by James Ellroy
We skidded in and out of mud troughs. We clipped rural fence posts and sheared off our right sideview mirror. Jean scanned the road for no-ice patches. She stayed ahead of back-sliding cars and kept her eyes peeled for new ones. She gripped the steering wheel loosely and braced it with her left knee. She smoked cigarettes, white-knuckled.
The weather shifted. The ice mulched and set the road traversable. We turned into an auto court and got a room for the night. It featured timber walls inset with plaster moldings. My mother found a string quartet on the radio. We were sweat-soaked from her boffo play with the defroster. I showered first and put on pajamas.
She felt different that night. She overtook my dad within my crazy heart for a moment. Her eyes were tight and gray-flecked some new way. She had smiled and went “Oops” every time she banged a mailbox.
I pretended to sleep. She walked out of a steam cloud and toweled herself off, naked. I slitted my eyes and memorized her body for the ten zillionth time. She never hid her nakedness. She never flaunted it. She was a registered nurse. Her nakedness was always deadpan working on brusque. She was a woman of science and undoubtedly equated sex with cellular function. She wanted me to ask her the facts-of-life questions. She wanted to vouch her stance as an enlightened mother and the first Hilliker to attend college. I didn’t want abstract responses. I wanted to know about Her and sex in an enticing manner with a mystical bent. I wanted God and Her and her separate world in perfect proportion.
I had seen her in flagrante before. This geek Hank Hart was her first post-divorce squeeze. I got some of the mechanics down and stood back from the doorway. Hank Hart had lost a thumb in a drill-press mishap. My mother had lost the tip of one nipple to a post-childbirth infection. I skimmed the Bible and my dad’s scandal rags for a sex-with-missing-body-parts parlay. I got adultery condemned and Sinuendo. I went back to eyeballing women for my answers.
We cleared the storm zone the next day and turned right in Texas. I scoped out girls in passing cars and scratched my balls on the sly. My mother said we might move in February. She was hipped to a house in the San Gabriel Valley. Our gelt was running thin. We were splurging on cheeseburgers and rustic motels. The Buick slurped high-test gas through four fat carburetors. We laid up in Albuquerque and went to a movie. It was a seagoing turkey called Fire Down Below. The stars: Robert Mitchum, Jack Lemmon and Rita Hayworth.
I pointed to Hayworth’s name on the screen. My mother glared at it. My dad went back to the ’30s with La Roja Rita. It pre-dated his circa ’40 hookup with Jean. Rita was half Anglo, half Mex aristocrat. My dad was working as a croupier in T.J. Rita’s father hired him to watchdog Rita and deter mashers. My dad told me that he poured Rita the pork. I cannot verify this assertion. My dad did enjoy a long run as Rita’s chief stooge. Rita sacked his lazy ass, circa ’50.
My parents defied easy classification. Jean Hilliker hit L.A. in late ’38. She won a beauty contest, tanked a screen test and returned to Chicago. She lived in a big pad with four other nurses. A beefy bull dyke ruled the roost. Jean got pregnant, tried to scrape herself and hemorrhaged. A doctor chum undid the damage. She had an affair with him, dumped him and married a rich stiff. Marriage #1 fizzled pronto. Jean remembered how good L.A. looked and caught a bus. A friend knew a ginch named Jean Feese. Jean F. was wed to a hunky drifter named Ellroy.
They met, they sizzled, they shacked. My dad dumped Jean #1. Jean #2 got pregnant in ’47. They got married in August. A troubled pregnancy foretold my rapturously troubled and memoir-mapped life.
I never got Rita Hayworth. She was plucked, lacquered, varnished, depilatoried, injected and enhanced. She shit-canned my dad before the Hilliker-Ellroy marriage imploded. She was my dad’s defaulting deus ex machina. He had a sweet deal with Rita. She blew it—not him. There were more sweet deals ahead. Other Ritas were out there. He would glom himself one.
It was loser shtick to a dipshit child predisposed to believe it. I heard it expressed plaintively, whiningly and disingenuously. Jean Hilliker heard it shrieked, sobbed and bellowed—behind bedroom doors closed to me. She underestimated my ability to eavesdrop and extrapolate. She did not credit me with a knack for decoding sighs. She went at my father with less volume and pathos. I watched her sadness and fury build from the inside out. I never heard her say it. I watched her think it and suppress it from the outside in.
You’re weak. You live off of women. I won’t let you take much more of me.
I knew it was true—then.
I sided with him—then.
I hated her then. I hated her because he was me and once he was gone I’d be alone with the breadth of my shame. I hated her because I wanted her in unspeakable ways.
I was an Ellroy then. I’m a Hilliker now. Our pride, my bifurcated identity.
My father made me his co-defiler. His mantra was, She’s a drunk and a whore. I cravenly acceded to the dictum. He told me he had private eyes tailing my mother. I believed it then. I know it was hoo-ha now. It didn’t matter then. Cherchez la femme. The imagined detectives led me to women.
All solitary men were detectives. All male pedestrians were detectives. All men hiding behind newspapers were specifically tailing me. My dad employed at least one whole detective agency. An equal number of gumshoes were stalking my mother.
My father was out discovering the next Rita Hayworth. His job description was “Film-Biz Slave” and “Hollywood Bottom-Feeder.” He was tapping some fantasy windfall. He scored the big bowl of bread that Sergeant Bilko and the Kingfish fell short of in pratfalls and greed. Private fuzz ran pricey. My dad loved me that much. A flatfoot fleet safeguarded me. Fleet #2 tailed the round-heeled redhead to juke joints and hot-sheet motels. Moral turpitude was a tough sell. Kiddie-court judges usually sided with the mom. My dad had film-biz clout. He had the lowdown on bribable Jew judges. He just slipped Perry Mason a fat retainer.
That wowed me. I watched Perry Mason every week. My case might wind up on TV.
My school was on Wilshire and Yale. My pad was off Broadway and Princeton. Santa Monica had semi-brisk foot traffic. I walked to school most days and dawdled home indirectly. My roaming range was two miles in circumference. Wilshire was dotted with cocktail caves and auto courts. I grooved the Broken Drum, the Fox and Hounds, and the Ivanhoe. I loitered outside and watched the detectives enter and split. I gave them perfunctory glances and shifted my gaze to any and all nearby women. I confirmed that my dad’s goons were on the job and went wild with the adjoining scenery.
It’s a fifty-year-old blur in ’50s film-process color. It’s etched in VistaVision and Sinerama. There’re stop frames and jump cuts that signify new stimuli and depict my divided attention.
Some details remain ripe. Uni High coeds pour off the Wilshire bus. One girl dangles her schoolbooks, cinched by a brown belt. I side-tail a chubby girl. She’s bare-armed. One dress strap keeps falling, she keeps retrieving it. She’s got dark stubble, all powder-flecked. I watch women enter rooms at the Ivanhoe. One woman is Italianate and picks at her stocking runs. Bus stops were good spots for repeat eyeball business. I saw the same detective at Santa Monica and Franklin several times. He was always chatting with a neighbor lady. She wore a dark green dress one day and showed boocoo back. The zipper was stuck above her bra strap. She told the man she worked in Beverly Hills. She carried a briefcase instead of a purse. I placed her age as Jean Hilliker’s age. She always smoked a last cigarette and dropped it ahead of the right-front bus wheel.
I waited for her one evening. I was nine years old and just that obsessed. The westbound bus dropped her across the street from the outgoing bus stop. I tailed her to a crib on Arizona. She opened the door and saw me. She gave me a schizy look and shut the door. I never saw her again.
It was surveillance within surveillance. I breezed through coffee shops, used the can and breezed out. I entered lounge lairs verboten to children and eyeballed the bar. I saw women reflected in above-the-bar mirrors. I saw women twirl ashtrays and look pensive. I saw women
dangle low-heeled shoes off one foot.
Samo High and Lincoln Junior High were close to my pad. Kids materialized on my block around 4:00 on school days. Boys and girls together. Older kids. The girls hugged their schoolbooks and swerved their breasts. One girl rested her chin on her books and swayed as she walked. She always lagged behind the other kids. She was pale. She had long dark hair and wore glasses. She lived one courtyard over from me. I didn’t know her name. I decided to call her “Joan.”
I spied on her bungalow. I saw her reading a few times. She sat in an easy chair crossways and wiggled her feet. I studied her family life. Her dad wore a Jew beanie and doted on her. Mom favored the doltish kid brother. I have thought about Joan and prayed for Joan for 53 continuous years. I considered her a prophet then. I was correct. The real-named woman Joan appeared 46 years later. She was that wish-named high school girl, physical point by physical point.
Both Joans are gone now. The real-named Joan had stunning gray-streaked hair. It’s been four years since I’ve seen her. I heard she had a child. I wonder how much more gray has swirled through the black.
We made it back to L.A. on gas fumes and a buck-98. The Buick was paint-pocked and minus that right mirror. I returned to my roamings and ruminations. Jean Hilliker went back to bourbon and Brahms and her nurse gig at Airtek Dynamics.
I didn’t think about the magic book or the Nazi chick and her aborted knob job. I didn’t brew potions. I got pissed at my mother after church one cold morning. I told her to beware—my dad had hired Perry Mason to get custody of me. Jean Hilliker found this sidesplitting. She explained that Perry Mason was a TV fiction. Moreover: That beetle-browed actor’s a swish.
The old man kept bugging me to spy on my mother. He kept calling the crib and driving her batshit. She kept bringing up the move to the suburbs.
She persisted, she insisted, she blathered, she cajoled, she lied. “The Suburbs”: euphemism/propaganda/forked-tongue doublespeak. The San Gabriel Valley was blast-oven exile. Renegade rednecks and waterlogged wetbacks. A shit-kicker Shangri-la.
Of course, we moved there.
Of course, she died there.
Of course, I caused her death.
I throw myself at women and talk to them alone in the dark. They speak back to me. They have convinced me of my guilt.
We left right before Valentine’s Day. I slid a card embossed with a big red heart under Joan’s door. I bought the real-named Joan a Valentine’s card and a blouse 48 years later. We made love in a hotel suite and planned our wedding.
It ended soon after. I’m alone with Joan imagery now. I’m mentally watching her age and grow stronger. She’s inside me with all of the others, each and every one distinct.
2
My dad got me. He alleged fluke providence. He didn’t have to retain Perry Mason or bribe Jew judges. We were both relieved and gratified. The murder went unsolved. I dodged the issue of my guilt and breezed through a season of adult solicitude. Nobody blamed me. There, there. Isn’t he brave and cute?
Alas, no.
Summer ’58 unfurled smoggy and powder blue. I stalked girls at Lemon Grove Park. I stole a chemistry set, mixed powders randomly and sweetened my potions with Kool-Aid. I watched the Criswell Predicts TV show devotedly. Criswell was a fruity guy with a cape. He foresaw the future and spoke portentously. He exemplified the shuck of self-confidence. I studied him and honed my act under this boob-tube spell. The Mighty Ellroy has decreed: You will drink this sacred elixir and disrobe!
The caustic chemicals outwafted the Kool-Aid. No girls put their lips to my cups. I dodged murder-one indictments again. Credit me with avant-garde panache. My shtick dramatically preceded the Jim Jones Massacre.
A nearby five-and-dime sold various brands of X-ray eye glasses. I stole them all and tried them all and got nil results. I bopped out to the Andrews Hardware Store. They sold infrared binoculars for night hunters. I was a skin hunter. The binoculars were expensive and too big to swipe. I aimed them at female patrons and saw my clothed prey in a red haze. A few women laughed and patted my head. Awwwww, isn’t he cute?
Alas, no.
I lived to read, brood, peep, stalk, skulk and fantasize. My reading focus zeroed in on kids’ crime books and lingered there all summer. Rich kids from happy families solved murders. Ordered worlds got resurrected and nobody got too fucked-up. There were no Weegee-like photos. Homicide was sanitized. No semen stains, no blood spray. No locked-limb rigor mortis.
Formulaic pap. My sublimated dialogue on the Jean Hilliker snuff. Triage therapy that prepared me for Mickey Spillane.
Mike Hammer was a chick magnet and a Commie-snuff artiste. He pistol-whipped left-wingers and bit women’s necks. He was dutifully dichotomized. He brutalized bad men and saved virtuous women. Mike Hammer’s quest became my moral credo. There was one major sticking point that vexed me.
Not all women expressed virtue. Some women were shrill and usurious. One woman was really a man with an implied donkey dick. Society women were One-Worlders and Comsymps. Mike Hammer slapped bad women around. Mike Hammer shot the big-dick he/she in cold blood. I could not read those passages. I could not endure depictions of violence on women. The same dynamic held with TV and film fare. I could not see it. I had to shut my eyes. I banished hurt women from my purview. I insisted that my maimed women remain off-page and offscreen. It was a bedrock of empathy within my overall kiddie-noir predation.
Hurt women brought me back to Her. Mental tenacity kept my guilt suppressed. I was a sex-crazed little boy before the death I mandated. I tamped down the upshot now. The fount of my will was, and is, the ability to exploit misfortune. Puberty boded. My hormones hosannaed. The stimulus of All Women All The Time forced me to contain the obsession. I was already a seasoned brooder and watcher. I started telling myself stories to rein it in.
Savior-of-women fantasies. Romantic tableaux set against history. Mike Hammer sans misogynist text.
I got hopped up on the Black Dahlia murder case. Starstruck girl hits L.A. and winds up severed and dumped. It’s another unsolved woman snuff. It’s L.A. ’47, again in SinemaScope.
I saved the Dahlia, alone in the dark. I killed her killer and resuscitated her with magic potions. I time-traveled. We dined at defunct hot spots resurrected from old photographs and impromptu imagery. We made love in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. My dad and Rita Hayworth were our flunkies. They shagged us chow from Ollie Hammond’s Steak House. I wasn’t a skinny kid with emergent acne. I was Zachary Scott with that cool mustache and my dad’s giant dick. The sexual mechanics were virgin-boy fantasia. A filtering process came and went and often shut down my narrative steam. I would see my mother in bed with Hank Hart. I would blot the image out and pray it away.
The Dahlia was a frequent co-star. I denied her martyred kinship with Jean Hilliker. A morbid subtext slammed me to Dahlialand. The same death sense shocked me and boomeranged me to my present-day world. I created stirring unions with local girls and their mothers.
I lived in a hotbox dive adjoining swank Hancock Park. Ritzy houses were arrayed in three directions. My dad and I owned a baleful beagle. She was dominant. She bit us and kept us in line. She defied housebreaking. She turned our pad into a dog-dung demimonde. The scent socked itself in and accreted. I took the dog for long late-night walks and peeped Hancock Park windows.
The girls went to posh private schools. They wore pastel uniform dresses by day and prepped-out civvies in the evenings. Madras shirtwaists and tartan kilts. Gingham button-downs inherited from big brothers. Sherbet-shade gowns for cotillions.
The girls were stunning in their collective pedigree. The girls were individually lovely as I peeped them in prosaic context. I had a secret compact with them. My access was God-like. It fueled my hunger and assuaged my privation in alternating heartbeats.
I took the girls home with me and talked to them in the dark. They spoke back to me in candid whispers. I concocted kid stories suffused with social-class struggle and love-c
onquers-all elation. My girls were never standard pretty or comely in prescribed ways. I was always looking for the physical flaw or distinction that marked gravity. I looked in window after window at face after face. I was looking for one face. There can be only one. Thus she will be me and she will be THE OTHER.
“The Other”: My real self made whole by an image. My hurt salved by a loving female touch.
Voyeur. Pious Protestant boy. Fatuous seeker.
It played out aaaaall in my head.
I took the girls home. Their mothers found me and pushed me into walls, threw me down and had me. Their hunger was my hunger expressed through their haunted aggression. They squeezed my face. Their hands hurt me. Our mouths clashed. Our teeth scraped. Our nakedness was blurred by a shutter stop inside me. I was frail and unequal to their bounty. It scared me then. The roughness unhinged me. The absence of a narrative line left me weightless. I didn’t know what it meant then. I’ll ascribe meaning now. They wanted me because I sensed who they were and went at them with that raging instinct. A dead woman fed me the knowledge. They were indistinguishable and each and every one unique. My moral intent was gender-wide and paid for in blood—frail boy bound credible and ghastly deep.
Women were everywhere and nowhere. My dad hid his girlfriends. Our dog-shit dive deterred assignations there. I overheard his “Hey, baby” calls and inferred fuck-pad dates. He had no family. Jean Hilliker’s kin were back in Whipdick, Wisconsin. I went to school and church because I had to and because there were women there. It got me out of the dog den and into the fresh air. Human interaction momentarily rewired my fantasy life. I was forced to sit, listen and talk. Matriculation led me to second-rung obsessions. American history and classical music started tearing through me. They were subsidiary fixations. They momentarily fogged my all-women mind-set.
I co-opted them fast. My woman-savior tales took on verisimilitude and topical oomph. Beethoven wrote me scores. Our rhapsodies out-juiced the Ninth Symphony and the late string quartets.