Death and Other Holidays

by Marci Vogel

  ALSO BY MARCI VOGEL

  At the Corner of Wilshire & Nobody

  DEATH AND OTHER HOLIDAYS

  Copyright © Marci Vogel, 2018

  All rights reserved

  First Melville House Printing: November 2018

  Melville House Publishing

  46 John Street

  Brooklyn, NY 11201

  and

  Suite 2000

  16/18 Woodford Rd.

  London E7 0HA

  mhpbooks.com

  @melvillehouse

  Many thanks to the editors and readers of the following publications in which these sections first appeared, sometimes in slightly different versions: Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine: “Go”; ¶ A Magazine of Paragraphs: “Heartbreak”; Quarter After Eight: “Physics for Poets”

  A debt of gratitude as well to the thinkers, inventors, writers, and artists whose imaginations sparked my own. The epigraphs are from: “Return to Tipasa,”

  Lyrical and Critical Essays by Albert Camus, edited by Philip Thody and translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy; “Theses on the Philosophy of History,”

  Illuminations by Walter Benjamin., edited by Hannah Arendt and translated by Leon Wieseltier.

  ISBN: 9781612197364

  Ebook ISBN 9781612197371

  Ebook design adapted from printed book design by Betty Lew

  A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  v5.3.2

  a

  For my mother, Ilene Estelle

  The initial day of a calendar serves as a historical time-lapse camera. And, basically, it is the same day that keeps recurring in the guise of holidays, which are days of remembrance.

  —WALTER BENJAMIN

  In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

  —ALBERT CAMUS

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Marci Vogel

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  [1998–1999]

  SPRING

  Snap

  Green

  Heartbreak

  Balance

  Vernal

  Linger

  Signature

  Space

  Clasp

  By Accident

  Museum Piece

  Dress Rehearsal

  Crash

  Fortune

  Vocal

  Anchor

  Optics

  Drive

  Memorial

  Bugs

  SUMMER

  Evolution

  List

  Forecast

  Pale

  Patrimony

  Tilt

  Spark

  Riverbed

  Want

  Assemblage

  Gut

  Hydroponic

  Regime

  Physics for Poets

  FALL

  Darkroom

  Fidelity

  Center

  Quick Study

  Return

  Birthday Suit

  Seismic

  Yellow Tape

  Bet

  Nine Lives

  Counter

  Veteran

  Swerve

  Saturation

  Leap

  Harvest

  Diagram of Dogs

  WINTER

  Revolve

  Shelter

  Resolution

  Rooted

  Heart

  Fuel

  Rhubarb

  Shift

  Register

  Architecture

  Rest Stop

  Promise

  Bridge

  Watchspring

  Vision

  Go

  Acknowledgments

  Snap

  I FOUND THIS OLD CAMERA when we were clearing out Wilson’s dresser drawers, and I’m going to start taking pictures. Libby says I’m going to drive her crazy with all the snap, snap, snapping every two seconds, but I read about this woman in the newspaper. She said she’s afraid of losing her mind, her memory, of being erased, so every day she takes a photograph of something, and that way she won’t lose her life when the time comes. I thought it was a good idea.

  Green

  THEY SAY WINTER is the season of death, but anyone I’ve ever known who’s died, they died in the spring. They say you’re supposed to get this miraculous sense of renewal and promise, but it never happens that way, either. Libby says it’s because we live in Los Angeles, and our seasonal clocks are set by new lipstick colors, but I don’t think that’s it. Maybe the changes aren’t as obvious as in colder climates, but spring is spring, and it always feels kind of precarious. I mean, there’s so much upheaval, all those blossoms forcing their way out of winter branches, tiny sprouts trying to break through the dirt. The whole business just seems a colossal effort, and if you don’t have a pretty good reason for it, well, I guess I can understand why the entire scheme might not be worth another round.

  Consider, for example, my father. He couldn’t stand it, not one more spring. He hanged himself the year I turned sixteen. He left me his Datsun B210 hatchback, and it was months before I learned to operate the clutch without stalling. And my mother’s mother, she held on all winter after a stroke. Halfway through March, she had enough. She made sure my mother knew how to cook a decent holiday brisket, then died in her sleep.

  And now Wilson, my mother’s second husband, Wilson, he died last week. I thought maybe he’d live forever, and maybe he would’ve if we had insisted on staying past visiting hours. He was so polite, he’d never die with us there. My mother called early Sunday, though, told me to meet her by the nurses’ station. She took down all the get-well cards, tossed the dried-up flowers, his green striped pajamas, the slippers I got him last Father’s Day. It was all done.

  “Hey there, beauty, baby girl,” he’d said. “Wilson’s life is over now, yours is just beginning.” He was pumped full of morphine and he wrote me this note: Start, go.

  It was spring, and I knew he was right. I just didn’t feel up to it was all.

  Heartbreak

  IT WAS THE FIRST new dress that Wilson wouldn’t see, black with tiny white polka dots. “My husband died yesterday,” my mother told the saleswoman as she rang up our purchase.

  The first time my mother and Wilson saw each other was in that elegant Hollywood apartment, the one he shared with Leo Fine. They tell me I was busy crawling up the stairs one New Year’s Eve when my mother shouted to Wilson, who was walking down, “Don’t step on my baby!”

  I was seven when they got married.

  I never asked what happened in between.

  Every spring, my mother and I would go shopping, we’d come home and take turns modeling new clothes, hats, shoes. My mother liked the skirts that twirled, she’d spin around, and Wilson would clap his hands and say, “Outta my mind over it! Best skirt in the world!” He’d have the Lakers on TV with the volume turned off, and if they missed a shot while we were changing in the next room, I’d know because I could hear his voice.

  “Heartbreak,” he’d say to no one in particular.

  Balance

  WILSON’S FAMILY WERE Petaluma poultry farmers, which is how Wilson learned to candle an egg, see if it was viable.

  He showed me once how to bala
nce an egg on its end during the spring equinox. He said it had something to do with the earth’s axis, equal day and night or something. I tested it out for my sixth-grade science fair project and had nine eggs standing in a row on the new wood floor in the living room. My mother had just remodeled. She had a fit when I told her the eggs weren’t hard-boiled. Wilson said they needed to be raw for it to work, but I found out later it was just a myth. Eggs will balance on any day of the year.

  Vernal

  IT WAS THE FRIDAY before Easter, but I drove over to pick up the ashes anyway because they’d already been sitting there a week, and I told the cremation lady I would. My mother told me she didn’t want them at home. I told her not to worry, I’d pick them up.

  It was far, so Libby went with me. We got lost like always, took a wrong exit. There was a guy dressed in a bunny suit standing on the corner, selling tulips. He held a blue umbrella because the fur on the costume was thick and it was a hot day.

  I spotted a phone booth at the Shell station on the next corner. Libby pulled over, handed me a quarter, and I called the lady. She gave me the directions again, told me not to worry about being late. Back in the car it was hot, so we rolled the windows all the way down. Fumes from the traffic blew in.

  Libby and I found the place, finally. It was nice inside, the walls a soothing shade of green. The reception area was furnished with two leather club chairs and a narrow antique table. A magenta gift bag sat on top, festive with a metallic sheen. The cremation lady walked in and whispered that it was Wilson, inside the bag. I signed some papers and Libby carried him out like we were going to a party.

  Linger

  I ALWAYS COME BACK FROM these big family events trailing half a dozen fragrances. Three I discern instantly from years of holidays with the aunts. Chanel No. 5 for Aunt Arlene, White Shoulders for Aunt Doris, and Shalimar for Aunt Estelle. All the rest blend together, except for my mother, who wears Wilson’s favorite, Je Reviens, until it makes her too sad. She keeps an unopened bottle in her medicine chest, a circle of blue glass with a small gold cap.

  It’s a little disconcerting. I mean, you’ve just been to a wedding or Thanksgiving dinner, and you smell of everyone’s scent but your own. I don’t know what it is exactly, but everyone leaves a mark, so that whenever you touch your hand to your cheek, you’re overcome with someone else for the day. Lipstick you can rub off, but perfume, perfume just stays.

  Signature

  WHEN WILSON WAS DYING in the hospital, I’d watch him sign his name over and over again in the air, Ezra R. Wilson. He’d hold an imaginary pen, a black Flair Paper Mate, start high at the left and boldly stroke down two round curves of the E. Sometimes he’d stop in the middle of his name, his brow dissatisfied with the motion his hand had taken. He’d start over again until the fast, sure lines cut through the air, just like they had always done on paper, Ezra R. Wilson.

  My mother had wanted to take care of business, the lawyer had advised her, and she had Wilson signing all sorts of things. Checks, bills, car registrations, even thank-you cards to everyone who sent flower arrangements. In between documents, he’d practice to make sure he didn’t lose his hand. He’d write his signature, and I’d watch.

  Space

  AFTER WILSON DIED, my mother started sleeping on his side of the bed so she wouldn’t see the empty space where he used to be. He always took the left, like where your heart is inside your body, farthest from the door. It was late one Sunday morning when I walked in and saw her sleeping there.

  Clasp

  PASSOVER, THE AUNTS all go to Eden Cemetery to visit my grandmother. The spring Wilson died, my mother said she couldn’t bear being around dead people, we drove to the desert to visit my uncle Joe instead. It was an obvious escape. Joe is my mother’s only brother, the only one of my grandmother’s five children who never married and who’s always lived more than an hour’s drive away.

  After my grandfather died, my grandmother took turns living with each of her four daughters, carting her things around in brown paper grocery bags because a suitcase meant you were leaving home. Whenever she stayed with us, she’d sleep in my room, waking me up with her apnea or hypoxia, or whatever it is when you stop breathing at night. I’d lie still, listening hard through the dark, until there was a gasp and a sputtering, and the snoring would begin again.

  My grandmother called Passover “Holiday,” like it was the only one of the year. We never had a Seder, just the dinner, but it took a month for her to plan. She’d sit at the breakfast nook in our kitchen, clipping newspaper ads for brisket, making sure she got the best price for the best cut. There was always an argument because my mother insisted she was not about to drive halfway across the Valley to save ten cents on a five-pound piece of meat.

  Unless the first night of Passover happens to fall on a Sunday, we always get together the Sunday before or after it actually occurs. Uncle Joe still brings an elaborate basket of candy. When all the cousins were young, we even had an egg hunt. Until I was about nine, I thought we were celebrating Easter.

  My grandmother would spend all morning in our kitchen, carving radish roses and seasoning the chicken liver she’d put through her grinder the night before, until my mother finally made her get dressed and gave my brother Jake five dollars to polish her fingernails so she wouldn’t be able to do anything else. I’d bring all the bottled colors to the card table where she’d be sitting, waiting, fingers drumming.

  She’d choose the brightest red, and Jake would paint it on, being careful not to smudge the skin around her nails, small-bedded and shaped like mine, only thicker and harder to cut. When he was finished, she’d fan out her fingers and wave her softly wrinkled hands through the air to make the lacquer dry faster. Jake would fasten her pearls, a lustrous double strand with a jeweled clasp. She kept them hidden in a tattered coin purse tucked inside the folds of her good dress.

  The last time I saw her alive, it was in that care center, and her hands were bound in soft cloth like little cat’s paws, the fingers all wrapped up in white cotton. My mother and I, we’d visit, and I’d sit next to her bed, thinking maybe that’s why they used those mittens, to make it harder to hold on.

  By Accident

  UNCLE JOE LIVES ALONE on a golf course in a two-million-dollar house with country French decor, everything in blues and reds. None of the clocks work. There are three king-sized beds and four television sets.

  I am driving to his house, and my mother is speculating about my uncle, who has been having some tests done lately because he doesn’t seem to have any energy anymore.

  “I think he’d be fine if he had a special lady friend,” she says. “He needs something to look forward to.”

  While I am driving and my mother is rearranging my uncle’s life, a Corvette speeds by suddenly, on my right. I stop at the light and glance in the rearview mirror. There is a family of birds, they look like quail, crossing the road. One of the fledglings has been hit, and a long line of traffic is forming behind.

  “What is it?” my mother asks when she sees my face change.

  “Don’t look,” I say, and she covers her eyes.

  Museum Piece

  I NEEDED TO GET BACK to work. Nearly all my vacation and sick days had been taken up with Wilson’s dying, and I couldn’t afford any more time away. Luckily, I rarely get sick, and I wasn’t planning on going anywhere soon.

  I’m a curatorial assistant at the county museum, which sounds more glamorous than it is. An assistant is an assistant, you do what others want. Libby says I’m wasting my life, but it hasn’t been that long, and they give regular raises. Besides, I’m a public employee, so I get all holidays off, paid.

  I’m almost always done by six, and on my lunch, I take a walk around the park, look at the tar pits, all the dinosaurs stuck in the black, sticky ooze. Sometimes I wander into the antiquities room, everything protected under glass, silent as a tomb. Whenever we show something big�
��Picasso, the Impressionists, van Gogh—the new galleries get jammed full of people. I prefer the permanent exhibitions, where nothing’s changed since I was a girl, displays I used to visit, weekends with my father.

  Dress Rehearsal

  LIBBY AND I WENT searching for a wedding dress. She and Hugo are getting married next March, and all the magazines say you need at least nine months, if not more, to assure a perfect fit.

  The first shop was called Cupid’s Playground, and there must’ve been five thousand gowns, all zipped into clear plastic bags, looking like bodies in shrouds. The place was way out in the West Valley, and there were mannequins and mirrors and a swarm of bridal consultants, all running around in platform heels and lots of hair spray. In the middle of the fitting-room suite, a young woman modeled an ornate beaded ball gown for her mother. She wore a rhinestone tiara. An older man sat, tired in an overstuffed chair, nodding to whatever his small, neat wife requested in a determined staccato voice.

  A fitter named Amber led us to our room. Libby stood on a raised pedestal, motionless and corseted, while Amber, ready in the corner, skipped a few steps to gain forward momentum, then flipped gown after gown over Libby’s head. It was not a job for a weak constitution. I folded my legs atop a small brocade love seat and signaled yes or no, as was my assignment.

  We didn’t find anything worth buying that day, but I told Libby not to worry, there was still plenty of time.

  Crash

  I BROKE UP WITH MY boyfriend finally. He kept falling asleep on long drives.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s the road, the monotony. I get hypnotized by the white line at the side of the road.”

  I wanted to shake him. It was as if he didn’t care if he crashed, if we both crashed. Crash Man, I called him. We’d been seeing each other for months, and every time we got in the car, I ended up exhausted. I either had to do all the driving myself or silently clench my teeth in the passenger seat, watching that he didn’t waver off the road.