Literacy and Longing in L. A. (3 page)

Emily Post and Grand Larceny

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

~
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900),
The Importance of Being Earnest ~

M
y first husband, Jack, was a different story. He was the classic catch in a high-school sort of way—handsome, popular, athletic, and he liked to party. That’s where I met him, by the way, at a party. For the first time in my life, he made me feel “in.” He was also the first man to tell me that I was sexy, beautiful, and desirable—how could I not love him forever?

I wish I had a better reason for finding him so appealing. But I don’t. I married him because he was a hunk. That’s it. No one understood it. But the thing is, men do this all the time and no one says boo about it. Why do women have to come up with all sorts of explanations for
doing the same thing? I didn’t try to impress him with my book stuff because I knew he didn’t care. To tell you the truth, it was actually liberating…and very romantic.

But as Shakespeare wisely pointed out in
The Tempest,
romantic love is so much more complicated than that. Even though Jack set me on fire in bed, alas, it couldn’t compensate for the fact that he had no intellectual curiosity whatsoever…he read car magazines, played video games, watched NASCAR on TV, and smoked pot. When you take out the sex factor, we had nothing in common. One day it just hit me. In all my years of making stupid decisions, this was the capper.

I had just graduated from Columbia and he was studying for his real estate license, the only classes he’d attended since high school. When we decided to get married, I was twenty-one years old and even as I was marching down the aisle, resplendent in Madeira lace, trying to ignore my disappointed relatives, mainly my mother, I knew I was making a mistake.

I landed my job at the
Los Angeles Times
two weeks after my wedding. That’s when I met Darlene. I was the hot new reporter (there’s always a hot new reporter) and my world was filled with infinite possibilities. Darlene, however, was buried in Classifieds, selling twenty words to anyone with a charge card and something to offer.

She was ten years older than me and married to a cop. The hierarchy at the
Times
was a caste system with Editorial on top and Classifieds somewhere near subzero. People treated Darlene with the same affection they reserved for their maid. They were nice but they weren’t
sharing their drinks or their secrets with her. It didn’t help that she looked like a female serial killer—long straight blonde hair that she bleached herself, black roots, epic tits, too much sun, and too much booze. Of course, I found her tremendously amusing and we threw back more than a few on several occasions after work. I particularly enjoyed these evenings because it prolonged the inevitable trip home and put off the nearly nightly confrontations with Jack. He was feeling insecure about the marriage, not surprisingly. I also thought he was back seeing his old girlfriend, a wretched creature he’d lived with for a few years before dumping her for me.

One night Darlene and I were at Cassidy’s, a once-lively spot wedged between two strip malls, which had spiraled downward until now the only time the place was full was on St. Patrick’s Day, when they gave away frothy mugs of green beer on tap. I had once seen the bartender, an aging thug with a long blond ponytail and a receding hairline, topping off the barrels using the hose in the back alley. His wife, a hefty Armenian girl with short hair and a mustache, waited tables and served as the bouncer when things got rowdy.

It was, however, a cop hangout and Darlene’s husband, Mel, would sometimes meet us and shoot the breeze for a couple of hours. Mel, an LAPD cop, was a meaty guy with a stubbled face and a cracked, hoarse, smoker’s laugh. Every now and then he’d give me a semi-reliable tip, which once turned into a pretty big story on the front page of the Metro section.

That night, I was not in the best of moods when my cell phone rang and it was Jack. He sounded uncharacteristically upbeat.

“Hey, I have to show this condo tonight. The woman can’t get there until seven and then she wants to see what the view looks like at night.”

I responded in mock sympathy, “Gee, that’s too bad. I guess you’re stuck late, then, huh?”

“Till ten at least.”

“Oh, okay. Don’t wake me when you come in, because I’m dead tired.” I must have looked relieved, because Darlene gave me a quizzical look.

“You know what,” I said, “he’s full of shit. This is the third time this week. But the worst part is, I don’t care.”

Darlene was sympathetic but firm. “Get rid of him. You made a mistake. Bite the bullet. Move on.”

“But we just got married and I’m embarrassed. Plus, our living room is littered with all these gifts, and I need to at least write the thank-you notes before I leave him.” It’s strange when anachronisms like Emily Post pop up in your life.

“God, are you nuts. Who cares about the gifts? Return them. No, wait! Give them to me. Just kidding.” Darlene never worried about what other people thought. I, on the other hand, felt guilty. No, it was worse than that. I felt like an awful person for not loving him.

When I got home that night there was an angry message on the answering machine from Jack’s ex-girlfriend, berating him for being late and telling him that she
“couldn’t take it anymore.” Assuming “it” was the affair they’d been having and never one for confrontations, I called Darlene and we devised a plan.

Jack came home late and I pretended I was asleep. The next morning, after he left for work, I called Darlene, who had been waiting for the “all clear” sign from around the corner. She pulled up in a banged-up purple van with black flames emblazoned on the side, which she’d gotten from Rent-A-Wreck, a place down the block that looked like a salvage yard. This was Darlene’s idea of being unobtrusive.

My place was on the second floor of what was jokingly called garden apartments. I guess the two dying azalea bushes were the garden part. The white stucco building had seen better days but not much better, and the open hallways left no room for privacy. Darlene parked the van right in front and came bounding up the steps with unbridled enthusiasm. For some warped reason, this whole thing really charged her up. “Dora, you can’t believe this killer van. And if I get it back to them by noon, they’ll give me a ’68 Mustang for the rest of the day.”

“Darlene, we need to focus here.” And then I saw Mrs. Richter peeking through her curtains. My nosy German landlord and his wife lived down the hall, and to them, the whole world was a soap opera, which in my case happened to be the truth. She stuck her head out and said hello, which was a “tell me what’s going on” kind of hello. I swear those people installed motion detectors. I nonchalantly answered, “Oh, hi,” as I ducked back into my apartment. I heard her Tevas flapping down the hall.

“What’s going on?”

Since it didn’t seem fair that Mrs. Richter should know about the split before Jack, I decided to lie. “Spring cleaning,” I said. Not bad for the middle of January. I could tell the old bat didn’t believe me, but she didn’t come out again.

Darlene was waiting inside, surveying the place. I was about to object as she lifted the Jack Daniel’s bottle and poured herself a large tumblerful, but what the hell, I joined her.

“You shouldn’t leave all this stuff. You’re crazy.”

“I don’t want it,” I replied. On this I was clear.

Darlene sat down. “Well, at least take the couch. Do you know how much these things cost?” She was referring to a distressed brown leather monster I’d always hated. For someone as deliciously handsome as Jack was, he really had no taste. All the furnishings were different colors of mud with green or gold flecks. If I were to categorize it, I would call it stupid stud furniture, but perhaps that would be too harsh.

“Do you honestly believe the two of us can carry this three-hundred-pound couch down the stairs?”

She was adamant. “Let me just think a minute. What if we drove down to Westwood Boulevard, picked up a couple of those construction guys who hang out on the corner waiting for work, and offer them maybe twenty dollars each? That would work.”

“You don’t understand, Darlene. I don’t want the couch,” I repeated.

She shook her head in disbelief. It was a tribute to her grip on reality that she thought I was the one who was nuts. “Dora, no one leaves stuff like this.”

She and I spent the next twenty minutes arguing about what I should take, while I was getting more and more nervous that Jack would unexpectedly appear. In the end, she convinced me to take at least a few of the more practical wedding gifts from my side of the family, and, indeed, I was grateful to have some pots, pans, plates, and silverware for my next place.

Acting as if we were committing grand larceny, we carried out bulging black Hefty bags filled with my clothes and box after box of my books, which I had meticulously saved since I was twelve, including textbooks with water-stained covers. I must learn to travel lighter.

For a long time after that, I felt guilty and liberated at the same time. I wouldn’t have to quiz him for his real estate license and pretend how difficult it was. I wouldn’t have to tune out the damn TV, or ignore the aftertaste of marijuana mixed with tobacco on his breath. Or feel like a sap every time we went to a party and I couldn’t think of a thing to say to him or his friends.

He insisted that no one would ever love me as much as he did, and at the time, I believed him. His girlfriend gave me the excuse to leave, but I knew he was still in love with me. Afterwards, when the inevitable pain of the breakup hit us, we met for coffee and we both had a good cry. He was sympathetic and resigned in the beginning but then came the zinger. “I helped you become the beautiful, self-confident woman you are and you stomped all over me and left me in the dust.”

The Roust

“I divide all readers into two classes:

Those who read to remember

and those who read to forget.”

~
William Lyon Phelps (1865–1943)
~

I
jump behind a bush as a silver Porsche 911 Turbo convertible races out of the driveway, driven by one of Palmer’s best friends, Hootie. Must be a new car. Like this slug would ever need to get from 0 to 60 in four seconds. His golf clubs are sticking out of the back of his car like plumes on a rooster and he’s probably headed to Bel Air Country Club for his afternoon rounds. The scion of an old Southern family, he currently spends his days golfing and his nights watching videos of himself golfing. At one time handsome, almost patrician, he is now a lush with a puffy face and a bulbous nose covered
with spider veins who tells unfunny jokes with boorish sexual references.

Oddly enough, Palmer is nothing like his friends. He went to Yale, and for some reason gravitated toward those guys with three last names who graduated from St. Paul’s or Exeter with a C-minus average and spent their entire undergraduate careers getting shit-faced in the same clubs where their fathers and grandfathers once held court. Talk about the original affirmative action.

Not that Palmer was like that. He grew up in working-class New Jersey, went to Yale on a full scholarship, and was the first in his family to graduate from college. He is smart and ambitious, the kind of person who could hold down three jobs and still end up with a 4.0. His family owned a ma-and-pa grocery store, and Little Joey, as the Palmers called him to differentiate him from his father, Big Joey, spent every waking hour helping out in the store. He still notices the prices of food items and pays particular attention to the cost of a quart of milk, feeling that it’s a bellwether for fluctuations in the economy.

Given all of Palmer’s obvious attributes, it always amazed me how impressed he was with old money. Even these clowns, the kind of people who juxtapose fancy cars with bad skin, bad breath, and slightly agape flies, were elevated in his eyes because of their once-fashionable social standing. He’s still grateful for the fact that they anointed him “Palmer” the first week of school as they ushered him into their snobby group, and he continues to find them interesting in spite of their pretentious and slightly depraved lifestyles. When I suggested that these
people were just losers taking up space, he shot back that I was the real snob here, not them.

Palmer loved everything that I hated, including fancy parties, corporate intrigue, business networking, and the whole Hollywood scene. I especially hated going to his Young Presidents Organization (YPO) weekend extravaganzas. This was an organization for mostly second-generation presidents of companies who liked to get together in places like Vail or Tucson to talk about interest rates and balancing their portfolios. They had boring seminars during the day and endless cocktail parties at night in dark reception rooms located in the basement level of the hotels. The wives were expected to come along, look beautiful, and spend their time participating in stupid activities like Asian flower arranging, shopping sprees at local malls, or guided tours by ancient docents of obscure museums.

I went along the first time to a weekend in Monterey, but after three excruciating days of socializing with women I never would have talked to ordinarily, I told him to forget about bringing me along the next time. He went alone after that, but always came home silent, resentful, and full of accusatory pronouncements like “I was the only one who didn’t bring his wife” or “You missed a great speech by Buzz Aldrin about orbiting hotels on Mars.”

But it wasn’t all Palmer’s fault. He was out in the world and I stayed home and read. Not that I let myself indulge all the time, but I’d have to admit that the book-binge thing sometimes got out of control. After all, I had plenty
of time to kill. He had evolved into a workaholic and I was lost in the blissful, dreamlike otherworldness of books. Compared to reality, it was much more enticing.

In retrospect, I made a mistake not going back to work. After my father died, I thought I’d take a short sabbatical. But how did it turn into five years? I just couldn’t seem to pull myself together. And Palmer was happy to have me all to himself. I should have remembered how miserable and bored my mother was just being the corporate wife. But now I’m not even the corporate wife. I’m just one of those thirtysomething women who roam around Los Angeles, speeding down the freeway with nowhere to go.

I am jolted out of my reverie by Steve, the neighborhood Bel Air patrolman. He taps on the window and peers in at me. “Hey, Dora. What’s up?” He’s friendly but clearly wants to know what the hell I’m doing here. I suddenly get queasy at the prospect of him maybe calling Palmer. Do they have a restraining order against me? Not possible. I’ve never showed signs of aggression or threatening behavior that would warrant such measures. Granted, it
is
weird that I’m hanging out in front of Palmer’s gate.

Even I don’t know why I’m here. I give Steve one of my most of-course-this-is-perfectly-normal looks and say, “Just came to pick up a few things.” Sure, that’s why I’ve been hiding in the bushes. “Guess no one’s home. I’ll try later.” He doesn’t believe it for a second. How humiliating. And I remember how I used to complain to him about all the tourists who cruised our
streets and, god forbid, if anyone parked by my gate to try to get a glimpse of the actress next door. I’d call Steve all agitated and make him come right over and roust the guy to move on.

I start my car and try to get out of the parking spot I had wedged myself into. Not easy. I never was very good at parallel parking. I think if you don’t grow up in L.A., you never quite get the hang of it. Finally, I angle it out. If a car could have its tail between its legs, that’s my once proud vehicle as I slowly head home.