John Belushi Is Dead (28 page)

I pushed my empty milkshake glass aside. I was still starving. I wanted burgers and fries and pancakes and whatever else was on offer. I wanted to eat until I was so sick I couldn't possibly think of anything else other than the discomfort in my stomach. Eating burgers seemed normal. Sitting in a diner was normal. It was more normal than being in a hospital, holding your friend's hand while he told you he had some big, terrible secret, like a dumb scene from the soap opera
General Hospital
. I didn't want to know what terrible sins Hank thought he was hiding. Part of me wished he would die before he could ever tell me.

“Hilda, I know living with me has been hard. I know I'm very different from your mom and dad, maybe a bit too serious, too forceful.”

“Nah, you're cool,” I said, eager to wipe the hurt from her eyes. I'd never thought about how hard it might be for Lynette to live with
me
.

“I don't know what was going on back there at the hospital,” she continued. “You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, and I'm not going to force it out of you. We don't really work that way. It's something I've kind of prided myself on, letting you make decisions on your own. Just know that if you need my help, I'm there. Don't be too proud to ask for it.”

“Okay, Aunt Lynette. Thanks.”

“And if you need anyone arrested, just let me know. I can get it done. I know people.”

I laughed. At that moment I wanted to tell her everything about Hank and Jake, the places I visited every day, and what I thought Hank planned on asking me to do. I wanted to tell her about Benji, how he had changed. But something stopped me. Deep down I knew that if I told her what had gone on at the hospital, I might never get to hear what Hank had to say and never have the chance to help him do what he needed to do, no matter how much it scared me. I picked up the remaining quarter from the table just as Elvis finished. “My turn,” I said, and put the coin in the slot. I pushed two buttons I knew by heart and waited. The familiar sound of the circuslike keyboard started and Lynette smiled.

“‘California Girls.' Talk about being predictable!”

“Everybody loves ‘California Girls,' I said. “Like you said, sometimes it's perfectly okay to be like everybody else.”

W
HEN
I
GOT HOME
, all I wanted to do was sleep: crawl into bed, throw the covers over my head, and never come out. Jake hadn't called. At that point I hoped Jake and Hank never contacted me again, that they would disappear from my life just as quickly as they had arrived. If Hank wanted to die, he would have to do it without me. I'd rather forget I ever knew him than live through losing him, losing anyone, ever again.

I tossed and turned under the covers. I couldn't sleep. I turned on the television; there was nothing but infomercials and music videos full of hos dancing in front of gangsters. I turned off the TV and put on my headphones, but even the haunting, pitch-perfect voice of Karen Carpenter couldn't soothe me. I had that old death itch. I wanted to hide in corpses, find comfort in the dead. I jumped online, went to all the usual sites, but nothing was helping. Even newly posted pics of Princess Diana's car crash weren't enough to get me excited. Seeing that tuft of beautiful blond hair sticking
out of the crushed Mercedes-Benz just made me feel even sadder. I started to wonder what was wrong with me.

I checked my email. There was a message from Benji; the subject line read GOLDFISH. I looked at Sid, now renamed Dee Dee after my favorite Ramone, swimming happily in circles in his new fish bowl from Petco, his scales glistening a healthy orange. I tapped on the glass and he turned his little fish head to look at me: it looked like he was smiling, but it could have just been my imagination. I considered just deleting the email, pretending I never got it. But there was something inside me that couldn't write Benji off quite yet, and now that my relationships with Hank and Jake were disintegrating, it kind of felt good to see Benji's name in my inbox. I took a deep breath and opened the email.

Yo
,

So how's it going? Sorry it's been a while but I've been really busy—me and the guys have been on so many road trips I'm hardly home anymore. It's crazy. Tomorrow we're going to the shooting range. I'm getting good but not as good as Dan. He's got a semiautomatic (don't ask me how he got it) like the one Eric Harris had. Its sick ass.

Anyways, I just wanted to know if you know what happened to my goldfish? I looked for it today in the closet and it was gone. Mom said she didn't do anything with it so I thought you might know. Anyways, no big deal. Its just weird you know? I was getting some good data.

There's going to be a party soon and if you want you can come. I think you'll be pretty surprised by where it is.
It will be the coolest party you have ever been to. So come if you want.

B
.

“What do you think, Dee Dee?” I asked my goldfish. “You wanna go to a party?”

His mouth formed an O and I don't know if it was because I was just really tired, but I swear it looked like he was saying, No, no, no, and little bubbles started to pop to the surface. I rubbed my eyes and looked at the clock. It was 2 a.m., and I hadn't felt this alone in a very long time. “You love me, don't you, Dee Dee?” I asked. Of course he did. He had to; I'd saved his life. Is that what it took to get someone to love you? I turned off the computer, got into bed, and decided to think about it all in the morning, because tomorrow, as they say, would be another day.

T
HE MORNING BROUGHT NO
answers. I took a cab to Westwood cemetery to see Marilyn Monroe's grave. It was a small cemetery, discreet, hidden behind the skyscrapers of downtown Wilshire. Truman Capote was buried there. Dean Martin. Natalie Wood. Jack Lemmon. Rodney Dangerfield had a headstone that read
THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD
. But Marilyn was the biggest star, the one we all came to see. Her crypt was toward the back and you could see it from a distance, the bright colors of a hundred roses, pictures, and teddy bears left every day by adoring fans. Already I could see there were people there, a large group of tourists, cameras raised, packed lunches carried in bus-tour backpacks. I approached warily. Marilyn's crypt in the wall was covered in bright red lipstick kisses. People had scribbled their names on it, left her messages, prayed at her feet. A woman in the crowd turned to her friend.

“Did you know Marilyn was a size
sixteen
?” she squawked.

“Sixteen? My goodness. She would never have gotten work today.”

“Not a chance in hell. She was a
very big girl
.”

I wanted to scream, tell them to leave her alone. What more did they want from her? Marilyn was hounded all her life, and now, even in death, she was given no peace. Some people believed Marilyn had been murdered by the Kennedys or the CIA, but I didn't believe that. Marilyn just wanted to die. Sometimes when people want to die, there is nothing that can be done, no way to stop them. And wasn't it their right to die if they wished? Who were we to tell others they had to live?

I turned away from them. Graveyards weren't for dead people; they were for us—reassurance that we wouldn't be forgotten when we were gone, that something would remain. I took a cab back to Encino.

W
HEN
I
GOT HOME
Lynette wasn't there, and I was happy to have the house to myself. I walked into my room, thinking I might keep reading
American Psycho
, knowing I didn't have the stomach for it anymore. Regardless, I picked the book up from where it was sitting on the bed and was once again struck by the barrenness of my own bedroom. It still pretty much looked like a guest room, with its bare walls and sparse decor. I decided it really was time for me to start making the space my own, because who knew? Perhaps I would still be there in a few years' time now that moving in with Benji was most likely not in the cards. I could extend my artifacts collection into a space larger than a single shelf, maybe a glass cabinet similar to Benji's, and I could maybe convince Lynette to let me put up framed posters from my favorite movies on the walls:
Harold and Maude
,
Mulholland Drive
,
Animal House
. I immediately thought of Jake and wondered what he was doing now, and I found myself thinking about all the years I had lived
without knowing him; I wondered what he had been doing all that time.

It was then that I saw the photograph pinned to my corkboard, a photograph that hadn't been there when I left for the cemetery early that morning, a photograph I had never before seen in my life. It was an old-fashioned Polaroid of a young woman with long, auburn hair parted down the middle, a baby in her arms. My first reaction was that it was my mother. The baby, wrapped in a soft blue blanket, looked up at the woman in wonder, showed a hint of a smile. I knew who the baby was. The baby was me. I had that blanket all my life, had it in the backseat with me when our car ran into that truck. I carried it all the way to the hospital and wouldn't let the nurse take it from me no matter how gently she pulled on it.

That's when I realized who the woman in the photograph really was. It was Lynette, of course. The woman who had told my mother off for letting me watch
Porky's
when I was six, who had walked past me nearly every day for the last five years and barely brushed against me. Here she was, staring down at me with a large smile on her face, teeth showing, hand wrapped tightly around the blanket, keeping me safe. I wished that I had been shown this photo before, then I wondered why it should make such a difference. But it did. The fact that Lynette had pinned it there herself told me all I needed to know. Lynette and I would be okay, perhaps better than okay. I took the photo off the board, placed it on my desk, and decided I would buy a frame for it in the morning. It would be the first picture I would hang on my wall. It was small, but it was a good start.

I heard something at my bedroom window, the sound of tree branches snapping. I pulled up the blinds, expecting to find a possum
or the neighbor's cat, and jumped back when I saw someone standing outside in the dark, peering in.

“Jesus!” I screamed.

“It's just me!” Jake yelled through the glass, tapping on it. “Can I come in?”

“Use the front door, you moron!” I yelled, my heart pounding in my ears. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I thought this would be romantic.”

“It's not romantic,” I said, opening the window. “It makes you a stalker. It gets you shot by the cops. What are you doing here?”

“Can I talk to you?” he said, producing a piece of paper. “I wrote something down—”

“Oh God, what is wrong with you? I'm not interested in hearing another one of your stupid little monologues.”

“Come on, Hilda,” he pleaded, struggling to push the tree branches out of the way and losing his balance. He had stubble on his face and his eyes were red as if he hadn't been sleeping, or worse.

“Around the front,” I said, closing the window. He finally tripped and stumbled on a tree branch, and I heard him fall to the ground and curse.

I turned the porch light on and stormed out the front door. A few moments later Jake appeared from the side of the house, a leaf sticking out of his hair.

“What do you want?”

He once again pulled the piece of paper from his pocket and started to unfold it.

“No paper!” I said. “Just talk.”

“But I don't know how!” he whined, sounding like a little kid.

“You're gonna have to learn, Jake. Normal people have conversations.”

“I don't know what to say to you. Listen, I'm sorry. I wish I could make you understand, this is just what I do. I do it in cafes, on the street. I hear people talk and I write it down and I make stories out of it. And Hank's story was just so amazing, I was working on it before you even came along. One day he was struggling getting his groceries up the stairs, and I went to help him, and I saw the number on his wrist and immediately I knew I had a great story, a story that had to be written. Then you came along, and you made the story better. It got better when you got there.”

“Hank was right about you. You
were
spying on him. Asking him questions. That why he's been so scared. Because of you. You and all your questions, making him think someone was out to get him. He's just an old man! Why can't you leave him alone?”

“That has nothing to do with me. He was crazy a long time before I came into the picture. Just ask some of his neighbors.”

“Oh great, so you're asking other people about him? No wonder he's so paranoid.”

“Do you ever think that maybe there's another explanation, Hilda? Do you ever think that maybe there are some things that Hank isn't being entirely truthful about?”

“Like what?”

“Don't be coy. There's more loopholes in his story than in a Star Trek movie. And you know what? I think he tries to tell you. I think he wants to tell you, but you don't want to hear.”

I wrapped my cardigan tight around my shoulders and pushed Jake in the stomach as I enunciated each word.

“Don't tell me about what I know.”

“Hilda, stop it. Stop pushing me.”

“You stop pushing me!” I said, shoving him so hard he nearly fell over onto the grass. “I don't even know what you want!”

“I want you to feel about me the way you do about him!” he said, and I stopped. “Why the hell do you care so much about a crusty old fart anyway?”

“Because he gave me a tile!” I yelled. “And it made me feel like he really understood me, more than anyone else ever had. Until I met you.”

I started to cry. Jake stepped toward me and wrapped his arms around me, and for a moment I fell into him.