The Hilliker Curse: My Pursuit of Women

by James Ellroy

  I studied Erika formally. The absence of sex fueled my study. She was grateful. She swooned at any dollop of recognition. Her harshness was a defensive posture and a moment-to-moment stance to propel her through the prosaic tasks of the world. She was impeccably gracious. She apologized for herself, without necessity. She jive-talked better than Karen and Helen Knode. I read her memoir. She was singularly perceptive and in surefire control of the autobiographical essay. This evinced her life in the constant assessment of meaning. Her retreat mode was dirty-girl talk for shock value. She was Ellrovian that way. If you can’t love me, notice me. Give us a microphone and an audience and self-inflicted harm will ensue. Erika was on a harrowing human journey. She was deadeningly encumbered by people she loved dearly. She had all my crazy exhibitionistic bullshit pegged. She understood it because we shared that psychic componentry. This was courtship. We had two months of words, concepts and tones decoded. Our souls were locked as one. Our bodies had yet to follow.

  We’re not even formal lovers. It was a long shot two months ago. I’m getting the vibe—she just might have the stones to jump.

  We began meeting at my pad. We sat at the kitchen table and reviewed her manuscript. It was a woman’s-whole-life book couched as a coming-of-age memoir. I’d heard some of the stories anecdotally. Erika’s tale of exile and neglect was my story with the volume dimmed, upscale backdrops and no curse and resultant murder. We converged again. Erika told me the tale of her marriage. She included the through-line that Karen always omitted. We converged and diverged there. I never demonized or ridiculed Erika’s husband. I knew she wouldn’t tolerate it. He was a good man in the thrall of a powerful and powerfully tormented woman. I knew that our collective mandate was to change each other. We were attempting to merge into a symbiotic and non-codependent whole—whatever the parameters of our union.

  We were united for that express purpose. It eclipsed sexual conjunction and anointed us with a solar system–high calling. We had to become the best parts of each other. I had to learn tolerance and greater humility. Erika required a transfusion of my determination and drive. I believed it because I knew it to be real beyond all manifestations of madness in my woman-mad life to date. Erika considered us cosmic. She repeatedly told me that our bond did not feel wrong. Her friendly love for her husband did not enrage me. They were comrades and parents united by shared history and ripped apart by a stultifying isolation. Their commitment to their daughters was a full-time job all its own. Seasoned adulterer Ellroy knew this. Neophyte Erika knew that she should not pass her marital legacy to her girls. That common meeting ground in no way astonished me. The newly confrontational woman had changed. She could not run and hide like she used to. Nor could I. She had changed me. I now inhabited a romantic world with no prescribed borders. This astonished me: I loved Erika past all expectations.

  Her manuscript required revisions. We worked at the table. It adjoined the living room and a long leather couch. Erika suggested an afternoon nap there. I gleefully acceded to the suggestion. There we were. The fit was tight. Erika threw a leg over me. My heart trip-hammered. Erika placed her head on my shoulder. We avoided eye contact that might lead to a kiss.

  Reinvestment.

  Fierce hearts beating. Let’s Twist again. Junior high limits adhered to—2009 as 1962.

  The summer wore on. We were nine weeks into our courtship. It was hot. The couch got too sticky. We curled up on the bed. Contact accelerated.

  We still imposed limits. We stretched out crossways and let our long legs dangle over the edge. The crossways pose became untenable. Two weeks of it was wracking our shins. We moved up and placed our heads on the pillows. Erika’s eyes were very close.

  She played me a song her 14-year-old daughter had written. It was a sweet and melodic love tune. Her daughter strummed a ukulele. Her voice broke during the high notes. I started crying. Erika leaned in. I kissed her then.

  She jumped.

  She was on her way back from a family vacation. Their car overheated and stranded them in Fresno in a heat wave. They dined en famille at a Rally’s Burger dump. The girls scrounged trinkets at a 99¢ Only Store. Erika and her husband sat on a grassy strip nearby. A dog turd reposed a few feet away. Erika picked it up with a Rally’s Burger wrapper and trash-canned it.

  She told him. He took it hard. That was mid-August. It’s now the following June.

  We’ve been together since then.

  21

  It’s who she is.

  It’s who she was and who she’s becoming.

  It’s the fact that she summoned me.

  Erika moved to a new pad near her old house. The girls took it hard and rebounded. The husband’s rebounding. He’s got a new girlfriend. Erika’s fighting off waves of residual guilt and regret. I buck her up with sociopathic good cheer.

  Marriage hits the rocks. Choppy seas pushed the boat there. Both of you were complicit. You both fought for the wheel.

  Divorce isn’t so bad. I’ve done it twice myself. Three’s my lucky number. Wear my tartan sash at our wedding—or at least think about it.

  My few friends express disbelief. Helen cites the “Tall Redhead Syndrome.” Karen says, “You finally destroyed a marriage. Mazel-fucking-tov.” The bulk of Erika’s many friends have censured her. You left that sweet man for him?

  I keep asking Erika to say it. Please, darling. Say it again.

  Yes, baby. You’re absolutely right. This is the sweetest shit that’s ever been.

  We’ve told each other the truth for a year now. Our most potent shared trait is gratitude. We read each other’s eyes and offer reassurance telepathically. We are dominant people possessed of frail contours and bottomless need. We are unassuageably hungry for each other and concommitantly as soft. Call us bubblegummers scaling the Mountain of Love. Call us passion’s pilgrims unbound.

  I’m fond of Erika’s daughters. The creation of two separate households have stretched them thin. They are wary of me and sometimes look askance at their mother and the odd man she hooked up with. I’m deferential to both girls. I crack a few jokes, work to amuse them and leave them alone. I push no I’m-your-dad agenda. They seem to respect me for that. I make their mother happy. I seem to score points there. I would never tell them that their presence marks the closest that I’ve ever come to Family.

  I’m not their father, or anyone’s father. Fatherhood would have been a giant tank job for me. The elder daughter smiled at me yesterday. She didn’t have to. I think I get it. Moments like that accrete and melt you. Biological connection is unnecessary. I bought the younger daughter a stuffed alligator. I speak to him in jive talk. The reward is a few offhand yucks. More moments will accumulate. I’m triply blessed. The woman I love has mothered two superb children. They are eminently worthy of their own determined contemplation. They’re children. They set a bar of propriety. The memoirists and self-obsessed lovers must rise to it.

  Our collective friends think we’ll flame out. They point to Erika’s girls as collateral victims. Many of Erika’s friends have scarlet-lettered her. An expressed “Fuck You All” would feel good in the moment and backfire in the end.

  Erika gets fearful. We diverge in many ways. She’s social and omnivorously connected to the world. I’m very reclusive. All I want is Erika enclosed within small spaces and time alone with her in the dark. I get fearful. I’m jealous and possessive. I’m always scanning for predators out to take my woman away. Erika talks to me softly and loves me out into the world. I’m often tensed up to fight. I’m rarely tensed up to run. I ran toward Erika for 50 years. I will not run away from her now.

  We are divinely deigned. Our bodiment was purchased by a mutual recklessness and refusal to forfeit belief in love. Together, we are sex and courage. Alone, we were skewed strains of self-will.

  I’m no good without her. She’s no good without me. I had always considered that a weakling’s epigram. I was surely mistaken.

  Tell me again, please.

  Yes, baby. Thi
s is the sweetest shit that’s ever been.

  Erika stepped out of the shower yesterday morning. Her wet hair was auburn-hued. She dried it off and cinched it back. She looked startlingly like Jean Hilliker.

  We scrabble at building a day-to-day life. It’s easier for Erika than it’s been for me. I’m becoming socialized. Erika has resisted my attempts to four-wall us into containment. We engage a range of activities and always return to a dark, enclosed space. She knows it’s all I want. She wants something besides that. I’m getting better. Our union has a greater shot at success if we maneuver in the world—clothed, on occasion. We always end up alone and enfolded. My nerves always decelerate as we get to my place or her place and the locks click.

  There’s things you must learn. You’ve taken me very far. Let me give you a primer on life outside of your head.

  Yes, darling—if you say it, then I know it’s true.

  I’ve met Erika’s soon-to-be ex-husband on two occasions. He personifies graciousness and concedes that we all did the right thing. He embodies a unique strain of the gratitude that I have always sought. He has lessons to teach me.

  I always get what I want. I more often than not suffocate or discard what I want the most. It cuts me loose to yearn and profitably repeat the pattern. Erika is teaching me to interdict this practice. I’ve never been loved or taught this gently or with this much precision or decorum. My moments of railing and retreat. Her confrontations that bring me back to the truth. Our belief that such moments will allow our moments to extend and our union to last.

  Erika often notes our cosmic dimensions. She stops short of crediting God. I would point to a moment in the winter of ’75.

  I was 26 and gravely ill. I was coughing up blood and walking down Pico Boulevard in a rainstorm. It was late at night. I was drenched and had no place to sleep. I passed a run of storefronts. One doorknob seemed to glow. I put my hand on it. The door opened effortlessly.

  I stepped into a warm office building. I found a stretch of floor near a recessed heating vent. I lay down and fell asleep. My clothes dried during the night. I awoke, revitalized. My bloody coughing fits had abated, temporarily.

  God left that door open for me. I have no doubt of that. I was bestowed with moments of reprieve. Other moments have accumulated and have assured my survival.

  Invisibility. The miraculous meets the mundane. Moments that build and form states of grace.

  I’ve entered one now. I feel transformed. I’m Beethoven with the late quartets and his hearing restored. Moments form the remainders of lifetimes. I reject this woman as anything less than God’s greatest gift to me. I address her with the faith of a lifelong believer. Her very being abrogates all strains of skepticism. She saw me and made me come to her. She found me while I clawed for myself, starved for Her and nobody else. Her great love emboldens me and cuts through my fear and rage. She is an alchemist’s casting of Jean Hilliker and something much more. She commands me to step out of the dark and into the light.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy novels—American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand, and Blood’s A Rover—and his L.A. Quartet novels—The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz—were international best-sellers. American Tabloid was Time magazine’s Best Book (fiction) of 1995; his previous memoir, My Dark Places, was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996. He lives in Los Angeles.