Literacy and Longing in L. A.

by Jennifer Kaufman

  I flip through the photo album in front of me. Lorraine as a toddler in a swimsuit and flippers, Lorraine and Fred whirring around on an amusement park ride, Lorraine with a wide “happy childhood” smile standing bowlegged on a beach in a floppy hat and sunglasses. When was it, I wondered, that she fell into the abyss? No photos of Lorraine with a man, or for that matter, a baby.

  More people now pile into the stifling living room. There is a tall, grizzled man with limp shoulder-length hair named Ish and a few older, dressed-up couples in their sixties and seventies who introduce themselves as Bea’s church friends. Most look slightly ill at ease and are carrying small bouquets of flowers or bottles of wine. Hanging around the doorway are a few gaunt, unshaven guys in their twenties who look wasted. Bea greets each guest with a warm, ardent smile as if they are old family friends. The emotional toll on her is clearly apparent, but she is still hospitable.

  “Nice of you to come, dearie.”

  “Have you seen her album?”

  “Please sit down, sugar.”

  The pastor from Bea’s church is also here. I see him take her arm and lead her to the corner of the room, where they sit across from each other in straight-back chairs. Bea bends her head and lowers her eyes as the man takes both her hands in his and talks softly to her as if she were a child. The shadows are lengthening outside the window as I overhear him saying that it wasn’t Bea’s fault, there was nothing she could have done that would have made a difference. “What you have to understand, my dear, is that everything you did was done out of love and God knows that.” Bea shakes her head and starts to sob.

  Harper tugs on my arm. “There’s some big plates of sandwiches. Do you want one? We have lots of food.”

  “You are a wonderful hostess, Harper. But I’ll help myself.”

  I go into the kitchen where I find a few people talking quietly in the corner and Fred sipping Scotch. His eyes are weary and he’s looking flushed but more relaxed.

  “We’re going to the beach now for the ceremony,” he tells me, and I’m thinking, What ceremony? I guess they’re going to have a memorial service after all…that’s nice. He walks out and as I’m getting something to eat I hear the woman in the corner whisper, “It’s for the best. It was no good for the child. No one will tell Bea that to her face, but everyone’s thinking it…”

  Fred makes the announcement in the living room and then goes up to the mantel, lifts the lid to the urn, and removes a small plastic bag, the contents of which look suspiciously like kitty litter. People start piling in their cars and Harper excitedly asks Bea, “Can I ride with the big girls?” One of the Goth twins says, “Cool, Harper. Come with us.”

  “Dora, just wait. You’ll come with Bea and me,” says Fred.

  The young men grab their surfboards and throw them into their cars. A few of them have long boards with eucalyptus tied to them, and in most cases, the boards stick out the window like a dog catching the breeze. They tie a red flag on the ends and take off. We weave our way down the hill, cross Pacific Coast Highway, and drive up the coast a bit until we hit a somewhat deserted beach.

  By the time we get there, most of the guests have already arrived and are walking on the sand to the water’s edge. The girls carry bunches of carnations and sage and someone holds a large conch shell.

  The guys then pull wet suits and rash guards out of their duffels and strip down to their boxers. No one is talking. Ish seems to be leading the proceedings. He suits up and swings the backpack with the bag over his shoulder. They all slide into the ocean after him, carrying the eucalyptus and carnations.

  It’s one of those perfect California sunsets—the wind has stopped, the sky is slashed with oranges, purples, and reds, it could be a poster from Endless Summer. They paddle out into the chilly Pacific in formation until they are well beyond the surf. At this point, like synchronized swimmers in the Olympics, they form an almost perfect circle, boards pointed in like a giant pinwheel. One of the girls burns sage on the beach, telling us it’s an ancient Chumash Indian custom—cleanses the soul and banishes sorrow.

  Ish straddles his board, says something inaudible, opens the bag, and dramatically sweeps the ashes out to sea. Someone blows the conch shell and starts to beat on the drum. Everyone on shore is quietly weeping. I look over at Fred, stoic, eyes cast down. He has his arms around Bea, who is sobbing. Harper is standing next to Bea with a bewildered look on her face.

  After the surfers return, the guests take turns giving impromptu tributes to Lorraine. I learn that most of these girls are fairly new friends and that Lorraine bounced around a lot, that she came to California six years ago and got a job working as a bartender at a local restaurant. She apparently had a boyfriend named Bobby D, who doesn’t seem to be here. Now Ish stands up, puts on his black sunglasses, and speaks.

  “Lorraine, honey. I didn’t really know you but I told Bobby D that I would stand in for him today on account of he’s been pretty fucked up since you, you know, gave it up. I’m not sure if you can hear me up there, but if you can, I have a few things to say…”

  I’m thinking to myself, I can’t even imagine…. I look over at Fred and he’s shaking his head in disbelief.

  Ish goes on, “We know you are going to a better place and that things got pretty messed up for you toward the end. But honey, we love you. Just remember that. And we aren’t gonna ever forget you. And you left a beautiful baby doll here on earth and I know Bobby D is thinking about you right now and will always love you. Amen.”

  The sounds of the highway rise and fall with the eternal rolling of the waves and I can hear the roar of a far-off jet somewhere in the clouds.

  Bea goes next. She takes out a folded piece of lined notebook paper and clears her throat. Her voice is shaky but audible. Violet puts her arms around her as she reads and Harper, surprising me, edges up beside me and takes my hand. Her hand is so small and soft and smooth. And she is holding on so tight. I kiss the top of her head as Bea starts to read, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation which thou hast prepared before the face of all people. For all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass witherist and the flower thereof falleth away.”*

  Fred is the last speaker. He recites from memory, of course, and his voice is clear and strong and mesmerizing. He starts out by saying, “This is called ‘Love Song’ by William Carlos Williams.

  “Sweep the house clean,

  hang fresh curtains

  in the windows

  put on a new dress

  and come with me!

  The elm is scattering

  its little loaves

  of sweet smells

  from a white sky!

  Who shall hear of us

  in the time to come?

  Let him say there was

  a burst of fragrance

  from black branches.”

  Dr. Seuss Doesn’t Like Kids

  “It had been startling and disappointing to me

  to find out that story books had been written

  by people, that books were not natural

  wonders, coming of themselves like grass.”

  ~ Eudora Welty (1909–2001), One Writer’s Beginnings ~

  You may be wondering why we’re speeding down the 405 in Darlene’s faded yellow 1963 convertible Thunderbird. I’m riding shotgun, Bea and Harper are in the backseat, the sun is beating down on us, and the windshield acts more like a funnel than a barrier. Darlene drives her ratty muscle car as if it were a Ferrari, and as she downshifts I hear something that sounds suspiciously like metal scraping blacktop. My thighs are stuck to the vinyl seat, the radio squawks an old Beach Boys song, the shocks are a thing of the past, and Darlene is in heaven.

  “I love my ’bird,” she yells at me over the wind. Sometimes you just need a party. And then you call Darlene.

  It’s been a month since Lorraine died. Fred and I have spent a lot of time
helping Bea with all the formalities and paperwork. I usually played with Harper outside while they sat at the dining room table filling out forms and dealing with the mountains of official documents that needed to be filed.

  After a few weeks of this, Fred told me that Harper was finally going back to school and Bea had asked him to come along for moral support. He added that Harper was less than enthusiastic and that Bea kept putting off the date of her return. On the day before he was supposed to take them, Fred got a call from Bea telling him not to bother. We had just eaten breakfast and Fred was getting ready to go to work. The two of them had been getting on each other’s nerves lately and it was obvious, at least to me, that Bea felt she had disrupted Fred’s life long enough.

  “She doesn’t really mean it,” I said to him. “She just doesn’t want to impose. I still think you should go.”

  “If you think it’s so important, why don’t you go?” he snapped.

  “Okay, I will,” I said. Boy, is he in a bad mood. But now I’m stuck. I AM right, though. Someone should be with them.

  I called Bea back and told her I’d like to go instead of Fred and was that all right. I had bought a few things for Harper’s room and I was planning on bringing them this weekend anyway. Bea, ever gracious, said she’d be delighted. Fred grumbled and left for work.

  The next morning, I held Harper’s small, delicate hand as Bea and I walked her into her second-grade class. The teacher, a young woman in her mid-twenties, gave Bea and Harper a hug and told them how much she missed having Harper in class. There was a poster on the blackboard signed by all the children welcoming Harper back, and I noticed her trying to wiggle out from the glare of all the attention. No kid wants to be different.

  The teacher took Bea and me aside and reassured us that the counselor was standing by to help. It seemed as if the school had it handled. As we were leaving, Harper, whispering in my ear, asked me if I’d be there when she got home.

  “Yes, of course,” I answered. She wrapped her thin arms around my neck and buried her head in my shoulder. Then she whispered something to Bea as well and clung to her until Bea gently pulled away. “Now, you’re my big girl and you’re going to be just fine.”

  I had bought a pink satin poufy comforter with matching sheets and pillows for Harper’s room and a pretty round braided area rug to put by the bed. When Bea and I got home, we set up Harper’s room and then spent the rest of the day taking boxes of Lorraine’s stuff to Goodwill.

  When Harper got home and saw the room, her eyes widened and she covered her face with her hands. “I love it,” she said shyly.

  Later that night, when I told Fred about the day, he admitted that it was good I had gone and thanked me. He said Harper was bouncing off the walls and it was about time she was back in school.

  In the weeks that followed, Harper resumed her usual activities, including Bible studies and an art class after school. Someone else took over Brownies and a few of the other things that Bea used to do. Every time I visited the house with Fred, Harper seemed busy and remarkably well-adjusted, considering the situation.

  Then it was June and the pace of things shifted. Harper’s school let out and her schedule loosened up. Fred and I tried to stop by as often as we could, but the last time we went over, Bea seemed tired, Fred detached, and Harper was unusually withdrawn.

  We were in the midst of a terrible bout of June gloom, the California phenomenon where the cold marine layer collides with the hot inland air and creates a blanket of thick morning fog, which can last all day. Harper’s spirits, which had been pretty stable, took a sudden turn for the worse. I don’t know whether it was depression or grief or boredom or a mixture of all three, but Bea was starting to worry and so was I. Harper just seemed like she was at loose ends. She would lie limply on the couch in her heavy flannel pajamas, afflicted with a kind of inertia that left her staring out into the emptiness, uninterested in whatever activities we suggested.

  At about the same time, Fred got a call from New York regarding his play. This had been a bone of contention with us because he still hadn’t let me read it. He said it was because I wouldn’t like it, but I think he was afraid of my reaction. Whatever. An agent in N.Y. had shown some interest and wanted to meet with him. Fred was cautiously optimistic and we celebrated at dinner the night before he left. He took me to one of our favorite places, Paddy’s Crab Shack. I wore a black chiffon see-through blouse and a sexy, tight A-line skirt. This was our first real date since Lorraine’s death, and we were both thinking that we needed this night.

  Fred looked weary and he wasn’t as talkative as usual. It was okay by me. Totally understandable. At least he wasn’t as depressed as he’d been. We both threw back a few and started to relax. He told me he was reading a fantastic, slim little novel by DeLillo called The Body Artist, about a woman who lives alone and encounters a strange, ghostlike guy who knows all about her. Weird. He then amused me with the latest dumb bookstore customer story. Several times I had an urge to bring up Bea and Harper, but I caught myself. He always seemed to brush off any of my concerns.

  After dinner, Fred took me in his arms and we danced to Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane’s “You Are So Beautiful.” I just love the way he dances. I love the way he feels and smells. He did that thing I really like, brushing up against my ear with his mouth. He still does it for me. That’s all there is to it.

  The next morning, I told Fred I would check in with Bea while he was gone. When I called her later that afternoon, she told me that the situation with Harper had deteriorated. Harper had a meltdown the day before when a friend came over to play and she was refusing to go to Bible studies or anywhere else for that matter. She just wanted to sit in Lorraine’s room and watch TV.

  Darlene happened to call right afterwards and when I told her what was going on, her response was, “Road trip! I’ll drive.”

  At first I thought, well, that’s a dumb idea, but then I remembered it’s what my mother used to do when things got really bad at home. A literary road trip. Why not?

  So now we are heading for La Jolla. Often referred to as the best place to live in America, the draw is that it was the home of Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.

  We get off the freeway at the tony seaside town of La Jolla. We drive past golf courses, restaurants, and lowkey shops like Cartier and Ralph Lauren until we reach a gas station. Bea and Harper get the key and head for the restroom while I fill up the car and hand Darlene some bios of Dr. Seuss I found on the Internet.

  When my mother used to throw out historical facts during our literary trips, my sister and I would zone out. But because this is Dr. Seuss, I’m hoping to pique Harper’s interest.

  “Darlene, pick out a few facts for me to tell Harper,” I say as I swipe my credit card.

  “Not gonna happen. This is booooring…. Let’s go to Sea World.”

  “I am NOT going to Sea World. And you’re wrong. All kids like Dr. Seuss. The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, The Grinch.”

  “Okay. If you say so.” Darlene starts to paraphrase the articles in a singsong voice. “It says here, Dr. Seuss’s real name was Theodor Geisel and he moved to La Jolla in the early fifties with his first wife. Published forty-four children’s books. Invented the name Dr. Seuss when he published And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street. Seuss was his middle name and he just gave himself the doctor title. Uh-oh! Listen to this. Met his second wife, Audrey, eighteen years his junior, when they were both still married to other people. In the wake of their affair, Seuss’s first wife, Helen, committed suicide. Audrey divorced her husband, married Seuss, and sent her two daughters away to boarding school.”*

  “What?! Where are you reading this?”

  “The New York Times. You couldn’t make this stuff up. Listen, quotes from the wife, ‘He was very happy without children. I’ve never been very maternal. There were too many other things I wanted to do.’† God, who are these people?”

  “This isn’t exactly what I ha
d in mind.”

  Harper and Bea appear from the bathroom. Harper’s hair is a windblown mess. She’s wearing a white The Cat in the Hat T-shirt that I bought her and a denim skirt with ruffles. Bea has a floppy cotton hat tied under her chin and they are both excited to finally be here.

  “Are we almost there?” Harper asks in a thin, expectant voice. Her eyes are wide with anticipation.

  Darlene and I look at each other. “Oh yes!” I say with forced enthusiasm.

  We drive up to the summit of La Jolla’s Mount Soledad, where a row of twisted and bent eucalyptus trees line the street. The house is a two-story structure surrounding an old observatory tower, which was Seuss’s studio, and there is a picture window that offers a commanding view of the Pacific Ocean. Parked out in front is a 1984 Cadillac with the personalized license plate GRINCH.

  As we approach the house, Darlene points her index finger to her head and dramatically pulls an imaginary trigger, the universal sign for blowing your brains out. “Pow!” she mouths as she races past Geisel’s house.

  “Dear, could you slow down a little?” Bea asks Darlene. Darlene grudgingly slows down.

  I whisper to Darlene to cool it and quickly give Harper my own version of Geisel’s life. What a bust.

  Normally, I would have gone into a whole thing. We would have parked a couple blocks away, walked to the house, and talked to a few people in the neighborhood. Then we might have looked up at the room and described what it must have been like to sit at those magnificent windows and write some of the most beloved children’s books of all time. I would have told Harper how Seuss started out as a cartoonist and his first children’s book was an ABC book. How before his books were published, children’s books were dumb little Dick and Jane readers that droned on and on and bored kids to tears. But my heart just wasn’t in it.