-gave-you-life sat forlorn and elegant, deep cataract well of chocolatey eyes asking to give of your heart-stream. Still looking for daddy: when the being who nurtured you lay undone, besieged and beseeching. Joan felt the sting of it—what she should do is let Dr Phil ream her out in front of a live studio audience. Do a deathdance with Ellen DeGeneres…
How had she gotten herself into this? She realized now that the Freiberg Mem would be her final commission—or attempt. The blood of ambition, once boiling, had pooled out. She was anemic and gone reckless in her arterial, architectonic imaginings; her vagina was the only thing that gushed. Perhaps that was a good thing. Everything sickened her—restless and reckless. She’d always wanted to screw a billionaire and for that she remained unapologetic. Joan liked to fuck and titans usually fucked pretty well. She saw Kirk Kerkorian cross the street once, in front of the Regent Beverly Wilshire and thought, He looks like a lion. Not a single bodyguard, no entourage, nothin. Double K made Lew look like a squirt, though Freiberg probably had more money. She’d love to climb a snowcapped mountain like K2. Lew was OK in the sack but tended to say dumb things like “Love is a sexually transmitted disease.” Or “Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.” Or “My ex called our waterbed the Dead Sea.” (After their last rendezvous, he’d actually said, “I love the smell of Napa in the morning!”) She had a feeling he memorized them out of those Yiddish humor books people keep in the shitter. He had a serious side but liked to karaoke to “In A Gadda da Vida” and the McGuire Sisters’ “Picnic Morning” and tell creep-out jokes like the one about the Iraqi woman whose doctor told her he needed blood, urine, and a pap smear. “Here,” she said. “Take my chador.”
Seemingly, the oaf gene and the saccharine one ran deep in the Freiberg clan. Lew revealed how Samuel and his wife loved the poetry of Mattie Stepanek, the dysautonomic mitochondrial myopathy pinup who took forever to die. One day Joan was on the treadmill at the gym watching a bunch of Mattie clips on Oprah. (It was on the very day she saw the “Oprah Goes to Auschwitz” billboard on Olympic.) The anniversary of his death, something like that. A rerun of a rerun. There were firemen in the audience and everyone was crying, including John Travolta and Joaquin Phoenix. (The theme of the show was Heroes.) Snot was flying. Oprah cried so much she wiped her chin with the heel of an open palm like an old pro who knows that tears on the face sometimes don’t “read” for the camera. They panned off O to Mattie’s mom sitting in a special wheelchair because she had the same thing her son died of. Passed it on to him and her other kids. There she was in the motorized peoplemover with the expensive black leather headrest that looked like something from Virgin Airways Upper Class. O asked Mom what Mattie’s last moments were like and she said, “Well, each breath was agony. And we couldn’t give him painkillers because that would be like giving him death. And he said he was ready to go, that he’d seen heaven, and heaven was nice, and he was ready. And I guess I wasn’t”—sniffle, sniffle—“I guess I was kind of selfish but I said, Mattie, you have to hang on! And he said, OK, Mom, I will, cause I love you. And after 2 weeks of this—I was bribing him, Oprah! I’d say, Mattie, where would you like to go? We can go anyplace in the world. We can go to Disney World. And he was so weak. Finally, I thought, I can’t torment him anymore. I told him: Mattie it’s OK, it’s OK for you to go. And he just gasped. He was too weak to say anything but I think he was saying thank you.”
Then, the suckerpunch. She said:
He had that same look my other 3 kids had when they went.
This would be Joan’s last hurrah—that’s how she thought of it—and she knew the phrase to be vaguely delusional, grandiose, because she’d never really had a 1st. There would be nothing to remember her by but the veined dome of her barren uterus. Brunelleschi’s Dome, bewitched, bothered, and unbuilt…she would never be asked to design MoMA knickknacks or water-front condos; never be asked by Miuccia Prada to conjure the splintered jewel of a flagship; never be asked to lay out city master plans with Wolf D Prix/Coop Himmelb(l)au; never collaborate with Thom Mayne on government-subsidized wastewater treatment plants; never go pub-whoring with Tracey Emin or be invited to the Finnish Lapland to carve ice art alongside Future Systems, Tadao Ando and Rachel Whiteread, El Zorro and Yoko Ono, Kiki Smith and Isosaki; never be thrown on the Holocaust Memorial boxcar bandwagon (the latest, in Farmington Hills, announced itself by emailed précis: It’s a new Holocaust museum that resembles a death camp. Its brick walls are surrounded by wire reminiscent of the electrified barbed wire at Auschwitz. The building’s top half is painted in blue and gray vertical stripes, as if it were clothed in an inmate’s uniform. A tall elevator shaft looks like a crematorium chimney. Steel tubs resemble gallows. The trees surrounding the museum are stunted and wiry, to suggest starving inmates); never be asked to star in magazine ads, like Matteo Thun balancing a maquette on his head for Canali, or standing inside a box, on Audi’s dime, like a gunsel in a roadshow Mummenschanz with the Nike-esque slogo Never Follow.
…the first architect to be given the Hiroshima Art Prize for work that promotes peace, is relentless in his vision to create spaces that are positive responses to the brutalities that surround us all.
Daniel Libeskind Never Follow
Never follow a relentless pussywhipped kike in python boots and a Yohji trench who gets off on pouring rusted’s into concrete Shoah tribute troughs. She saw Cowboy’s recent design for an add-on to the Royal Ontario Museum: it looked like a Sony Aibo robot dog taking a bite out of a lovely old cathedral. An aesthetic train wreck—you couldn’t take your eyes off it. Maybe that was the whole trick…
Some of the condos the starfuckitects were being asked to design—aside from containing wine vaults and massive screening rooms—literally had minimuseums of their own work! Meier was putting up a building whose units were called “limited editions,” signed and numbered acrylic models of each apartment presented to the proud new owners as “closing gifts.”
No. That would never happen to Joan Herlihy—
BARBET asked her to attend an opening at the Gagosian in Beverly Hills.
And there he was again: the Renaissance Meier showing collages or constructions or whatever at 10,000 a pop. Pop goes the easel. Faux Cornellian boxes with artful effluvia of the great man’s double helix pasted within: a First Class (naturally) boarding pass (JFK to LAX), a subscription label peeled from a magazine with RM’s name and address (East 57th), a placement card for some fancy dinner—Richard Meier in High Society hand-inked cursive. The starchitect himself greeted all comers—tufthunting toadies—in a corner like a silver-fox cardinal fresh from a papal conclave. To Joan, he looked like a well-heeled dentist, the type with something questionable on
his hard drive.
She’d met him before and he had always ignored her but this time, when Joan said how much she loved the “constructions,” he looked her square in the eye and seemed to connect. Maybe he was horny. He probably wasn’t such a bad person. She actually admired that church he did in Rome. He was no Thom Mayne—balling Ricky Meier wouldn’t be a walk in the (memorial) park—but who knew. She thought she could probably do it if she had to.
XXXVIII.
Ray
THEY went to Little Indian Village on a drizzly day. She glowed with the life inside her. She never stopped smiling.
“You’re feeling your oats.”
That’s what Ray liked to tell her, though BG hadn’t a clue what he meant.
He wasn’t feeling so bad himself.
They sat in a window booth of Ambala Dhaba grazing curried goat and Mysore bonda, spring dosa, and payasam. Then they went to market for spices and she bought zebra rice, tiger biscuits, Ovaltine, and a case of Manila mangoes. At a curio shop, he got her a small statue of Durga on a wooden base, nicely detailed. The goddess strode a lion and possessed 8 arms; one held a trident, one a sword, another a lotus, another a conch shell, another an arrow…. Ghulpa said that when Durga went to war she lopped off heads while trumpeting a conch—a one-woman band, for sure. He bought an emerald green sari to commemorate the pregnancy. Man, she was pretty. He told her she made him “prouder than all get-out.”