by Bruce Wagner
“I don’t know—” said Allegra, still needing a bit more of a finesse.
“Okay,” said Larissa, backing off. “Scratch that.” Rising to the challenge, she masterfully chose a new vector. “You know, having kids ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s a fuckin’ heartache. I know it doesn’t feel like it right now, Allegra, but I think at this time in your life, with all the shit that’s going down, some of which you don’t even know about, but most of which you do—I think you dodged a serious bullet, for real. But you can still have one, you’ll still have one, you’re young, I know you will. ’Cause I’m totally psychic about baby stuff. And it’ll be even better when it happens because you’ll be ready. You’ll be so ready, Allegra! Because you’ll have really fought for it and it will have been meant to be. I totally wasn’t ready when I had my son. The girl was easy—everything about her has been easy. But I’m much more like my son. I don’t think either one of us was ready for this world!”
Her finger traced Allegra’s hipbone then drew tight circles around the belly button before moving downward, like the logy legs of a sea spider. Allegra relaxed into it, even as her pulse quickened.
“What are their names?” she asked, trancelike.
“Rafaela and Tristen.”
“Tristen?”
“Uh huh.”
“Tristen? He didn’t just get a new car, did he?”
“How did you know that?”
“Is he gay?”
Larissa stammered, “What the fuck—”
“Oh my God,” she said. “Your son is dating Jeremy!”
“Jeremy—?”
“My, like, closest friend—from the party, the Tuesday Weld party! From Soho House!”
“Are you shitting me?”
“Totally not!”
“Jeremy’s the international man of mystery? Jeremy? That is fucking hilarious! Allegra, that is so crazy! Because I wondered about the car and I asked him who he’s been seeing, and it was, like, radio silence . . . he’s not a creep, is he?”
“Oh my God, totally not! Jeremy is amazing. You’ve seen him, you’ve met!”
Though there didn’t seem much point in keeping it from her—she’d already given away so much—Allegra decided not to share that he was her dead little girl’s donor-dad.
“It’s beyond small world,” said Larissa. “How old is he?”
“I wanna say, like, fifty? Fifty-two?”
“Oy vey! Well, as long he’s ‘amazing.’” They shook their heads in wonderment like a couple of stoners. “I think that probably . . . you shouldn’t tell him,” said Larissa, “that you know his boyfriend’s mom—oh my God, that sounds so weird—‘his boyfriend’s mom.’ I guess what I mean is, everything’s kind of messy enough, right?” The stand-in had reasons of her own, beyond those of discretion. “What’s that great line from No Country for Old Men? ‘If it ain’t the mess, it’ll do ’til the real mess gets here’—”
“Love that motion picture,” said Allegra.
“I don’t know,” said Larissa, moving another chess piece. “I guess it doesn’t really matter. Fuck it, I guess you could tell him, if you wanted to—”
“Of course I’m not going to tell him! I don’t want anyone knowing about us.”
About us—Larissa took that as her cue.
It was three hours before they were done.
—
Tristen’s father had been home only a few days. His girlfriend said she had to go to Portland to see her parents but Derek knew she’d burned out on the caregiving, minimal as it was. What did he expect? She was twenty-three and he was a sixty-two-year-old loser who had to be put in a coma when his 02 dipped into the 80s. They replaced him on the craphouse reality show he and Beth were cutting and fired her too. Good riddance to all.
The “medics” (how Derek annoyingly referred to them) had trouble figuring out the problem. They thought it was some kind of leukemia, which bummed him to no end, but when an MRI caught a stroke caused by a clot, they shoved a camera down his throat and found staph growing on the valves like mold on a pipe.
Tristen sort of took over for Beth, cleaning house, running errands, and—miracle of miracles—just hanging with the old man. A ceasefire was declared. Derek (miracle upon miracles) seemed grateful.
They grooved on watching Snapped and Forensic Files marathons. The half hours were crazy dark. In one episode, a serial killer was arrested after his dental impressions were matched to bite marks on the chin of a dead woman. The pathologist said he’d never seen a bite mark there, usually they were on breasts and stomach—the theory being that the killer became aroused by looking into her eyes as he bit down on the chin while mutilating her genitals with a knife.
“I don’t really see a problem with that,” said Derek. “Ya gotta take it on the chinny chin chin some time.”
“Bite me,” said Tristen.
“Don’t mind if I do.”
It was heaven to just sit around eating popcorn and Red Vines and shoot the shit over a bit of the old ultraviolence. Then out of the blue, Derek pushed pause on the remote.
“They say I need a heart transplant.”
“For real?”
“Can you fucking believe it?”
“Uhm, whoa. Not really.”
“Some kind of infection. They can’t even nuke it with antibiotics. It’s, like, done.”
“Jesus. Shit! Fuck.”
“The medics say I’ve got an abscess in my heart. A fuckin’ pus pocket.”
“Whoa—!”
“I’m about to go on the list. Heart transplant list. Motherfuckers. And here’s the best part. Are you ready? My fuckin’ IATSE’s about to expire—next month. How ’bout that?”
“Your insurance?”
“That’s right.”
“Can you, uhm, get you, like, COBRA?”
“Can’t fuckin’ afford it. And what’s the point, paisan? How the fuck am I going to survive a heart transplant? ’Cause I’m not. It’s, like, a joke.”
“It’s no big thing anymore, Derek. I mean, they have it down, they’ve had it down for twenty years. I just read about a guy in prison who got one, some bank robber. Cost a million taxpayer dollars.”
“Great! Then that’s what I’ll do—go rob a fucking bank. That’ll probably get me bumped to the top of the list. Maybe they’ll throw in a hair transplant and a penile enlargement. Widen the girth.”
“I read that when they execute prisoners in China, they use their organs for transplants. You could get one of those.”
“Chinese take-out. No ticker, no washee.”
Tristen over-laughed . . . good times. Sometimes all it took was a crisis to get back to where you once belonged. Derek unpaused, and they fast-forwarded to the next Forensic.
—
“Slow down, Twist!” said Jeremy (what he occasionally called the boy; Tristen now and then called him “Nobodaddy,” after Blake).
Tonight, in the driver’s seat, coolly navigating the wavy road, the kid lived up to the sobriquet. Jeremy was starting to think they should maybe have taken the freeway instead of Sunset.
“Y’know, a lotta people have died along this boulevard of broken dreams, Twisterella. Jan Berry, Ernie Kovacs . . .”
“Who’s Jan Berry?”
Jeremy vaped his weed and coughed. “Jan and Dean—‘Little Old Lady from Pasadena.’ ‘Dead Man’s Curve.’ Ernie Kovacs died over by Whittier. Me thinks. Know who Ernie Kovacs is?”
“‘The Nairobi Trio.’”
“Jesus, you fucking do know! Of course you do, you fucking brainiac. Ernie Kovacs makes Louis CK and all these so-called geniuses look like Jay Leno. All these Apatow genius cunts with their oh so amazing series and specials and Madison Square Garden bullshit.” He was in a merry mood. “Tina’s the only genius. And Lena. Maybe Lena—no, just T
ina. Maybe Lena’ll get there but she ain’t there yet. Though I do like Amy, gotta say. Parts of her. (Schumer, not Poehler.) If she can make it intact through the canonization. People even got shot watching her bullshit romcom—hotties too! How lucky is that? You’re nuthin’ till kids and hotties are killed at your movie. That’s the big time. And who’s that friend of yours? What’s-her-name? Your friend who died right here, on this very stretch of road.”
“What friend? What are you talking about?”
“You know—what’s-her-name, Dead Internet Girl. The one who lost her head over a handsome Porsche. Right here on Funset Boulevard.”
“Nikki Catsouras?” He knew Jeremy was high, and being playfully absurd. “That was in Orange County, bitch.”
He was high—and happy. He’d just come from a meeting with the awesome Heather. She was in her late thirties, which worried him until he got educated on how that was a common age for surrogates. (She had four kids of her own and three more from IVFs.) It was all about the paperwork now, which was going to be hassle-free—Heather was already vetted by the agency, the same one she’d worked with when carrying his friend’s twins. The whole deal was going to cost about a hundred grand. She’d clear about twenty-five thousand, more for “multiples,” but he still couldn’t fathom why a woman would want to have a bunch of babies for strangers. When he probed, Heather said, “I just love the way I feel when I’m pregnant.”
“You seem awfully chipper tonight, Twisteramakrishna.” They curved around the Lake Shrine Temple, a few minutes from PCH. “I’m going to have to start calling you Sunshine.”
“It was a pretty good day. Hung out with my pops.”
“Oh yeah? How’s he doing?”
“He’s actually super fucked up. He’s trying to get on the transplant list.”
“Kidney?”
“Heart.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s crazy.”
“I had no idea.”
“It’s one of those rare kinda irreversible deals.”
“My nightmare. Maybe you should, like, hack him a heart.”
“Hey, if I could, I would. But I have an almost better idea.”
“Do me a favor,” he said with a smile, “and don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to be an accessory to any inseminating information.”
—
In preparation for the evening, he gave Tristen a précis of the ballad of Devi and the Sir, and was glad the boy had the savvy to appreciate the peculiar genius of the encounter. Jeremy liked showing off a little of the ol’ anarchist brio that was a lion’s share of who he was; showboating his psycho-historical DNA made him feel virile and adventurous, still relevant. And Tristen gave Nobodaddy props because he wasn’t monetizing or script-teasing the couple. He was just following his Dadaist nose.
When she opened the door, her lustrous beauty overwhelmed. She’d morphed from street hippie to bohemian-cum-socialite, and vanity begged Jeremy to wonder if Devi’s anticipation in seeing him had anything to do with primping her ride. When they kissed (that was a first) her skin smelled like cannabis and troubled sleep. They gathered in the overqualified kitchen and smoked—the Gaelic guru’s whereabouts unknown—while Devi cooked up a storm. She moved with the alacrity of a five-star chef amongst the elegant dishes she was preparing. Maybe it was just a chemical thing but the socially awkward Tristen got on with her right away. Learnedly au courant without being pedantic, the hostess riffed on Trolls as Authentic Heir to Coyote Tricksters. The blasted boy was charmed and at ease, something Jeremy had yet to see, at least not in mixed company. It gave him intense pleasure.
He left them and walked to the vast terrace that overlooked the crashing sea. On the way, he was startled by three figures whom he thought to be guests before realizing they were employees. They smiled at him unobtrusively as they tended to the open-pit fire and busily set the stage with a profusion of scented candles, Persian pillows, and dark cashmere throws. He noticed a southern gate and went through it. Without fanfare, he found himself in a garden of dumbfounding sweep and breadth. He strolled, insensate, through a dusky, virtual meadow of ghostpipes and creeping myrtle, monkeyflowers and bursting heart, coatbuttons, toadflax and old man’s beard.
Another gate led to the beach and he stumbled toward it.
He took off his shoes and walked onto the sand. The sorrowful wisp of a Santa Ana, broken off from the herd, brushed his face consolingly and reminded him of Devi’s greeting.
The refrain of late—who am I, why am I, where am I—played just beneath the wave song, with its choral variation: And what if I die before I know?
He looked toward the soft lights of the house and heard laughter . . . Tristen, laughing! His wild child, blue-eyed boy! Would wonders never cease? He ambled back to the patio, where servers revolved with platters, delicately setting dishes on driftwood tables round the fire. Others brought carafes of water, juices, and wine. After a few minutes Devi emerged and dismissed them.
Suddenly the three were alone on the deck, gathered by the colored flames:
Storytelling Hour!
“Do you remember where we left off?”
She jumped right in, her method to a tee, which suited him fine. Tristen was already wolfing his food but paying strict attention.
“I was talking about the bells—always the bells!—and the fire that took my mother . . . I’ve been thinking about all of it. The only thing I haven’t put to mind is my daughter because I knew I was going to tell you about her tonight. It’s an extraordinary gift to have found someone to talk with—organized by my Sir and the Source—for I haven’t spoken of this in so long. My guru says it’s my fate—our fate, yours and mine!—to have found each other, just as it was mine to have found him. We don’t know what ‘the bells’ have in store for us yet, do we, Jerome? Isn’t that exciting? We forget so quickly that it’s already written, and can be no other way. Mind if I call you Jerome? I like it so much better. Well, not so much better, but I do like Jerome. And I’m thrilled that you brought your friend!” Tristen grinned, his mouth half full. “It’s always a good omen to have a witness, particularly since the Sir is dead to the world. (If we’re very quiet, we might hear him snoring.) We’ve had such a long day and he needs his rest.
“Now, I’ve told you Mama died in a fire, and Papa followed just a few months later. His lungs were scarred by the heat and smoke when he carried her out. He held her so close that his skin became hers; I can see them emerging from the conflagration of that house like figures in a great fresco of Rubens—or something in the American style of Thomas Hart Benton . . . where her skin was no more, his stood in, like a graft. I’ve found that detail (not a metaphor) to be worthy of any of Poe’s creations.”
Jeremy noticed the boy had stopped eating and was completely rapt. He presumed Tristen’s awed attentions had something to do with his recent role as caregiver to his own father, and the looming mortality of the aggrieved man who had brought him into this unquiet world.
“Before he died, my father made me promise I’d return to school (I’d taken a sabbatical to nurse him) and resume my studies. I was to inherit his practice—the only legacy he had to give. I told him I would and meant it, but after the fire it was impossible. You see, he never cared about money. His finances were in shambles. We’d been living in a motel since the holocaust; he’d forgotten to pay a bill and the insurance on the house had lapsed. The bank foreclosed.
“I told you at the restaurant that after their deaths, the clanging of the bells became too much—‘a fatal tinnitus,’ remember? I returned to Loyola and promptly went mad. I lived for months in a hospital associated with the school but that’s another story. The short version being, I became pregnant there. A boy I knew from campus, prone to violence. He’d been placed on seventy-two-hour hold. They put him in the lockdown ward and he smuggled me in—as I say, another story! I knew at the very mo
ment I lay with him that she had been born. I knew her sex and even what I would call her: Bella!—my beauty, my only, my Bella, my ‘bell’! And in that moment of conception, the world stood still. Everything stopped ringing too . . . everything but my love for my daughter and this mysterious blue planet and the starry places beyond. I left the hospital immediately.
“I rented a room above a garage belonging to a former teacher of mine who pitied me. She thought I could have my child, come to my senses, and return to my studies. Because, you see, I was ‘filled with promise.’ In that tiny space above the carport, with Bella at my breast, I was so happy, Jerome! Time stopped, and with it, all worry. I took a job as a waitress. The teacher’s mother lived in the main house and was delighted to look after the little one while I worked.
“I won’t talk about what went wrong with Bella’s body, in her fourth year. The details. Please forgive that omission . . . it’s too painful. Though my Sir has said that one day I shall be able. It won’t hurt at all, he said, the time will come when I’ll be eager to remember those awful, terrible things—though I admit I have trouble imagining such a time, so do forgive my faithlessness!—but my Sir says they won’t be awful anymore, they’ll be as beautiful as the memory, the truth, of her eyes, her hair, her skin—that I’ll wish to remember it all, the closer I come to seeing her again. For that is where we are going, my guru and I: to that place where she resides, that place where my Sir will see those dear to him, whom he once lost as well. The wife and son that he loved, and loves still . . .
“While she was at Children’s, I took long walks. I was there, of course, for all treatments and procedures, holding her hand, kissing and fussing over her, taking on her pain as best I could, never leaving her at night. They kept a cot for me right beside her. But when she napped (often with the help of medicine) I took walks because I was starting to hear the bells again; walks were the only thing that muffled the noise. You see, if one is not in the proper frame of mind, if one isn’t ready, the sound of the bells can be very unpleasant. For they’re not the sound of bells as you know them . . . On those meanderings, I’d pass a homeless man, surrounded by heaps of rags and discarded things, who begged for coins from his carpet of cardboard. I wouldn’t go by him all the time—it depended on which route I took. But when I did, he searched my eyes in such a way that eventually I chose to force the encounter. Each time I grew near, I slowed on the approach, until one day I broke through my shyness and spoke to him. I’m telling you, I was in a horrible, shambling state! Yet the moment I was in his presence, something strange occurred . . . I didn’t realize until half an hour later that the bells had stopped entirely. He cleared an edge of cardboard and asked me to sit on some shag he had requisitioned from a dumpster. I felt no shame. Pedestrians walked by, hardly giving notice. No shame! You see, I’d come home. So I poured my heart to him and told everything. About the fire and the bells—and my Bella. Jerome, never in my life had I been listened to like that! The tenderness! Had his tenderness stood of itself, without my anguish to balance it, I think it would have been too much to bear. I’d have died from such kindness.”