Dandelion; Memoir Of A Free Spirit

by Catherine James

  My two radiant allies, Patti, the quintessential actress, and Miss Pamela, a best-selling authoress, were quite the engaging witnesses. They recounted numerous droll occasions with my dad and testified to his constant near-comatose state and his extraordinary appearance after his sex change. They each recalled my father never missing an opportunity to tearfully lament how I was all he had left in the world, and how when he died I’d be a well-to-do-woman.

  I was proud of myself. I’d put up the good fight, but the question of the independent review plagued me. Would my case hang on the letter of the law, or would the judge see the real picture? After the trial there was nothing left to do but wait for the court’s decision.

  I spent the next arduous week going over every detail of the trial in my head. I prayed to God, Jesus, Allah, any saint that would listen. I promised, “Dear Lord, if you just let me prevail, I’ll use the money to go to college, and I’ll get a degree in psychology.” I’d be a comfort like Dr. Deshler, the man who had helped me out of my food-poisoning pickle.

  Five days later I got the call. The judge had ruled in my favor. S. and his wife were ordered to immediately return all properties and cash to me, and the twenty thousand dollars gift to the mother-in-law was rescinded. I could hardly believe my ears! I had won!

  Of course, it wouldn’t be that simple. Mr. S. refused to comply with the order. And he still refused to hand over the accounting of the cash.

  A month later we were all back at the courthouse, baking in Palm Springs, awaiting an order from the honorable judge. The good judge ordered sanctions against S. of $250 for each day he withheld my property, but even that didn’t do the trick. My own lawyer wasn’t very reassuring either. He just shook his head, saying, “I don’t know, I’ve never experienced anything like this.”

  Of course not, this was me; nothing was ever simple in my life. With the sanctions amassing into the thousands, S. finally relented. He reluctantly handed over the cash, the Cobra, and some kind of accounting, but this was just the beginning of my woes.

  Along with the assets came another bit of news: Mrs. S. was appealing the judgment.

  I still wasn’t satisfied with the accounting. I sat at my desk for days on end, surrounded by piles of papers and reams of receipts, trying to figure out just where the money had gone. I had copious columns of hand-scrawled addition, subtraction, and multiplication. I was dizzy with numbers swirling in my brain, and my lack of formal education didn’t help. I remembered complaining to my seventh-grade math teacher, “Why do I have to know fractions? I’m never gonna need them.”

  I was in control of the estate, had done my homework, and felt fairly confident I would win the appeal, but then came a new snag.

  Supposedly the appellate court ordered arbitration, meaning they wanted me to try and settle out of court. Settle, after all this? No, thank you. I wanted to take my chances at the courthouse, but my lawyer said I didn’t have a choice; it was mandated by the appellate court.

  To be sure, he put doubt in my step by telling me the appeals court was a fifty-fifty gamble. Most likely I’d win, but it was possible I could lose it all. My brain was beginning to ache. I couldn’t think clearly about this anymore. It had consumed two years of my sweet life. I’d become all about a court case, it was my focus, my conversation; it even invaded my dreams like a broken record. I was determined to triumph, but on the other hand, I was almost willing to pay just to make it go away, and to move on with my life. Unknown to me, the purpose of the arbitration was to whittle me down to the marrow.

  I arrived in Riverside County at the crack of nine, armed with unruffled conviction and laden with confidence. I imagined it would be like the round table, that we’d sit at the board table and hash it out in a civil manner. Maybe I’d even concede and toss them a small bone just to get it over with. It turned out to be a bit more covert. I’d almost forgotten whom I was dealing with, and I fell headfirst into the pit.

  After ten onerous hours of strategic double talk, I understood that I was about to give away a third of my inheritance, but not without the understanding that in return I’d get a full accounting. A handwritten document was drawn up stating that I was to receive a full and final accounting, and at that point I shall hand over one third of the residue. I read and reread every locution like I was trying to crack a secret code, then I questioned my lawyer like it was the Spanish Inquisition.

  “Are you sure this can’t be disputed? Are you positive I’m not signing my rights away?”

  I sensed my attorney was a breath away from becoming annoyed.

  “Yes, it’s as I’ve told you; we’ll go after them until they give the accounting.”

  “But what if they refuse?” I asked.

  “You’re in possession of the estate,” he assured me, “You don’t have to pay anything till you’re completely satisfied.”

  He seemed quite certain that the document was to my benefit, and spurred me on to endorse. My inner voice was screaming, “Don’t sign!”

  There stood the arbitrator, Mr. S and his wife, her attorney, my attorney, the appellate attorney, and my son Damian. Seven tired people standing around waiting for me to come to a decision. It seemed to me that if the opposition was satisfied with the covenant, something was awry. Was I just being overly paranoid? To make the situation all the more pressing, all summer I’d been working on the movie Town and Country, standing in and photo doubling for Diane Keaton. My morning call was at 5:00 A.M. If I left right now, by the time I got back to Los Angeles, I might get five hours’ sleep. My attorney had a good point. I was in possession of the estate—what was the worst that could happen?

  A month had passed and still no accounting. It was starting to look like my own attorney had sold me down the river. It turned out the agreement I had signed actually was airtight except for two little definitive words: “I shall.” In Black’s Law Dictionary the simple word “shall” is as good as a done deal. Mr. S. got around our accounting agreement by avowing the original ledger was the final and true document. I demanded we go back to court; I would simply deliver a paper trail of documentation to the judge.

  To my utter astonishment, the magistrate couldn’t have been less interested. He sternly spoke: “Miss James, you have signed an agreement which is to be upheld. Please take under consideration the waste of the court’s time and money you are costing all involved.”

  He refused to even accept my files. I felt like I’d crashed into a cement wall. I quickly hired another attorney, who reviewed the agreement and confirmed, “This is unconscionable! You never should have signed this.”

  The next step was another five grand to start an additional lawsuit, this one confronting my previous attorney. Did I really want to go through this a second time? I was losing my thirst for justice, or the lack of it. I just wanted to get back to my life, release myself from the legal stratagem and intrigue.

  I wrote out the checks and Mr. Toad’s slippery ride came to a peaceful repose. I felt like I’d gone ten rounds with Muhammad Ali and come out miraculously only slightly bruised. I’d certainly given S. a run for the money and managed to retrieve a portion of my inheritance. There was still a pit in my stomach that felt like a bitter pill. I still felt flagrantly robbed. But like everything else in life, I’d get over it.

  So now what? I’d fought the good fight and the movie with Diane Keaton was completed. Oh yes, there was still my deal with the Lord, my vow to use my inheritance to get an education.

  I called UCLA and inquired about their psychology program. The counselor said I’d need a copy of my high school transcripts. High school transcripts? I’d barely made it to the seventh grade. In my sporadic adolescence I’d attended eleven different elementary schools and two junior highs. There had been no prom night or high school reunions. It appeared I was going to have to start from the beginning. I made an appointment at Hollywood High to take the required GED.

  The general knowledge and English exams were a breeze, but when I got to the mat
hematics, especially algebra, I was lost. I had no concept of equating numerals with the alphabet; it was like trying to decipher hieroglyphics. It also appeared that I was going to need some class credits that would cost at least a year of my cherished time. I was a fifty-year-old girl with little desire to do a term at the local high school. Determined to keep my promise to the Almighty, I leaped the hurdle and enrolled in the regional city college. Thankfully no one checked up or asked me to furnish a high school diploma. I was free and eager to learn. Never mind that I was the oldest student in the lecture hall: I’d made it to college.

  My initial course was chemistry of the brain. I’d always believed I was somewhat cerebral, but compared to the immensity of knowledge and wisdom obtainable at the college, I knew naught. I felt like applauding after each and every inspiring lecture. I was learning the science of synapses, serotonin uptake, and the chemistry of gray matter. I could almost feel my dendrites branching, reaching to make a connection. Besides the psychology there were the prerequisite classes. I opted for history of film, anatomy, and the mandatory English 101.

  I’d read some of the classes, loved the Irish poets, and thought Shakespeare was a prophet, but creative writing was not one of my innate abilities. It took me an hour just to compose a Post-it note. I was sure English class would be a bore, but I lucked out and got an illuminating professor abounding with whimsical tales. Mr. Dumonte was a romantic Italian American who spent the first hour of his classes speaking of his pilgrimages to the old country. He’d tell us dreamy, vivid stories of the ‘Spanish Steps and the Bridge of Sighs, then take us on a journey through the Italian countryside and farmlands.

  “Now it’s your turn,” he’d say. “Tell us a story; write me something you’re passionate about.”

  For fear of my mother’s wrath and obsession with perfection, I’d always been self-conscious and afraid not to be perfect. I had a creative soul, but I always got lost in the detail. Mr. Dumonte made it so easy: “Just write what’s in your heart.”

  In the midst of my spiritual enlightenment, I had a somber epiphany. Even if I spent the next two decades buried in books, I was running out of time. I may not have looked or felt like it, but I was now fifty-two years old, over half a century. I wished I had had this opportunity forty years earlier. In the words of Terry Malloy, I realized I could have been a contender. I could have been anything I aspired to, but I’d been too busy focusing most of my life on survival, raising a child and trying to decode the mysterious opposite sex. I hadn’t a clue there was so much more. I always felt like I’d fallen to earth via the heavens, and begun my journey without even so much as a leaflet. On the plus side, God gave me a pretty face, and inquisitive intellect, and Mimi, my guiding light to help softer the fall.

  19

  During my second semester of edification, my mystical grandmother began to ail. Mimi had been on the planet a hundred years, and for the first time was showing signs of wear. It was only two months ago we were energetically trawling the thrift shops for lost treasures before trotting of to Dupar’s for a bite of custard pie. She still delighted in dragging out her beaded silk finery from the forties, and we’d play dress-up like a pair of schoolgirls.

  One morning Mimi called asking, “Could you come over, love? I’m not feeling so well.” After one look at my beloved Mimi, I called the paramedics, who swooped her up in an ambulance and sped her off to Cedars-Sinai hospital. The doctors did a barrage of blood tests, and her physician informed me, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your mother has cancer.”

  “She’s my grandmother,” I said.

  Not only was she my grandmother, she was my son’s great-grandmother and a great-great-grandmother to boot. We were five generations alive.

  Mimi was so amazingly well preserved that the doctors decided to go ahead and operate on my hundred-year-old girl. She got through the surgery without a hitch, but the trauma left her as weak as a babe. Her physician assured me that with a bit of rest she’d be good to go. The bad news was that, against her bitter protest, she was being admitted to a nursing home until she was strong enough to walk on her own.

  The atmosphere at the convalescent home was about as joyful as the plague. The dreary green hallways were lined in wheelchairs with worn, tired souls either slumped comatose or mumbling to the cosmos. All these little spirits with their inner light barely a glint. I padded past the nurses’ station through a maze of lifeless corridors and eerie groans until I found my sweet Mimi.

  “There you are…,” I said cheerfully, as if it wasn’t so bad here.

  Before I could even get through the door Mimi cried, “Thank God you’re here, my prayers have been answered. Catherine, if you have even a shred of love for me, please take me out of here!

  “Mimi, it’s just for a few days.”

  But she wouldn’t be calmed. “Catherine, please,” she begged. “Don’t leave me here, I’ll die.”

  I could feel my heart shattering. I remembered all the times she had come to my rescue, how she had sat up all night holding my hand when I had scarlet fever, the way she fought so hard for me in the courts. My soft-spoken angel woman had never once let me down. I wondered, was it illegal? Would I be able to get her past the nurse’s station? What about her IV, and oxygen? I envisioned myself maneuvering her body into my car. “All right,” I said to myself, “I think I can do this.”

  “Mimi, if you can sit up on your own, I’ll take you home.”

  “I can,” she said.

  She grabbed onto the bed rail, struggled to rise, then fell back to the pillow.

  “No, I can’t,” she moaned.

  I felt like Judas but realized there was no way I could even get her out of the bed by myself, much less up the stairs to her home. It seemed like I was helpless to do anything but try to comfort her. I had the nurse bring her a sedative, and I held her hand till she fell off to sleep.

  As the days passed Mimi became as fragile as a petal, and her chances of going home looked slim to nil.

  During her infirmity I still had two final exams at the college. I was propped up on the sofa trying to finish the last dry chapter of biological psychology when I felt an unsettling jolt. I knew instantly it was my grandmother; she was about to die. I grabbed my coat and sped down San Vicente Boulevard, praying to make it there in time. At 10:30 the halls were ghostly still, not even a shadow of a night nurse to be found. When I got to my grandmother’s room, I whispered, “I’m here, Mimi.”

  With her eyes still closed, in a soft weary voice she said, “That’s good, love.”

  Her breathing was short and steady, almost like someone in childbirth, like she was propelling herself somewhere big. My eyes instantly flooded with tears. I held onto her soft familiar hand and asked, “Is it peaceful, Mimi, or are you afraid?”

  “It’s both,” she said.

  I turned off the light over her bed, leaving a small ray of light illuminating the room from the hall.

  Is there anything you want?” I whispered. “Can I do anything for you?”

  With her eyes still closed she asked, “I’d like a little water, please.”

  I gently held her sweet head and gave her a last sip.

  “Mimi, I want you to know that every loving compassionate trait I possess, my awareness of beauty and grace, my artistic nature, every good thing about me is you, a gift from you.”

  For a brief moment she opened her eyes and replied, “It was all worth it, then.”

  Those were her last words to me: “It was all worth it.”

  I wanted to keep talking with her. I wanted to know where she was going, what it was like, but this was her moment.

  It was time to let my Mimi be. I thought how perfect that it was just the two of us, just like when I was little. I ran my hands from the top of her head to the soles of her feet.

  “I’ve loved you so much, Mimi. You were everything to me.”

  I put my head down, and asked the angels to come and take her softly. And they did.
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  All the beautiful women in my family had one thing in common: They all suffered from vanity. Mimi was not an exception. For years, even before she became ill, she always asked me to promise that when she died I would be the one to do her makeup for her funeral. After one hundred years she still took pride in her carefully arched eyebrows and lily-white complexion. The day before her burial I packed a sachet of cosmetics and headed for the mortuary to keep our pact. It never occurred to me that there might be a problem getting in. I swooped into the parlor and said, “I’m here to see my grandmother.”

  The undertaker said it was impossible, that I’d have to wait till the service in the morning.

  “But I can’t wait; I have to see her now.”

  He said he was sorry but it was against policy, and I’d have to come back tomorrow.

  “But she’s here. Why can’t I see her?”

  When I explained I wasn’t leaving without seeing her, the man went into another area, and I could hear him whispering with the staff. The next thing I knew a room was prepared for me to visit.

  I was taken to a pure white room, and there she lay. Mimi was tightly swathed in white muslin and her shoulder-length straight hair was freshly combed back away from her face. There were small windows that were too high to see out of, but shafts of natural light illuminated the room through the panes, and Mimi looked like some kind of angel. I remembered looking at her two nights earlier, when she was actually leaving her body. As she was dying her face visibly changed. The few lines and wrinkles she possessed had melted before my eyes, and her skin became smooth and taut. In this spotless white room Mimi looked as pure as snow; it felt sacrilegious to start putting paint on her face. I decided that just a brush of pale fingernail polish, and she’d be good to go. I tugged on the muslin where her hands were bound inside, but she was wrapped so tightly, it wouldn’t budge. I’d have to unwrap half her body to reach her fingertips, but then how was I going to get the cloth back tight the way it was? I thought, what if the funeral director comes in and finds me and Mimi in a heap of unraveled cotton; he’d think I was a nut! No, she was perfect just the way she was. I spoke out loud to my grandmother, “You don’t need any makeup today, Mimi. You already look beautiful.”