THAT EVENING, Lisanne saw her.
She went for a walk and saw Cameron Diaz and a woman with a turban on her head leave one of the rooms. Against their tender protests, Viv shakily emerged to escort them to the elevator. That was when the weakened actress looked at Lisanne and smiled. (She remembered the time Kit made eye contact after yoga.) She thought how pretty Viv was without makeup, how vulnerable looking. Lisanne looped back toward her own room so they wouldn’t have the same trajectory.
The moment they exchanged glances, she knew.
She felt the same peace she’d experienced after her amazing nap. They looked into each other’s eyes and Lisanne knew, was certain.
The Bardo of Becoming
BUT HOW IS HE?
He farts, grunts, giggles, howls.
Words remain in throat, stillborn. Incipient thoughts — autochthonous ideation — aborted.
He is in love with his body, its pain, pleasure, and rapturous stink. Becomes fixated on arbitrary landscapes of skin — hair, follicle, pigment. Flake and fingernail.
A stage actor warming up, he spends hours fogging a hand mirror, watching himself gesticulate, crease, pucker, twitch, startle, suspirate, belch, yawn, coo, whisper. Therapists stretch muscle and rub ointment; he submits like a dog, belly up, with unannounced pleasure. He takes businesslike joy in their grooming and bodywork, as if thespian instinct has informed that the vessel is preeminent and must be maintained at all costs.
Sometimes his head is stabby and migrainous. He presses, imploring the scarified points of incision, feeling the heat beneath sutures, vents to a still-active furnace, mistakenly — catastrophically — soldered shut.
Boosters and cheerleaders are certain he’s more “present” than he appears to be, the gray matter busily rerouting and reknitting “as we speak.” But he has trouble standing, and, once standing, has trouble standing still. Trouble walking too, the gait ticcy and belabored.
Sometimes he awakens bellowing. High-priced nurses, privately hired, burly, stalwart, do their best to soothe without injections. Sometimes he surfaces from REM sleep cackling, knee-slapping, with attendant nefarious dysphonic outbursts. Sometimes he weeps, soft and plaintive like a child — or ragged, seizured, ugly.
Always heartbreaking.
He seems to know Alf but doesn’t recognize his bride to be — or at least won’t let on. Boosters and cheerleaders (led by Kiki) fantasize his indifference to be a shuck, a heroic way of letting the actress off the hook, nobly allowing her to break the engagement. No fault, no contest, nolo contendere, gentleman to the end, even in debilitation. Dad agrees, up to a point. The dad says Kit knows damn well who she is but “just doesn’t want to go there.”
Viv fears his eventual acknowledgment of her, no matter how gradual, will cause great suffering. Stops visiting. Wants her man to focus his energies on recovery. She martyrs herself, shamefully hating her secret involuntary mantra: “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this.”
Alf disappears. He’s doing a film that, mercifully, is on location, out of the country. He was going to stop coming, anyway. In a fit of tiredness that he regretted, he told Burke it was just too depressing. Mr. Lightfoot said, as a lawyer would to a prospective juror whom he was about to dismiss, “Thank you for your candor.” Go recharge, Burke added expansively. Stop guilt-tripping. You’ll reconnect down the line. (You piece of Hollywood shit.)
Kiki still comes. A tough broad, said Burke. He tells the Buddhists she’s one hell of an agent.
• • •
HE WISELY LIMITS access for those who would see his son. But the Buddhists are allowed to come and go as they please — all Kit’s friends and practitioners from the sangha. Burke calls them the sanghanistas and knows they want nothing from Kit. They’re not morbidly curious. Their religion demands they act in the most ethical, dignified, compassionate, “mindful” of ways. They are patient and generous with their time. Burke respects them and is comforted by their inconspicuous, warmly obeisant spirituality.
He feels his son to be comforted too.
• • •
OLD FRIENDS ARE pleased the father kept open this vital aspect of his son’s life. They’re happy not to be banished and glad he didn’t trash Kit’s beliefs because they know it is the foundation that will heal him. They had heard stories of the tyranny of this man — some from Kit himself — but in this terrible time Burke Lightfoot had, for whatever reason, opened the door, and for that, they are profoundly grateful. So they honor him. They see the Buddha in his gesture and honor Burke Lightfoot’s heart.
The sangha visit at all hours, even meditating at bedside while Kit sleeps. They serve him while he is awake. They bring cooked food and read scriptures and sutras out loud. They massage him with emollients and encourage him to stretch. They do baby yoga. They even teach the nurses — child’s pose, downward dog, easy twisting warrior, spinal twist, neck release. They are courteous and helpful to staff, dependable, soon indispensable. Many have worked in hospices, and the nurses let them do funky, menial things. Bedpan and hygiene. Stripping the sheets and making the bed.
Burke watches the Meditators come and go, fingering their beads, reading texts aloud, intoning lengthy prayers, sometimes in English, sometimes in Japanese or Tibetan or Whatever. They wear civilian clothes and close-cropped hair, but now and then smiling monks, bald men or women in saffron robes, come to sit. They do not speak.
Tara Guber even brought Penor Rinpoche, the lama from Mysore.
• • •
NOW IT IS TIME for him to leave.
The hospital is happy to see him go — he is just too big a celebrity, and difficult to accommodate. An unruly tabloidal pall had wrapped the complex in gauze. So much to contend with: the twenty-four-hour media presence, the police and additional security, the concrete barriers and parking disruptions, the predatory paparazzi eyes invading other patients’ and their families’ privacy. Donors and in-house benefactors were becoming restive.
At four in the morning, he emerges from the elevator and is rolled into the garage by wheelchair, flanked by doctors, nurses, and a half dozen private guards. (One has the sense the doctors are there so they can eventually boast that yes, they were present for that strange and historic release.) Burke engaged Gavin de Becker, the man who oversaw the details of George Harrison’s last days, to facilitate his son’s relocation. An armored van with blacked-out windows awaits, plus two dark Buick sedans with three men apiece.
Suddenly Kit becomes agitated.
His father, already inside the van, emerges to calm him. It takes but a few minutes. The dad gives a thumbs-up to the others and says, “Good to go.” Whatever feelings anyone has about Burke Lightfoot and his questionable motives, it is clear the man has worked hard to establish an effective, easy kinship with his volatile, traumatized son. Things would have gone a lot rougher without him.
With media none the wiser, the convoy makes the forty-minute trip to Valencia.
The facility awaits. An entire wing has been cleared.
• • •
MR. DE BECKER HAS PROVIDED round-the-clock guards on-site. Rehab employees have been screened and Tyrone Lamott, among others, duly briefed. Those immediately under him were seriously cautioned — warned — by Mr. Lamott himself that any breach of the celebrity client’s confidentiality would be harshly dealt with.