The cleaning was pleasant and ruthless: I emptied the refrigerator of every object, the jar of butter-flecked jelly, the container of capers floating in leaky brine, the optimistic bottle of multivitamins now in a moist, smelly clump, even a not very old bottle of expensive flaxseed oil. All must go, and so it was easy, just dumping without having to smell or decide anything. I did the same thing in the bathroom, though not quite as ruthlessly. Any really recent and expensive cosmetic or cream was spared, but most of the stuff also went. Then the scrubbing and washing: the grout, the shower curtain, the back step, the under eaves on the porch. I moved from there to the recycling. No magazine and no newspaper lived to see the New Year, no exceptions. If it wasn’t read by that date, it didn’t make it. I got it all out. Finally, I did my clothes. This was the most difficult task, but I usually started this in advance. Everything I hadn’t worn in the last year would be given to Goodwill. I continued in this manner to my desk, and by the evening I felt my space—modest though it is—was airy and open to the future. I felt liberated and purged and deeply in control. I have to admit that my rigor was not completely laudable. It existed in tandem and could only exist because of a twinning rigor on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains. As I did my discarding, my righteous, relentless emptying, Nik was doing the opposite. He was organizing the year’s remnants. He was logging and archiving and filing it all. The whole swollen yearlong cumulus. He discarded hardly anything; he wanted souvenirs of every moment. And his accumulations somehow underwrote my eliminations. My liberation was brought to you by the ordered collecting and keeping of my brother. But of course his task was much more complicated than mine. He not only kept, he documented. He annotated, he footnoted, he wrote, he arranged. He updated the Chronicles. (Okay, the Chronicles. Am I already going to digress? Because going into the Chronicles at this point could be a huge digression. But okay.)
By 2004 Nik had thirty-odd volumes of the Chronicles (going back to 1978 officially; unofficially they were retrofitted back to 1973 with the rise of the Demonics). They were all written exclusively by him. They are the history of his music, his bands, his albums, his reviews, his interviews. He made his chronicles—scrapbooks, really—thick, clip-filled things. He wrote under many different aliases, from his fan club president to his nemesis, a critic who started at Creem magazine and ended up writing for the Los Angeles Times, a man who follows and really hates his work. Nik had given him plenty of ink these past few years.
It is odd to think Nik’s Chronicles took some weight off me and my life. I am only tangentially part of the Chronicles. They are truly all about Nik. When I am mentioned, it is largely as part of events invented by Nik. I am only ever in the Chronicles as a figure in Nik’s narrative. Like when he produced my girl band back in the early eighties—Hair Krishna. And when I sang backup, or when I happened to be in the house when an interview or photo session happened. It was always entertaining to read what he had me say about his latest record. Or when he had me trying to capitalize on being Nik Worth’s sister by launching my own failed TV variety show (which apparently I insisted be called My Turn. I thought that was pretty weak and just part of Nik conflating all the women in his life with characters from the Valley of the Dolls. I guess I was the Patty Duke character to him, with his projecting on to me a diva-like longing for fame and attention). In the later Chronicles I think I also visited him in one of his stints in rehab (court-ordered), and—oh yes, I testified on his behalf when he was suing his former manager. And one other time when his bandmates all sued one another for divorce. I apparently submitted a friend-of-the-court brief, an unsolicited amicus curiae. So the Chronicles were by no means a chronicle of my life. Ada, for instance, was hardly ever mentioned (a few Linda McCartney– style photos of Nik with baby Ada’s serious, round face peeking out from under his parka). Nik’s Chronicles adhered to the facts and then didn’t. When Nik’s dog died in real life, his dog died in the Chronicles. But in the Chronicles he got a big funeral and a tribute album. Fans sent thousands of condolence cards. But it wasn’t always clear what was conjured. The music for the tribute album for the dog actually exists, as does the cover art for it: a great black-and-white photo of Nik holding his dog with an intricate collage along the edge consisting of images of the Great K9s of History from Toto to Lassie to Rin Tin Tin (credited as “the border collieage compiled by N. Worth”—Nik loved puns, and in the Chronicles all his loves ran without restraint, unfettered and unashamed). But the fan letters didn’t exist. In this way Nik chronicled his years in minute but twisted detail. The volumes were all there, a version of nearly every day of the past thirty years.
Perhaps that really is the reason I seem to have such bad recall. Maybe I threw too much out. Maybe I should have kept a few souvenirs. Or maybe I should have been making an accounting of some kind, not just ridding myself of it all so quickly.
So the day started as an unremarkable New Year’s Day, and I have no doubt I have fused other New Year’s Days with 2004, other jars of moldy preserves and other stacks of unread Vanity Fairs. But I do remember the rest of the day, or at least one very specific thing from the rest of the day. It wasn’t even anything that happened to me, it was something I saw on the news in the evening. Actually, I first saw the photo and read about it on the internet. Does that count as a memory of mine? I’m afraid so, particularly this past year, when I felt myself an observer of events more than a participant. But that isn’t accurate. I was an absorber of events. They seeped into me, and the first indication of this was on the very first day of the year.
I saw a picture of a pale red-haired woman on the front page of a news website I frequently visit. She looked dazed and older, maybe forty, but a rough forty. The headline was “Mother Arrested After Bringing Baby to Bar in Blizzard.” I clicked through the link. I had to—her expression was so raw. The story wasn’t anything all that unusual, a banal tabloid tale. She brought her two-week-old baby to a bar on New Year’s Eve. She got very drunk at the bar and someone called the police, who then took her baby away. But somehow the story opened up to me. I could picture her walking in the cold, the half mile to the bar, the baby in her baby carrier under her parka. She wants to drink, it is New Year’s Eve, she is just starting to feel like a person after the birth. She takes her baby out into the bitter snowy cold—a half-mile walk with a newborn. How unthinkable. But maybe she knows she’s a drunk, and she imagines she is being prudent by walking instead of driving to the bar. Maybe she believes she is even being responsible. Or she simply had no ride, no car, no booze. She just pretended to herself she was getting some fresh air. She told herself the walk would be soothing to the baby, that it would be good for them both to get fresh air. And maybe she just “found” herself at her favorite bar and then she stopped in to show off the baby, and she never thought too clearly or directly about how she would proceed to get drunk. Maybe.
I could see her at the bar, cradling her baby against her chest with one arm, lifting her glass with the other. (The short article said “she held the baby in her arms as she drank, alarming some of the customers.”) This is what kills me: as she proceeded to get drunk, she was no doubt feeling buzzed and cheerful at first. The bartender and others in the bar coo over her baby. Perhaps someone even buys her a drink to congratulate her. She is feeling high and enjoying the attention. She clutches the baby, who is sleeping, and downs another drink. Then she goes further. I can see her, red hair falling in her face as she starts to talk too fast, too loud. She slurs her words slightly, she doesn’t notice the discomfort on the faces of the others. She sways a bit, she has a hazy smile, her face ruddy and her breath sour gin. This is what gets me: she doesn’t realize the room is turning against her. She has become this terrifying, appalling display, and she thinks something else is happening. Her misapprehension, then the exact moment she might sense the disconnect. She is now stumbling, and the baby’s woken up, and she says she’s got to go home and she’s got to feed her baby. Some concerned person calls 911
. The article also said the woman was breastfeeding the baby when the police arrived at the scene. I can’t help picturing that, the baby crying, the woman drunkenly breastfeeding to soothe the hungry kid, the baby rejecting the clumsy nipple and the off milk, the long walk home in the cold waiting for them, and the entire room witnessing her fiasco. And then the cops come and rescue the child. And the mother can barely walk. A tiny piece of broken-human shame.
A little story like that can make me crazy. It just breaks me down. I’ve never done anything as egregious as this woman, but I can so easily imagine that I am the woman. Something about the need for company, the inadequate mothering, the total collapse of self-protection and dignity. I clicked on the photo and enlarged it so I could study her face. I felt my own face getting red and I could feel the choke building in my throat. I searched her name and found another article at another tabloid site. This one had the same photo of the woman—the only photo ever of this woman, forever. But it wasn’t just her—the poor cop who had to take the kid, the poor bartender who served her and then felt queasy as he watched her, the people who sat next to her in the bar—but mostly the woman herself with her pale, bony face and long red hair. And yes, of course I felt sorry for the baby, but everyone feels sorry for the baby. I’m sorry for all those compromised adults, bloodshot and guilty and telling the story later to their friends, just not quite honest about what role they each played in its unfolding.
I’m only at the end of the first day of the year and I am already exhausted and defeated.
JANUARY 2, 2004
Nothing, I remember nothing about this day.
JANUARY 3, 2004
Nothing at all.
The Chronicles never have any blanks. Ever. Nik would’ve inserted photos here, all flattering. Or a fanzine questionnaire, like this one from his prehistoric teenage Chronicles of the seventies:
I’M WITH THE BAND
The Back Page Vital Stats
Nik Worth tells us his fervid faves and frustrations
Name: Nik Worth
Real name: Nikolas Theodore Kranis
DOB: May 25, 1954, Hollywood, California
Hair color: black
Eye color: brown
Fave song: “Wear Your Love Like Heaven”
Musical influences: SELF. Okay, here: Bowie, Bee Gees, Donovan (see above), J. Lennon, Faces, John Cage, Velvets & Lou, Macca sans Wings, the Residents, Can, John Fahey, Miles, Incredible String Band, Otis Redding, Carl Stalling, La Monte Young, Eno
Pastime: taking walks with my dog Martha
Marital status: single (!!)
Things you look for in a girl: quick smile, patience, love of music, patience, hygiene, patience, pretty hands, patience, trust fund, patience, good sense of humor!
Food: yes [Nik won’t admit it, but he has a weakness for sweets. In an interview with another, unnamed mag (Melody Maker), Nik once mentioned how he loves Mars bars. His fans then sent thousands of Mars bars to his studio. More get thrown on stage at every gig. Says Worth, “I appreciate the thought, girls, but please—no more!”]
Gear: my gorgeous old Gretsch, my Goldtop Gibson, and my bike, a ’65 Triumph Bonneville
Calendar: Julian, but also Sumerian
Quote to live by: Orbis Non Sufficient (James Bond)
Building: The Bailey Case Study House #21 by Pierre Koenig
Book: Deuteronomy. No, Ecclesiastes.
Biggest frustration: I can’t hear infrasound
Monoaural or stereophonic: Quadrasonic
It is easy to fill up the space when you get to make everything up.
FEBRUARY 9
My forty-seventh birthday. Ada called me in the morning from New York. She made me promise to look at her blog. She had posted a photo of us, and it said “happy birthday to my mom,” just like that, no caps or anything. Not “happy birthday, mom” but “to my mom” because it was really reportage to some audience beyond me. It wasn’t a personal message to me but a public announcement about me. The picture was from the mid-nineties. We clutch each other in front of a homemade birthday cake. I would guess Will took the photo. No doubt he gave it to us to keep, but I was sure I had never seen the photo before. I could see our house, the lemon sofa, the sliding glass doors. She was so young, maybe eleven? I studied the picture posted on Ada’s blog and felt a surge of hot tears, which I feel all the time over nothing, then sniffed and made myself some coffee. I was wearing my terry-cloth bathrobe, and I felt lumpy and tired. Matronly, may-tron-lee, I said out loud, gleefully trying to fuck with myself, but I knew there was more to what I felt than that. I sipped at my coffee. I kept thinking about posting a comment. I should’ve posted a comment, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t ever post a comment. I knew how, that wasn’t it, I just couldn’t say something spontaneous and pithy and then have it hang there for all eternity. Those are opposite pulls—eternity and pithy—and if I thought at all about what to say, it was even worse. So I never posted, even though I knew Ada wanted that and expected that. Other people would post. Later I would read “Aww, sweet!” from grl4gravity and “Mom’s hot!” from mitymitch, which would actually please me in a pathetic birthday-malaise kind of way, an elegiac feeling of my former beauty getting its due or something equally tiresome and full of self-pity.
I ignored my phone when it rang and then checked my voice mail. Nik wishing me a happy birthday. Later in the day, Jay would call and I would ignore that, too.
I got dressed and drove to my mother’s apartment. I promised I would stop by on my way to work so she could wish me a happy birthday. I drank more coffee from an insulated travel mug as I drove. Although she lived only one exit south on the 5, I managed to drive right into a thickening hive of slow-moving vehicles. It was mid-morning and I was clumped behind a freeway accident and riding my brakes. I came to a full stop with my exit in sight, a quarter mile of stopped cars between us. Just leave the car and walk. Wouldn’t that feel great? I yawned. I could easily smoke while I was stuck in traffic, but instead decided I would listen to a book. I bought it for myself, for my birthday. Happy birthday to me. It was a self-help book, there is no way around that fact. MemTech: Using Your Brain’s Technology at Full Capacity, which I bought because Mom couldn’t remember anything anymore. I told myself I bought it to help her cope with her lapses.
At first she just misplaced her keys. Her wallet. Her glasses. Minor things. Then repetitions of stories, then repetitions mid-conversation. She seemed more confused than embarrassed about the lapses. She acquired a static but low level of agitation (even actual hand wringing) that made her seem much more unhappy and distraught than she really was, whatever really was means. Then we got a diagnosis and I grew accustomed to the idea that things would not improve and at some point I hoped to grow accustomed to the idea that they would not even maintain.
I hadn’t paid attention to the introduction and pressed the back button to start over when the exit ramp finally opened to me.
As soon as I walked into her apartment, she started to insist that I take the boxes of used clothes she had in storage to the Salvation Army.
“And get a receipt for your taxes,” she said. I could have just said yes, sure. But I had already taken the stuff weeks ago. And we seemed stuck in replaying this same conversation. It always felt tactless to point out the repetitions, but I did because it felt too condescending not to.
“I did it already, don’t worry,” I said.
“Did you get the receipt?” She had become focused on receipts and paperwork. Our whole life growing up, I don’t remember her saying that word one single time, receipt. I doubt she ever itemized her taxes even once. But what do I know about her, really? Maybe she always kept meticulous paperwork when we were growing up and she just protected us from all of it. Maybe this was a hidden side of her always there and now leaking out. I doubted it. Now she was interested in coupons, receipts, bills, instructions, warranties, paper trails of any kind.
She kept things to show me. As she grew anxious, the recei
pts proved something of a comfort to her, a concrete thing she could hold that wouldn’t fade like the things she was constantly trying to recall. She nodded and walked into her bedroom. Then she came back to where I was.
She stood in the center of the living room, brows furrowed, eyes darting back to the doorway she had just passed through as though her thoughts might be right behind her, left there.
“What, Ma?”
“I don’t remember why I came in here.”
“To talk to me?”
“No!” But it was really more like “No!?”
“To find the receipts?”
“No, there was something else …” and she looked worried. How could it not be worrying? It could be anything, even something really crucial, couldn’t it?
“It doesn’t matter. It will come to you if it was important,” I said, which was not at all true. She frowned at me. She didn’t enjoy this, and it grew harder all the time. But at a certain point she couldn’t be aware of things worsening, because that required remembering how they were yesterday or last week or last month. Maybe she read it off me, off the anxiety in my face.
“Do I look older? It’s my birthday, Mama. Today. I’m forty-seven—I’m middle-aged.” I loved to tell people I was in middle age. It was so terrifying to me that I was middle-aged, it was so deeply impossible, that I wanted to say it all the time.
“Oh, happy birthday, sweetheart. You look just lovely.” She sat next to me on the couch. The blankness and anxiety left her face.
“You and Nicky got to pick your cakes. Do you remember? I had this booklet of fancy-shaped birthday cakes and how to make them? The Wilton Book of Birthday Cakes.” She just pulled that title out of some pristine cerebral crevasse.
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