Follow the Dotted Line

by Nancy Hersage

  Instinctively, she put up her hand to stem the flow of his predictably galling logic. “Stop right there,” she warned him.

  He didn’t. Instead he just rounded the corner. “This could be a new spiritual beginning for you. Like it is for me. Be all you can be, Aunt Andy. Be part of the Hasidim!”

  For the first time in her life as a writer, she truly grasped the meaning of ‘gobsmacked.’ “Did you make that up?!” she gagged.

  He beamed, totally unrepentant. “It just came out of me.”

  If social scientists ever wondered how long it took to run from one end of the theological spectrum to the other, Andy could now tell them. Just over five weeks, including brief stops for eating and sleeping. Even for the spectators, making change at this pace was exhausting.

  “Harley,” she said, responding to his improvised proselytizing pitch, “I’m still a little hazy about how to be a good person. There’s no way I would ever be a good Jew. More importantly, it’s my understanding that orthodox women do not play golf. And as you well know, that’s a deal breaker for me.”

  Harley danced around for a moment, trying to come up with a counterpunch.

  Andy didn’t bother waiting. She went right for the upper cut. “I think it’s time we call your mother about all this,” she said.

  He hadn’t seen it coming. “What?” he said, swaying slightly.

  She swung again. “We need to call your mother about your conversion.”

  He tried to redirect. “I’m not converting to anything,” he protested. “I am realizing my heritage.”

  And again. “We need to call your mother.”

  His creamy blues began to glisten, as he unconsciously drew his hands into his stomach. “I can’t.”

  “Harley—”

  “Please, Aunt Andy,” he said, pleading. “I’m not ready. I need time to assimilate.”

  At least Judaism was increasing his vocabulary, Andy observed. “Maybe she does, too, Harley,” Andy pointed out. “This whole thing might go down easier if your sideburns aren’t in tresses by the time we Skype her.”

  “She won’t get it.”

  “Give her a chance.”

  Andy sympathized with the fear in his gut, but his parents deserved to know what was going on. The phone call had to be made—for both of their sakes. Still, it didn’t have to be done today.

  “Go to temple,” she said, dismissing him. “But we are definitely making a full disclosure before the high holy days.”

  By four o’clock that afternoon, the light from the southern California sun was crawling slowly westward across the townhouse patio on its way over the mountains to the Pacific Ocean. Andy, who had taken to hanging some of her laundry out to dry across the back of her Adirondack chairs, collected an armful of heavy towels and glanced over the brick retaining wall separating her unit from the next, making sure none of her neighbors were watching. No one in Los Angeles hung washing out to dry, even though it was, unquestionably, the most suitable climate on earth for a clothesline. Homeowner associations, including her own, prohibited the behavior. If she were caught, the Board would slap her with a hefty fine.

  As she gathered up a set of polka-dot pillowcases, Andy began fantasizing writing a sketch about a group of female eco-terrorists devoted to stringing illegal clotheslines across the barren backyards of suburban America. Moms by day, they would transform themselves into Pimpernels by night in order to save the planet. She was just working up a head of satirical steam, when she looked at her watch and realized she was might be late to meet Lorna. They had reservations to see a taping of Real Time with Bill Maher at seven, and she needed to get moving.

  One of the great pleasures of living in Los Angeles is that everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who can get tickets to see the taping of a talk show. Lorna Drexel was the kind of somebody who knew somebody who could get a free parking pass, a VIP escort, and reserved seats. The excitement of watching live television, combined with the pleasure of waltzing into the audience 15 minutes before showtime and parading past the waiting plebeians to the front row, never got old, and the two women did it as often as possible.

  By five o’clock, Andy was in her car, coasting 1,000 feet down the mountain from Valencia towards Sherman Oaks, where she and Lorna were scheduled to meet up, grab a quick tostada on Ventura Boulevard, and then drive over Laurel Canyon to the TV studio in Hollywood. Tonight’s HBO food fight featured a lineup of guests that was too culturally toxic for the networks and even more left leaning than Bill’s usual panel of political celebrities. The pot-smoking comedian was hosting atheist Richard Dawkins, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, and feminist folk hero Janeane Garofalo. To counterbalance this trifecta of radical liberalism, Henry Kissinger had inexplicably consented to an interview with Maher about his latest book. Taken together, Andy decided that it would be okay if she died tonight, as long as she got to see the show first.

  Traffic was light going south on the 405, and Andy made it to her friend’s Dickens Street condo right on schedule. Lorna was curbside and ready, as Andy pulled over to swoop her up. They were placing their twin tostada orders by five thirty-two.

  “I thought you were going to ask Harley to come along,” Lorna said, as she and Andy made their way to the salsa bar after prepaying at the counter.

  “I did. But I made him read the jacket cover of The God Delusion before he gave me his answer,” said Andy.

  “Ouch. I take it he had never heard of Dawkins or the book.”

  “You take it correctly. He couldn’t even make it as far as the back flap before hyperventilating.”

  “I think you’re awfully hard on that boy, Andrea.”

  “Not nearly as hard as he is on me,” Andy said, ladling out a scoop of salsa verde from the refrigerated table. Weary and resigned, she turned to her friend. “He’s growing a beard.”

  “A beard,” Lorna said, softly. She shook her head with sympathetic foreboding. “I’m sorry, Andy,” she whispered into the glass food shield, as she reached for a spoonful of the wood-fire red. “Say no more.”

  By 6:30 p.m. they were approaching the guard station at the studio, located on the fringe of the Miracle Mile district near the Farmer’s Market. With the practiced precision of synchronized swimmers in pairs competition, the two women pushed open their car doors the minute the key was out of the ignition and walked confidently, stride for stride, toward the red-jacketed usher, who promptly waved the dynamic duo through. They were seated and ready for business by six forty-three. As the second hand on the studio clock neared seven, the stage manager counted down from five and cued the cameras. Showtime!

  The evening’s performance by Bill and his heretical panelists was as wicked and wonderful as any wannabe European socialist like Andy could have hoped, and she delighted in every witty transgression. Lorna, who was not a big fan of Maher’s vulgarity, agreed he had been on his game from start to finish, despite his potty mouth. And together, the two baby boomers marveled that Nixon’s national security advisor, who had sent so many of that generation to their deaths in Vietnam, remained in old age as callous and clueless about the human condition as ever. Andy and Lorna sat within spitting distance of the remorseless Dr. Kissinger, now nearly fifty years older, above ground, and still deeply sure of himself, as he demonstrated once again how little he had learned from those high school boys whose futures he had buried.

  It was, Lorna proffered, as they walked into Canter’s Deli thirty minutes after the episode wrapped, an evening for the Devil to remember. Located just down Fairfax, the deli was a family-owned landmark, frequented by tourists, locals, and LA’s ubiquitous celebrities.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in the Devil,” Andy said, as they settled into a booth without bothering to look at menus. “We’ll split a Rueben and each have a Dr. Brown Cel-Ray Soda, please. Dressing on the side,” she told the hostess who seated them.

  “I don’t believe in the Devil. But I wish he’d shown up tonight,” said the accountant. �
��He’d have to prove himself to Dr. Dawkins, of course, but once he did, he could have taken old Henry home with him.”

  Andy laughed loud enough to draw the attention of a young couple seated across from them.

  “It wasn’t that funny,” Lorna winced. “Calm down.”

  “It was that funny. I wish I’d said it.”

  “You’ve gotten enough laughs in your life, Andrea. You don’t need to appropriate mine.”

  They continued to rehash the night’s highlights, until an aging waitress, who had once been young and angular and was now rounding into middle age, brought a sandwich so laden with corned beef and sauerkraut that the top slice of bread had to be anchored with several toothpicks. She set it in the middle of the table, along with a custard dish filled with Russian dressing and the sodas. Sober and speechless, she moved on, as if the food spoke for itself and she needn’t bother.

  “You know, they have a Kibitz Room here,” Lorna informed Andy, as each woman planned individually how to attack the sandwich. “If you’re going ‘Jewish,’ this place is the place to be.”

  Until now, Andy had avoided mentioning to Harley that one of the truly sublime things about being Jewish is the cured beef and matzo ball soup. As far as she knew, he’d never eaten in an honest-to-God’s-People delicatessen. How many could there be in Omaha? “I’ll bring him for his birthday,” she said. “I promise.”

  “You’re such a good auntie.”

  It was one of Andy’s axioms that a person cannot nosh at Canter’s and conduct business at the same time. Most meals require the eater’s full attention, particularly when they involve Russian dressing. So Andy waited until the dishes had been cleared to bring out the notes from her conversation with the man from the Puppy Palace.

  “This was Gus Andropoulos’s former address in Texas,” she said. “Billy, Gus’s second cousin once removed, confirmed that the house was sold after he died. Are you sure you don’t mind doing this?”

  “My pleasure.”

  “You’re not being sarcastic, are you?”

  “No, Andrea. I’m being perfectly serious.”

  “Are you going to start with the county clerk or recorder or somebody like that?”

  The CPA downed the dregs of her Dr. Brown’s and ruminated. “I have no idea. I need to think about it. I suspect it might take a few tries before I get any information.”

  “You really think someone will have a copy of Gus’s death certificate?”

  “If Tilda sold the house, there will have to be a death certificate.” Lorna called a halt to her train of thought and switched to another. “Unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “I’ve been trying to think all this through. And there is another possibility.”

  Andy groaned. “Why is there always another possibility with you, Lorna?”

  “Because I’m an accountant, Andy. And there is always more than one way to account for something. In this case, there is the off chance that Tilda got Gus to file a quit claim before he died.”

  “What’s a quit claim?”

  “It’s a deed document that transfers the ownership of property from one person to another. So if Gus transferred full ownership of his house to Tilda before he died, then she would have no need to file a death certificate. She would already own the property, and she could dispose of it any way she wished.”

  “Well, Gus would have to be a monumental dummy to do that, wouldn’t he?” Andy suggested.

  “Old men have done far worse for the love of younger women, my dear. We probably shouldn’t count on any of these guys, including your ex, to be the sharpest tools in the love shed.”

  Andy inflated her wrinkling cheeks like a puffer fish and then slowly released her disgust. “I can’t believe Mark would get himself involved with a woman like Tilda. I just can’t believe it!”

  “Then maybe it’s a good time for you to take a vacation from all this idiocy,” Lorna advised. “Get on that plane to Edinburgh and go play with Sam and the grandbabies. Leave the palm reader to me for a few days. And when you get home, maybe I’ll have some good news.”

  “Gus’s death certificate?”

  “Well, in its own ironic way, that would be good news.”

  Yes, thought Andy, better Gus’s than Mark’s. “You’re right. As you usually are, Lorna. And you don’t think I should worry about leaving Harley alone while I’m gone?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You don’t mind keeping an eye on him?”

  “I’ll call him every day.”

  “You’re a true friend, Lorna.”

  “I want a bottle of Macallan’s.”

  “Very reasonable price to pay.”

  Chapter 24

  The Auld Woman of Wicca

  The flight from LAX to Scotland’s capital usually took about 11 hours, with time out for a stop in London or Amsterdam. Andy calculated that her daughter had moved about one-fifth of the way around the world. Initially, Andy had been so proud of Samantha’s appointment to the faculty at Edinburgh Uni that she had completely looked past the possibility her daughter might do more than simply teach for a few years in another country. It never occurred to her that Sam could fall in love with the place and a man and have babies thousands of miles from home. More to the point, Andy never dreamed she would be making this transatlantic flight with dogged regularity.

  As things often do in retrospect, the fact that Sam had chosen a life in Scotland made suitable sense. Andy wasn’t angry about it so much as a little mournful, in the same way she was mournful about Lilly’s move to Idaho and Ian’s life on the road. Even Mitch, who hadn’t technically left the building, had transformed himself from an engagingly combative teenager into one of those LA whiz kids who only call home when they have a spare moment and just to be polite. All of her children had chosen exactly where they wanted to be and had made the journey by themselves. Their pigheaded individualism gave her a lot to be proud of—and a great deal to miss.

  In all fairness to Samantha’s intercontinental move, Andy soon discovered she felt the same affinity for the Celtic countryside and its inhabitants that her daughter did, which really wasn’t all that surprising. Andy’s paternal grandfather had been a Byrne from County Wicklow in Ireland, and that side of her family tree was ripe with Scots and Welsh. This was a culture that had been genetically imprinted on Andy, where storytelling was competitive, politics were raw, religious identification was often incendiary, and the music made you weep. Now that she understood more about her family history, Andy could grasp the cultural attraction between her Catholic father and secretly Jewish mother. The Celts were not really that different from the Tribes of Israel. Maybe Sam was the one who properly lived at home now, and the rest of them were living in exile.

  Half a day after boarding a plane, Andy arrived at the Edinburgh Airport, leaving the new world behind and happy to be back in the old one. The novelty of her visits had long ago waned, and Andy was content to grab her luggage and a taxi and make her own way to her daughter’s flat on Merchiston Crescent, just off Collinton Road. As the iconic black cab pulled up to the front garden, Sam was seated on the step, a child on either side, ready and waiting to take her mother to a puppet show. A visit to Sam’s meant you dumped your suitcases and hit the cobblestone running.

  Andy managed to stay awake during the entire performance of Hansel and Gretel. Additionally, she remained lucid through a dinner of fish and chips in the pub at the Etrick Hotel, during which she regaled Sam and Graham and the kids with tales of cousin Harley’s Semitic muttonchops, while avoiding any mention of her investigation or the recent trip to Big Bear. The eight-hour time difference finally caught up with her back at the house after a game of rock-paper-scissors with Ella and Jake and just as she was about to rehash the results of the Ryder Cup with Graham. Without preamble, she decompressed into the sofa at the same time her son-in-law brought her a rum and diet Coke.

  “I think she’s out,” Graham called to Sam, who was p
utting the two little ones to bed. “Didn’t even make it to the after-dinner drinks.”

  Sam appeared at the living room door and assessed the situation. “Must be age,” she said.

  “It is not,” Andy moaned into the throw pillow. “It’s this damned schedule of yours.”

  “Help her up, Graham,” Sam instructed. “We’re having lunch tomorrow at the Dome with your parents, and we’ve got tickets to see the Soweto Gospel Choir at Assembly Hall at two o’clock.”

  “Have mercy, Sam,” Andy groaned. “And I can still get up by myself.”

  The next ten days with Sam and the kids passed as they usually did this time of year: playing in the park, taking the double-decker bus downtown to lunch, and riding the train to see friends in Dundee and York. For his part, Graham took Andy to golf at a course along the Firth of Forth near a little village called Gullane and then again across the Forth Bridge in Fife. As always, evenings were sacrosanct and tightly regulated. Either Andy babysat while the two parents went out to the pub or Graham stayed home, and Andy and Sam joined the throngs on the streets who were busy mixing equal measures of arts and alcohol at what had become one of the largest cultural events in world.

  The Edinburgh Festival is really a collection of many different festivals, firing simultaneously throughout the city for three weeks in August. Theater, music, standup, books, science, film, politics, military tattoos, and harvest—organizations and events celebrating almost everything. Among the individual festivals, the Fringe is the largest, and embedded in it are great evenings of storytelling, ranging from classical tales to comic tattles. It had become an annual tradition for Sam and Andy to hunt out the best spellbinders among them.

  Tonight Sam had tickets to see Russell Bain, a weathered and well-cured Scottish highlander known locally for his ghost tales. He was performing at a venue called the The Caves near Cowgate, part of Edinburgh’s Old Town and a street originally used for bringing local bovine to market. Sam was so excited about the performance that she arranged to leave Ella and Jake with Graham’s parents so that he could attend, as well.