Dead Stars (62 page)

BETTER

BODY

AFTER

BABY

MOTHERHOOD CERTAINLY AGREES WITH HOLLYWOOD'S SEXY STARS! HERE'S HOW THESE HOT MAMAS LOST THEIR BABY WEIGHT—AND THEN SOME!

CLEAN

[Bud]

Til Your Hip Don't Hop Anymore

Bud

read somewhere on the Internet that last year there were 23,000 murders in Mexico. It made him think about his novel; maybe he should take a stab at dystopian sci-fi. He could write about how in the future, 80% of the world's population will be murdered annually. How in the future, there'd be no new pop songs, as all melodies/lyrics would be exhausted. In the future, Dolly will be dead too but the interest generated by multiple accounts would live on.

A fear both justifiable and irrational—the fear of falling—seized his mother, preventing her from leaving bed. The occasional diaper Marta taped her into was no longer only for bouts of diarrhea or leaky one-offs, as it had been the last six months or so; it was now her permanent toilet. When the caregivers informed him of this new development, Bud's first thought was,
How can she fall and die if she never leaves the bed?
He actually had a lot of guilt over what had become his own obsession—Dolly falling and dying—and spoke about it to a female therapist he was referred to by Michael's wife. Dr. Pelka said that with adult children, a death wish for one's elderly parents was fairly normal. (Bud wondered what other cultures would have made of her pronouncement.) She told him it was a common response to “caregiver burnout,” which apparently sons and daughters can have even if they weren't strictly caregivers.

With Mom pretty much bedridden, Bud had to chuck the fantasies of her falling, instead imagining death from bedsore infection or pulmonary embolism due to inactivity.

. . .

Bud was feeling vulnerable and a little sorry for himself when the envelope from CAA arrived by messenger, to cheer him—the Ooh Baby contract. He scanned the pages. Ooh Baby and even CAA took it for granted Bud was an artist: beside each place that required his signature was written
Bud Wiggins (“artist”)
, which gave him a pang of pride as well as one of doubt that he'd ever be worthy of the appellation. What would it take to fulfill that promise?

Lydia Davis, the author Michael and Wendy Tolkin threw a dinner party for, was at Barnes & Noble signing a new trade paperback edition of her acclaimed translation of
Madame Bovary
. She was in the middle of a 27-city tour and Bud thought he'd stop by; it was either that or the Central Library where David Ulin had undertaken interviewing the undertaker Joan Didion. Whereas authors like James Salter and Barry Hannah had been certified by academia as “writer's writers” (i.e. doomed to
nyrb classic
status), Davis was considered to be that
rara avis,
a writer's writer's writer. Apart from translating Flaubert, Blanchot and Proust, she had tried her hand at the art of the novel
and
short story, efforts, critics duly noted, for which the world was a better, more perfect place.

A lot of her followers were comfortable in asserting that her
Madame Bovary
translation was best approached as a novel
by Lydia Davis
, not Flaubert. In her own fiction, her stories were “famously short.” In one essay Bud read, a reviewer excerpted in its entirety what he called “one of her more famous stories, ‘Collaboration With Fly'”:

 

I put that word on the page, but he added the apostrophe.

The MacArthur Foundation gave her the genius grant.

Her famously short stories . . . one of her more famous stories . . .
famous to whom? Bud ruminated that all things must be famous in their own way to someone or other
,
a notion which had the comforting effect of making his dream of achieving fame as a novelist closer to becoming a reality than he thought. Based on Davis's example, Bud took heart that it might be feasible to release a book of exceedingly short stories of his own culled from the work-in-progress that was currently giving him such a headache. He'd call it
Some Extremely Short Stories
—
A Pop-Up Book, by Bud Wiggins
, and sell it out of a pop-up bookshop on Melrose funded by his inheritance. Maybe Barnes & Noble would carry it too, one of those little “humor” items on sale next to the cash register.
A Book of Short Torys, by Bud Wiggins
(with illustrations by the author). He'd take a little trip to the UK for research on Dolly's dime.
*

During the Q&A, a witty Davis groupie stood up and said, “Do you think it's
possible
Flaubert's book is actually a French translation of a novel by
Lydia Davis
called
Madame Bovary
?”

Hilarity ensued.

. . .

He took long walks in the evenings now. He began at dusk, looping down Gregory to Rexford, then over to Charleville, back up to Reeves.

The turnaround point was Horace Mann, his old elementary school.

As he passed the various houses where he spent much of his childhood, he thought of all the sons and daughters who had lived in them, the progeny of the famous, crushed beneath their legacies. A good friend from those days was Eric Douglas. A sad case—the obits said handsome Eric was 300 lbs when the police found him, dead of an overdose in his hotel room. He was Kirk's firstborn . . . Kirk had a new book out, a memoir. He'd written a bunch of other memoirs, novels as well. Bud thought he should probably have a look. You never know, maybe there's something to be learned. Michael Douglas told Brando Brainard that the stroke finally gave his father peace. Bud thought,
I wouldn't mind a stroke, though it'd probably be better to publish first.
Brando said Kirk had a second bar mitzvah when he was 83, something having to do with the biblical lifespan of 70. Thus far, the strokeless Bud had only been bar mitzvah'd once. He felt like a sluggard.

Someone forgot to lock one of the playground gates. Bud sat in the well-worn leather strop of a swing and propelled himself, letting his thoughts wander. Things were looking up. True, he'd been staying with his mother in the same room where he lived as a boy, but his days there were numbered. He was
Bud Wiggins (“artist”),
a working writer again. His novel would either come together or not, and Bud had surrendered to both outcomes. He was having a little trouble with the
Antigone
script though wasn't too worried; Michael said they could get together again soon to shoot the shit. Also, the pressure was off because Biggie, bless his soul, was preparing to have surgery to remove the tumor that'd been affecting his memory. Brando was completely caught up in that. No one would be breathing down Bud's neck. It gave him more time to work on the script
and
his novel.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd been on a swing. 50 years? He was never a daredevil like the other kids. In fact, swings scared him. No doubt those fears could be traced back to the days when his father installed a set in the backyard of their first house. Morris, a sadistic drunk, gave his son powerful push-offs and refused to stop, even when Bud screamed and cried and the swings shook, partially breaking free of their foundation – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –of an instant, he was on the asphalt.
What?
Confused. What happened . . . how silly!—the swing had broken. Well of course it did, it was old, and made for 100 lb kids. Bud fell hard on his ass and it hurt like hell.
What a fool.
Dad was probably laughing his ass off, or at least the rotting coccyx it was once attached to.

. . .

Bud was invited to a Sunday brunch at Michael and Wendy's.

The house in Hancock Park was beautifully done. He was a bit rusty on the social side so when Michael's wife playfully chided him for being a wallflower, Bud forced himself to mix. He wound up talking to the writer Scott Berg and his partner Kevin. Bud hadn't read any of Berg's work but knew he'd gotten the Pulitzer for a bio having something to do with Scott Fitzgerald. He also knew that his brother Jeff was the bookish head of ICM.

Michael came over and asked Berg if he enjoyed teaching at Princeton. The conversation led to the great Dante scholar Robert Hollander, a professor emeritus there. Though in pain from his fall and higher on oxycodone than usual, Bud wanted to join in. He had more than a passing knowledge of the Italian poet. In the last few years, he'd pushed himself through a pastiche of different
Infernos—
Pinsky, Mandelbaum, Longfellow—and read most of the SparkNotes to
Purgatorio
and
Paradiso
.

The conversation was heady and he held his own.

“I've read the Hollander translation,” Bud lied. Though it probably
was
true he at least owned the volume. Whenever a new translation of
La Commedia
appeared
,
he OCD-
one-clicked
. “It's always been a dream of mine to give a Dante lecture.”

Bud made it clear he was being wry, but not entirely. Why not? Why
couldn't
he one day lecture on Dante? And why shouldn't they take such an aspiration seriously? Michael was an esteemed novelist, Berg, an honored author of nonfiction. While not as celebrated, Bud was a working writer—a journeyman peer.

Berg twitched. It was only the discreet, gently admonitory touch of his partner that softened his scowl.

“
You
want to lecture on
Dante
?” said Berg. Already Bud felt like he'd been stung. “
Really?
Somehow, I don't
think
so.
Durante
, maybe! You can lecture on Jimmy
Durante
. Maybe.”

. . .

The soreness from the fall didn't go away.

Bud didn't have a doctor, so he went to Dolly's internist, Dr. Fine. He'd have to ask her for money because his Writers Guild insurance wouldn't kick in till next quarter.

He was back in the examination room putting on his shirt when the doc came in holding x-rays.

“Congratulations! You've got a break.”

“Really?”

“It's classic.”

“What do we do?”

“You're going to need surgery.”

“Jesus, you're kidding.”

“See the break?” He held up the film. Bud was too perturbed to focus. “We don't see it too much in people your age. It's literally called an ‘Old Man' fracture. You're a little young—I'd expect to see it in your
mom
. The
good
news is, it's eminently repairable. I'm sending you over to Moe Ravitz. He's in the Cedars Towers. Great bone guy.”

“Moe Ravitz?”

“Best geriatric orthopedist on the Westside.”

CLEAN

[Gwen]

High Resolution

Gwen's

lawyer had already been given an inkling of “the number,” but wanted the other side to go ahead and present its case. There was of course no question of the hospital's wrongdoing. A heretofore unbreakable chain of checks and balances had been torn asunder by human error, each link's failure more improbable than the next. The day of reckoning had come.

The timing couldn't have been worse for the plaintiff. St. Ambrose was compellingly forthright, telling Gwen and counsel that a philanthropist and longtime donor was about to make the largest gift to a private teaching hospital on record—a billion dollars. Bertram Brainard, whose name already graced one of their buildings, was deeply grateful that its doctors had discovered a rare, sesame seed-sized brain tumor in his son that had failed to be detected by the world-famous Houston clinic Biggie was initially brought to after exhibiting signs of memory loss. (There was no reason the hospital attorneys would have known that Biggie and her daughter had become fast friends, and no reason to enlighten them either.) Gwen got the sense they'd told her more than was needed—they could have just mentioned the billion-dollar gift and stopped there—because they wanted to state, almost for the record, that catastrophic mistakes can and
do
happen, and are not in the domain of any single institution; nor was it a conspiracy of negligence that brought them to this room, on this day, but rather the banality of events
—
lab reports read in haste and fatigue, faulty calibrations and equipment, malignant interpretations of benign processes—that accreted to provide an evil end.

The hospital was convinced that any public revelation of Telma's case would do more than cause the sort of damage to an institution and its caregivers that takes at least a generation to heal; it would result in the catastrophic loss of the Brainard endowment. Attorneys for the plaintiff informed that because of the gift's magnitude, the hospital board had approved putting a $35 million settlement on the table. The money could come monthly, quarterly or annually, in a formula to be determined by defendants' design. (Compounding interest assured that the amount paid out over the girl's lifetime would more than double the offer.) There were two caveats. St. Ambrose wanted the entire case sealed forever. Secondly, Gwen must agree to sign a document stipulating the settlement would be diminished by two-thirds should its details ever go public by virtue of memoir, interview, blog, et alia, traceable to the injured parties.

The men finished, leaving Gwen and her lawyer alone in the conference room.

“It's blackmail, isn't it?”

“A form thereof.”

“They don't even want me telling her! It's so
smarmy.
They're dictating the choices I have in sharing with Telma what happened—what they did that changed her life.”

“What you say is true. Though I'm not sure I'd have quite put it that way.”

“And what if I say no? What if I say go
fuck
yourselves, we're having a press conference. News at 11.”

“You'd still get a settlement. You'd still be rich—Telma would be rich. I can't visualize a scenario where you'll walk away with less than $25 million. There are always unknowns. Insurance companies can be tough. They'll put forth the argument that she's got an excellent quality of life.”

“Peter, she's a
fighter
. She wouldn't want me to take the money and run.”

“That may very well be. But I don't think you can effectively solicit her opinion at this time.”

“And
they
get a billion dollars. To fuck up more kids.”

“You could look at it that way. Or you could look at it as maybe saving a thousand kids—5,000 kids—for every one they get wrong.” He sucked on his electric cigarette. “If we go that route, you need to be prepared to go to trial. It's unlikely that would happen, Gwen, but you'd have to be prepared.”

“How much did the boy who Michael Jackson molested get? The dentist's kid.”

“Twenty million. In 1993 dollars.”

“So:
20
years ago, a boy—how old was he?”

“13.”

“Ha! A boy
Telma's
age gets $20 million for an
alleged
molestation. And
my
baby has a radical
mastectomy
for
no medical reason
. If you take inflation into account, it's probably the
same amount
.”

“That's a pretty fair representation.”

Long pause. The lawyer speaks up again.

“Why don't you go home, Gwen. Let me see how serious they are. I'll ask for a 5% penalty if word gets out. Let's see what they counter with.”

“I don't want this going on and on, Peter. I've lost 20 pounds, and I'm losing hunks of hair.”

“Let me talk to them.”

. . .

Phoebe what did I do what did I do what did I do I made a terrible mistake! I made another mistake! He just called and said “its up to you but if it were me I/d take it,” they always say its up to you but if it was them
theyd
take it, they just say it so you dont think theyre coercing, the man gets millions, Peter gets millions his percentage but now I/m blaming him! O Phoebe I/m so selfish I told him I just couldn't take it anymore I just said do it you know how I/ve been since we found out but what difference does it make how
I/ve
been what difference does it make
I
cant take it anymore? of course I can of course I can take anything they throw if I was any kind of mother can you imagine my baby suffering, how she suffered, the surgeries the pain the crying herself to sleep compared with my little problems my big problem! Ha, my little bullshit depressions or whatever Phoebe its so sick my saying to him even to you that I cant take it anymore just do it I cant take it anymore & thinking knowing what shes been through! Phoebe all I have in life is my daughter my relationship with/to my daughter, when she got diagnosed I said I swore before that horrible god because He was the only one I knew I cursed Him and said nothing will ever come between my daughter and me nothing & now they've bought me off thats what theyve done they bought & sold my relationship with my daughter my sacred relationship o my god my god my god they didn't buy it off I did I bought & sold my daughters trust I cant put that on them I can't blame them or anyone for anything anymore O Phoebe what do I do what do I do what do I say how can I look at her how do I even ever explain all the money, the mastectomoney Phoebe Phoebe what if something happens to me, what if I die of cancer wouldnt that just be so perfect? We need to make sure that youre the guardian should something happen to me you not my mother, & when Im dead and gone they say O & by the way sweetheart you have like 50 million dollars, we just dont know where it came from O Phoebe I want to die its too late I think its too late I tried to call & Peter said it was too late he said I made the right decision of course he would say that because he just got $10 million fucking or whatever dollars, he said to calm down, he used that phrase buyers remorse Phoebe why would he use such a detestable phrase? Im the golden calf so of course he said Id done a noble thing ugh he used that word, noble, he said that I provided for her I assured my daughters future her education her security o these guys are so slick you know all I did Phoebe all I did was assure HIS daughters future, thats what I assured,
HIS
daughters education, he said I assured her grandchildrens future too Telmas grandchildren thank god she didnt get chemo or there wouldnt BE any grandchildren Phoebe Phoebe yes yes please come over I think this is one of those things people kill themselves over no yes no I promise no I don't feel like harming myself not yet Im just saying, I took all the mirrors down I just cant look at myself Telmas with her grandma Phoebe how do I explain to Telma why Mommy took down the mirrors because she couldnt look at herself anymore because instead of telling you the truth Mama took the money Mama ran with the money & now your whole life is going to be built on a lie a terrible dark cheap soap opera secret, I know what happens when families keep secrets Phoebe I know you know I know it isn't good no good can come of it O Telma Telma I am so sorry I was so selfish and so weak okay OK yes Phoebe yes come but dont you think I should just tell her whatever the consequences? Theres a legal penalty, they engineered it that way fucking brilliant like they already knew me, like they had insider information like they already knew Id go for the money! Shes a whore she/ll go for the money, just watch and see . . . Phoebe I don't care anymore we dont need that money, not all of it, its an obscene amount, I dont really care I/ll show them I dont care maybe thats the way I can fix it okay now I feel a little better but still come over no I wont make any calls I promise, & if I dont want to do it all I probably need to do is call the attorney, I dont care what Peter said, I/ll get another lawyer, you cant tell me, you cant tell me they can say no because no money has exchanged hands and even if it had I could just give it back, thats what tells me somethings wrong, thats what tells me I fucked up that Im thinking about how to no I wont make that call not until you get here Im so greedy Im
just a
greedy bullshitter Im a whore isnt that what I am? Im a whore who wants the money maybe I/ll just tell her maybe I/ll just talk to Telma & ask what she thinks we should do maybe she/ll say just let them just let them pay Mama or maybe she won't, maybe she wouldnt maybe she/d just say Mama you sold my breasts why did you sell my breasts you sold them to the highest bidder! oh Phoebe hurry hurry no I wont I wont do anything I promise, I/ll just sit here no I wont just come just hurry please just come