The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

by James Ellroy

  “What was the girl’s name?”

  “I don’t know, but I named her Joan.”

  13

  The lectern was raised, the room was packed, I had a slay-the-audience view. She sat at the left rear. I caught her gray-streaked hair first. She expanded and filled my frame. Two hundred people receded.

  I read from My Dark Places. I brain-spoke to the woman at pause points. I described the wish-named Joan and stated the resemblance. The woman was skeptical—college prof up for a fight.

  May 28, ’04. Sacramento in a spring heat wave. The six thousandth public performance of my dead-mother act.

  I was boffo. I read from pitch-perfect memory and laid down even eye contact. I had a pulpit and an eons-deep Protestant bloodline. I was the predatory preacher prowling for prey. The woman was my pivot point. I eyeball-tracked the audience and clicked back to her. She had deep brown eyes. Her features were the wish-named Joan’s, aged and age-askewed. I pondered a family resemblance. The woman laughed. It made me toss the thought.

  A Q&A session followed. Two hundred sociologists—a dead-mom-tour first. A man asked me how I stage-managed grief.

  I cited repetition. I cited faith and a buoyant will that sometimes swerved to obsessiveness. The man called me glib. I brusquely rebuked him. I said she was my mother—not his. I said I’d paid the price—and he hadn’t.

  The exchange sparked a rumble. I eyeball-drilled the man. He shrugged and shut up. I looked directly at the woman. She looked directly back. She asked me what different forms my mother assumed.

  I swooned a little. In that moment, I knew.

  I pointed to heaven and back down to earth. I said, She’s there and I’m here. I said other women had been known to intercede and fuck with my head.

  The woman laughed. A few chuckles drifted out. I ended the gig with an elegiac quote. The folks clapped and lined up to get their books signed.

  The woman stood behind them and moved toward me in small steps. She got closer and eclipsed the prophecy. Her features became hers alone. She distorted then and now and blitzed iconography. I thanked her for her question and asked her her name.

  She said, Joan, and stated her surname. My legs shook. I asked her if she’d like to have a drink later. She said, Assuredly, yes.

  Sacramento was the first Joan Zone. It was three hours northeast of Carmel and always swamp hot. It was full of pols and lobbyists sucking the state-government tit. There were hayseed and rock-and-roll contingents. Sacramento always vexed me. That first night was a ghoul show. I got to the lobby bar early. People booze-effused and walked through with cocktails. They were dog-den crashers. I was tensed up to fight or run. First-date portent: I must contain Joan within a public place.

  • • •

  She showed on time. She’d changed clothes: summer dress to skirt/boots ensemble. Her arms were bare. She had a tattoo on her right bicep. First-date apostasy: I fucking dug it.

  We arranged chairs beside a table. It was semi-private. I guzzled coffee as Joan sipped scotch. She left lipstick prints on her tumbler. It should have instilled a preacher’s kid fury. It didn’t. First-date apostasy #2.

  She’d read my books and knew some of my story. I supplanted it and laid in a first-date rationale. My wife and I were headed for Splitsville. Divorce was a fait accompli. It was set for an indeterminate date. Helen and I had our deal in the meantime.

  I was disingenuous, verging on mendacious. My relationship with Helen was tortuous and open-ended. My life was a daily process of atonement. I could not conceive of a life without Helen Knode. I started double-dealing Joan at the outset. I wanted Helen for companionship and the long shot of sex resurrected. I wanted Joan for her flaming expression of selfhood.

  We talked. I got Joan a second scotch. She barely touched it. Not a juicehead—good.

  Monologues followed. Joan went first. She was from New York City. Her bloodline was left-wing/Jewish. Mom and dad were divorced. Dad was a college professor and mom was a shrink. She’d been partially raised in a commune. She had a brother in San Francisco. She’d matriculated at Cornell—Helen’s alma mater. She had two master’s degrees. She was teaching at Cal Davis and was earning her doctorate.

  She’d knocked around a lot. She’d pitched some left-wing woo-woo. She’d spent time in the radical women’s movement and the punk-rock scene.

  I asked her what punk rock meant—that shit had slid by me. Joan called it a rebuttal to Ronald Reagan. I said that I disliked rock and roll and greatly admired Reagan.

  It was a test. Joan more than passed it. She smiled and said, That’s okay. She picked up my left hand and dropped it in her lap. She laced up our fingers and contained me.

  I wondered how we looked together. The age/style gap scorched me. I was bald and a foot taller. I felt awkward. I wore a pink polo shirt and wheat jeans.

  My monologue followed. I mentioned the crack-up and fresh sobriety. Joan bluntly stated that open-union deals don’t work—she’d been through it.

  Her jaw was wide. Her mouth connoted harshness and determination. Her smile undermined a seething grievance. A raucous-kid aspect simmered. She knew when to deploy it. She inhabited moments intensely and performed and observed them in concurrence. She was the most stunning woman I had ever seen.

  I moved my hand to her knee. I floated someplace. We exchanged phone numbers and addresses. We had some silent spells.

  I thanked God for bringing Joan to me. I counted the runs in her black stockings.

  The ride home was swervy. I drove too fast and played Beethoven in murmurs and crescendos. I sent Joan flowers and a note en route.

  Boomerang car: I zoomed south and whooshed north with equal force.

  Helen was out. Margaret growled and retreated to Helen’s bedroom. I checked my office phone machine. Joan’s name was on the display.

  Her message began, “Hey, it’s Joan.” She continued and thanked me for the flowers. Her voice was softer than it had been the night before. I caught some Brooklyn in her vowels. A few upward tones implied gratitude. She invited me to call her.

  I played the message 30-odd times. I memorized every word and every inflection. I don’t know how long I cried. It was bright daylight when I started and full night when I stopped.

  The Joan Zone, the Knode Abode, three hours between sites. The civil contract that made it okay.

  It began with phone calls and letters. The house was large and permitted privacy. I snagged the mail every day. My office was sealed off. Helen rarely walked through. Margaret stormed through and barked her outrage. I conducted the courtship sans disruption and overt lies.

  It felt exhilarating and wrong. It was a second-to-second Joan-to-Helen parlay. I wanted to regain Helen’s respect. I wanted to know who Joan was and what she portended. Joan was new and I was a seasoned opportunist. Opportunists ruthlessly cling to emergent imagery and people. Joan was urgently vivid. My loyalty tipped toward her. It made me queasy, despite the deal. I fawned around the dream house in redress. Helen acknowledged my efforts with an offhandedness shaped by her justified grudge. I wasn’t who I said I was. I sensed that I could never regain my stature.

  Opportunists move on. My task was to create credibility with Joan. Written words and phone calls were my métier once more. Joan became the ultimate female spirit in possession of my time alone in the dark.

  Her letters were brief. They expressed her attraction to me and ridiculed the Knode-Ellroy contract. My letters described the forthcoming dissolution of the marriage. It was preposterous. I had spent a total of two hours in Joan’s presence. I was having it both ways. I was mending fences I intended to jump. Two women got the Ellroy troika: seduce, apologize and explain.

  My letters were romantic and oozed sweet intent. I FedExed them to goose the process. I was hard-selling a potential lover. I came on too strong. Joan scolded me and prompted epistolary retreat. I plumbed Joan’s character and besieged her with perceptions. I never mentioned her wish-named antecedent. Joan praised my ardor
and conceded my acuity. She kept postponing rendezvous in Sacramento and Frisco. I was a dipshit bubblegummer scaling The Mountain of Looooove.

  It was a tough climb. Joan was a tough woman. I struggled for handholds as she pried at my grip. It was exhilarating. Joan made me work. Written praise sent me summit-bound. Written rebuke kicked me back to earth. I lived for her voice in the dark.

  Helen and Margaret retired early. My nerves were still shot. Sleep came late, if at all. Panic attacks still zapped me daily. Joan and I talked most nights. Her implied rule was, I’ll call when I call. I was breathless with the forfeit of male control and mindful of it as a means of seduction. I doused the lights at 9:00 p.m. I played the Chopin nocturnes and killed the sound at 9:45. Darkness held me. I heard crickets and the waves on Carmel beach. The phone rang when it rang—and almost always at 10:30.

  She always said, “Hey, it’s Joan.” Her voice carried a husk and registered as mid-range contralto. I’d ask her if her hair was up or down and whether or not she was wearing her glasses. She’d say “Up” or “Down” and “Yes” or “No” with a swoopy inflection. It always pulled tears out of me. I never told her this. I was grateful for every small kindness she showed me. My gratitude was there at the start. My gratitude remains in Joan’s long-standing absence.

  Our talks were affectionate and often contentious. Joan’s university status bewildered me. I didn’t quite get what she did. She provided brisk word portraits of her many friends and colleagues. My interest waned then. I wanted to milk our sex vibe and set up a face-to-face meet. Academic code deterred me. I believed that anecdotes should ping-pong between people. Joan questioned my interlocutory style. I was supposed to respond along set lines and not talk about myself so much. Academians deployed this method and balked when interlocutors ignored it. This constrained me. I wanted to wow Joan with my story. She wanted to establish parity with a storytelling pro. I came up short most times. I was bucking a woman from a different world and another generation. Our talks always got around to us at the phone-call finale. The road ran circuitous. Joan challenged me. I found a way to stay in the fight. I knew that I had to change. My old woman ways had decimated my marriage. Joan astounded me. I had to think and act from her perspective. It felt like film noir. The amnesiac assumes that the black-clad woman has the answers. The price was a certain submission. It rankled me. I respected Joan for her fight. I wanted to get her to an enclosed space. I wanted to tussle with her and get past words. I believed that mutual surrender would lead us someplace very soft.

  She was left-wing, I was right-wing. She was Jewish, I was Gentile. She was an atheist, I was a believer. Her cultural influences bored me. Her punk-rock shit was jejune. Our conversations fractured and rebuilt around desire. We flabbergasted each other. She possessed a surpassing personal power. I told her this. Joan told me that my power leveled her. She hinted at a roundelay of role reversals. We always got there as we said good night. I always put the phone down, trembling.

  • • •

  I won a book prize in Italy. It entailed an a.m. flight from Frisco. I decided to spend the preceding night there. Joan agreed to meet me.

  I got a suite at the Ritz-Carlton. Joan rang the bell right on time. I held her in the doorway. She found the suite constraining and suggested a stroll. Her local travelogue delighted me. The Coit Tower kiss kept me attentive. I let her walk ahead of me. She saw it as packed-street etiquette and my means to study her. She let me take charge then. I took her hand and spieled a run of kid-crime tales. She laughed and let me lead her to a restaurant. I didn’t want to eat and blitz my adrenaline rush. She understood. She studied me and reported her findings.

  She nailed my beady eyes. They were ruthless. My body language was jerky and deferential. That showed my desire and my instinct not to crowd her. I riffed on her performing sense and her tripartite inhabiting of all moments. She said I was the first man who ever got that.

  We walked uphill to the Ritz. Our legs fluttered. We kissed until 3:00 a.m. and kept our clothes on. I pre-imagined one thing correctly. The clash was strenuous. Our bodies ached from the meld.

  Milan was a portable Joan Zone. Our transatlantic calls featured a softened rapport and frequent sex sighs. Carmel was Joan and Helen coiled contrapuntal. My moral sanction impeded, rather than liberated, me. I felt loyal to both women. I had to regain Helen’s trust and gain Joan’s trust. The deal was “Don’t ask/Don’t tell.” Helen did not say “Don’t pray” and “Don’t brood.” The Hilliker Curse required me to protect all the women I loved. There were two of them now. Prayer pushed me toward either/or dictums. I was, and am, decisive by nature. That native trait failed me here. Extra brood sessions compensated. I assessed Helen and Joan sans a decision-making process. I came to this: they were the only two women who had ever astonished me.

  They emboldened me and made me fear my heedless maleness. They encompassed differing strains of strongly held belief and made me ponder meaning. Helen’s swami shtick imbued my Christian view with a lighter secular touch. Joan’s strident leftism gave me the passion of the red flag aswirl and contextualized her personal grievance as historical and therefore empirically valid. They were big women suffused with big ideas. Helen and I had 13 years together. She still had the power to move me, jazz me, fuel me. I had squandered sex with her. It felt irretrievable. Joan was the prospect of sex as endless ride. Joan represented dialogue to spark enormous change. She had described moments of childhood horror that left me eviscerated. Her sporadic softness engendered my full-time softness. All my praying and brooding buttressed my love for both women. My addiction to woman imagery and the force of The Curse pushed me toward Joan.

  Summer courtship, ’04. The prelude extends.

  Joan invited me to Sacto for Independence Day. It’s a long weekend. Get a room at the Sheraton—it’s near my place.

  A film-director colleague lived close by. That provided my alibi. I drove up in an ever-present heat wave. The Delta Valley was always hot. This was the blast oven–Everglades combo. I checked in at the hotel and walked to Joan’s pad with flowers.

  She wore a white blouse and jeans. Her hair was down and she wore her glasses. I smiled at that. Joan said “Down” and “Yes” and kissed my cheek. She put the flowers in a vase. I checked out her bookshelves. The only shit I recognized were three of my own novels. The other tomes: labor history, Commie tracts, gender polemics.

  Window units barely kept the heat out. Sweat seeped through my shirt. My pulse raced and produced more wetness. Joan served a roast chicken and salad dinner. It was simple and tasty. I hardly touched it. Talk was difficult. I wanted to tell her everything I’d never revealed to a woman. Helen trumped Joan here. She already knew all my stories. Joan chatted up her teaching load and a bar-b-q the next day. Some friends were throwing a bash. I was invited.

  All I had were expressions of love and alone-in-the-dark perceptions. They seemed precipitous and untimely. Declarations of chivalry bubbled up and almost choked out. Joan mentioned her atheism. My chivalry pitch cited God as a primary resource. I kept my mouth shut. I got tensed up to fight or run.

  We washed the dishes and sat down on the couch. Joan smiled. Some lipstick was stuck to her teeth. I wiped it off with my shirttail. Joan asked me what I was afraid of. I said, “You.” I asked her what she was afraid of. She pointed to me.

  We kissed. We fell into the meld and stayed there. Joan held my face. I kissed her gray streaks. Joan pushed the coffee table back to make room for my legs.

  I started to lay out my declarations. Joan touched my lips and shushed me. My heart rate went haywire. Joan sensed something wrong and held me. My shirt was halfway off. Joan removed it. I unbuttoned her blouse. I saw her breasts and started sobbing.

  She let it be for a while. She said things like “Hey, now.” She saw that it wasn’t about to stop. She eased me up and got me to the door and told me she’d see me tomorrow.

  • • •

  Sleep was impossible. The air conditioner
rattled and tossed ice chips. Drunks careened down the outside hallway all night.

  I kept the lights off. I saw Joan’s face and fought half-nude imagery. I conjured Helen and told her we could work things out. I never completed my spiels. Joan appeared, Joan smiled, I dabbed traces of red off her teeth.

  The bar-b-q was above Sacramento, near the UC campus. Joan had a VW stamped with pro-labor stickers. We crossed a drawbridge and hit a greenbelt. Joan said, Last night was all right, you know. I touched her hand on the steering wheel. She curled a finger around my wrist.

  We drove in silence. It marked fifty rides we took in a similar quiet. I never knew what Joan was thinking. I would have given anything to know then. I would give anything to know now.

  The shindig was outdoors. The crowd was thirtyish academics. Joan introduced me around. She kept a hand on my arm to indicate that we were a couple. It was stunningly decorous. She said “James” and left off the Ellroy. I felt weightless without my hot-shit surname. Joan caught it and touched me that much more.

  Sunstroke heat, burgers and guacamole. Weightlessness and sleeplessness. The vertigo that Joan always inspired.

  A young couple recognized me. That gave me a task beyond yearn and obsess. I regaled them with outtakes from my perved-out past. I eyeball-trolled for Joan about once per minute. I caught her looking my way at the same rate. She winked on one occasion.

  • • •

  My hotel was near the statehouse. We watched a fireworks display from my room.

  Joan sat on the window ledge. I sat on the bed. We imbibed room-service libations. The show produced a sputtery sound track. Joan’s silence was a roar. I started to tell a trademark story. Joan said, “I’ve read your books, you know.”

  The fireworks crescendoed and died. I smelled gunpowder through the AC vents. Joan walked to the door. I got up and followed her. She touched my cheek and told me not to worry.

  Sleep was impossible. I was terrified. She walked out the door and took my body with her. I checked my mouth for malignant bumps and my arms for seeping melanomas. I went from the bed to the bathroom mirror, all night. I conjured Joan’s face. The process tore at my fear. Every Joan image invoked Helen. Every Helen image returned me to Joan.