Roadmap Part 3

CHAPTER 12 - VICTIM BAND

My phone rings. My brother. Talking in Lawyer-ese. In his South Florida accent. "Carrie, it's Jeff. The short answers to your questions are I don't know what's going on with my Mom.

"I'm concerned she's finally gone off the deep end. She succeeded in getting herself evicted from her apartment and I don't know what her plans are."

Every weekend I call Mom and listen to her rant about politics.  At seventy-two, she now focused her hostility toward the U.S. government.  Like many crazy people, her craziness waxes and wanes.  One moment raving about conspiracies and the next, making a startling astute comment about Boris. 

All my life, I’ve hated calling her.

Last week when I called, she complained of a "flea invasion."  Her talk was loose, rambling, breathless.  I'd known for years that she had psychotic episodes, but my brother refused to recognize them.  I’d pray this isn't one of them, but the odds decreased today when she wasn't reachable by phone and the answering machine didn't pick up.

So I called Jeff. He would know if something had happened.  My brother and I hadn't talked or written in a year.  Not even to comment on our divorces.  Now he says:

"Unbeknownst to my mom, the whole thing with the fleas seem to be a symptom of a much greater problem, at least according to the exterminators that I've talked to.  So it's not a pretty story."

When our parents divorced, I chose to live with Dad because I'd always known she was crazy.  But my brother always believed her problems could be solved with money.  It was Jeff who paid her rent, furnished her apartment, took the heat.

"Why is she getting evicted?" I ask him now.

"She put mothballs into her air conditioner, and the fumes got into the neighbors' air conditioners.  We're talking class action suits here."

"Do you know where she is?"

"Truthfully, no.  All I can advise you is to wait and let her contact you."

Okay.  So Mom’s \out of reach.  But Jeff...

"Is your divorce final, yet?" I ask, hoping he might ask about mine.  "Do you still see Mary?"  His ex-wife.

"The final hearing's coming up soon and that's about all I care to talk about in that regard."  He asks me to call if I hear from Mom and hangs up.

She calls at midnight.  Three A.M. Florida time. 

"Oh my God, Carrie, these goddamn fleas!" her voice sounds as cracked and worn out as an old record. "I'm in agony. They sting and then you bleed. They're in the toaster.  They eat my food before I can. They're even laying their eggs in my dentures.  I'm in agony.  Nobody believes me, Carrie. I've got to get out!"

Trying to keep my voice easy, caring through my sobs:

"Maybe you should go to the Emergency Room, have them look at the bites."

"Yes, you're right."

She was agreeing.  Relief.  Then -

"No! I went to the doctor, he couldn't find anything wrong."

"Mom, you need help..." Desperate now.  God, help her.

"No!  No shrinks!  Jeff wanted me to go to a shrink.  Screw you both.  I've been to plenty of shrinks, how many have you been to?"

"A lot," I say.  Well, a couple. 

"I'm going to Cocoa Beach. To live with my friend, Dalara.  There's a vacancy opening up in her building. Only $250 a month.  eff won't have to support me.  He gets so mad all the time. You've never tried to help me, Carrie. You know that children can't help their parents. That's why I love you."

Her next words almost make my heart stop. "You're just like me."

What's going to happen to this woman?  Scared, so scared, I plead: "Can you give me Dalara's number?"

"No!  No!  You can't call her, she doesn't know I'm coming.  I'm selling this furniture, renting a car and going."

Trying to breathe through my tears, "Promise me you'll take my phone number with you...and Jeff's..."

"Oh, I always carry all my information!" Then she’s gone.  Hung up and gone.

I call Jeff. Leave a message on his machine. Run out onto the deck where Eva is sleeping in a chaise lounge chair.  I wake her up and manage to get the whole story out, ending with:  “You're just like me!"

Eva rolls her eyes and crosses herself.  "Call 911 in Orlando.  Have her committed."

Could 911 help?  What if she acts sane all of a sudden?  She can do that. "I'm afraid."

"What are you afraid of?"

I stop to think. "That I'll wind up like her."

I’m shaking so hard, the lounge chair rattles under me.

"Close your eyes," Eva says, her raspy voice soothing.  I close my eyes and hear her say: "You have a Victim Band around your head."

"What's a Victim Band?"

"An energy field that’s wrapped around “victims.”  All the victims of the Hillside Strangler had them.  Yours is only around your head and down to your neck.  That's why you swing back and forth between high and low self-esteem."

"How can I get rid of it?" I feel open, drained, pliable. Willing to do whatever.  In the light of the almost full moon, Eva no longer looked like our lovable Ripcord, but like a little wise Buddha.

"Close your eyes again.”  Her voice blends with my thoughts in the darkness.

"In the next two years, you will learn you don't have to like. You don't have to fix.  You don't have to take care of."

She begins to chant softly, "'OM NAMAH SHIVAH-YA...OM NAMAH SHIVAH-YA...OM NAMAH SHIVAH-YA...'"  I chant with her.  The pain recedes.

"'I HONOR THE GOD IN MYSELF,'" Eva translates.  I keep repeating this mantra until it whispers through my head in concentric circles.  Crickets pick up the harmony.  My thoughts blend into the trees, the air, the moon. 

When I open my eyes; Eva says quietly:

"Adversity is the stone that polishes you."

My phone rings. I wake up on the floor of the deck. Eva is sleeping on her chaise lounge.  I run to my room and grab the receiver.  It’s Jeff.

I tell him, "I'm going to have Mom committed..."

"It's already been done."

This is how he did it:

Jeff called Mom and asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'm cleaning."

"What are you cleaning?"

"Blood."  Then she says she wants to kill herself.

Using his deadpan logic, Jeff managed to convince her to write down her ailments and take the list to the Emergency Room.  Mom loves to make lists.  So she arrived at the hospital with her list, talking suicide and fleas, and bingo!  Involuntarily committed.

And they could not find a single flea bite.

The next morning, I awake to find a pile of magazines and small pink and green hearts made out of construction paper in front of my door. On top is a note from Eva:

"ASK ME ABOUT THIS."

CHAPTER 13 - GLUED HEARTS

Eva sits on my bed and shows me her box of wishes that have mostly come true.  Magazine photos of things she once wanted, that she pasted onto hearts made of construction paper.  There’s a woman in fur getting out of a limo in a Tropical Paradise.

"The year after I cut this ad out," she says.  "I won a trip to Tahiti and a mink coat!"

Sitting on the deck's sofa cutting out pictures from magazines and pasting them onto colored hearts. "Think of what you want," Eva had advised. What did I want? There’s the rub. After sifting through those magazines all day in Topanga’s July heat, after three hours sleep, I had come up with three pictures: A woman with a cat on her lap sitting in a country meadow. A meditating Buddha. Old Chinese people doing Tai Chi.

And finally on a whim, I cut out a portrait of a Kabuki actor from a Air Tokyo ad and glue it on a heart.  Did I want an Asian man?  The air stinks good from astralgus, dong quai, and ginseng boiling in my "medicine pot" on the stove inside the house.  Tony sits at my feet, picking out tunes on his guitar.  Edward sweeps pine needles off the cabin roof, while the cat follows him step for step.

Around the corner, lies Eva in her chaise lounge with eyes shut.  She's been like that all day.  Tony actually put a mirror under her nose to see if she was breathing.

Letting my arts and crafts project slide from my lap, I flop my head against the peeling upholstery and whine:  "Sleepy."

"Go to sleep," says Tony. 

I look at my watch.  "I've got to turn my herbs off in twenty minutes."

He holds out his hand for my watch.  At my hesitation, he says quietly, "I believe there's times for construction and times for de-construction." Our fingers touch in the exchange.  A brief current of tenderness.

I stretch out, feeling safe.

"I should nap, too," he says.  "S'posed to get together with Belinda tonight, but I'm feeling like shit."

"Belinda?" I ask, closing my eyes, "Who's Belinda?"

He’s always out with somebody. I'd never met one of them. I never even heard Rebecca's name again after that night. And the French woman is living with a man old enough to be her father while she decides "what she really wants to do with her life" so Tony hasn’t made a move toward her all summer.

"Remember that woman I met at that party?"

"The one you like intellectually, emotionally and physically?"

"Not necessarily in that order." He stops playing. "Man, I almost collapsed yesterday giving a treatment.  That's a no-no in this business."

"And you've been peeing a lot."  I shouldn't have said that.

"Man, you really got me under surveillance!"

"Well, my bedroom wall is a bathroom wall."

"So do those herbs really help, d'ya think?"

"Sure they do."

"Then why do you drink them all the time?"

"It's a process.  Each week I get a little better.  Pretty soon, I'll stop.  I'm not as sick as I was.  It started on my wedding day.  An undiagnosed infection in my liver and pancreas.  For seven years.  Finally an 88-year old Polish friend told Boris that he’d gone to Dr. Yang for his prostate cancer and it was in remission.  This was years before I met Si Fu.  I was already boiling Chinese herbs when I started Tai Chi in Ventura. Tony, I spent so much time in Chinatown, Boris used to joke they’d name a street after me.  Not to change the subject, but…"

"Yeah? " 

"Have you ever had physical therapy?"

Examining the strings he's plucking, "Sure I have."

"What for?"

His look says it's personal.  But...

"Guess you'd call it a high school football injury. I tore a muscle in my groin during practice.  Coach told me to quit whining.  After the game, I got paralyzed on my left side.  Two years of physical therapy. We're Italian. You know,  Italiano.  For a man not to be able to walk..." A loud strum of chords. "Okay!  Betcha can't name this tune!" I listen, absorbing his pain.

From the side of the house, comes a strangled animal cry that causes heads to turn and the cat to jump.  Eva stumbles into view, eyes like pinwheels, kimono sliding.

 "I had a vision..."

My roomies and I try not to snicker.  Eva continues in her drugged-out monotone:

"We grew up as boys together in Tibet.  They sent us into the Himalayas for spiritual teaching, as they did all boys, but the four of us went together and never returned.  We stayed and became monks. The tallest man was the leader of our chants and he can still sing. He still has a wide range. Now we have returned to be cosmic warriors for the healing of Mother Earth."  Then she collapses. 

xx

Eva comes to like Dorothy surrounded by Tin Man (Edward), Lion (Tony) and Scarecrow (me), and the first thing she says is "Edward, can you sing?"

"Of course I can. I’m an actor."

Tony interjects: "Hey, wait a minute. I can sing too."

"Edward’s the tallest, " says Eva. "Edward, what’s your range."

“Four octaves.”

"Then you will lead our chants.  Tonight is the full moon of the Summer Solstice."

xx

Eva spent the rest of the afternoon digging a fire pit in the dirt part of the yard.  Tony’s Belinda cancelled so he’s in for this event.  We will each bring something to burn.   

A fire now rises up into the night as we prepare to release whatever we need gone.  Edward steps forward with Rinko's icy letter. The fire crackles. He drops it into the flames and it goes up with a sizzle, dissolving into a flurry of black ashes that blow back in his face.

His grin melts years off his face, "This is fun!" 

Tony takes a hardcover book from the pocket of his baseball jacket, holds it up and announces, "This book fucked up my life!" It’s title? Saving Your Life. He crouches before the fire and patiently feeds it, page by page. When he leans over to poke it with a stick, his long loose hair falls across his face like a dark curtain.

"I was reading this when I broke up with Kiki," he says in a hoarse, blistered voice.

Eva gasps. "I knew the man who wrote that. He's the devil incarnate."  The book takes a long time to burn.

I’m next.  In my hand is Boris’ Tao Te Ching.  I shred it.  The tough staples resist so I harshly tear the book in half until they pop.  I rip and rip and rip--putting my whole body into it until the last ragged bits flutter from my fingers and are consumed by fire.

This morning I had a call from Boris:

"Carrie, do you have my Tao Te Ching?  I can't find it."  I hung up on him.

“Feel better?” asks Tony.  Indescribable lightness rises in me.

We dance for a while around the fire while Edward leads us in gibberish chants. Let’s get naked and run through the woods!” suggests Eva. But we laugh so hard, she says, "Shhhh! Don’t want neighbors to complain. "  

Eva hugs herself with tight arms and then yells, "Okay! Okay!" With deliberate drama, she whisks off her kimono, revealing a silver jumpsuit underneath with a bulging left pocket.  Edward begins to chant again. 

Eva reaches into her pocket and pulls out...

A lettuce.

She tosses the round, raw green vegetable into the flames where it flips over and over, gradually turns black, and eventually lies under the licking flames, as it curls and sobs like the head of a Industrial Light and Magic dying alien.  "NO MORE FUCKING SLAVERY!"

Eva’s visions have told her it’s time to eat cooked food.

Back in my room, I write on a postcard:

"I DON'T HAVE YOUR TAO TE CHING.  DON'T CALL ME ANYMORE." 

Then for the first time in long time, I sleep and dream.

CHAPTER 14 - THE "L" WORD

A month after our ritual, Eva announces she’s going back to visit her family in Columbia for the first time in ten years.

"I have to bring gifts!" she moans. "I don't know what to bring. I don't know what they'd like." For the first time since I came to this Topanga hideout, I have a clue how to help her. I give her the three new watches Aunt Vermillion has just sent me and amber jewelry that Boris' mother gave me. Eva asks me to take care of the house. collect the rent. Pay her bills.

"The day before I come, hire Consuela and her husband to clean the place."

Yes, yes, yes. I promise. Happy to have something to give her. Payback time.

That full moon-ritual had served as the blast of the starter gun for all of us.  No sooner had the ashes in the fire pit cooled than we all began to slide through swift changes.

Tony and Edward now have girlfriends so they aren’t here much.  Most nights I have the whole plantation to myself.  I spread my sleeping bag on the deck and lie under the stars in the fresh July night.  But never content. Crying for my broken marriage...longing for a warm, understanding man to hold me.

Edward has become a great example of how love can make your life sing.  On his way home from the Grand Canyon a few weeks ago, he pulled over to the side of the road and called a woman in L.A. on whom he had a crush.  Then he drove straight to her and they spent the next seven hours together.  He showed up in Topanga around midnight looking pleasantly disheveled by driving and lust.  But the next night, he came in depressed.

“I wanted to sleep with her and she said, ‘I don't feel that way about you, Edward.’"

He’s already talked with his sponsor who advised him to "go slow."  After two weeks of diligent dating and late-night phone conversations, Edward now appears in the kitchen at 1:00 a.m. where I’m sitting on the kitchen floor petting the cat good-night.

“You have that glow that only copulation can bring,” I say.

Edward closes his eyes as if to retain the euphoria and whispers, "Tonight Suki and I said the 'L' word.'" 

The next night, Tony leans in the doorway of my room showing off his sunburn and shit-eatin' grin.  "Hey, roomie.  Just checkin' in."

I’m on the bed where I’ve been meditating.  The only light source is a candle, but I can see that he looks terrific. "Let me guess...Belinda."

We went to the beach today.  It was, and I don't use this word lightly, magical."

  "That shirt's very flattering," I nod at his new white cambric shirt.

"You're very flattering. No, really. You look good, too."

Do I look different?  Can he see it?

"Well, I kind of met someone." I can feel my pride at the words.  I feel beautiful.

"No kidding! What's his name? Not that I'd know him."

"Edward knows him.  His name is Shane and he's in Suki's play.”

"Wow, Japanese?"

"Japanese American."

xx

Edward’s Okinawan girlfriend Suki was understudying a couple of roles at East/West Theater in Silver Lake. Two nights ago, she'd gotten her chance to go on, and Edward asked if I'd like to go with him. Suki could get us comps and he knew how much I liked her. In the short time I’d gotten to know her, I was crazy about her. 

If I were a man, I would have wanted to marry Suki.

Despite her "Asian Classic" waist-length hair, thick-lashed eyes and hushed voice, this twenty-seven-year old is no "submissive Asian female." She’s a hard-drinkin', chain-smokin', hard-lovin' woman. 

Edward had already begun to confide his doubts about Suki to me during his daily watering of the vast yard (which I had agreed to water on alternate days). The introverted Edward complained that Suki was too introverted and her breath sometimes smells unenticingly of cigarettes and alcohol.

"But the sex...our bodies," he says, shaking his head over the miracle, "just seem to know each other."

Suki was intuitive and fun. And a Cancer. We hit it off. 

I meet Edward at the theater, not dressed up. I left my face bare, hair in a rubber band. A comely green sundress was my only concession to hope. Inside East/West, feelings begin to reawaken in me. We sit in a cramped space on folding chairs on risers, with the stage so close you can feel the actors breathe. I spent much of my life on a stage just like this one. Or in a chair like this one taking or giving actors' notes.

Home. 

xx

This is how I met Shane:

The play was a kind of Asian American Gothic. Suki floated on stage in a diaphanous gown, playing the spaced out Japanese American matriarch. Ethereal, she settled in a rocker and waved her long red fingernails like a Tennessee Williams heroine. 

Then an Asian American man strode in, picked up an ax and began splitting logs. He was close to my height, maybe five six. With an athletic grace. When he spoke. his voice was rich as dark caramel.  Like n Asian John Wayne. I could hardly breathe. 

"Carrie, you're in hormonal overdrive," I scolded myself.

But I couldn't take my eyes off him.  Maybe it was his close proximity (we could hear the actors breathing) but I felt I already knew him.  And whatever I didn’t know, I wanted to learn.  Every time he uttered a word, I felt his voice brush against my skin like a stroke of silk.

He’s the only male.  Of course he stands out. 

xx

When the play ended, Edward turned to me and said: "When I see her on stage, I realize how lucky I am."

Suki was haunting, unforgettable.

Edward took me backstage and introduced me to Shane who received my compliments with bland distance. I felt somewhat apologetic. Shane's indifference seemed to say. This isn’t your world. 

Edward had already explained that Shane and a young Korean American actress named Grace had just started going out.  The two couples had formed a foursome, going out after the shows.  Grace was the other understudy and she'd also gotten her first chance on stage tonight. Her acting was less striking than her physical presence.  She appeared young (eighteen?) with a supermodel’s long-waisted bod and a face that wafted fragile and strong face. A square jaw giving edge to her delicate cheekbones.  All topped off with skiens of glorious black hair.

Tonight was the after-show understudies' celebration.  And I was invited.

On our way to the parking lot, I heard Shane wisecrack behind me and I wisecracked back, never looking behind me. But I could hear his surprised chuckle and I felt connection.  As tangible as my hand.

We stood next to our cars trying to decide which restaurant.  Everyone seemed grateful to go with my suggestion (as a former eight year resident of Silver Lake).  El Conquistador.  The food was above-the-line Mexican, the colorful decor full of tropical birds and palms, and the service always made us feel at home. When Boris and I would go.  It was a block from where we used to live.  We five sat at a long white-tableclothed table in the middle of the room.  I sat on the end; Shane sat at the other end.  But still.

Describing the connection, I tell Tony: "We clicked hard." Spent the evening leaning across the others to talk to each other, seated at opposite ends.  Riding on our spontaneity, we volleyed questions, answers, anecdotes.

"What did you talk about?"

Nothing quotable. Dialogue took a back seat to the undercurrent of attraction and genuine liking between us. We talked directing…Mexican food…politics.  "And he got all of my jokes.” The ultimate  turn-on.

Offstage, Shane was low-key and entertaining. When we first sat down, he explained, “This salsa is so hot, it’ll lower your voice.” Putting a spoonful in his mouth and doing a hilarious imitation of Toshiro Mifune in fake Japanese.

While digging into his chile relleno, Shane called to me, "My parents lived down the street for years, but I've never been here. What other great places do you know about?"

"Well, there's Millie's. They've got a counter with seven seats and they cook on the grill right in front of you. On the wall, they've got a framed photograph of this skinny old woman in a waitress uniform—that's Millie—she's dead now."

I sounded fine, but inside I was a mess. I couldn't eat. Instead I nursed a margarita, drinking half of it. Our speedy jokes, the lateness of the hour and my surprise enjoyment of this man and his appreciation of me (even at the expense of his girlfriend's Big Night) had sent me into orbit. As the check was being tallied, I heard music coming out of the loudspeakers on the walls next to the stairwell.

"I didn't know they had a band here," I said, thinking the music was coming from upstairs.

Edward stared at me with a reformed alcoholic's stern brow and said, "Carrie, there's no band here."

Embarrassed, I sank back in my chair.  But before the awkward moment could take hold, Shane leaned over and suggested with wry cheerfulness, "Maybe it's the ghost of Millie."

That made everybody laugh.

By the end of the evening, Shane was sparkling at me and I sparkled right back.  The only one who wasn't sparkling was Grace. 

"So you stole him from his girlfriend," Tony says somewhat proudly.

"I don't think I stole him," I say. "We just couldn't  stop."

"Look at John Lennon and Yoko Ono," he smiles.  "They couldn't stop either."

"Except I’d be John and he’d be Yoko. "

My last memory was standing on the street corner saying good-bye...Shane's strong handshake ("It was good meeting you").  While his girlfriend was already in the car.

"Is that it?" Tony asks, sounding disappointed.

"Yeah." But something else. Something felt. Tony seemed to feel it, too.

"Maybe lightning'll strike again," he says. 

I explained that I had already tried to feel Edward out to see if he noticed anything. But when I told Edward "I had fun last night," he responded that Shane is hilarious and an excellent actor. "Grace is twenty. Shane's more our age."

"A twenty-year old probably doesn't have much to talk about with him," says Tony. "Can't Edward or Suki arrange a chance meeting, a dinner, a something...so you can see him again?"

"Those days are over," I reply.  "If they can't chase me, then it's not meant to be."  I'd asked Boris out on our first two dates.  I only saved face because he proposed.

And as I make my way towards divorce, I’ve watched my two male roomies chill once the object of their pursuit begins to respond.  Just the other day, Edward confided with a worried gaze:

"Suki told me when she woke up this morning at home, 'You weren't here and I missed you.'"

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"No, that's not good.  I don't want her to get so dependent."

The next night, he entered the kitchen with a chagrined expression, holding a mug with a photo of them on it that says "I LOVE YOU" painted with pink hearts.

"Look what she gave me," he croaked as if it were a venereal disease.

 

Two weeks later, lightning struck.