by Bruce Wagner
the headstone. Ray’s girlfriend was to be buried in Calcutta, come hell or high water—that was what Joan gathered from the industrious diligently sweethearted women he always called “the cousins,” one of whom it turned out was actually the dead woman’s sister.
Joan told them her father said Ghulpa wished to be buried here in the States, at Forest Lawn, in a plot already purchased, and that was when the Artesian brood confided there were “difficulties”—that the “spousal relation” was not “sanctified,” that the deceased was in fact not a legal resident. Joan understood.
She asked nothing more.
THERE were a host of stones to choose from.
“Do I have to pick it now?”
“No, no! This is just a selection.”
“Could something—can something be built? I mean, a design of some sort?”
“Do you mean a mausoleum?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure. I’m an architect…”
The woman smelled money.
“That depends on the amount of space you purchase. I can check in the particular area your father—”
“No, it’s all right.”
“In terms of ‘design,’ did you mean a photo?”
Joan was uncomprehending.
“There is a wonderful technology that allows us to etch a photographed image of the loved one into the surface of the stone.”
“I see. OK. Let me think about all that.”
“Take your time! And, of course, we’ll eventually need to know what you’d like to put on the stone.”
“On the stone?”
“In memoriam. Usually the simplest is best. ‘Less is more.’ You know, we actually had that epitaph. The man’s name was Les and the family wrote, ‘Les Is More.’ Quite clever. But you can do, well, anything that space allows. It could be a poem. Or a thought.”
“Oh—right! When do you need to know by?”
“Absolutely no hurry. The stone can be put down without a legend and engraved at a future time. Heavens, we have people think about it for years.”
On her way out, the words slowly surfaced—
Full fathom five thy father lies; of his bones are coral made; those are pearls that were his eyes. But doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange.
—so beautiful but seemingly too fancified for the man she’d only begun to know.
Then, opening the car door, it came: the most perfect memorial she could imagine.
Joan rushed back to the office so she wouldn’t lose the courage. She wrote it for the caretaker:
RAYMOND RAUSCH
1930–2006
Father
There are some things Joan would never know, just as there is much in and of the world that can never be known, but the things that would remain unrevealed, were, in the scheme of mysterious gifts which had been tardily gathered, rather small.
As an example, she would never learn that the woman who abandoned this earth with Ray’s dead child—Joan’s sibling—had once worked as Pradeep’s nanny, and had fled, not through unhappiness, not entirely, but because it had been her fate, unlikely as most fates are, to meet a kind old man at the end of a pier one blustery Santa Monica day, an old man who would love and be lionized by her, who would live to see her death before he himself departed for other realms.
Joan had Friar Tuck in the car while driving to Cora’s to give the faithful woman a small keepsake of her mom’s. (A copper Buddha.) She thought it a tidy plan to adopt Raymond’s pet but had been bitten and was having 2nd thoughts; he cowered and low-growled, soaking the backseat towel in urine. When she arrived, Nip jumped from the open window and rushed to the neighbor’s new King Charles, given to her by Stein, her thoughtful Steinie, and the pair sniffed and shimmied and licked each other as if lifelong friends. Cora gave a hug then squinted downward, asking how far along Joan was. She stood back and blinked, but not at Joan’s tummy: it was something in the off-kilter gait of her 4-footed friend…Wasn’t this the terrier who costarred with Mr P on the Whisperer show?
The 2 had a moment of dissonance.
Cora explained how she knew this creature, she had met the Friar—hadn’t she? Didn’t they call him “Nip”?—Yes! said Joan—who’d been shot—hadn’t he been shot by the police?—Yes—well she had met Nip and his lovely owner, many times, a gemütlich old gentleman with an Indian companion who rarely left his side. They realized (not fully, though, not yet, and would never really be able to compass it) the astonishing coincidence of it all.
Joan asked if she could come in.
They went to the living room, where, over coffeecake and lattes, she told Cora everything. The dogs sat obediently, as if listening to a bedtime story.
“What a strange life this is!” said Cora, in one of the few genuine instances she would ever have such a complexly simple thought. “My, my, that is a different dog, that Friar! I remember him when he was freshly wounded—I was in the waiting room with Mr P, right on Sepulveda, your dad was there with his ladyfriend. A very pretty woman, in one of those colorful—what do they call them?—saris. But oh, he’s quite a different dog now!”
On cue, Friar Tuck trotted over to lick her hands and face with abandon. The Princess wasn’t far behind (Cora said she had to maintain the tradition of the Ps)—then did the exact same to Joan, as if in goodbye. Again the women laughed, to keep from crying.
“Would you mind if I kept him?” said Cora. “He is a delight. And look how they get along! See how protective he is of my Princess? Besides, my grandkids think Mr Friar Tuck is cool (they call him ‘50 Cents,’ I’m not sure where that started). I know it sounds awful, but they see him as a ‘gangster’!”
Joan said that would be quite wonderful, suddenly feeling a mild yet fleeting horror over her secret fantasy of having Nip euthanized. She’d gotten the idea from an article in People called “The Angel of ‘Doggy Deathrow.’ ”
“But Cora—if you change your mind, any time, that’s just fine. If he gets out of hand in any way, or for any reason…”
“Don’t you worry, he’ll be perfect. We’re old friends! Aren’t we, Friar? Aren’t we, Mr 50 Cents? My little Princess needs a companion—she’s been chasing her tail something fierce, and I had the feeling it’s from being lonesome. I’ve been thinking, Oh! I don’t want to have to call that Dog Whisperer again! He’s got far more troubled creatures to deal with!”
Joan gave her the figurine and invited her to the beach house, where they were still settling in. It was important Marj see her old friend.
“You better come visit,” she said, wagging a finger. “I don’t want Mom ‘chasing her tail.’ ”
“I love the beach—my grandkids too.”
“They’re more than welcome, any time.”
“You might regret saying that—you’re going to beat us away with a stick! I’ll bring the sunblock!” she said cheerily.
Joan was glad.
“What will you call her?”
She was nonplussed.
“The little one?” said Cora, nodding at Joan’s belly.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s going to be a girl.”
“Of course it will! Marj would love another girl. What will you call her?”
“I’ve been thinking about Aurora.”
“Rory!” said her hostess, with sparkling amiability.
It was odd, but Joan knew right away it was true—she would have a girl—and she’d always loved that name. Something about those magical Northern Lights (Pradeep once promised to fly them to Alaska for “front row seats”), the evanescent curtain, the rollicking name itself, which spoke inexplicably to her of the Old West and the Midwest too, of Rory Calhoun and Annie Oakley, whoever they were, her dream of who they were, but the lights, it was the lights she remembered, in National Geographic photos, drawings, or children’s book paintings, wonderful fireworked love-letters to our fleeting time on this beautiful world.
THERE was one detail that Cora always thought to reveal during subse
quent visits to sandy Point Dume, but always, in the excitement and fussing over Marj, managed to forget.
Friar Tuck had tunneled under the fence that separated her home from Marj’s. Joan was going to sell the property but it wasn’t a priority; only the concrete foundation remained, barely visible, the earth around it wild and weedsprung. At night, the dog would pass through the hole—Stein kept filling it up, to no avail—and fall asleep where Marj’s bedroom used to be. It was the queerest thing. But he wasn’t doing any harm, and as long as her little Princess didn’t follow (she didn’t seem to have the inclination), well, after a while, Cora just thought to let the Friar be. He always came home, early in the morning, sweet-tempered as ever, but not before making a somehow poignant effort to kick clods of dirt to close the gap, as if shutting the phantom domicile’s door for at least another day. Sometimes, in fits of insomnia, and when it was warm enough, Cora looked over from her backyard—there he’d be, bathed in moonlight, in the exact same part of that now invisible house, as if at the foot of the old woman’s bed, sound asleep, like a clerk at a country inn.
The Friar repeated his routine until the lot was finally sold. From then on he no longer roamed, becoming closer to Cora in many ways than even her Princess, whom she still delighted in telling everyone that she loved “more than life.”
E N D
Bombay/Mexico City/Los Angeles, 2006
The Waters of Life
Waters, you are the ones who bring us the life force. Help us to find nourishment so that we may look upon great joy.
Let us share in the most delicious sap that you have, as if you were loving mothers.
Let us go straight to the house of the one for whom you waters give us life and give us birth.
For our well-being let the goddesses be an aid to us, the waters be for us to drink. Let them cause well-being and health to flow over us.
Mistresses of all the things that are chosen, rulers over all peoples, the waters are the ones I beg for a cure.
Soma has told me that within the waters are all cures and Agni who is salutary to all.
Waters, yield your cure as an armor for my body, so that I may see the sun for a long time.
Waters, carry far away all of this that has gone bad in me, either what I have done in malicious deceit or whatever lie I have sworn to.
I have sought the waters today; we have joined with their sap. O Agni full of moisture, come and flood me with splendor.
—The Rig Veda
I was curious. I went for the first time and got addicted. I told my mom I wanted to work the sea and not the fields. And she let me go. She said, “It’s up to you now. If you want to go, go. I’ll be home praying that you have a prosperous future.”
And then I went to sea.
—A young boy, after the Christmas Tsunami
About the Author
Bruce Wagner is the author of Force Majeure; I’m Losing You; I’ll Let You Go, which was a PEN USA fiction award finalist; Still Holding; and The Chrysanthemum Palace, which was a PEN Faulkner Award finalist. Two movies (I’m Losing You and Women in Film) adapted from his books have been shown at the Telluride, Toronto, Venice, and Sundance film festivals.