Without the settlement, he’d be in a terrible bind. What would happen to his Big Gulp? He didn’t care about himself, he was a salty old dog just like the Friar, but he sure as heck didn’t have the kind of money you needed to support a newborn. The ACLU even worked a deal with the hospital so BG could stay all this time without financial worries. That was a lot of scratch.
Ray didn’t think of himself as political but it seemed like every day there was something on the TV or radio about how people were hurting. The article in AARP said that 700,000 families were driven to the poorhouse each year because of medical emergencies, middleclass folks with houses, college educations, and good health coverage. Going bust over things like copays and cremation fees. Couples were still paying $800 a month for medication. 800 a month! How could that be? The article said these people were insured. It made no kinda sense. Folks were alone and isolated, the highlight of their day being when Meals on Wheels dropped off supper. It was just like the Depression. Jesus God, he didn’t want to end up that way! He wanted to be a provider, to provide for his woman and child. He’d screwed up the whole thing before and wasn’t going to let it happen again. (He realized that he hadn’t properly apologized to Joanie when she was there — it still seemed like a dream — hadn’t apologized at all. He’d been so shocked by her visit, it made him cross-eyed. She left her phone number and he would make sure to remedy that in the weeks to come.) He was done with screw-ups. He just read a pitiful story in the paper about a man who was sick the day his fellow employees pooled their money for Mega Millions. The “Lucky 7” worked at Kaiser Permanente and won $315,000,000 for the $3 each they’d put in. The poor bastard was suing. Claimed he should have been included but the “Lucky 7” said there wasn’t even a casual agreement, that it was spontaneous, and anyhow the last time he’d gone in was over a year ago. Still, Ray could sympathize. “His day off cost him 39,000,000”—that’s how the article began. That would be damn hard to take. No, Ray wasn’t going to be left behind. Not like the captain in that Twilight Zone whose ship crashed on an asteroid and he became a kind of Mormonstyle patriarch, keeping crew and passengers — and the generation to come — together in sound mind and body with tough love brimstone discipline, until one day, 25 years later, they were finally found by an American search-and-rescue team. Everyone couldn’t wait to leave but the old man refused to board (his stubborn pride) and just as they were taking off he realized he was stranded. Alone. Changed his mind and chased after the ascending rocket. Too late. That hit Ray like a ton of bricks. Stuck with him from the day he 1st saw it.
He read a lot of magazines when he visited Ghulpa—Time and Newsweek and Forbes—they said big companies were dropping healthcare plans altogether and that seemed to Ray a crime. The corporations were gutting pension funds too (especially when they got bought and had their books cooked) and telling people to go invest hardwon earnings their damn selves. The workers could just go to hell. In his book, no one was supposed to be able to touch a pension fund, that was a God-given. Had someone changed the law? Social Security was going the same way with the blessings of the White House. Social Security was dryin up and they were putting an end to Amtrak too. The damn country wasn’t going to have any more trains! But all those CEOs were rich men and didn’t have to worry, they didn’t need trains unless it was a hobby, in which case they could just go out and hire a private railcar and take a tour on any timetable they pleased. The article in Time said these CEO gents — homely looking nabobs in eyeglasses — could make 60 or 70,000,000 just by quitting their jobs! The CEO of Morgan Stanley got a hundred-and-13-point-7,000,000 dollars for leaving. The contract said that after he was gone, he was still entitled to full medical plus $250,000 a year plus an office and a secretary for the rest of his life. (Why would a man need an office and a secretary if he wasn’t working?) That was no golden parachute — hell, there weren’t enough elements in the Periodic Table to say what kind of parachute that was. He shook his head in disgust and laughed. Then off they’d go and get another job, sign another contract. Being a Chief Executive Quitter got you into a special country club. Somebody figured out that when that Exxon fella retired, he’d been making $144,573 a day for 13 years.
He wasn’t on their level, but still thought himself a king. Ray had the notion that with the settlement from the City of Industry (he bet that BG would triple it in no time), he could buy private health insurance. If anything ever happened to Ghulpa or the baby, they’d have the finest treatment in the world. The old man wasn’t thinking of himself — his shelf life, as he liked to put it, had long since expired. Even so, he made the cousins do a little research, and they used their computers to find a special kind of coverage that would pay for a decent convalescent home; he didn’t want to drain money from the main account. The settlement would buy peace of mind and other things too, like the down payment on a house with a nice yard for the Friar.
A yard for their Lionel to crawl around in, and the cousins to throw parties. Maybe they’d even get married there.
GHULPA got ornery and wanted to leave Sisters of Mercy against medical advice. Even the Artesians couldn’t influence her; they were having a hell of a time. The doctors finally said she could go home, but made BG sign a release. The family was worried she wouldn’t stay in bed. Ray was afraid she’d miscarry. He was scared as hell but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. She was a hardhead.
He wasn’t going to mention that his daughter had come to see him. The timing wasn’t right. Anyhow, he hadn’t wrapped his head around it himself — his Joanie! — not at all. Such a strange, strange deal. So beautiful, so educated. She dressed carefully, fastidiously, fashionably, like her mother. Since the visit, he’d been flooded with memories. He and Marj officially met in 1960 on a dance date. They went to the same church and he’d had an eye on her. Ray was on the rebound, still getting over a stormy shackjob with a redheaded waitress. A trumpeter friend, Bill Peterson — Jesus, the names from 50 years ago were really coming back, isn’t that how it was with old age? — said he knew just the gal to cheer him up. Marjorie Donovan was an assistant to a mid-Wilshire bookkeeper. She was younger than him, on the brink of 23, a religious gal, not too stuffy. Ray wasn’t even sure she’d say yes, he probably had Bill to thank. They wound up downtown. She was shy but quickly dazzled; he could tell she thought dancing at the Biltmore was the height of sophistication. (It came pretty close. Ray Rausch was a 30 year old man and knew a few tricks. He earned money as a part-time bartender but was a free spender and had to tap the trumpeter for the big night.) They swang and sashayed to the golden oldies, and the silver and brass ones too—“Save the Last Dance for Me.” He could hear that in his head, note for note, clear as day. Marj was living with her father, a widower, and had the queer idea she wanted to go to India for missionary work. Ray remembered picking her up in his 52 Ford. Her dad would greet him, pipe in hand, very debonair. He’d been in the clothing business, fabric and knickknacks, a friendly man now retired.
The couple went horseback riding in Griffith Park. Ray couldn’t believe he’d actually climbed on a horse — laughing at the memory — he got thrown and there was something about the way she dusted him off, a sly grin reminiscent of Claudette Colbert and Myrna Loy wrapped in one, and that’s when he knew they were going to have some kind of life together. That night he proposed and was befuddled to watch a diamond teardrop make a plumb line to her smile. (Soaked it right up.) Her father wasn’t too thrilled, which surprised Ray at 1st before it didn’t, and they eloped to Bakersfield of all places, couldn’t remember why, he borrowed money from his friend again (Bill was making good in the studios) and they moved to Culver City and had 2 beautiful babies. Had wonderful times and a picket fence and then the times weren’t so wonderful and on a sunny nameless day he just walked, like in a country song. Might even have said he was going for cigarettes; it was like that. The old man quaked at the thought. He told himself all these years that’s what being married did, some kind of allergy, never would have guessed it — but that just didn’t wash. Leaving the kids behind nearly killed him. Like the Twilight Zone and the reluctant rocketeer: by the time he ran toward the ship, everything was finished. The children were aloft. By then he was almost 40 and hated himself. He hated himself a long, long while.