CHAPTER III.When we first moved to our castle on the hill, I remember I attempted a lobster bisque, put way too much tumeric in the broth so when thickened with cream, it ended up this neon orange color. I floated a peeled tomato in the tureen. Well, sunrise in L.A. ---our tomato red sun rising through the smog, -- always reminding me of that botched soup. Gazing out at the sun rising over the slums of East L.A. I wondered if I would ever have a Sonoma solid steel restaurant stove again. Probably not. I sighed wistfully and Bill looked over at me. I smiled brightly and toasted him with my cup.
We sat at the Tide box table sipping freshly made coffee. The morning charcoal fire was just getting hot under the grill when we heard Hedda's car come crawling up the driveway. After a minute, she appeared in the dining room doorway. "Mr. Wendell, I'm so sorry. They had warrants, and legal papers, I had to let them in." Bill's jaw clenched, he fought the impulse to rise, throw his coffee and pace.
"Hedda," I stood quickly. "Let's get breakfast started." I pulled her into the kitchen and showed her how I was making coffee by heating water in a can set inside a toaster oven that I'd retrieved from the garage. In a while she appeared with hot, black coffee and eggs on paper plates.
Bill wasn't used to how paper plates bent; he took hold and the eggs slid toward the edge, he caught it and hot eggs slid onto his hand. "Son of a bitch!"
"We've got aloe!" I said, reaching behind me for a cactus leaf.
I don't want aloe, fucking frontier medicine woman!"
I slid the rubbery eggs onto a fresh paper plate. I called inside. "You forgot the bacon, Hedda." She reappeared in the doorway. "I didn't trust the bacon, ma'am"
"Trust it?"
"It was out all night." I had a brief, flitting, mental picture of this tomcat bacon having been out all night on the town."The bacon did WHAT?"
"Oh OUT. Like not fridged. Hedda, it has nitrates -- You could leave it in the glove compartment for a year and still give it to a baby. The pioneers brought bacon across the Rockies. You didn't throw it away, did you?
"Yes 'ma'am it's in the trash can."
I ran around the house to the cans and fished it out, ran back to the patio and set the soggy strips to fry in a tin pie plate over the charcoal grill. Bill shook his head disapprovingly, frowning and sighing.
"Making do, camping out." I said, a little singsong. "Plenty in the midst of splendor, in the grass. On the patio cement, without a freezer, using a tin pie pan as a frying pan, without meat for the cats. I called the bank, no money in my checking account. Your secretary Camilla was going to make a deposit. I called the office but Camilla was not there. A government examiner was. I asked a government examiner for milk money and got turned down."
"Avery, there's nothing to worry about. I can get money. I've got it stashed, the problem is, I can't it out of the country but you could. You take a plane to...well, anywhere, " he finished lamely.
To where? Where is anywhere?" He scrubbed a mote of dust off his knee, reluctant to say.
"You want me to go to some offshore bank only won't tell me where I'm going? You don't trust me? Thirty-five years of marriage and you don't trust me?
He eyed me. "Would you go? You'd have to bring cash back in under your girdle or something."
I don't wear a girdle and imagine me who won't drive to the center of Beverly Hills if I don't have ten reasons flying all the way to anywhere to smuggle a few dollars in so the cats can have meat. I don't think so. I'll sell my wedding ring, feed them for a year."
You'd sell it?"
"Oh like I'm the villain. You sold out the marriage when you turned to a life of white-collar crime.
"What are you? Judge and jury? I didn't do a crime. I invested in some dumb bonds."
"Dumb blondes is probably more like it. No, that was unkind of me. I won't sell the ring. I'll sell my locket." I fingered my throat to make certain it was still there, a beard hair from Yogi B was inside it.
Why do I get the feeling you're having a nervous breakdown and kicking me in the balls at the same time?
That's right, you're the outraged party. I'm the jealous, hysterical fink. I didn't your little paper -- In hard times and good times, in sickness and health, in crime and in punishment? I'm the slacker. The weak link. Put me in cuffs."
"Strait jacket is more like it."
"Yeah like in Gaslight. 'I didn't turn on dose lights. I don't remember. Did I defraud the rock group of dere securities? Did I disappear the money to an offshore? I did? I don't remember doink it. I must be goink crazy!' "
He put the fork down. "That's it. I know when somebody's kicking me and just for the record, you're doing it when I'm down.
"Yes, I'm truly evil. Get me a whip for Christmas."
"You hid your true self from me, Avery. Always the sweet, quiet, perfect little wife but I guess you marry a lady with a birdcage for a name, she's got to have something rustling around in the ole belfry. Now I know why you kept your mouth shut for 35 years cuz when you open it, bats fly out. To think I never knew under the PTA simp act you were Dracula."
"Same to you Vesco. Millikin. Jed Bush" He fled back into the house to make his getaway in the Rent a Wreck that sat in our driveway. "Keating! Nixon!" I called after him. The bacon flared up. Hedda rescued the pan but it was black as an accountant's heart.
"Mrs. Wendell, I think I should go, but for the unemployment could you please fire me?"
"Of course." I hugged her. "You're fired Hedda." She hugged me back. "I don't have your salary but take anything you want."
"I do have my eye on a few nylon nighties and a few dozen house plants?"
"They're all yours. Hedda, and could I hitch a ride to Westwood?'
* * * * * *
In Westwood I got a lawyer and divorced my husband. Well, almost. "Walk those papers through the courthouse, Mrs. Wendell, claim indigence and there won't be any fees and you'll be a free woman. That'll be thirty-five dollars. " I showed him an empty wallet. "Do you garden?" I asked hopefully.
Back at the house, the young mall lawyer and I finished digging out and potting up a hefty part of the garden. He got a beautiful ficus lyrata, a few swordplants in ancient brass pots. And a ton of ferns. I told him to come back with a truck and get the azaleas, though they didn't look like much now, give them peat soil they'd be dynamite in springtime. I wheeled the wheelbarrow around the side of the house using a shady path. "Oh and see that greenhouse on the hill? Thousands of pots of tuberose, take all you want." He went to inspect it.
There was a Chinaman man unlocking my front door.. "Yes?" I said. "This is my home."
'No more! I buy house legal from Caldwell Ashton, Gaines and Young. Dey true owners. Not your husband's house. Not even lease. My house now."
I reeled. "Forgive me, nobody told me. Just let me get my clothing out. Take me a minute."
While the man watched, I filled grocery bags with old Salvation Army clothing I'd put in the garage to give away, skirts, blouses, more old blue jeans, tennis shoes, the one suit left, a crucifix. By then the lawyer had returned with the a few blooming tuberose plants. I asked him to take me back to Westwood. The two cat carriers with Ginger and Monkeyface inside, went in the backseat with me.
* * * * *
"Candice? It's mother, let me in."
A buzzer sounded, opening the door. The mall lawyer stuck the cages inside on the marble, lobby floor. We said our good-byes.
* * *
My child was doing okay. The elevator had muzak. It stopped gently at the penthouse and when the doors opened, Candice stood there in slip and suit skirt. On the wall behind her hung a huge oil painting of Ducky Darwin, her boyfriend, the Australian crooner. "Why the cats, you traveling?" Candice slipped into a jacket and earrings as she talked.
"Don't you read the papers?" Candice looked confused.
"You didn't have a fire did you?"
"No. Don't your girlfriends call you?
"Mom you know I don't have girlfriends. I have no use for women."
"Then I'm the bearer of bad tidings. That inheritance you were counting on after you'd sent me to the old age home? Start recycling the cans from Ducky's Aussie brew because Daddy ran through it. Let me put it this way. His money is in an offshore and Daddy can't get out of the country because the IRS is after his ass. Daddy's probably going to ask you to bring dollars back in your girdle but don't do it. You'd be looking at fifteen in the slammer. Prediction. He won't tell you that." She was floored. Sounds came out of her. "Honey, your dad is not what we thought he was."
"He's not what you thought he was. He's exactly what I thought. What, they get him on embezzlement?" I nodded.
"Predictable. What a fucker. if this hurts my career, I'll kill him. I'm up for a mini series, thank God I changed my name. Candy Carter is not going to get mentioned in any trashy tabloids and Candice Wendell doesn't exist. Well, it sorta does. I wonder if I can change my driver's license and social security card. Probably a hundred bucks on a street corner with some Salvadoran. She slipped into a scarf and coat. "Mom I gotta hit the highway!"
"Candice, can I bunk here?
"Are you kidding? Ducky would leave me. You wouldn't want to ruin my relationship with him would you? If you were a Mother in Law maybe, but...I'm just a ... Anyway, you have so many girlfriends --"
"You'd think -- but it's not so. Don't put me out on the street to beg. I just need a place to stay 'til I get a job. You've got a guestroom. They took the house, the Bentley, all the checking accounts are closed, they took my jewels, clothes..."
"Your Chanels?"
"Every last one."
"The Emerald Diamond Ruby bee from van Cleef Arpels?" I nodded. "AAAAA! Dad is sucha jerk. He could have done it so he was never caught. Junk Bonds are transparent. They can prove what he invested by going in records. There are a hundred ways to embezzle a few lousy million dollars without leaving a paper trail and getting your ass caught. And that drip couldn't find one? I'll take the cats, but you have to go somewhere. Here's cash for a taxi. I'm late to a rehearsal. You can stay long enough to eat, and feed them, then you gotta leave before Ducky comes home." She did the kiss kiss thing and the elevator doors closed around her.
* * *
There were lost minutes in my day. I do not remember how I got from Candices' gorgeous Westwood street to Pico Boulevard and the Department of Public Family Services or whatever they call it. DPSS, though God knows what that stood for. But I remember the waiting room. There were dozens of hollow eyed adults and twice that number of fretful babies in the Welfare office. Why the city didn't distribute apples to every visitor I'll never understand.
"Avery Wendell?" a woman called out to us. I stood and followed the worker into the back area. "It's been three hours," I complained meekly.
"Yes well, it's not crowded today." We went in a cubicle.
* * *
"So you understand the 212$ a month is a loan, not a grant. You have to repay it picking up garbage in the park forty eight hours a month. The park is in Sylmar. You must sign in at 7 am and work until 3 p.m. Bring your own lunch."
"It takes four buses to get to Sylmar from LA. I don't have bus money."
"That's not our problem. Sign here if you want General Relief.
"You mean I get 212 $ a month, 88$ foodstamps but I have to pay it back working on a chain gang in a distant city? Forty eight hours a week plus ten hours on buses means I'm paying for my aid at the rate of roughly --- well it's illegal rate. 4$ an hour is earning way less than miminum wage and all this so that the State can fire union workers earning l7$ an hour?"
"With accounting skills like those you don't need welfare. Get a job."
"My last name wouldn't look too good on a resume just now.
"So fine, sign here and you're taken care of."
"Taken care of?" I sneered. "If I sign, can I have my money and foodstamps now?'
"You have to show up and sign in at the Sylmar park first, and then it takes a month to process paperwork."
"What do I do in the meantime?
"We will give you a voucher for the Skid Row mission for women. Abundant food, a little heavy on the noodles and potatoes.....but warm beds. Lots of religion. Then of course, there's the cardboard Hilton. Mrs Wendell?" I declined to sign, got up and walked out.
* * * * *
Where. Where to go. I stuck out my thumb. Ten minutes later, I was at Coldwater and Sunset. I walked north to Chevy Chase Drive, turned left and in moments was at the house with the lipstick red door. It opened. Florine Macy stared at me a long half minute. "Avery, I can't deal with this."
"Are you saying I can't come in?"
No, I'm saying that I just can't deal.
Florine looked both ways and closed the door. A paroxysm of fear and shock engulfed my heart.
I walked uphill to Beverly Crest Drive. I trekked up a long cobbled drive to a Harold Lloyd kind of stately home. Cypresses lined the driveway leading to a Pseudo Greek mansion. The Butler was in the portico emptying ash trays. "Is Mrs Cummings in?"
Whom may I say is calling?"
Cristina Commings was a bleached blonde who looked a lot like Madonna. She came out to the patio, stopped a foot away, raised her hands as if she were going to embrace me and did the huggy thing with two air pecks as if her lips would smear. "Pussy cat. You came at last. I get so lonely during the day. I have the prettiest place in town and simply nobody drops by. You're an angel to break the thousand year curse."
"Don't you wonder why I'm here?"
Wonder, I'm overjoyed. Dudley bring us some cigarettes. Have you a fave brand?"
"No, but you know what? I am hungry."
Dudley, celery sticks and perrier."
"No, like for bread, meat. Food. That old fashioned stuff."
"Now now, can't let ourselves get chubby. At our age, it doesn't go bye bye. Can't I convince you to smoke instead of eat? Tobacco makes us nice and skinny. Who can eat when you're nauseated?"
We sat on florid couches in the shade of a grape arbor. I noticed that its chunky Wisteria really needed a pruning and knew I could do it if she'd hire me and let me live there. Dudley Do Right delivered the celery sticks and Perrier. I gnawed one down wondering if celery could actually make hunger abate.
"Bill's had some troubles...." I started.
"Harold was saying. He came up short or something and ran away or something? Walked acorss the border to Mexico and now, nobody can find him? Well, good riddance. You don't deserve a no-class bum like that. You're a sweet girl with a thousand friends. You'll be just fine.
"I've heard you can depend on the kindness of strangers, Christina, and maybe one can. But ..depending on friends hasn't worked for me, so far.
"Then it's time to get a career. What I'd do is, I'd act or get in a rock group or get kept."
"I'd thought more in the line of being a clerk at Nordstroms."
"You need a degree in marketing, nowadays Those girls are all art school grads."
Hmmmmmm. I sighed. Then I reached up behind my neck and unfastened my gold locket. ""You might be interested in this."
"I've lovely. You're so sweet. Christina stashed it in her pocket. "Honestly, you're one of my dearest girlfriends. Listen, can I run you into town? I'm due for a bikin wax and tan at Ardens."
I was astonished. "Oh no. I'm walking. That's how I preserve my figure. That and celery."
"Well, I'm off. Toodle and come on by any morning. My yoga teacher's here around nine. We could transcend. Together."
I let myself out and retreated down the long cobbled driveway to the canyon pass. I put my hand to my neck. That bitch had stolen my locket!
***
Sierra Vista meant "view of the mountain" and they weren't just whistlin' Dixie. I panted as I knocked on my third door. Joan Cohen hugged me and pulled me in. "Your phones are disconnected! We panicked."
"Yes the phones probably are dead."
I've got ten women looking for you. We even told the girl at the Beverly Hills Library if you came in to call us. Where are you living?"
I-- was at my daughter's this morning. Otherwise, nowhere. I don't have money to get a room at a residential hotel."
"No money at all?" Her mouth was a round 'o' of horror.
The government took all my jewelry, bank won't let me in the deposit box. IRS took the wall safe. Every stitch I own. "
"Your PTA suits? Oh God, you used to be able to say 62, 63, the Kennedy commemorative, 64, the LBJ inauguration, all the way up to 2006. You kept them all perfect. Not a moth, and not one from New York, straight from Gay Paree, every last one."
"They re' gone and Bill is too. To Mexico according to reports. To visit his money. His L.A. accounts are empty.
"Well, let's see what I have. My mad money." She drew me into the kitchen, reached for a teapot on a high shelf and pulled out a wad of hundreds."
"A lot of mad money."
"Stashed for the big one don't you know. ATM's won't work if it's over 8 on the Richter scale. Here, take it all."
"No, I can't take money. I want to earn it."
"Well, we never eat home so I do all my own clean up. I don't need help. Oh you mean a real job. That's your strategy?.
"Yes, the real world. Get a job."
"Avery, entry level is chump change. You can't live on minimum wage, 5$ an hour. Not you. Tell you what I'd do. In a community property state like California, New York, Nevada, New Mexico, marriage is the best business next to being a tax lawyer. Think geriatric. Something in a senior size…..blue hair, blue blood? I'd go to Palm Springs! That's where I met Max."
* * *
In despair, I walked across this great jewel of a city passing boutiques where blue jeans cost 400$ in my ratty cardigan and tennis shoes. The many paper grocery bags of old clothing that I carried got looks from shoppers stepping into Rolls Royces. How I pined for either of our two Bentleys. I passed houses for rent in Beverly Hills where they asked $15,000 a month. I kept walking. In West Hollywood houses were 3,000$ a month. I kept walking. At the north end of the "Swish Alps", near the Sunset Strip, an apartment was $2,000.
I tried to use a credit card at a drug store to buy candy. It was rejected. The owner compassionately pressed the candy bar and a dollar into my hand. I headed East on the Strip. I stared too long or too longingly at a man drinking coffee and he handed me his cappucino. I thanked him, gave him a thumbs up and drank it down as I walked, wondering if I looked like a beggar, or why else had he given it to me? Fatigue melted from my bones as the caffeine hit the vagus nerve. Refreshed, I kept walking.
By late day I got to Hollywood. My mokkalatte bouncy step had slowed to a decaf crawl. Hippies with Mohawks and studs in their ears would not move to the side for my weary ass so my weary legs did the sidestepping. An angular red-headed hooker pressed a fiver into my hand. "If you wanta work with me, honey I gotta great guy; he'll take care of you. Some men actually prefer you older broads."
"Sweet. Thank you ---"
"Edna."
"Edna? Surely nobody gets named EDNA anymore."
"In Indiana, they do.
"None of our lovely modern names there? You got Tiffany's in Indiana?
"I went to school with one. She married a dentist."
"So Tiffany married the dentist and Edna came to Hollywood?"
"Go figure." Her smile was yellow.
"You didn't come here to do this did you?
"No, I was an electrician back home, I came to work for the DWP. Went into their training program to be a lineman, a week out four of their best fried in the wires, you may have read about it."
"I think I did."
"I quit the training, changed my name from Ed to Edna and my debut was on Santa Monica Boulevard." Oh. I got it. Edna was ED. A man. Of course. The Adam's apple. The wrists like oak branches. Scratch a shiny object in tinsel town and you'll hit story gold every time. But that was not a story line I wanted to pursue so our conversation stalled.
* * * * *
The side streets off Hollywood boulevard had ancient houses. One was wrapped in blue morninglories with a sign, Room for rent, Inquire Within. I sniffed at the solid wall of blue flowers but only came up with a vague whiff of tamale pie. I stood drinking in the aroma and realized a woman in the garden watering was looking back at me. I nodded and kept walking. "Hey!" I turned. "The Room is 700 a month, kitchen privileges.""I don't have that kind of money."
I can read your fortune, see when you will!" I laughed, took note of a second sign on the wall of flowers, reading 'TAROT, Palmistry, Astrology.'
"No money. Tell you what. I'll do it for free." I was impressed and came back to the gate. "Cuz you're living on the street now, aren't you."
"You're really psychic."
"We all are. But you give off impressions. Like you had a pedicure and facial scheduled for this week and you forgot to cancel it.
"You're right, It was for tomorrow. My God, you are psychic."
"And you just broke up with this guy who looks like that 'make my day' actor, Clint --the mayor Clint?." She was squinting off into the sunset. Pondering. "No no. You're fighting him. You left a million dollar home, and you don't want your friends to know or hurt you any more than they have so you're on foot, nowhere to go -- and hungry. Oh sweetie. Never eat candy on the road, it makes hunger much worse. Trees everywhere in L.A. have fruit. Go for the fruit."
"You're good. "
"Not really. You're wearing a wedding ring, have a Gucci purse and you've been smelling dinner since the sidewalk.
"Sherlock Holmes and you cook tamale pie?"
"Enchiladas, well, corn and chiles, so that's some beagle nose you've got there."
"Home Ec was my college major. Got a nose like a truffle hunting pig. I'm Avery Wendell."
"Carla Hinshaw." She put out her hand. It was like grasping a steel worker's glove.
* * * * *
I had finished my plate of enchiladas and was sipping black coffee. 'And then-- ??" Carla prodded.
"Well, the IRS came and they gave him a summons and then we had this brawl...I called him a white collar criminal."
She winced "The one thing you can never do, shame someone or make them lose face.
"But I was right."
"That's called being dead right. They'll never forgive you for it "
"Then how does anyone progress down here? "
Somebody'll mirror him eventually just don't let it be you if you want to live to use them for another day.
"I see."
"No you don't. You're thinking how transactional."
"Yes'.
"Staying alive I call it. You keep a smile on your face and a white lie on your tongue. Better a lie that hurts no one than a truth that kills. Mom called it manners. I call it self preservation. After all, you put yourself in the cage with him. You never mirror, if you're locked in a cage. Telling him the truth about himself shows your will to fail."
"So I can never tell anyone the truth?
"Only if you are an independent operator. And then, you have to put it in past tense. Like 'you were a miserable lying cheating bastard but everybody makes mistakes and I know you're gonna be good as gold from now on. If you don't candy coat it, man woman or child will not forgive you for being right and they'll dump you sure as shit. Never let on you know their dirty little secret."
"Well, I knew his and I was't going to help him go bankrupt 'cause God knows what I really was signing. I told him frankly -- I thought he was a thief."
"You tell him the truth, he predictably gets mad and sells the house."
"Well, either he sold the house or his bosses did, cuz it turns out they may have owned it really and--these Wall Street guys might do that to distance themselves from him. We never really owned any of it. That's possible. That they already had his signature on a quit claim deed? I don't know. Anyway someone sold it to a Chinaman. Overnight, I'm homeless."
"We don't really know what a man is capable of. You should have been socking money away. Shame on you."
"I haven't had a dollar bill in my hands in thirty five years. It was all little plastic cards." Look at them. Dozens. Every one of them dead.
"The reins were not in your hands. You let them slip out."
I looked around the kitchen at a collection of antique pie tins, whippers, ricers, graters, trivets." Nice stuff." I said, changing the subject.
She brightened. "Garage sale diamonds. Their previous owners didn't know what they had. I come Sunday at five and they'll say 'haul away anything you want. Cookie jars, trivets, ricers' Like taking candy from babies.
"You resell? That how you live?"
"Today you gotta two two hundred things to live. Yeah, I sell at Ebay but I also buy there, antique table linens from farms in middle America and I resell them at the posh Farmer's Market in Beverly Hills, you've probably seen me there. Women find 8$ a jar jam so very bon marche. Well yeah, it truly is when the cook gets her fruit in a dumpster behind the Safeway, free as air. Glad to let you Beverly Hills ladies have it bon marche. I can make 50 jars in a day.
"That's Four hundred dollars."
"Free and clear almost, cuz I gotta put the old jam in new jars. And give my pal who has the booth a twenty.
"What else do you do to live?
"Well the room for rent, Fortunetelling, --massage, ladies only. Occasionally sell weed. You do know what weed is, don't you?
"Oh Yes. I have millions of weeds. I have a green house at home.She laughed. Then she studied me. Not that kind of weed.
You grow orchids? I can sell orchids. You know, you can live here if you come up with 7 bills a month or a helluva lot of potted orchids.
"Well, I don't have any money. Maybe Joan Cohen would give me what's in her sugar jar. But come to think of it, drive me to my house, we can get the tuberoses out of the greenhouse. Much better than orchids. I mean it, I have pots worth thousands.
'So do I," she smiled. '"But for the legal kind, I'll get my car keys."* * * * * * * * *
The electronic iron front gates were closed but I showed Carla where to park her van on the side of the service road so we could climb the hillside to the greenhouse. I showed her what had once been my own private Idaho. From the hummock of meadowland, we could up hill to the Tudor palace or look west across Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, see the sun sinking into a swath of clean, smog-free beach-blue cooling into ultramarine.
We went into the greenhouse, its air still warm from the day's sun, its lush, silky thickness perfumed with the first blooms of summer.
"Wow pikake, gardenia maybe a little plumeria in it," she said sniffing.
"All tuberose. Take as many as you want."
"Waddya know? I died and went to heaven. Tomorrow, we gotta come back and get them all out. I can get twenty bucks a pop at the Farmers Market. Maybe more. Nobody's seen anything like them."
"Except in Cuernevaca. There, it's a weed."
"Well, not 'weed' but..... " she sniffed again. "a definite kind of pleasure-conferring vegetable substance."
* * * * * * *
As we drove back to Hollywood, I told her about the DPSS office and their attempt to get me to clean highways. "Avery, you were stupid! You missed a big chance there. All you had to do was go to your family doctor first, get a typed letter on legal stationery and give Welfare that doctor's letter for any malady in the book....collapsed arches, RSD, MS, MM. Let'em prove you don't have alphabet soup. Meanwhile, you can get out of cleaning highways and parks and picking up garbage. You got that collapsed disc? Those bunions. That heart Murmur? That incipient diabetes. Play it for what it's worth. Get the dole you get a buffer zone. Otherwise kid, when you fall out of a mansion to hard sidewalk, you hit cement!" And cement is a definite 'owie'. Damnit, gal, don't you know anything?" I shook my head." "Well, the good thing is you're not in the computer yet so we can take you to the HOLLYWOOD OFFICE and do it all over again but Avery? You gotta be smarter when you go see the man. You can't say every damn thing you think, the way you tell off your husband. Just say what The Man needs to hear. And for that you gotta know the Rule Book. You say stuff right and all the time act humble, stupid and grateful. Voila, you get your stipend, your food stamps.
"Hmmm, who knew?."
"OK, here is the list of the people you can never tell the truth to: the IRS, the SSA, the cops, the landlord and the welfare authorities. You're honor bound to lie to the DPSS because if you don't qualify by their rule book, you are less than a straw in the wind. They have lost their humanity doing that job, so your feelings will not count and you stop existing the second you don't fit into the profile. The trick is to know the rulebook before you get to the gate. Fit the bill. Assume the Pose. The Landlord sees multiple bank accounts, stock accounts on paper, he doesn't go check if they're still open or if the FBI confiscated them? So go home and get those old bank statements. Cops may actually buy that your wallet and ID were stolen at Saks. Give them one letter off the true name on your true driver's license which obviously you didn't show them so the moving violation goes to ticket Hell.
"Don't have one but I see where you're going."
"Tell the welfare lady you have a slipped disc, she'd have let you out of that work detail -- she doesn't do it out of kindness but because you fit a code in the rule book, the bad back brigade. They probably work for half minimum wage at a school cafeteria!"
"Got it. Just lie to the State of California."
"I don't advocate lying. I advocate surviving. Yes! Lie like a fucking rug. Tell them your heart goes 180, your cardiologist wants open heart surgery then drink three expressos, stay up all night, go to their welfare doctor the next morning and voila, your heart goes 180. Done it a million times. What's the big deal? There are method actors and nobody says boo, they get Oscars. Be a method fucking welfare recipient who can't even work cafeteria!"
I chuckled; that loosened a laugh which in turn loosened tears. "This is a bad dream. A nightmare."
"Life is only a nightmare when you think. Let your heart be happy and your mouth say what people want to hear. Brains come up with skewed strategies." She gestured toward Hollywood Boulevard where hobos and whores strolled under neon. "Somehow, you created the thug husband getting into your life, you picked an ugly soul. You overlooked that Marines are professional killers. You married a heartless lying scumbag with no remorse, you let him grow like a weed which took some serious lying. You never mirrored him gracefully and continually. Take responsibility. At least that way you won't be bummed. Be happy. Life responded to your thoughts, words and deeds -- or lack of them. There is a God and you are He. Now, if you want to create more and better, get into a heart centered, creative good humor and I promise, you will be able to make changes in your life. At least, now, you know the Universe listens to you! From now on, you'll only speak creative affirmations, envisioning beautiful pictures that describe future conditions or better, you'll vow future deeds and solutions and you'll keep those vows and do actions which will make you joyous."She punctuated that sentence with a merry little left turn at Highland and Hollywood on an orange light, watching her rear view mirror. "See what I just did? I should have stopped when it went orange. I was asking for a cop to be there but at least I'm hauling a crop of premium Mexican tuberose buds and not some --ahem! Oh hon, check the glove compartment would you? if there's a baggie in there, put it in your purse real quiet like. They'd never search you."
I obediently opened the little door, spotted the baggie and put it in my purse. She nodded approvingly.
"You're a survivor, Avery and now that you know that life approves of that pure quality, you'll only speak creative, beautiful pictures and make choices that will make everyone happy." I thought of the fact I'd taken that baggie into my purse and felt my mouth scrunch sideways in doubt. "Now you will live in truth. No more marrying an ex marine, lying scumbag who's probably banging his secretary in the Cayman islands as we speak.
"Ya think?" I looked over at her.
"With a blonde named Gloria or Gladys. Yep."
"Camilla."
Nah, her real name is Gladys. I get the Caymans. At a four star hotel with jacuzzis in the garden, gold faucets. Nothing like the dump you're going to be spending the night in."
As we pulled into the driveway I said wistfully, "I should have gone to Bermuda."
"He asked you to go, well that was about banks, Avery, not scenery and Not second honeymoon. And do you truly want another thirty years of him? I don't think so."She was right.
* * * * * * * *
We unloaded the tuberose pots in the driveway, inside the gate. "South side of the house is real warm maybe I should tent the area with plastic."
"Inspired. And come Autumn, a heater would be good at night."After a supper of eggs and bacon, I was shown to my room, a garret with a cot and a thrift store nightie on the bed. Too tired to change, I lay admiring the effect of Hollywood Boulevard's flashing neon rainbows all over the morninglories outside my bedroom window.
* * * *
The next thing I heard was a strange voice asking "No spiders?" Hmmm? I came awake to blue sunny skies.
"The downside of using morninglories as house paint. " The sun poured in on her as she came in with a breakfast tray. "Those vines out there are prettier than paint but they attract spiders, all of them deadly. Once I soaked bread and put it under the screens, ya know at the edges to keep them out only it attracted this hoarde of beetles and roaches. I haven't the heart to poison them, cuz they can't kill you. "
"Actually they carry hepatitis."
"Oh God, you ruined your life with Home Ec, don't ruin mine."She set coffee in front of me. I made a mental note to ask Jakobs if I might be exessively fussy because of an overdose of Home Economics classes at a tender age but then I realized I would never have money again and would probably not be seeing Dr. Jacobs ever. So I asked myself. Was I excessively anti-bug hygienic? Nahhhh, not the lady who wanted to hug a baby rat.
My new friend was studying my pensive face. "Breakfast, five minutes OK? Downstairs. I'm not good for two walks up those stairs a day and that's it."
"I will be there."
"Good. I plan an adventure ."<----- PROCEED TO CHAPTER IV.