She read the opening verse aloud:
I will remember what I was. I am sick of rope and chain.
I will remember my old strength and all my forest affairs.
I will not sell my back to man for a bundle of sugarcane…
I will go out until the day, until the morning break — out to
the winds’ untainted kiss, the waters’ clean caress—
I will forget my ankle-ring and snap my picket-stake. I will
revisit my lost loves, and playmates masterless!
SHE put on her “lucky” Schlumberger peas-in-the-
pod and parrot-and-feather Tiffany pins, plus a necklace she hadn’t worn in years made of tourmalines, peridot, and aquamarine stones. (They set off the fire of her wedding ring opal.) It crossed her mind that Cora might look through the window and see her wheeling the suitcase she’d packed for New York; Marj wasn’t up for any explaining. In fact, she rather enjoyed the idea of Cora guessing her whereabouts. The mystery of it. The old woman smiled to herself, feeling like a double agent — a saboteur! It was very Graham Greene! She could always say she’d been to the elephants’ ball…but when she thought of Pahrump and how tough a time her neighbor had been having, Marj felt a little less “cock-of-the-walk” (an expression Hamilton liked to use). She scribbled a note saying she was on her way to La Quinta with her daughter and stuck it in Cora’s mailbox. The suitcase was small but the old woman had trouble lifting it to the trunk. She slid it into the backseat instead. She would get help once she got to the restaurant.
MARJ drove right past Spago. For a moment, she didn’t have a clue where she was. Why hadn’t she hitched a ride with Bonita? Dumb, dumb, dumb. She circled Rite Aid a few times before coming back around Wilshire to Cañon. There was sidewalk construction going on but then she saw the valets.
She felt glamorous making her entrance. The pretty Asian woman looked up “Mr Weyerhauser” then asked if the party might be under a different name. Marj said, as if intoning a password at the Magic Castle (she’d been to that place in the Hollywood Hills years ago, with Ham), “the Blind Sisters.” The hostess seemed puzzled but a confident Marj added, “It should be a large group.” The gal checked again, under “Weyerhauser” and “Herlihy” and “Blind Sisters,” but came up blank. She couldn’t remember Bonita’s last name, not that it made much sense that it would have been used for the reservation. She nearly blurted out “State of New York” and “lottery winners,” but thought that unwise. (It might even be illegal.)
The hostess never stopped smiling. She made the old woman feel comfortable that there had been a mistake, and her party was certain to arrive soon. She led her to an empty table for 2, opposite the bar. She was lovely — and my, there were so many people there, yet she had been so personable! No wonder Lucas had chosen this place.
She ordered Perrier and after a few minutes pulled Mr Weyerhauser’s card from her wallet. Stupidly, she’d left the cellphone Joan gave her at home. (Her daughter would have been mad about that. She told her never to leave the house without it.) Marj asked the server if there was another Spago and was politely told there once was, but no more. She waited almost an hour. She left a kerchief on the chair so that no one would claim it, then went to the bathroom, passing parties of beautifully dressed diners who seemed to stare at her with respect — Marjorie Herlihy knew that tonight she exuded elegance, wealth, sophistication. The old woman splashed her face and the water felt good; she had diarrhea from her nerves and wondered how much longer she should stay. She found a payphone to call Lucas but didn’t have any coins.
She sat down at the bar for another 40 minutes — a gal her age, sitting in a bar! Ham would have laughed — nursing a glass of red wine. She wondered if there had been an invitation, and searched her mind. Did Lucas give her something with an address, something for the party? She told him she was coming — didn’t she? — but there wasn’t anything to RSVP. Usually, for a grand gala, there was a number you could call to RIP…no, they were probably careful about that. This sort of thing, if you had it on paper, was too easy to “leak.” Still, she imagined those federal people had printers they worked with who were bonded. It was probably her own damn fault for being a late enrollee in the Expedited Award Program. There wouldn’t have been time to send something out.
When she finally left, she made deliberate, old-world pains to thank the attractive hostess, one of those marvelous professionals trained never to make assumptions or judgments nor to condescend. She told Marj she was sorry, but nothing, not a scintilla, of her demeanor made the guest feel foolish, and for that Mrs Herlihy was grateful.
Perhaps she’d made a terrible mistake and the plan had been to meet at the Four Seasons all along. She needed to drive over, right away — where was that hotel? On Doheny? The thought crossed her mind that something awful might have happened to Lucas; or, more reasonably, the dinner was canceled due to a sudden emergency, and both he and Bonita had been trying to call. (Not that it mattered, because the damn “mobile” was at home. Anyhow, the old woman wasn’t sure she’d ever given them her number — and how could she? She didn’t even know it herself. Joanie kept saying she was going to tape it on the back but never did.) Wait. No! Now she remembered…Bonita saying she would give her a check for the dresses she’d charged “tonight at Spago.” So even if there had been a last-minute change, Bonita — Billingsley! — would still have met her at Spago—someone would have — then proceeded, arm in arm High Hopes, to the Four Seasons or wherever it was they had settled on. She kicked herself for remembering to pack everything in the world — everything except that stupid phone.
She went to Rite Aid for coins to call the special State of New York Blind Sister Beneficiary Hotline. Everything was so brightly lit that she felt herself coming out of her skin. The cashier was a surly Mexican who said, “I don’t have no change.” (Marj expected Rite Aid to have a higher caliber of worker, at least in Beverly Hills.) The girl wouldn’t even look at her and Marj knew that she was lying. Maybe they’d be kinder in the Rx section but it was so busy she would probably have to wait 20 minutes just to talk to the cashier. (She needed to use the toilet again.) The only place to sit was at the machine that took your blood pressure but right when she got close a little boy clambered onto the seat. Marj smiled and turned to leave. She was at a loss.
Up front, a raucous pack of youngsters jockeyed for ice cream, and she remembered how she used to buy Chess and Joanie cones and sundaes at 31 Flavors, kitty-corner to the drugstore (which back then was called Thrifty’s). Ray didn’t like it but she enjoyed taking the children on excursions to Beverly Hills, she thought it was good for their character to be exposed to wealth. She wanted them to see the large and orderly houses tended to by gardeners, homes she knew one day they could live in. More than anything, she had the desire for her children to attend Beverly Hills schools, the finest in the nation. (Ray never knew it but on Sundays, when Marj said she was with a galfriend, she went apartment hunting, just south of Olympic. But the prices were beyond their ken.) There was a huge pond on Santa Monica Boulevard and Beverly Drive and she sat with the kids on its stone borders, watching the big colorful fishes. Occasionally Marj even spotted someone that she recognized from television or the movies — she swore she once saw Fess Parker and Joan Fontaine but couldn’t get Raymond to believe it. To this day, she retained the habit of walking around the city, and a few weeks ago actually passed by “31” on her way to get bunion medicine — it amazed, but the parlor was still there, one of the few surviving landmarks from that time. There used to be 3 theaters in the neighborhood, and 3 bookstores too — all gone now. She remembered vividly that the Beverly movie palace was literally in the shape of the Taj Mahal, it had become more important to her through the years, after the children had grown she parked nearby just to look. (Best to see its dollop of a roof from a block or so away.) It hadn’t been a working theater for decades, enduring a series of drab transformations from clothing stores to banks, yet rose like a creampuff cloud above storefront commerce, visible only to the delighted cognoscenti, until finally, only a few months ago, they tore the icon down. It was almost proof there was a God that it had managed to stay for so long. Bless 31 Flavors, and bless the memory of the Taj Mahal too. She took the kids there for Saturday matinees. Ray didn’t like that either.