“But we have individuals out here who are just as imaginative. You might have read about a fellow in the paper who gave a donation of a hundred-and-12,000,000 to a little college in Northern California. They were so thrilled, they gave him a 1st edition of The Origin of Species—and arranged for the guy to be blessed by the Pope! A convicted felon! Of course, the pledges turned out to be completely spurious. The human animal has a primal need to believe. It’s very important to believe, and there are folks out there who take advantage of that. I think it was St Mary’s — St Mary’s College. So at least your mom’s in good company.”
SHE stayed overnight at the hospital. Barbet stopped by. They had coffee in the cafeteria and commiserated.
After he left, she watched television while her mother slept. The usual reports of bombings, bird flu, and mass burials; anchors spoke of Death’s details — always sketchy and sexily half-baked, like a stairwell dry hump — with a breathy, erotic edge to their voices. She zoned out and tried to read. It was after 10. There was a segment about a former TV journalist who’d recovered from cancer and now devoted his life to helping others who were disabled or trying to recover from catastrophic illnesses. The feature ended with a visit to a quadraplegic who spoke with the aid of a synthesizer. When the retired newsman asked the quad how he would now describe his life, the electronic voicebox replied, “I — am — happy — always.”
She thought of Mom’s fortune cookie (love is around the corner) and collapsed in silent tears.
LXIX.Joan
SHE punched in the destination — Detective Whitsell was kind enough to get her the exact address — and followed the yellow brick Mercantile Road to the City of Industry.
It was funny to her that a robotic female voice (I am happy always. Love is around the corner) guided her from point A to point B, point B to point C, and so on. The Woman was relentless and unwavering, automatically lowering the volume of her CD (a haunting Rachmaninoff chorale) to tell her to hold fast to this or that lane of this or that freeway; the Woman cut into phone conversations like a switchboard gossip, ordering Joan to exit, turn left, go a quarter of a mile to this street or avenue, keep right—a warmly disembodied automatrice, shepherding a 4-ton machine over subex-urban grids until Joan reached the heart of the heart of the matter, the apartment complex fixed in ever-mutable nonnegotiable space and time where her supposed biological father allegedly resided, reverse paternity, aging mitochondrial DNA/GPS entity, who, like Mom, had recently been assaulted (unwarranted warrants) under true/false colors of authority, all interchangeable now, good cop/bad cop neverending.
The Woman said, “Your destination is ahead on the right. Your route guidance is now complete,” and Joan laughed.
Oh, is it really?
She scoped her father’s building then turned tail. Found a liquor store and bought Marlboro Lights, a Diet Coke, and a jumbo bag of Lay’s chips (she hadn’t smoked in 5 years). Sat in the car listening to Rachi then shut it down for a reality check. The symphonic backdrop for her own personal opera was overkill.
Drove back to the apartment and sat some more.
Took a cigarette out, didn’t light it.
More scoping: a cheerless but well-kept area.
Left her car. Walked upstairs to the 2nd floor.
(Must be a haul for an old guy.)
Saw a brightly painted door, different than the others — replacement for the one they kicked in?
Got closer till she was staring at it.
Some heavy breathing on her side—#203B.
Heard the television: loud.
(Probably losing his hearing.)
I better just do this.
Because it was too easy to walk away: because she was effulgently depressed: because she was prone to hair-trigger tears: because her mother and the baby and the hormones had kicked her ass ragged, and broken down the doors of her own house.
Knock. Knock knock. Knock knock knock knock knock.
(She had lost, she was lost, I am lost.)
He stirred.
Stood.
She saw bearish shadows slowly moving.
Her heart snagged.
Ray greeted her — a dusty, frazzled screen now between them. He looked at her and smiled. She lost it. He was startled. Joan said she was sorry. He laughed with befuddlement while she wiped her eyes and shoved down tears. He opened the door. You OK? Asked how he could help. He’s kind. She said — again, with sobby strangled self-conscious actressy laugh — I think you — I think you are my father. I think you are my He took a not unfriendly step back. (Literally taken aback.) Oh. What is he going to do. He asked her in, surprising. Pungent smell of Indian leftovers. Are you…Joanie? She nodded and sobbed and he offered his semi-fancy easychair. She couldn’t take it. She needed something upright so’s not to slip into a dream. My Lord, he said, not thinking to turn down the TV until he appeared cudgeled by its blare. My Lord My Lord My Lord
She told the old man her friend had read about him in the paper, a friend who was aware of her “other name.” The Rausch name.
Oh my Lord. Oh my Lord.
Neither knew where to start but had already begun, brought together by the fates and the CG and the GPS, matchmade and ready-to-order by adenoidal androidal I am happy always.
(Love was just around the corner.)
Joan asked if he was all right, a good neutral question, meaning she heard he’d had a heart attack, or actually read about that, it was in the article. Yes he was, he said, eyes moistening now, hand trembling too, yes, he was all right.
Somewhere a dog squealed, cowering behind a chair.
Why, that’s the Friar, he said, that’s Friar Tuck. We call him Nip/Tuck, Nip for short. It gets a little complicated around here. She cautiously put her hand out but the dog lowgrowled and hunch-hunkered. He’ll get used to you. Best not to pay any attention, that’s what Cesar says. Don’t lookim in the eye. Doin a helluva lot better, that one. Did he get shot? I mean they said, I read, he got shot. The man — her father! — said yes, the cops “put a slug in him” by mistake but he was much better, had a surgery, now he was just about 100 %, tough old coot. Outlive us all.
The Friar waddled over and licked her hand and she saw the shaved patches, Raymond Rausch said for some reason the hair wasn’t growing back in, and Joan thought of her mom — his ex! — and the awful beating she took, and again: wave of lipquavering tears. The nice thing being that a certain awed politesse had mercifully overtaken and they rested in quiet ancestral reverie not much different from the folksy, civil calmness between strangers who meet in extremis, no hurry, no worries, there was time, unbridgeable time, too much to speak of, no catching up to do in the usual sense, only a kind of tacit, preternatural, subterranean filling in, the homemade soupy soak of skinspirit and lineage, cellular charades, boardgame of the secret society of genomes, conditioning and destiny, of double helix and timespace serendipities. It was understood that for now there’d be no discussion of wife or mother, brother or son. For that, again, there’d be time and opportunity, at least that was the mutual assumption, which was, afterall, part of what was nice, nicely nice and relaxing. He did say, “What do you do?” and was pleased and nonplussed by her answer.