The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

by James Ellroy

  Dawn came up. I forced myself to shave and shower. I bolted half a bagel and coffee. I was tensed up to fight or run. There was no one to fight. I had no body to fight with—so I ran.

  I drove to Joan’s place and rang the bell. Joan opened up and saw me. She sat me down and let me find some breath. I got light-headed words out. “I love you,” “I’m scared,” and “I’ve got to go home” are all I remember.

  The dream house was empty. Margaret was kenneled up. Helen was back in K.C. with her mother. I gobbled food out of the refrigerator and fell down on the couch. I woke up at midnight. I ran to my phone machine. The number 0 glowed.

  Four days went by. I called Helen in K.C. and reveled in her family minutiae. I worked on a TV pilot and played raging Beethoven and soft Rachmaninoff. I wondered when I’d get my body back. I saw her face every few seconds. It wasn’t a conjuring. She was omniscient.

  The doorbell rang. Friday, midafternoon, FedEx for sure.

  Take note of what you are seeking, for it is—

  She looked grave and sweet, all bollixed some new way. She said, “Hi,” with her swoopy inflection.

  I folded her up and kissed her gray streaks. I said, “I’ll never run away again.”

  14

  But I did.

  But not far.

  But not for long.

  I was the amnesiac. She was the black-clad woman with the answers.

  Joan raided my image bank. It was a yippie prank. The Red Goddess decreed that all women should look like her and that I should seek only her revised portrait. She gave herself to me and eluded me. She gave me the knowledge that all women were her and that any terrified exits were just preludes to runs back.

  No faces looked like Her. No new images replaced Her. Every partial resemblance dispersed into pixilated dots. No woman could ever be Her. No face read for the power to redeem could ever connote what She gave me and what She withheld. I stopped looking. There was Her and nobody else.

  Goddess: Beckon me and cast me out. Let me worship and learn, love thee and fear thee. Partake of my reckless spirit and know that I am soul-pure. I am falling. No place is safe. Savagely sanction me to seek the world in Thy name.

  My nerves were still shot. Sleep remained problematic. I juiced my original cover lie to explain my weekends away. I stayed in the dream house with Helen. Margaret remained outraged. I relinquished myself to romantic fixation and built bridges at home. I was sober, I made money, Helen’s anger withered as her grudge snap-crackle-popped. I repented less and brooded more. Helen researched her new novel and made a bevy of friends. I wondered if she sought male action, and decided, C’est la guerre. I got smug. We had an agreement. Helen sensed my preoccupation as a return to form. He’s back, he’s less crazy, he’s off—per always—in his head.

  Joan. The power of name. Strong-willed lovers Sturm-und-Dranged.

  Joan despised my Helen deal. We had no deal ourselves. I refused to ask, Joan refused to grant. Helen and Joan were grudge holders. I was not. I was a movin’-on guy on a two-way track. It was a three-hour drive between women. Joan and I collided most weekends. Our time apart allowed me to yearn and seek Her in prayer.

  Yearning is my chief fount of inspiration. I live in that exalted state. The drama of women sought and fleetingly found competes with History as tidal wave. My dark-room communion has given me a world to rewrite. Wanting what I cannot have commands me to create large-scale art in compensation. My broad social arcs backdrop big love at all costs. I must contain these stories and create perfect love in book form. Unfound women counterbalance History as random horror. I must bestow grandeur on my mother’s death and err on empathy’s side with all my depictions of women. The Hilliker Curse was a self-inflicted summons to compulsion and predation. The Hilliker Curse charged me to sit in the dark and seek art. The Red Goddess Joan obliterated other women for me. She left me gasping for meaning. I began to see her as History.

  Our time apart was my monk’s retreat, shot through with phone sex. Our time together was a passion play with an often dissonant chorus.

  Joan took me everywhere. Sex was an unending surprise and an ever-replenishing joy. Talk was bewilderment, enlightenment and vexation. My theme was, you must change me and I must protect you. It was highly specious and unassailably tender. It allowed me to hear shit that I didn’t want to hear and stay in the war.

  Joan’s atheism killed me. I eschewed Christian text and laid on a soupçon of deistic jive. I listened. My code was, Tolerance does not equal approval and should not be construed as censure. Joan’s leftist/anarchist shit bugged me. I listened. I conformed to her interlocutory style and asked gee whiz–phrased questions. I fucking tried. Joan loved me for it. I loved her for loving me. Every acknowledgment of my flowering heart gut-shot me with gratitude. We told each other sex stories. Joan chortled at my previous exploits. I portrayed them as buffoonish, to spare her pain and allay jealousy. We did not achieve parity here. Joan described good pre-Ellroy sex in wild-ass detail. It titillated me, horrified me, enraged me and moved me. The black-clad woman has the answers. She is your seditious sister. The easy answer is, She is you and you are She. The Christian answer is, Judge not, lest ye be judged. The hard answer is, Acceptance means loss of control.

  We diverged and reconnected along odd lines. Our social codes dovetailed unexpectedly. I was a door-holder and a ladies-firster. Joan dug that. I never scoped other women in her presence. Joan looooooved that. Her brazen brother was a fascist, a religionist, a heterosexist. It didn’t matter. He was a good human being, and he was sweet to her.

  She cut me open. I lived for her approval and wept at her harshness. I left blood spills wherever we went.

  Our love was immediate and unimpinged by commitment. My relationship with Helen killed the chance of a sanctified US. I was at fault here, I was confused, I was atypically risk-averse. Joan weathered this with grace and very few expressions of displeasure. She let me stay in the fight. I was always tensed up to fight or run. We fought. I ceded control in reluctant increments. Joan noted my efforts and gave me no reason to run.

  I found the reasons, alone in the dark.

  Sacramento to Carmel. The Joan Zone to the dream house, bereft. The Red Goddess to the best friend/roommate and her outraged dog.

  The Hilliker Curse. Bylaw #1: You must protect all the women you love.

  Helen never questioned my time away and always welcomed me back. I left my body and my design for conquest and surrender three hours northeast. I returned to Helen in all her goodness and unique brilliance. She’d softened toward me. I assumed the role of companion-husband sans bedroom access. I crashed—just a little. The roar of Joan subsided—just a touch.

  The phone rang every other night. Anticipation kept me breathless. I felt unbodied. My need and taste for acquiescence horrified me. I fixated on Joan’s past. I feared her susceptibility. My sex tales stressed pathos. Her sex tales stressed seXXX. My fear stretched to encompass our inimical worldviews. I had become a sponge for reassurance and consolation. It appalled me. My need for titillation felt masochistic. It registered as peeping turned inside out.

  I brooded. I prayed. I toured for my journalistic collection. I called Joan from dark hotel rooms in a dozen cities. A new book and new acclaim. It felt like my old and safe world, redux.

  Joan and I were six months in. I knew the sex would never diminish and the roar would never abate. I couldn’t grapple the walls between us. A sob at the top of my chest was permanently stuck. I felt unreasonable. I felt infantile. I wanted more, more and more. It was staggeringly MORE than any sane woman could give.

  I flew to a Mexican book fair. I told Joan I’d call en route. I didn’t. I felt unequal to her weight. I felt soul-frail. I abdicated. I vowed survival in apostasy’s name.

  Misalliance, folie à deux, obsession. I mistakenly defined us as that.

  She said, “You look the same.”

  I said, “So do you.”

  “It hasn’t been that long.”
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br />   “You haven’t asked me for an explanation.”

  “I don’t need one. It got to be too much for you. I would have done the same thing if you hadn’t.”

  “You would have done it more gracefully.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “I am. You were always more gracious than me.”

  “I was surprised that you didn’t return my calls. The phone was always your guiltiest pleasure.”

  “I didn’t want to be tempted. I was afraid I’d go crazy with it all over again.”

  “That might very well happen.”

  “I’ll risk it.”

  “You say that now.”

  “I want to try again.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s no one but you.”

  15

  Winter ’05 was a dreamscape. Coastal storms indoor-contained me. Joan called twice. I ignored her swoopy inflections and erased the messages. The dream house four-walled the dreamscape. I sat still and brooded up hours. Helen went about her work life and social life. Margaret oppressed me. The Red Goddess appeared at least once per minute. She showed up conjured and unbidden. Her ban on images of other women remained in effect. I could think of no one else.

  I tried. I screened Marcia Sidwell, the airplane woman, Marge on the train. I was internally resistant. Anne Sofie von Otter and Anne Sexton, ditto. Likewise the woman from that rainy-night dream.

  Rain. 1980 to 2005. Joan as childhood imagery transmogrified. The other woman still recalled and real-life unfulfilled.

  My image bank remained intact. It stored the monomaniacal overflow of my world-class memory. It was a dormitory full of women the Goddess had slain. I got what I had always really wanted. I was alone with one woman who would never reappear and dash her power with the demands of real life.

  I was overdue to write a new novel. I was bored with film and TV work. Journalism and short stories were snoresville. I got a bug up my ass to write GIANT fiction. I had plot points, characters and historical flow brain-prepped. Helen urged me to create a less rigorous style and shape it with greater emotion. The crack-up had deadened my soul. My soul was astir now. I had an armored-car heist, black-militant shit, the late-’60s zeitgeist. I had protagonists, connective tissue, history writ small. I did not have the guts of the novel. A rainy-night brood session provided it.

  Joan.

  The Red Goddess as the unifying force of four years of History.

  Our clash of wills, our war of belief, that woman’s immensity exploded and contained.

  I waited in the dark for the phone to ring. I played the Hammerklavier adagio in summons. I waited three weeks. She didn’t call. She sent me a card, instead.

  It included birthday wishes and concluded with a poem. It ended with the word “Prayer.”

  She came that far. She honored our separateness that deeply. She assured my eternal love.

  Rain pounded San Francisco. The cab traffic-crawled and contained us. Space constraints and inclination kept us pressed close.

  It stayed non-verbal. The cabbie was a witness. He dropped us at a restaurant in Sea Cliff. The place was crowded and deterred conversation. Small talk got us through dinner and a cab ride to the Fairmont Hotel. My call: drinks at the Tonga Room.

  A tiki bar with a barge sunk in chlorinated water. Wall torches and carved god masks. The barge band played oldie covers. We imbibed the usual: scotch and coffee.

  Joan was pensive. I was full of grand declaration. Joan’s quiet gaze doused the volume and shut it off. I felt bombastic. I demanded the world in every moment. Joan looked exhausted. I saw what I had cost her so far.

  The corny music was a life raft. Our talk floated in sync. We chitchatted, segued into it and got to it. There were no interruptions or silent intervals. The All-Souls Retreat meets the Worker’s Collective. Commie-cell minutes and Lutheran call-and-response.

  My bullshit open marriage, her abrupt moods, our temperaments that no lover had ever withstood. My delusional expectations. Her debilitating brusqueness. Our incomprehensibly different worlds.

  My controlling nature. Her controlling nature. Our conflicting surrender pacts. Our amalgam of white and red flags aswirl.

  Our big hurt. Our dear love. Our moments of two different worlds subsumed.

  We let it trail off. We watched fat tourists dance. Our eyes found each other’s. We both nodded yes.

  Winter courtship, ’05. The process re-extends. Chaste weekends in Sacramento. Sex postponed and reinvented. A chastened rapport and a pre-commitment plunge.

  I stayed at a hotel near Joan’s place. My cover lies became more convoluted. “My colleague” in Sacto—epic falsehood now. Lying killed me. The added mendaciousness made it worse. The re-courtship softened Joan. I started to think marriage, daughter, dog. The jaunts between women sapped me. I wanted to rebuild a dream house in the Red Goddess’s name and reconsecrate the sacrament of marriage. Joan was planning a move to San Francisco. I dream-built our love shack by the Bay and reimagined holy matrimony again.

  My nerves were less than shot. My sleep was less problematic. I was less inclined to fight or run. The decarnalizing process tempered Joan and de-clawed me. We talked about sex, but didn’t do it. Joan reemerged and re-stunned me. I got re-obsessed within chaste boundaries. I reconceived our life together and repopulated it with ideals.

  Paradox, dichotomy, dialectic. The Diaspora meets the Reformation. Our divergent beliefs contained. Our corporeal selves reconstituted with a daughter. My safety-zone concept deconstructed with someone dangerous. I was the amnesiac. She was the black-clad woman with the answers.

  There was a single answer. It was Family. Joan never stated the word as goal or solution and refrained from comments on my familyless state. Jean Hilliker dumped my old man in November ’55. I was five decades into my only child/orphan/skirt-chaser/part-time husband act. Joan and I read wrong on paper. I revised our differences to read defiantly right. Prayer brought me to the concept of consolidation. Brood time brought me to a vision of parenthood and the mandate to fight even harder for an even truer cause and perhaps create a plane of unimaginable sanctification.

  I told Helen that I’d met a woman. She winced and said, I know. She cried a little. I inquired about her action. She laughed and refused to tell.

  I continued with TV and film work. I pored through research briefs and compiled a set of notes for my novel. I never told Joan, This Book Is You. I wanted to de-bombasticize. I wanted to reseal the union in a clarified state. We were buying time to observe ourselves. We were recycled lovers. I was bopping between dream houses, gone-bust and future. I was ever the amnesiac. I was ever prone to relive the life I forgot.

  • • •

  Re-consummation was joyful. The six-week prelude ended in Sacto, fresh with spring heat. The victory of resurrection jazzed me. I started predicting our future. Joan withstood a dose of it and blew up.

  Not restricted by your marriage, not without more trust of you, not with you on some maniac roll.

  I listened. I heard the answer. Joan didn’t ask me or tell me to bail on the marriage. She told me not to jerk her chain.

  Joan always knew how to play me. It wasn’t guile. She understood that her best weapon was the truth.

  I wanted more and more of her. I wanted honor to reign at our core. I didn’t want to cause Helen even more pain. The word Divorce ratched me. I wanted it both ways. I tend to err on the side of high cost and risk. I felt it coming here.

  Spring into summer. Hotel weekends in San Francisco and dinners with Joan’s friends. Late lessons in social etiquette and the merging of lives. Lessons that I learned. Lessons rewarded with Joan’s bright eyes and light touch.

  I was grateful for every small kindness she showed me. The gratitude was there that second summer. The gratitude remains with Joan gone.

  We spent the Fourth of July in Frisco. We had drinks at the Tonga Room and walked back to our hotel. It was downhill. We steadied each other. Joan slid on her slick-soled shoes.
I kept an arm around her and swooped her back up. The hotel suite was red-walled and sconce-lit. Joan plugged in a CD player and performed a torrid dance. Her movements were stunning and shocking. Her black garments fell just out of my reach.

  Lover, goddess, redeemer. Possessed eyes that went swoopy the instant the music stopped.

  • • •

  Joan slept. I didn’t. The black garments remained on the floor.

  Dawn hit early. I cracked the drapes for some light. I circled the bed and watched Joan from different angles. I saw a dozen sides of her with every tuck and stretch.

  So be it. Whatever it costs, whatever it takes.

  We said good-bye a few hours later. Joan drove home to Sacto and I drove home to Carmel. I told Helen then. We both cried. I fished for reassurance and got it. Yes, it was inevitable. Yes, it has to be. Yes, it’s the right thing.

  We cut our financial deal there in the kitchen. I was grandiosely generous. I told Helen that I’d always take care of her. She said, I know you will.

  We debriefed a fourteen-year marriage. Blame got spread bilaterally. We laughed a little and steered clear of the obvious detours. The talk did not relieve me. I felt shallow and cruel.

  Helen had tea. I cued up Joan images and felt my brain screen lurch. I saw Jean Hilliker. I calculated her current age as 90. I recalled March of ’58, and the day I inflicted The Curse.

  16

  Joan was fearful more than moved. She expained why. She rarely knew when I acted from a sense of drama or from a viable truth.

  So women will love me. So I get what I want. There is no other truth.

  I moved into a nearby Carmel apartment. Helen helped me pack. We put the dream house on the market and retained divorce lawyers. My lawyer found my largesse unnerving and financially unsound. I told her, Tough shit. Helen’s lawyer said, I dig this guy. He lets it all hang out.