Losing Clementine (33 page)

“It's a rumor.”

“Smart mouth,” I said, sounding like my mother. “You need to start painting again.” I nodded at an orange abstract landscape above her head. “That's old.”

She looked up at it as if its presence offended her.

“The Essex Gallery will still do that show,” I said.

“They won't. I don't have anything for it. I already told them.”

“Call them back. Use my name. They'll wait for a little while. Not too long. Get something for it.”

“It's not that easy.”

“It's not supposed to be easy.”

I went toward the door. Hugging her would be the thing to do, make a nice memory for her, for me as long as it lasted. I could put a nice punctuation mark on it except that I couldn't. She'd still hidden from me, lied to me, all but lived in my space under a false identity. It was what it was, and it couldn't be undone.

There is a big cathedral downtown, newly built. It seats thousands, hosts dignitaries, features the finest of everything: modern art chandeliers; a sleek, minimalist baptismal font; even a tapestry all the teenagers think looks like Jesus giving John a blow job. There are landmark street signs pointing the way to the cathedral just like the Hollywood Bowl. There is valet parking on holidays because when God takes a rest he most certainly doesn't worry about parking. They hid all the stained glass in the crypts, and the whole damn place is fourteen shades of beige as though it were decorated by the people in charge of making office cubicles. It is a place not of personal prayer but of collective showing off, and that is not where I went.

The church I went to was surrounded by eight-foot chain-link fencing and stood on a corner lot next to a bodega. Across the street one way was a Mexican seafood restaurant specializing in whole fried fish. Across the street the other way were a hair salon and a lingerie shop specializing in crotchless underpants and nurses' uniforms.

The inside smelled like church. That smell hasn't changed and will never change as long as people pick up and go somewhere to pray. It was hospital disinfectant, old books, and incense. There was a community bulletin board at the entrance with reminders about drives for the food bank and Sunday school hours, which I didn't stop to read. There was even a carafe of coffee with a stack of Styrofoam cups sitting on a small, rickety table. I did not have any, but I did touch it just to see if it was hot. It wasn't.

I went through the interior doors to the nave, crossed myself, and sat. They had not hidden the stained glass in the basement here. Afternoon light filtered through the primary colors. The infant Jesus's face was painted onto a beige circle of glass, giving him a flat, cave-painting look. He lay naked in Mary's arms with a halo hovering above both their heads. His sex was hidden by a falling piece of fabric, and she had robes of red and blue. He grew up from window to window, gathering apostles, performing miracles, and hanging in permanent crucifixion, agony etched on his flattened face. There was a window for every season, every age, birth to death in pictures.

I wasn't alone. This small church next to the fishnet stocking emporium was one of the few perpetual adoration congregations left. It wouldn't last. The women who came to pray in shifts over the Blessed Sacrament would not live forever or even much longer. They seemed to get older with each passing moment. There was no one to replace them. Even a priest could not be had for the asking. The confessionals were closed.

I could have checked the schedule, which was posted outside. I did not do that. I had not been to confession since Aunt Trudy made both Bob and me go, back when I lived in the small bedroom and was carving my initials in the windowsill. How would you fit twenty-five years of lapse into one confession? It was like cleaning house. If you took care of it a little at a time, it was manageable, but neglect to take the trash out for a few decades and there was nothing to do but take a backhoe to the whole house and start over.

Still I sat.

A Hispanic man came in behind me dressed in long pants and a shirt with his name embroidered on the front. It looked like he did lawn work. He knelt and crossed himself and then took a seat on the opposite side of the aisle farther up. I wondered what personal crisis brought him here in the middle of the day in the middle of the week, but we were not in a bar and so I did not ask.

In my own way, I had already called for mercy, directing the wish at my own self rather than above. I had not prayed about it, and I was not praying then, not in the way I had been taught. I did not believe doing so would help. I did not believe anyone was listening, and I was not worried—at least not excessively so—that my soul would be punished for all eternity.

What I was doing sitting there on the wooden bench, polished and smoothed by decades of tormented behinds, was allowing for the possibility. I did not talk to God, because if Moses couldn't catch a break and be let into the Holy Land, I was sure as shit doomed. So the Virgin it was, the übermother and kisser of boo-boos, the forgiver of schoolyard fights and messy bedrooms.

I talked to her. I explained myself. In case she hadn't been keeping up, I gave her the rundown of my reasons for doing what I was doing. I explained the things I had tried and how they had failed. Therapy—all kinds, medication—all kinds, work, money, marriage, divorce, sex—all kinds, drugs, a strong affinity for Motown. I told her that I really thought this was for the best. I told her about my mother and how that had ended. I knew, I said, that she would understand how important it was that no such thing happen because of me. I explained how I had carefully made sure that no one needed me and that nothing would be messy or complicated in the aftermath. I told her I hoped I had covered my bases. And when I ran out of explanations, I just sat. I sat and waited for something to happen. That was it. That was all I had. I felt like a child sliding the permission slip across the dining room table for a signature.

“Are we good here?”

Nothing happened. No one signed. I hadn't really expected anyone to.

“All right then, maybe later. Glad we had this time together.”

Sometime while I was sitting there taking care of my “just in case,” the gardener had left. Maybe his problems weren't so complicated or maybe he just knew the value of brevity. I had spent longer sitting in the pew than I had intended. I walked out into the warm, late afternoon sunshine and headed through the chain-link gate to my car. I was hungry.

Usually this restaurant required reservations, but they had just opened for dinner, and most folks had not yet shown up for their tables. I was in luck. Or maybe Mary was looking out for me after all. The hostess sat me next to the window at a table dripping with white linens. I had more glasses and silverware at my disposal than any single person should need. Despite its being plenty sunny outside, a candle was lit for me. The wine list was long, dense, and beyond my ability to translate. I asked if there was a sommelier on duty. Of course there was.

He arrived at my table in dress pants and tie with his shirtsleeves rolled up, which gave him the look of a man who was putting in a vigorous and demanding day. He introduced himself and shook my hand. How could he help, madam?

Red, I told him, easy to drink. Not too heavy, not too light. A cabernet sauvignon maybe.

“Did you have a price range in mind?” he asked very politely.

“Let's worry about that later.”

“In that case,” he said and pointed at the menu.

It was expensive but not the most expensive. I chose to believe this was a sign he wasn't merely padding the bill. I told him I'd take it, and he was back before I'd decided on hors d'oeuvres. He opened it at the table with one of those basic, Swiss Army–type corkscrews that I can never get to work right and poured a sip into the appropriate glass. I swirled, sniffed, tasted, and just barely controlled the urge to lick the drip off the side of the bottle.

“Yes,” I told him. “Yes, that's it exactly.”

And it was. It was the Goldilocks of red wine. Not too watered down, not so heavy it made your teeth feel they'd sprouted fur. Just right.

He smiled, nodded, and poured a proper glass.

There were almost half a dozen categories of hors d'oeuvres and choices in each. I ordered the French onion soup. The broth was deeply colored and almost sweet from the caramelization. I didn't eat it all. I didn't plan to eat all of anything tonight so as to have room for everything. My taste buds had fully emerged from their medication-induced coma, and I wanted to let them run. Next I asked for the terrine of foie gras. The liver was unctuous and cut perfectly by the layer of port jelly on top. I smeared it in decadent portions on top of my little toasts and protected it from the waiter, who offered to take the remaining bit away before my next course. What I didn't eat, minus the wine topping, Chuckles would have.

I nibbled on a salmon tart with lemon cream and drank more wine before the main course arrived. We were going slowly. I was going slowly. An hour had passed, perhaps a little more, and the sun had sunk past the tall downtown buildings that surrounded the restaurant. The streets made narrow urban valleys that darkened early. It was both sad and romantic. It was the way old Italian movies make you feel.

I had eaten a lot of food already, but I was starting to get lightheaded from the wine. It was a happy, cozy feeling, like pulling on a sweater. The bottle was almost half-gone, and the glass I was working on half-gone, too. I topped it off and ran my finger through the butter, which was French. It was so much better than American butter. It tasted like fresh cream, like real dairy. It tasted the way butter must've tasted before we began pasteurizing the life out of everything. Why shouldn't food be a little dangerous?

If the restaurant had been Japanese I would've asked for the puffer fish. As it was, I had duck confit, salt cured and cooked in its own fat, with cherries and a side of haricots verts. I nibbled at all of it, savored my bites, smelled everything before I took a taste. God, it was so good to be able to smell things again, to have all of my senses back. Sane, unmedicated people don't know how good they have it.

I ordered a cheese plate with a selection of three. I asked for the chef to choose his three favorite goat cheeses, presuming he had three favorites. Goat, with its tendency to be sweet and grassy, was my favorite animal to squeeze for sustenance. The tray came with bites of dried fruit, nuts, and, best of all, a small pot of orange marmalade. I loved the gentle bitterness of the rind in the sweet jam. I loved the color of it, the translucency that caught the light and reminded me of church windows and of Miles, who had told me a clementine was a type of orange, in case I didn't know already. I loved how it mixed with the softest of the cheeses.

The leftovers, too, although there was none of the jam, I would take to the cat. Dairy and duck and liver for him, and a case of feline diarrhea tomorrow for his new owners. I poured more wine.
C'est la vie
.

I was verging on the sort of full that makes you hate yourself, that's painful and gluttonous and stupid, but I told myself I was not there yet when the waiter, a beautiful woman with dark, thick hair and dimples, brought out dessert. The chocolate pudding was dark and, like an orange rind, a mixture of sweet and bitter. Fresh whipped cream swirled on top to be taken bit by bit with each bite of the custard, and sprinkled over it all were crystals of sea salt large enough to crackle between your teeth. I sat at my table for two that was a table for one while the world went full dark, and I ate that pudding slowly and methodically until it was all gone.

The restaurant had gone from empty to full while I had eaten. Not one table was unoccupied, and couples and trios stood waiting at the bar and clustered around the hostess stand. The din, when I stopped and listened to it, was loud enough to keep dining companions from being able to hear each other across a table. Voices rose above the clatter of silverware and glasses. Still, it was quiet in my own head. I felt deliberate and calm. It could've been the wine. It most certainly was a little bit the wine, but that wasn't all of it. Choosing death was different from death choosing you. I wasn't a fresh-caught fish flopping on the bottom of the boat, desperate for that last rush of water and oxygen through my gills.

I lingered over my last glass of wine. A quarter of the bottle remained, but I was done. I asked my waitress with the dimples to box up those things I wanted for the cat and slipped cash into the leather folder with the check. I included just enough to cover the bill then reached into my back pocket and took out the title to my car. I asked for a pen, and she brought it, leaving it on the table for me and then going on to her other duties. I signed the title and slipped it, the key, and the valet receipt into the leather folder, got up, gathered my to-go box, drank the last dregs of the glass, and went to call a cab.

Meow
.

I had emptied and washed Chuckles's food dish and packed it up in a paper grocery sack along with his half-empty bag of dry food, the leftover cans of wet, and his treats.

Meow
.

The moving of his things was making him nervous. He'd rubbed his body around my ankles as I washed and packed, and when I sat down on the floor, he put his face very close to mine, almost to where his whiskers could touch my cheek, and sniffed, his pink smooshed nose twitching. “Explain yourself,” he demanded.