He worked at Chasen’s for a while—
began his career in a New York cotton brokerage house, earning fifteen dollars a week. In nineteen forty-nine, he formed an import-export concern that he operated until, at the age of thirty and already a millionaire, he bought into the Michigan parts company.
Among its hundreds of subsidiaries, the most widely known are Paramount Pictures, the Madison Square Garden Corporation and Simon & Schus
What could it have been like to live with him? Diantha saw less and less of those she cared for. Corraled by his sickness, she became a mirror, herself house-bound and bizarre. It had never been easy for her to make friends. She lived for Lavinia, grown unsavory and irascible before her eyes; turned to her granddaughter, but Molly was in trouble early on, evaporating around the time of Severin’s own manic retreat — all that jail business broke Diantha’s heart. His wife would have no rewards; when she passed, Molly had been gone almost five years. Severin kept hoping their grandchild would appear at Diantha’s bedside and she did, yes she did, a day late, sores and scabs everywhere, tattoo covering her back, spidery rendering of a woman entered from behind by a skeleton with a scythe. For the last few years of her husband’s madness — five, really — well, ten — what Diantha really had then was Lavinia. Overbearing, unkempt, gloomy, abusive Lavinia.
He saw his wife hanging in the air outside the window, a blown out, blighted angel dragged to hell by the gagman’s caravan of black humors. Severin came to the Beachwood bedroom once and there she was, rocking, eyes slammed watery shut, hands over ears to evict the scannerbabble.
Mr. Bluhdorn’s favorite expression, said an associate, was, “What is the bottom line?”
Didn’t even bury her — too busy waiting, and waiting still! Why had he been so indulged? They should have done something, rancorous and violent, lacking decorum, caved in his head and smashed his machines, chased him down with wild children and devoured him on the beach.
It was pouring. A thousand gargoyles spat rain at the windows (Diantha gone now) with fatal, mischievous mouths. Severin slept.
Rachel Krohn
Oberon Mall was dead.
Mitch had a flu, and Calliope asked her to come to the service at Hillside Memorial Park. Rachel showered when they got off the phone. She was showering at least five times a day, skin chafed from overwashing. Mortuary parking lot lustrations hadn’t been enough “to remove death,” not by a long shot — in fact, the effort was risible. According to the Hebrew Bible, even a mikvah couldn’t banish the intensity of the tumah of a corpse. This is where the red heifer came in.
The cow would be slaughtered, then burned with cedarwood (the mightiest of trees — HOPE), hyssop (because it grew in crevices — FAITH) and “crimson stuff” (from the scarlet worm — CHARITY) added to the fire. The ashes were to be mixed with living water, not stagnant, then sprinkled over the unclean — all in addition to immersion. That’s what it took to emerge tahor. This particular law of Torah was one of four that remained unfathomable to even the most faithful of interpretants, the others being: marrying one’s brother’s widow; not mingling wool and linen in a garment; performing the rites of the scapegoat.
She put on the brown Armani her mother had bought for her birthday. To calm herself, Rachel recited the laws. When a wife entered the niddah state, she and her husband could not touch. They could not comb each other’s hair, nor could they brush lint from each other’s clothes. They couldn’t even hand objects to one another, a small child being the rare exception. They were forbidden to sit together on a sofa unless another person — or, say, cushion — was set between them. They may not pour each other drinks, nor should a husband eat or drink from his wife’s leftovers, though she could eat from his. If the husband didn’t know the leftovers were hers, it was all right for him to eat. If someone ate from his wife’s leftovers first or the leftovers were transferred to another plate, the husband could eat them too, as long as the wife had left the room. While she was unclean, he was not to sit on his wife’s bed, smell her perfume or listen to the sound of her singing….
They drove through a phalanx of paparazzi at the cemetery gate.
This, the green freeway-bound park where her father was laid.
It was Calliope’s genius to stage a reunion via this ballyhooed alternative event. The psychiatrist was a public figure of sorts, a bit-player perennial in the media drama — she would upstage the cantor (with a little help from Oberon), as he had upstaged her in that shattered time. She wanted him to feel her feathers as she swept past his table with the VIPs. Yes: it seemed to take forever but now all the bodies were in their proper place. Mother and daughter could have their mikvah.
Donny Ribkin and Zev Turtletaub said hello. They were joined by Katherine Grosseck. Calliope said she was glad to finally meet the real McCoy, and Katherine quickly filled Zev in on the impersonator scandale. Then the screenwriter said: How can I be sure you’re the real Calliope? “By her hourly fee,” said Donny, and everyone laughed. More jokes were made, belaboring the theme of the double. Before they broke off, Donny said he and Katherine were a couple again. Calliope offered congratulations. Zev said they were together only because Katherine’s directing career needed jump-starting.
“Donny Ribkin was a patient of yours,” said Rachel, reiterating what she’d already been told. She felt a bond with the agent, an illicit kinship.
“Not any longer. Not for months.”
“Did he — does he know about Sy…and his mother?”
She nodded. “Just recently. He called to say he found her diaries.”
“Well, didn’t he think it a little strange? I mean, that you were the wife of the man that his mother was—”
“Of course, he thought it was strange. It is strange.”
“I just can’t see how — how you ever could have agreed to see him as a patient, Mother. Knowing that—”
“I made a choice, Rachel. Doctors make choices.”
Rachel felt like making a choice of her own: to kick off her heels and sprint up the hill to the Mount of Olives, where the cantor awaited. She had cedarwood in her purse, and minty hyssop too — a small fire would be kindled at grave. She would perform the rites of the scapegoat while Aztec laborers shut off tractors, respectfully turning away.
Leslie Trott shook hands like it was a collagen convention. Calliope was always pushing her daughter to see him. A few years ago, Rachel gave in, but the emperor was overbooked. She wound up in a distant room, far from Big Star country — the Mount of Olives suite — where a dull colleague cheerily burned off a minuscule nostril wart.
“How long did you see Obie, as a shrink?”
“A year. A very troubled girl.”
“Isn’t it…inappropriate for you to be here?”
“I don’t know where you get your ethical bulletins from, Rachel, but no. I’m a human being. I dance at weddings and I cry at funerals.”