Literacy and Longing in L. A.

by Jennifer Kaufman

  Three eggnogs later, we finally arrived at the Spanish estate and were greeted by a jolly group of Christmas carolers dressed in Victorian velvets and those Scroogey black velvet top hats, singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas.” (What a joke. Irving Berlin wrote this while lounging in his backyard on a brilliant sunny day in Beverly Hills.) We all paraded inside, past a roaring fire in a huge stone fireplace and a towering Douglas fir that just grazed the massive, beamed ceiling. Someone said they had imported the distressed wood from a nineteenth-century farmhouse they’d dismantled in Provence. Palmer, evidently in fine humor, gave me a “Buck up, dearie” peck on the cheek as he handed me a flute of champagne and moved into the big-game trophy room.

  I wandered after him, watching in horror as the host gingerly tugged on the tongue of a seven-foot-tall, stuffed, matted-haired grizzly standing on its hind legs in attack position.

  “Here,” he said, as he pulled the tongue out, showing it to a group of admiring guests. “You wanna feel it?”

  On the walls, in between the twisty-horned goat heads and antlered elks were huge rococo gold-framed oils of dogs ripping apart fox carcasses. I grabbed another drink off the tray of a passing elf as I maneuvered past a set of impressive leather furniture with animal-limb legs. That’s when poor, beleaguered Nan cornered me, two sheets to the wind.

  “Guess what, Dora,” she said in a pinched, trembly voice. “They’ve seated me next to Marge and her husband. I don’t think I can stand it.”

  She looked as if she had fallen asleep in the bus. Her lipstick was dried-out and feathered into the lines around her mouth. Her hair was askew and she seemed on the verge of a major breakdown.

  Okay, I’m not excusing myself for what happened next. I just couldn’t help it. I strolled into the tented dining area with Nan to casually check out the ornate, calligraphed place-cards, and I did it. I switched them. I must say I was ever so pleased with myself.

  “It’s nothing,” I announced smugly. “They’ll never even notice.”

  “God, Dora, you’re so sweet,” she slurred.

  We were about to join the party when the hostess, an elegantly dressed woman with a huge diamond brooch and an upturned nose, ambushed us. It took her about two seconds to sniff out the crime.

  “You know, I spent a lot of time doing the seating and I don’t appreciate you switching everything around,” she said imperiously. Nan immediately explained it was all my idea. Just goes to show you, no good deed ever goes unpunished.

  “Gosh,” I said ingenuously. “I’m really sorry.”

  She could tell I didn’t give a shit. Shooting me a dirty look, she switched the cards back and, without another word, departed. What a jerk. Nan slinked out after her while I grabbed a champagne glass off the table and helped myself to the Moët chilling in the nearby ice bucket. I gulped it down, poured myself another, and another, and suddenly realized the room was spinning. Whoops. I sat down carefully and tried to keep my equilibrium.

  It was at this point, I noticed Palmer walking in, obviously wondering where the hell I’d been.

  “You’re drunk,” he said. He could always tell.

  “So is everyone else,” I replied. But probably everyone else didn’t feel like vomiting.

  “I think I have to go home. I’m sorry, Palmer. Those eggnogs were lethal.” (And the champagne didn’t help either.)

  “How come I’m the only one with a drunk wife?” he shot back unsympathetically.

  Why is he so pissed? “You don’t have to leave. You stay here and I’ll call a cab,” I offered, trying to defuse the situation.

  “Right. How embarrassing. In front of all my friends. You did this on purpose. You didn’t want to come to this party in the first place. Next time, do me a favor and stay home.”

  It was a grim scenario after that. I called a cab. Palmer insisted on leaving with me, holding me steady as we weaved past the massacred animals, the enormous glass gun case, and the still-joyful carolers.

  “Christ, Dora. What were you thinking?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied, fighting back the tears. “Marge was such a shrew to Nan and I just felt sorry for her.”

  “Who cares? It’s not your problem. Anyway, everyone knows Nan’s a pain in the neck. You’re the only one who takes her seriously.”

  “Well, it sounds like she has serious problems.”

  “This isn’t a therapy session. It’s a party and you’re supposed to have fun,” he said, shaking his head in frustration.

  “Well, ho, ho, ho!” I said defiantly, the tears starting to stream down my cheeks. Palmer was unmoved. I hate that.

  “You know, you don’t give a shit about anything, including our marriage.”

  There it was. He was quiet for a minute waiting for me to deny it, but now I was angry. He could have been more understanding, he could have been a lot of things. But maybe we were too far gone for that. Palmer and I split up a few weeks later.

  As for Nan, I never heard from her again. That’s how life goes sometimes.

  The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

  “Ask a toad what is beauty…. He will answer

  that it is a female with two great round eyes

  coming out of her little head, a large flat

  mouth, a yellow belly, and a brown back.”

  ~ Voltaire ~

  I drag through the next few days, avoiding any contact with Fred. On the third day, I sit down at my computer and open my mail. I see that I have seventeen e-mails, two of them from Fred. I open the first one.

  “Hast thou no care of me? Shall I abide in this dull world, Which in thy absence is no better than a sty?* Fred.”

  There is a faint touch of humor and pathos in the second one. “Dora, be nice. At least answer my phone calls. I’m dying here. Let’s make up. Fred.”

  I fight the urge to delete and instead reread the message a few more times. Then I make a decision. I decide to procrastinate. Clean up the kitchen. Make a few calls to the bank. Check my bills. Call Darlene to see how she’s doing—she’s going home tomorrow. I ask her about the dog and she says that Palmer’s already called to check on her and told her to not worry about Brawley. Palmer has it handled, as usual.

  Then, out of the blue, Brooke calls and offers me a freelance assignment. No one on staff wants to cover it. Evidently a man has a pond in his backyard filled with bullfrogs. As if that wasn’t noisy enough, now it’s mating season, the bullfrogs are bellowing to each other in the moonlight, and the neighbors are threatening to have animal control come down and bludgeon the little suckers. She tells me the owner is a wacko and all the neighbors are wackos but, without hesitating, I say yes. In fact, I’m thrilled. In the old days, I would have turned up my nose, but now it’s a chance to write again.

  Here’s the deal. The deadline is tomorrow, so I need to interview the guy at his home tonight and hear the racket for myself. This freeway thing is really starting to handicap my life. I can’t have a limo taking me to my assignments. That’s absurd. Darlene’s still laid up. No one to call. And I have to be in Riverside by six. With the traffic, I’d need to start out pretty soon. I can do this.

  I call the Frogman, Mr. O’Connor, to get directions. He can’t wait to tell me his side of the story. His voice sounds like Chuck Yeager, slightly Southern, earnest, and reassuring, like all pilots. “Nothing to worry about…just a little turbulence, we’ll be through this in a couple a minutes. I’m going to ask all the flight attendants to please sit down…”

  I get into my old Mercedes and jump on the 10. Well, not exactly jump. I hesitate at the top of the on-ramp until some jackass behind me honks impatiently. I place my foot on the accelerator and slowly speed up to fifty-five (and I’m not going one bit faster). My car hasn’t gone this fast in four years and the engine strains and sputters like an old lawn mower. My hands are sweating and I hunch over the steering wheel, gripping it tightly, as if it were a lifeline. I feel slightly dizzy. I keep saying to myself, focus, focus, sixteen-yea
r-old kids do this, people with an IQ of 12 do this, eighty-five-year-old deaf people do this…I can do this.

  I stay in the far right lane, the worst lane to be in because everyone exits and enters from it, but I’m not moving. I want to be able to get off at a moment’s notice. I think of Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream. That’s me. Silent hysteria.

  It takes me over two hours because of traffic, but I show up at exactly the right time. I’m bedraggled and I need a shower. But I did it! Do they give out merit points or medals for this? I’ll celebrate later.

  The guy lives in a slightly cockeyed, ramshackle California hacienda that looks as if you’d have to hack your way through with a machete to get to the front door. Large banana trees and thick bushes are everywhere and there is a narrow walkway that goes around the house into the backyard. He hears my car pull up and yells, “I’m back here.”

  I venture into the backyard, where he stands next to an amoeba-shaped, scum-covered pond surrounded by overgrown, weedy-looking grass and reeds. Dragonflies and mosquitoes are skidding across the surface. There is a hand-carved wooden birdhouse hanging from a crooked old oak tree and some white iron benches under it.

  O’Connor is a guy in his early forties. He’s wearing a floppy canvas hat tied under his chin and a pair of green Wellies. He apologizes for his appearance; he’s been cleaning the pond. He tells me the story. When he first moved in, the pond was choked with weeds and algae and he spent weeks clearing it out and replanting. A few months later, he heard the first “Jug-a-rum” mating call of a male bullfrog. Female bullfrogs, he informed me, do not call, but the males are aggressive and their voices can be heard for almost half a mile. It didn’t take long, he says, for a few more frogs to join in and soon the backyard became a cacophony of bullfrogs croaking and physically wrestling with each other, the way they do when they are actually mating.

  He goes on, “I’m not a nature freak, but this is their habitat. I didn’t put ’em here. And I’m not gonna move ’em. These people even checked into relocation. Cost about five thousand dollars and no one wanted to pay. Can you imagine? Neighbors don’t complain about the crickets. And they’re much louder. We’re pretty near the freeway, they don’t complain about that. Jets fly over all the time from the Ontario Airport, they don’t complain about that. And hell, it’s only a few months out of the year.”

  “What do you do for a living, Mr. O’Connor?”

  “I’m a computer technician, worked for Lockheed for fifteen years.”

  As he’s talking, I’m thinking, this is a great story. This is what America’s all about. Suburbia encroaching on nature and squeezing it out.

  “I mean look at this guy,” he says as he bends down, searches through the rushes for a minute, and grabs a large, brownish-greenish, splotchy bullfrog with smooth moist skin. “Isn’t he handsome?” He goes on, “In the old days, people used to make up songs about these guys, you know, ‘froggy went a courting he did ride, uh huh.’ They loved the way they serenaded each other. Now all these people want to do is nuke ’em.”

  “Well, hello, Mr. Toad,” I say, and think of Toad dressed in a dapper plaid three-piece suit with a silk cravat casually peeking out of his pocket and a watch fob draped around his chest.

  “So, they’ll start their ruckus in a little while. Have a seat. My wife’s bringing out some iced tea.” At this point a pretty, natural-looking woman wearing a calf-length flowered dress comes out carrying a tray with an icy pitcher and two glasses. She sweetly says hi and walks back into the house.

  The humidity has now reached mythical proportions and I feel little droplets of sweat trickling down my back. We chat for a while longer until it is pitch-dark. A cool breeze hits my face, gently rustling the reeds by the pond.

  And so it begins. A single baritone note heralds the start. Other deep melancholy voices join, ushering in a symphony of enchanted music. There is a furious double fugue tempered with delicate, lyrical shading and then, suddenly, the voices soar and a burst of sound erupts like thunderous, cosmic cannon fire. I am spellbound as I listen to this majestic amphibian requiem with its triumphant grandeur.

  I think back to The Wind in the Willows, when Rat passionately reacts to the music of Pan, “So beautiful and strange and new!…Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet!”

  Save Me!

  “…always read stuff that will make

  you look good if you die in the middle of the night.”

  ~ P. J. O’Rourke (1947–), American Political Satirist ~

  How could I think that I’d just get on the freeway and all my fears would be gone? The glaring headlights from oncoming cars are blinding, like hot, laser streaks of white flashing across my vision. I’ve slowed down to forty and I’m still totally freaked out. I can’t do this! I have to get off! I was so elated when I left the O’Connors’. I knew exactly what I was going to write. I even had my lead. But now, it’s all turned to shit.

  I need intensive therapy…. A lot of good that does me now. Oh, thank god, there’s an exit. Hell, no one’s letting me in. What rude people live in L.A. In Nebraska, they probably slow down for you. I should live in Nebraska or Kansas or some other place you fly over where it’s mostly one-lane country roads.

  What’s this semi doing? Aren’t they supposed to stay in the far lane? Jesus! Now he’s tailgating me. His headlights look as if they’re two stories high. “Just go around, you moron!” Damn! He’s still there. He lays on his air horn, which sounds like the USS Liberty approaching port.

  I put on my blinker. Great. He changes lanes and blocks my exit. I’m trapped. I can truly understand road rage. If I had a gun I’d shoot out his tires, all twenty of them. Then I’d aim for his head. There, thank god. He’s gone. I’ve had it. I’m just going to pull over onto the side. But weren’t all those girls raped and murdered when their cars broke down on the freeway? Guys impersonating police officers with giant nightsticks approach the car and then it’s all over. The next thing you know, your corpse is found stuffed in the trunk of your car. Or thrown in a deserted ditch. I think I can hang on until the next exit. I slowly drive down the off-ramp to safety.

  It takes me a few minutes to calm down and stop shaking. I pull into the 7-Eleven and do what I always do when I hit rock bottom. I call my sister.

  “I need you to come get me,” I say, my voice audibly trembling.

  “What’s happened? Where are you?” Virginia says. I can hear Camille squawking in the background.

  “I’m in San Bernardino somewhere. And I can’t drive home. I tried but this big truck bullied me, well, I was scared before that, but that didn’t help and it’s dark…” I’m starting to lose it.

  “Okay. Calm down. Tell me where you are. I’ll throw Camille in the car and come get you.” She doesn’t hesitate when she says this. I love my sister for that.

  I glance at my watch. It’s almost nine p.m. Way past Camille’s bedtime. I’m relieved but depressed. I’m awash with failure.

  By the time Virginia pulls up, it’s after ten and I’ve eaten at least two Little Debbie sweet rolls, nachos with melted cheese, and a frozen cherry Slurpee. I tell the young Indian cashier about the car and he says it’s okay to leave it until tomorrow. I’m going to call my driver to come pick it up with one of his people.

  Camille is asleep in the car seat in the back, her little body swathed in a stretchy sleeper and covered with a pink-and-white-checked blanket. I open the car door, get in, and immediately burst into tears.

  “Oh, sweetie. Come on. It’s not that bad.”

  “I’ve been sitting here for two hours because I’m too psycho to drive home. I thought I was over this. I’ll never be able to do this job. I have no life. I’m totally fucked.” The tears are streaming down my face. My clothes are stuck to my body. I smell like a mixture of mulch and sweat and rancid cheese. Virginia looks at me. She’s clean and crisp and together.

  “Don’t be so dramatic. You were a litt
le unnerved on the freeway. That’s all. It’s a process. You can’t expect to be normal overnight. Well, not normal. I don’t mean normal. But you know what I mean. Anyway, your job isn’t about driving. It’s about writing. You can work out the other stuff.”

  I’m quiet for a minute. I take a deep breath. Maybe she’s right.

  “Dora, where have you been for the last three days? I must have called you a dozen times.”

  “I was reading.” I sniffle.

  “That’s what I was afraid of. Why do you do this? You make everybody crazy.”

  “Sorry, Ginny. Really. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  “Everybody has problems. Everyone’s been disappointed. They don’t sit around for days doing nothing, bingeing on books.”

  “Everyone does have problems, but this is the way I deal with mine. I’m happy sitting alone in my room reading.”

  “No you’re not. Anyway, books can’t fix your life. You should know that by now.”

  There is no way to answer this, because no matter what’s going on in my life, I will always need a book. Nevertheless, after all that’s happened to me this past year, I’ve come to the conclusion that for me, reading is not purely an escape. It’s more of a search for some kind of meaning in this world. Now when I read, I think I might open to any page and find the truth. I just can’t stand the fog of not knowing. Whether you love someone or not, what you are willing to do to make it last, how you come to terms with the people who leave you or disappoint you, or how you deal with people with whom you feel a deep connection but who ultimately may not have anything to do with your life. I don’t know. The answers are there. Somewhere. Each author has their own vision, whether it be transforming, unnerving, inspiring, or devastating. It’s comforting in a pathetic sort of way and I have wallowed in this comfort for most of my life.