Dead Stars (63 page)

CLEAN

[Telma]

Wanderlust

She

brushes her mother's hair. Not a real brushing, really just a way of caressing. Gwen's been in bed for a number of days.

“Mama, are you still sick?”

“I'm sad. I'm just sad.”

“Why are you sad?”

“Sometimes it just happens. Sometimes people get sad, & then they have to take care of themselves. That's what Mama's doing—taking care.”

“You're not sad about something that happened?”

“No, sweetheart. Not at all. Darling, would you like to do some traveling?”

“Like where?”

“I was watching
Eat, Pray, Love
, and thought it might be wonderful to go to Italy.”

“Sure.”

“Or maybe Bora Bora or the south of France. Or China. We could go to China. Is there anyplace you'd like to go?”

“I want to go to St. Petersburg in Russia!”

“Oh?”

“We've been reading about the
tsars
and Catherine the
Great
. I want to go to Russia and be
Telma
the Great!”

“I think that can be arranged.”

“But I can't go now, we have to go later.”

“And why is that.”

“OMG I didn't
tell
you. Biggie has to have surgery.”

“What's wrong?”

“He has a brain tumor! I didn't tell you because I just found out.”

She remembered what the attorneys said, but played dumb.
I will play dumb, for the rest of my life. Play dumb, for the rest of her life. Play dumb, for the rest of our lives.

“O! Is that what's been causing his memory problems?”

“Uh huh. But it's really small and it isn't cancerous.”

“Well,
that's
good news.”

“And everyone
missed
it but St. Ambrose! Biggie went to a hospital in Houston and they
totally missed it
.”

“That's awful.”

“St. Ambrose said that if Brando didn't bring him in to see them, Biggie could have
died.
”

“I guess things like that happen.”

“They
shouldn't
. Mama, I was thinking—and I wouldn't talk to Biggie about it, but—I don't understand what a hospital is
for
if it isn't to
help
people, and find out what's
wrong
with them? It's not like his brother brought him to the
dentist
or to
Whole Foods
, and
they
couldn't find anything. He brought him to a
hospital
that has
specialists
who are supposedly
trained
. Even if the doctors
couldn't
find it, they have
machines
that are supposed to be able to. How can the doctors not have
seen it
when a
machine
sees it
for them!
”

“That's awful. But as long as the tumor isn't—”

“The doctors at
St.
Ambrose
found it. Yay, team! Yay Team Telma!”

“I hope it all turns out . . .”

“I would be
so angry
. I don't even think the mom knows yet, Biggie said he thinks his dad or his brother's going to try to tell her, but I don't see
why.
I think it's a waste of time. And Biggie's only going to get hurt because she's
never
coming home and I just think it's wrong to use his problems,
whatever
they are, to bring her back. She's a horrible mom and she doesn't sound like a good person either. If
I
were his dad or Brando,
I
wouldn't tell her. But I would be
so mad
. I would
totally sue
that hospital in Houston!”

CLEAN

[Michael]

What I Tell You In Darkness, Speak In the Light

—Matthew 10:27

He

had five days off and was on his way to New York to spend the long weekend with Catherine and the kids. Brando was going to New York so Michael hitched a ride on the Ooh Baby jet. On the way to Van Nuys, Brando called to say he had to bail, something having to do with his kid brother, but the plane was at Michael's disposal. “Enjoy the weekend.” Classy kid.

It was great to have it to himself.

He was feeling reflective.

He looked at his email.

Oliver Stone had forwarded a prospectus for something wild. An American architect refurbished a few dozen “peasant houses” (some were 5,000 square feet) in a village about an hour from Beijing. Each fully modernized home, with views of the Great Wall, were for rent. Oliver's email had just one word in
SUBJECT
:
Timeshare?
He knew Ollie was kidding, but it sounded like
the next cool thing
. He wouldn't be surprised if he heard that Bryan Lourd or George Clooney snapped one up.

www.headandneck.org
wanted him to tape a segment about early detection, for their new app.

His reply:

Done.

The iPad chimed a new email from his daughter Carys:

hurry!

. . .

If he had the energy, the actor planned to visit his son. Since the bust, Cameron had been caught using in prison, and a tough judge had doubled his sentence, giving him another 4½ years; the kid was obviously so sick, but all they knew how to do was punish. Until this, Michael had been breathing easier because of a transfer to a minimum security camp, one without fences. The jail in Manhattan was rough on the kid—the Douglas men weren't too fond of confined spaces, especially when mandatory. But now everything was bad again. His hopes that Cam might be out in time to have a part in
Jazz
were dashed
.

. . .

An art consultant he sometimes worked with sent him images of the work of an 18th-century Italian artist called Piranesi, best-known for a series of prints with the overall title
Carceri d'invenzione—“
Imaginary Prisons.” The drawings were simply that: darkly baroque, labyrinthine, finely detailed renderings of jails that didn't exist, at least not outside Piranesi's mind.

Michael was captivated by the metaphor. These days it had become especially clear to him how zealously a man worked to customize the “cell” in which he served out his life sentence. His downfall is that he imagines he's safe behind bars; he becomes accustomed to counting himself the king of finite space. When the actor was a student at UC Santa Barbara, he wrote a paper on Plato's
Allegory of the Cave
. The philosopher put forth a world where men grew up shackled and facing the wall of a cave, unable even to turn their heads. Behind them was a great fire; figures walked across a footbridge, and the chained men took the shadowy forms to be reality.
For the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream . . .

What
was
real? (He felt like an undergrad again.) Being a movie star? Cancer? The motorized chair that became a bed for him to lie down on inside a machine with metal wings that flew 40,000 feet above the Earth? His wife and children? Sages said the only thing one could be certain of was the Self—who was Plato to say that form preceded shadow, and not reverse? In the end, everything was taken away. A drunk driver, a blow to the head from an unlucky fall, a rogue clot ended all discussion. The imaginary prisons of Piranesi underscored the folly of belonging to the Church of Realism, that cult of forms and shadows which seduces us into believing we have some control over our lives.
Hey I ought to give a lecture on this shit . . . afraid I'd disappoint. They only want to hear about cuckoo's nests and throat cancer, not imaginary prisons or flickerings in a cave . . .

The clichéd
moment
was the only thing that was real. And if you could be lucky enough to be in the moment it was best to be happy, or at least at peace. It was best to love: he loved his wife and his children, and the blue planet that held all their beating hearts in its earthen hands.

And that was that.

. . .

On Tuesday, he'd be at Sloan-Kettering for his check-up.

Anyone in remission (or “cancer-free”) had been through the drill a hundred times, playing the nightmarish variations in their heads as if to inoculate themselves:
OK here's what's going on: I saw something on the scan that I didn't like.
Or,
We're all kind of surprised at the speed of the recurrence—you were in three months ago, no?
Or,
I'm not going to dress this up for you; the cancer's returned. Having said that, I'm not going to doom and gloom you, either. Cause we're gonna sic the Navy Seals on this thing.

The iPad chimed with another email.

Did you get me anything?

He'd forgotten. Which only meant his daughter was going to make him pay for his lapse, at FAO Schwarz. Big-time.

Thinking of her, his whole being smiled. The two brave little ones—Aleisha and Telma—followed Carys into his head. What would he do if something like that happened to one of his own? Such occasional musings were a hazard of parenthood. It was important to remember to be in the
moment
; not even forms that threw shadows were real
 . . . and nothing to get hung about
. Maybe cancer was just another bar of an imaginary cell. The uncontrolled division of abnormal cells . . .

He was prepared to believe it. What would be the harm? The New Age parable said each of us had two wolves fighting inside. One was dark and evil, the other was light and filled with love. The winner of the battle is whichever wolf you feed.

. . .

Lately, he didn't like being called
survivor
. He was mildly superstitious that the very word fed the wrong wolf.

It was challenging enough just to live on the planet. As far as he was concerned, being vertical and breathing conferred full survivor status. Why should the word be reserved for victims of rape, incest, the Holocaust? Every human being struggled to get through the random blessings and scourges of the day, to live through the night to see the sun.
Hero
was the other word that put a hair up his ass. Everyone was a hero. We were all survivors—until one day, we weren't. It was probably the hubris of it that bothered him.

He'd take Telma and her mom to tea again.
We're cancer-free, right Telma? So let's forget the whole survivor deal—I never liked the “Nice try, cancer/I kicked cancer's butt” thing anyway. Let's forget being survivors and just be people who happen to be living their lives, people lucky enough to be surrounded by family and friends who they love. Maybe we don't even need to be cancer-free, how about just “free”? I guess what I'm saying is that I had a whole life before this thing and now I'm having one after. You're having one too, sweetheart, you're having it now, and believe me, there's going to be a lot more to come. And just because we don't use the words anymore, just because we don't say survivors and cancer-free, that doesn't mean we don't get our check-ups. “Trust in God, but lock your front door.” Ever hear that saying, Gwen? So we go and get our check-ups, and when we get a clean bill of health we kick up our heels. Kick em up
anyway!
Cause we can just be people now, citizens of the world, not survivors or some kind of heroes. Kid, I think that's a jersey we can retire.”

He would take her on all the talk shows—start a new anti-hero movement . . . hell, they'd shout it from the rooftops!

I used to be cancer-free—now I'm just free.

CLEAN

[mixtape]

Malibu Slumberyard

Rikki

named the baby girl Nikki, after one of ReeRee's favorites, Nicki Minaj. That it rhymed with his name was a bonus. Tom-Tom said she thought that's why maybe he picked it tho.

Nikki lived at Jim & Dawn's. Jacquie visited everyday. Rikki lived at the house again too. He had a job that paid good money (so he said). He told his soon to be lawful parents he was working for a “no profit” involved with the rehab of former child soldiers. Among his new friends were will.i.am & Emmanuel Jal, a rapper from Sudan who was featured on MTV. Rikki had a newfound confidence about him that Dawn attributed to fatherhood & the death of Reeyonna. Jim worried he was dealing drugs because he never heard of anyone making “good money” working for an NGO, especially someone w/no experience.

Reeyonna's girlfriends loved to visit. The mood was heavy those 1st few weeks but then their laughter filled the house. They even taught Rikki how to change a diaper. He fucked 2 of them.

. . .

Jacquie hadn't yet developed the pictures she took at Cedars. She thought about burning the film but Albie said don't you dare. He was the only one other than Dawn who knew. It was monumentally unreal.

Nikki was gorgeous. Sometimes she called her “Lynnie” by mistake. (What she called Jerilynn as a newborn.) She thanked God for Dawn & Jim.

Albie helped disperse the ashes. At 1st she said no but he insisted & she was so glad. Jacquie knew how head-over-heels Jerilynn was for Malibu. Jeri used to say one day she was going to make enough money to buy a house there, “for weekends.” Jacquie told Albie about the day she drove Jeri & 2 girlfriends to the Malibu Lumber Yard. The girls squealed & carried on because they saw one of the kids from
The Vampire Diaries
at James Perse.

She wound up scattering the ashes in different places. Jacquie was always intrigued by a private neighborhood in the Malibu hills called the Serra Retreat. It used to be Old Hollywood—people like Roddy McDowall, Loretta Young, Ray Walston & Karl Malden used to live there. Now, it was James Cameron, Eva Longoria, Steven Tyler. At the top of the mountain was a beautiful old Catholic monastery, with grounds overlooking the Pacific. It was open to the public.

When it came time, Albie walked a respectful distance behind. She reached into the container &, grabbing a fistful of her daughter, nervously looked around like a 1st-time shoplifter. When Jacquie finally let the ashes go, she burst into unbidden tears. Albie ran over & held her in his arms.

They drove to the Malibu Lumber Yard & walked around. She left a lot of Jerilynn there: in front of James Perse, in front of Kitson, in front of the yogurt place & the movieplex & the Coffee Bean. Her mood lightened. They saw Vincent D'Onofrio.

The last most important spot was the ocean. Her bare feet felt good in the sand. When it was done, they had drinks at Gladstone's. Albie got excited because he thought he saw Colton Dixon from
Idol
in one of the booths. He took the long way to the bathroom to get a closer look. When he passed the table he looked over at Jacquie with a trademark pukey face & shook his head. He made her laugh.

It was dark when they got home. She brought Albie next door and introduced him to Jim, Dawn & Nikki. Rikki wasn't there. They all had dinner together. After, Jacquie asked Albie if he'd spend the night. She made up the couch and they watched 3 saved
Glee
s.

She went to bed but Albie stayed up & watched 2 more.

. . .

With the help of a hospice newsletter she subscribed to, Dawn prepared a few things for Jacquie to journal about:

 

What I will miss about you is . . .

What I will remember most about you is . . .

What you meant to me was . . .

The hardest thing about letting go is . . .

I am angry at you for . . .

I feel guilty that . . .

I regret that . . .

 

She would wait for the right time.

She got an email from the Metta Institute.

Subject: WE'RE ALMOST FULL!
 . . . They were having their annual 6-day Cultivating Presence Retreat in San Rafael. The email said “Retreat Almost FULL, Commuter Places Now Open.” The cost for the commuter package was “only $900.” She thought,
Don't be silly, you can't do that now, how could you leave Nikki.
A few other retreats were coming up that looked tantalizing, and she'd already shared some of them with Jim. “The Great Matter of Birth & Death” was taking place in Turin, in Italy.

She phoned anyway. Dawn felt different now, a part of. A bonafide member of the community that once denied her.

“I'm interested in the Cultivating Presence retreat.”

“Do you have hospice experience?”

“Yes,” she said, wondering if the woman could read the sorrow in her voice. “Yes, I do.”

“
Wonderful.
Can you hold a moment?”

Wonderful was an odd word in this instance, but why not? Afterall, she'd just read an article in a Buddhist magazine about a student who told his guru he'd been diagnosed with cancer. The guru said, “Congratulations!”

“Thank you for waiting. Our computers are a little sluggish today. They seem to have minds of their own.”

“Hate it when that happens,” said Dawn affably.

“Don't you?” said the woman. “Ah—here we are. The Cultivating Presence Workshop . . .” She was slowly reading from the screen, stalling while the software fired up. “I know our literature says ‘retreat' but most people just call it a workshop. Ah—okay. It looks like we are completely full.”

“Even the commuters?”

“I don't know why we had so much interest this year. It's
wonderful
, but I can't put my finger on it. Can I put you on a wait list?”

“Yes. How many—”

“Now just wait a moment . . . it says that there's 40 people on it already—can that be? Well, it
must
, because the iMac tells me so! That doesn't look so terrific . . . don't think it will happen. I like to tell people the truth, what's the point in leading folks on? Now we've got
another
workshop—excuse me,
retreat!—
coming up in around 6 months. That's a
very special one
, people like it as much if not
more
than the Cultivating Presence training—oops. Wait—now, hold on—isn't that crazy? I spoke too soon. Aren't we having a time of it today?”

. . .

Jacquie had sent him to pick up the ashes. She told him that if he wanted to, he could take a portion before dropping them off at the house. Rikki expected an urn, but they were in a brown plastic container instead, about the size of a rural mailbox. A sticker on it said
WE HEREBY CERTIFY THAT THE CREMATED REMAINS ARE THOSE OF JERILYNN CRELLE-VOMES
. The box was
heavy
.

He sat in the car for about a ½hour, smoking a blunt and sniffing the last gram of yay. He broke the seal on the box. The ashes were in a plastic bag with the same affixed certification. He'd planned to take some but now he wasn't so sure. 1st things 1st tho: he drove to Tom-Tom's to get more blow. She was staying in a Travelodge in Mar Vista. She had an emaciated stray cat over there & was nursing it back to health. Rikki hadn't seen that side of her.

He brought in Ree's ashes. They set them on the table and tripped a while. They smoked some weed & crack, then balled. Her pussy was infected so she only wanted her ass fucked, which was cool. Rikki thought about the ashes. Kind of like Ree was watching.

He got his 8ball and on the way out, Tom-Tom said, “Did you forget something?” They both laughed at the lameness & the stonedness. Rikki went to the side of the bed & bent over to get the box. It was tipped on its side. He thought they must have knocked it over while they were fucking. Then he saw the plastic bag protruding, with clawed holes on top. Rikki said
Hey!
Tom-Tom came over & looked. She went to the head where the kitty cowered behind the toilet with its paltry, fastidiously created litter. The room stank from its humid, sickly droppings.

“Goddammit!”
shouted Tom-Tom.
“Not
OK!
Not fuckin OK!”
As she rousted it, she told Rikki to open the front door. She tried chasing it out but it hunkered under the bed and hissed when she reached for it. She gave up & inspected the box in Rikki's hands. He'd shoved the bag all the way back in.

“Just get some scissors and cut around the holes—clean up the edges. Say it broke while you were taking your share.”

. . .

Beth Rader, the woman from Gagosian to whom Pieter emailed the image of the dead newborn, was persistent. She told Jacquie to let her know if she ever changed her mind.

Jacquie knew there was no way. She was done with that part of her life. She didn't know where she was going, but she knew where she'd been.

As scary as it was, she'd take the not-knowing every time.

. . .

Jacquie and Nikki went to court for the adoption hearing. To see the motley family collected together, and to know their poignant history, as the judge did, was not without impact. He was friendly, almost folksy, which made sense to Jim. In this courtroom, gentility & care should and did reign.

“I was made aware of your situation,” he said to Rikki, “from a lovely note your soon-to-be-legal father sent to the court. You've had a heck of a lot thrown at you—everyone in the family has—that's quite an ordeal to go thru. You've probably had to grow up a little faster than you'd have liked. But Mom & Dad say you're stepping up to the plate. Handling yourself like a man.”

“Yes, sir—I mean Your Honor sir. I'm trying.”

“Fake it till you make it. Ever heard that one, son? ‘Fake it till you make it'?”

“No sir your Honor sir.”

“Well now you have. That's one beautiful baby. Bring her closer, ma'm, can you bring her a little closer? Oh, now she's a little doll now, isn't she. What's her name?”

“Nikki,” he said.

“
Excellent
name—I have a goddaughter named Nicki, so good choice! I like your taste in women. In women's names, anyway. Ours is Nicole but everybody calls her Nicki. How do you like the experience of being a father? I know you haven't been one for long, but how do you find it so far?”

“Uhm . . . it's—pretty good.”

His tentativeness caused laughter from those waiting for their own cases to be heard. The judge laughed a bit himself.

“All right,” he said. “If the parties are willing, I approve, & wish you good luck. And I want you to take a good look at your Mom and Dad, son, remember this day. I hope you know how fortunate you are. Because these two people saved your life. They gave birth to you as surely as the mother who gave birth to your Nikki.”

“Yes your Honor sir.”

“Good luck to yall. And don't forget! Fake it till you make it.”

As they left, a bailiff came forward & whispered to the judge, whose visage went from startled to dour. Rikki was arrested just outside the court.