The Chrysanthemum Palace

by Bruce Wagner

  I was at the club when she called. I finished my workout, showered, and drove to the beach. When Miriam opened the door to her suite, she was in a thongy Victoria’s Secret number. Drinks were postponed. I’d never seen her this passionate—not even the first time we fucked. It was more than exciting because the funny thing was, if I really thought about it, I couldn’t recall a woman in the past five years who seriously came. I somehow remembered the girls of summer being more vocal, spontaneous, lubricated, what have you. Lately, I connected an overall waning of erotic impulse not just to growing older but to my unthrilled partners themselves. (A friend had palmed off a couple of blue, baseball-diamond shaped Viagras which I’d yet to try; a watershed moment I was willing to postpone.) Anyhow, my unhappy assessment of the current state of affairs—at least my own—was that sex seemed to be in a sort of cross-culturally, dumbed-down, or should I say numbed-down, state. As if the whole world had forgotten how to climax, and was content merely to grope its way toward the funky, muddled, middle-aged light at the end of whatever tunnel it found itself stumbling down.

  A few hours with the new, improved Miriam shot my depressing little theory to hell, and it wasn’t just a reinvigorated sense of my own powers: something elemental had been aroused that was instinctively attached to making babies. It’s incredible how simply we’re wired. In the days that followed, Miriam became my A1 breeding candidate, alpha bitch and repository of all manner of marital fantasies. I imagined us betrothed in elaborately catered affairs in Angkor Watt or New Zealand, lovingly captured in the New York Times Weddings/Celebrations section. Dad would happily pay through the nose; the bliss of it might even heal Gita of her tremors, allowing her to walk again. (Sorry, folks, but it’s true—at the root of everything is the need to please one’s parents.) Miriam would be a few months pregnant during the ceremonies, a saucy zitz and added delight to the gathered tribes. Oh, did I mention those tribes would be flown in by chartered jet? Knowing Perry, elaborate trust funds would already be in place, ensuring cushy futures for hordes of children, as Miriam would undoubtedly prove herself to be in possession of a shockingly fertile womb. HBO would pick up Holmby Hills and I’d settle into “the life,” that of a proper man and mogulian force to be reckoned with. I’d give great amounts to expunging this and that disease, enshrined and honored at black-tie galas, just like Dad. How would Clea react? Sure, she’d be hurt—at first. There’d be some fireworks . . . where’s the fun without fireworks? Besides, Miriam totally got it, understood from the beginning that Clea and I were contentious, harmlessly amorous siblings. To soften the blow, god-motherhood would thus be conferred. Clea would prove herself a natural, spurred on to drop a few kids of her own (by anonymous donor). If it was too late, I’d spring for a Mongolian, hiring a pro to arrange trips to orphanages and facilitate paperwork.

  That’s how I walked around—wearing the scent of Miriam’s ovulations like a dreamy cologne, in full acceptance that the tidal tug emanated from the dictates of social order, not soul mate. But sometimes they seemed damn hard to tell apart.

  WHEN THAD’S LUNCH WITH MORDECAI and the Danish DP wannabe director was canceled, Clea got it into her head we should all go down to Disneyland. It’d been a rough week and she thought it might be “fun” to get him out of the Chateau and “into open air.” I hadn’t been to the Magic Kingdom in years; the escapade jibed perfectly with my second adolescence (courtesy of Miriam). Still, I was surprised at the level of Thad’s excitement when she floated the idea.

  When we arrived in Anaheim, he suddenly got excited about California Adventure—so instead of going to Main Street, we hung a right. Friendly guards cursorily searched the girls’ handbags then pointed us toward the truncated Golden Gate Bridge that served as the corollary theme park’s entrance.

  A sense of horror quickly descended.

  There was nothing but wide-open spaces filled with porcine, handicapped families tooling around in rented, motorized tricycles. In place of attractions, an onslaught of shops—vast franchised plains of promotional material that looped back on the World of Dizleenan like a nauseating Möbius strip. Wall-to-wall music of the overamped John Williams variety piped relentlessly through invisible speakers, inflated and gaudily anticipatory, a sound track typically heard over opening (or closing) credits of a Spielberg extravaganza; everywhere you turned the orchestra strained toward something massive yet all one encountered were sprawling boutiques, screaming toddlers, and crippled fatties in PC motorcarts. Clea wanted to go roller-coastering and finally, miles away, we spotted “Mulholland Madness.” Weirdly, the point of the ride was to simulate what it would be like to speed around Mulholland Drive. There was a long line but a “cast member” (translation: wage slave) signaled us through, having cheerfully recognized Thad as a VIP. It was lame enough to see a replica of the Manhattan skyline in Vegas, or the Eiffel Tower in Orlando, but something else entirely to take a forty-five-minute sojourn from the Chateau in order to be whipped around a simulacrum of my native Mulholland. Soon, no doubt, there’d be a new wonderland—a mini-Disneyland within the park itself, a glorified, edited version of the Happiest Place On Earth™, with tinier boutiques filled with bitsy souvenirs. Secondhand reality was hot! I thought about my faux-Dynasty project, Holmby Hills, and got even more dejected.

  As my mood grew more cynical and downcast, Thad became contradictorily energized. He tugged us this way and that, as if burning off the nervous energy accumulated during the week. He and Miriam walked arm in arm, chortling about her brainstorm to make him a bestseller. (I was genuinely glad to see him upbeat.) Then he’d hook up with Clea and off they’d go while Miriam and I strolled among the meat puppets, dissing Black Jack Michelet. She was resolute her plan would succeed, giving Thad the last laugh. She wanted to huddle with Perry for his blessing and approval; I told her I would seriously lobby the cause. Basically, I’d agree to anything she asked, which had nothing to do with the fact she was my potential wife and the mother of my children, nothing to do with the fact at that very moment she had arched her neck to inhale the scent of my inner ear, nothing to do with the fact she was joyfully showing off the sun-bleached hair on her forearms, parading them for my delectation, and that her eyes witchily widened when I brushed her thigh and kissed a strawberry wedge of lip (in full view of grimy-costumed Cast Members, and the riveted toddler-spawn of a paraplegic dad)—and certainly nothing to do with the fact I found her crusade to get Thad his millions to be heroically sound, just, and true.

  Eventually, we did find a ride I enjoyed.

  Miriam and I sat in little steel gondolas that faced an IMAX screen, approximating what it felt like to hang glide. Soaring over a montage of river, mountain, and gorge, we clutched at each other with desire and wonder while the gondola swayed and surged in a warm, slyly generated current of synthetic Santa Anas. (At last, something worth the $47 park entrance fee.) She gasped and excitedly pointed—for a rapturous moment, our old friend Death Valley, and Badwater too, lay below.

  Just when I thought everyone had had enough and we could hightail it back to lotusland for an expensive lunch, young Michelet caught sight of a heinous sidebar village called the Hollywood Pictures Backlot. In the last hour or so, I’d caught fans staring; once or twice a family approached to have their picture taken and Thad obliged, for which the three of us were skittishly grateful. (He actually seemed to enjoy the attention.) Strolling deeper into the Backlot, he thrust a theme-park brochure in my face, stabbing his finger at the captioned ride he was dead set on buying tickets for. According to the description, the miniature limousine (set on little railroad tracks) took starstruck groups on a Mr. Toad–like tour of “the Hollywood experience of casting offices and premieres.” It did sound amusing, very Nathanael West, and Thad was miserably deflated when we arrived to find it shut down. We made inquiries to a ubiquitous Cast Member but the pimply girl said the ride had been closed for “voluntary safety issues,” whatever that meant, and no one knew when it would “relaunch.”

&nbs
p; Thad just stood there, staring at the moribund attraction, as if he could will it to life.

  Clea headed toward the candy superstore—she was jonesing for double-chocolate truffles—when our disappointed friend, ever-vigilant, spotted the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” Theater. I groaned. The line was a block long. “We have to go!” Thad shouted. “Don’t you see? I can pay off the IRS! I can finally pay off the fucking IRS!”

  My mood plunged further, if that were possible. I hate to be dramatic but there was something so creepily apocalyptic about it—I wasn’t even sure Millionaire was on the air anymore. Not that it mattered. Disney evidently fucking owned it and was going to fucking milk it for all it was fucking worth. When I was a kid, there was Tomorrowland, Tom Sawyer, and the glorious, snowcapped Matterhorn; now, it was all about replicating whatever syndicated hits had metastasized under the corporate umbrella. I had one of those “If this be our culture, let it come down” moments, and muttered as much to Miriam, who said I sounded like an intern at the Voice. I thought it was more Fahrenheit 9/11, but what the hell, I liked being put in my place. That’s what wives were for.

  It turned out the theater was full because everyone was eligible to win a three-day cruise and Americans really love winning shit. That probably isn’t fair. I should have said, Americans really love standing in line to win shit. The host came out. Someone must have tipped him because he pointed toward us and said “we have a VIP in the crowd today.” The audience applauded while our boy Thad-libbed; they laughed but something didn’t feel right. Miriam shushed me for being a curmudgeonly paranoid.

  Questions flashed on huge screens and whoever gave the fastest, most accurate response was moved to a center-stage “hot seat.” (“Answer buttons” were on back of each chair.) Thad was nothing if not competitive; it suddenly occurred to me that he really wanted to win. Things went from bad to worse when he couldn’t make headway. The questions were easy but they made sure to lob the occasional high ball, leaving you clueless unless you happened to be conversant with the inventory of the entire merchandisable Disney universe. Thad began to curse. It was funny for about ten seconds then some triple-chinned cracker objected to his language. Thad told her to shove it and the hubby didn’t like that one bit. Clea and I began to tug at both sides, as both reprimand and cue to leave.

  The master of ceremonies asked the hot-seater, “Where would you be most likely to find a denouement?” The answers flashed onscreen, with annoying musical trills:

  1. In the bathroom

  2. In a story

  3. Under the hood

  4. In a salad

  The mispronounced word (“day-new-mint”) had the contestant totally stumped. He used his “lifeline” to phone a Cast Member standing by somewhere in the park. After the employee answered, we could hear him hand the receiver off to a pedestrian. The Q&A was repeated and each time “day-new-mint” was enunciated Thad laughed so hard I thought he’d have a heart attack—it was that violent. After much deliberation the hot-seater said, “I guess in the bathroom.”

  Thad literally fell off his chair. “You fucking idiot!” he shouted. “Yes! Of course. That’s where you find a day-new-mint—in the shitter, with your elephant-legged wife and waterbrain daughter! Sucking each other’s pussies!”

  Needless to say, we rushed him out at the very moment a squad of terrified Mouseketeers, poorly trained in militia-like maneuvers, gave dogged, unspirited chase.

  While waiting for the tram to take us back to the car, Thad bought the tiniest cup of Coke I’d ever seen. It was like something from a dollhouse but still cost $4.50—setting off another rant, this one with anti-Semitic overtones that managed to include Michael Eisner, Mel Gibson, and shouts of “Allah Akbar!” Clea told him if he didn’t shut up, “we could very well be detained.”

  We finally boarded for the two-minute trip to the parking garage. I remembered how exciting it was to listen to the recorded voice accompanying that ride in my youth; how it evoked the genteel mystery and endless promise of a clean, well-lit, preordained world—truly, the Magic Kingdom. Now everything was different. The kingdom was Orwellian, the world was rotten, and the singsong murderous monotone of the man alternating product promotion with safety reminders only filled me with premonitory dread.

  WE DROPPED THEM AT THE Chateau and drove back to Venice.

  Miriam and I had plans that night. She went to Shutters to bathe1 while I headed for the beach. After an hour and a half in the car, I felt like stretching my legs. I took along The Soft Sea Horse, intending to finish it on a boardwalk bench.

  I was surprised at the unguardedness of the book’s narrative. (I knew the title had been cribbed from the yacht that launched Jeremy to his watery death but subsequently learned it was a line from a poem of Jack’s.) Sea Horse is the story of twin brothers, one of whom, an autistic “angel” favored by their glamorous film star father, drowns in the Aegean Sea during a visit to a film set. When the child vanishes and is presumed dead, the long-embittered wife flies in from Amagansett with the surviving twin. The “angel” reappears after the wounded family reunites, in the form of a seaweed-swaddled wraith. When the book was published, Miriam said Jack called it a “cruddy Creepshow of a novella, worthy of a trepanned Stephen King.” He did everything he could to humiliate Thad in print. I’m no critic but I disagreed. To me, the novel was a fantasia that attested to a courageous, tender nobility. The reviews, though, were unkind and it sunk like a stone—or a boy—providing trivia for future unauthorized bios of the patriarch.

  Thad was forty when he wrote Sea Horse. While the book showed promise, it was still very much a first novel—there are far greater sins. At the exact same age, his father had produced Radiant Light, Come to Morning, Death of a Translator, Jonas and the Whale, The Man at the End of the Booth, and so on, already winning a clutch of Guggenheims, Pulitzers, and National this-and-that’s. (Dual citizenship would eventually allow him a Booker.) Michelet saw the runt’s efforts as blasphemous exposure of family business, a tabloidal assault dressed up in the pathetic gown of magical realism which was then in American vogue, lazily diluted by its long, northern migration. His rage knew no bounds or boundaries.

  I did some Netsurfing and found an interview Black Jack gave in the New York Review of Books, at the time of Chrysanthemum’s publication:

  NYRB: Your son has written about Jeremy in his book, The Soft Sea Horse.

  MICHELET: It’s god-awful! So clearly an attempt to stab at me. What’s galling is, his publishers know it. That’s how cynical the game’s become. I doubt they even read the manuscript, such as it is. The thing has no value whatsoever, except as literary curiosity. Please to put quotes around literary. It’s obscene. All the needy stuff one prayed to have gotten off one’s chest a lifetime ago while battling acne. Or on the frigging couch. You write it, yes—of course you do, but then you burn the pages. If you’ve got any sense! Look, we’ve all done it, I’ve burned reams of juvenilia. But to enshrine, as a man? The towering stupidity of it—that kind of unforgivable hubris. If it were any good, I’d be the first to—hell, I’d haul it out like a piss-proud grandpa and do the book fair circuit with him, kit and caboodle. But see, I cain’t, cause it’s so much shite.

  It was piercing to read.

  The devilish thing was, I found myself suddenly blackjacked. With the collegiate nonchalance of an armchair freelancer I dismantled Thad’s inferior prose, tropes and longueurs, stylistic shibboleths and high-minded canards. There on the boardwalk, hard by clusters of sinister halfway-house junkies and hardbodied skatergirls, I smugly took him to task for daring to attempt a dissection of family tragedy through the refracted lens of a borrowed genre that in order to transcend parody would have required genius. I excoriated the man for the grandiloquent gall of embarking on such a voyage, knowing full well his ship would founder on remaindered shoals—he had to have known. On that Saturday afternoon, dusk approaching, my blood and eyes grew cold, and I seemed not to care a whit about the fortitude, the s
heer, steely gumption required for Thad to have taken up his own dare. Then I wondered: Had I ever done anything equally ambitious or recklessly poetic? Had the pathetic, unrealized, revenue-driven scribblings of Bertram Valentine Krohn even faintly approached the boldness of this monumentally disruptive, violent, seminal act? My remorse compounded as I recalled Michelet’s single-minded determination to devour his remaining son. How could anyone have survived such a father? Or such a reader as I was turning out to be . . .

  Yet the legacy of Jack Michelet’s genius will outlive our days—the ironic curse promised and delivered, it seems, by all monstres sacrés. I stopped at the bookstore tucked behind the Sidewalk Café and found a thin volume of poetry that put the old man in good graces again; I hated myself but what can be done? I wandered to the fiction shelf. The absence of Thad’s novels alongside his dad’s seemed a grievous wrong—an unmarked, looted grave, a desecration and ugliness perpetrated by that child killer, cannibal, madman. Thus I seesawed back and forth, pro-Thad, pro-Jack, pro-Thad, finally leaving the paper cemetery to take in the ambient exultation of seaside tourists, natives and buskers.2 I was at odds with the carefree crowd, wading against their currents while stewing over the House of Michelet, surprised at how far off the deep end I could go when it came to other peoples’ bad juju. Maybe it was the writer in me. But that sounds so—

  Let me leave it at that.

  * * *

  1 On Sunday, the four of us were supposed to have lunch at my folks’ in the Colony. It was a busy weekend.

  2 A moment oddly reminiscent of hours spent listening to NPR during the Iraqi invasion: the commentators’ ceaselessly articulate, impotent point-counterpoints and my own irrelevant internal tug-of-war, syncopated to the jazz riffs bridging ads and pledge pleas.