INTRODUCTION
I no longer live in Ocean Park, though I am never far from that place, no matter how many miles stand between us. Ocean Park was the place we were young, when we were golden, and the world was a girl, and she was Ocean Park. But she left it long before I did, it was broken for her, like I broke her heart.
These days it seems I spend my time in passing, from somewhere I don’t want to be, to places I have no desire to go. Everything is in between, without sanctuary, and home, well, home is in Ocean Park, which exists now only as a place on a map that I used to know. A nostalgic memory, a kind of poem.
But, oh, in its time, Ocean Park was something beautiful. It was hope and the resurrection, or at least it was mine. Ocean Park was my chance for redemption. It was the light at the end of the world, the safe harbor. Ocean Park was a thousand sunsets, given as gifts to a girl who’d laugh and throw back her head. Ocean Park was a long forgotten but beloved song heard from the radio of a passing car.
Ocean Park was Beth, and Beth, oh, she was the whole wide world.
AUGUST 20
I always thought there were three ways of coming at 4:37 in the morning. The first is coming at it full on, from the night before, raging and on the run. The second, breaking into it from unconsciousness, suddenly awake and alive, facing that moment just before light returns to the world. The third is, well, not at all, sleeping through it, unaware of its existence until it's passed.
That night I discovered a fourth, sitting in a chair at St. John's Hospital, wishing I was asleep, but knowing it won't come, can't come, watching the woman who brought you into this world as she was about to leave it.
My mother was dying.
My sister was asleep in the other bed, trying to catch one or two hours of sweet oblivion that I had sought through wine and women and excess and never come close to.
The things that made her who she was were gone. Her mind, her warmth, her humor, her sadness, those things had been drained away by cancer, pain, and morphine. Still, her body refused to let go of this life, clinging on, refusing to submit.
Earlier that evening, I'd pretended to sleep as my father stood over her, his head hung down and his hand tenatively brushing hers. He'd been in love with her since they were in high school, more than half their lifetimes, although his still had decades to go, hers could be measured in hours. I think for the first time I saw them not as my parents, who had always been there, weak, misguided, uncommunicative, lost at times, but instead as two people who had and did love each other, would always love each other. Yes, my brother, sisters and I were losing our mother, but he was losing the only person he had loved, the only person who had loved him back, the ... well, the one.
Now, he was at home, taking my youngest sister there so they could shower, change clothes, sleep in a bed. My brother was in Long Beach with his wife, who was pregnant with the niece my mother would never know. As I already said, my other sister was sleeping fitfully in the other bed.
So I was the one standing vigil.
A priest came quietly into the room, old, gray balding head on tired stooped shoulders. He jumped slightly when he saw I was awake, as if he expected to be alone with the dying. I knew he had come to give the last rites, to say the blessing of a church my mother had left when she was 14. The priest looked embarrassed, as if he didn't want me to realize what everyone knew, that she was dead already, and only a stuborn perverse physical shell refused to give up. He rushed through a quick prayer, made the proper gestures, and awkwardly hurried out of the room, leaving the two of us alone.
I wanted to tell her it was okay, she could go, we'd be alright without her. I wanted to tell her I'd be okay, she didn't have to worry about me. I'd make it through this life. In other words, I wanted to lie to her, to ease her on her way. I didn't. There was no real point. She was gone.
Instead, I sat in the chair by her bed at St. John's Hospital, at 4:37 in the morning, coming at it from what was definitely the wrong way, standing watch, waiting for my mom to die.
MORGAN
She couldn't sing to save her life, but that didn't stop her. What she lacked in pitch, rhythm, tone, and, well, talent, she more than made up for in enthusiasm and volume. Morgan was why God created Karaoke. Or was it the Japanese who created it?
Her legs were long and straight, and her body had that awkward grace of one who hasn't yet grown into herself. I honestly think she had no idea she was beautiful, high cheekbones, eyes like the wild blue yonder, shoulder length blond hair tinted with orange. There was a regal beauty about her, and I could tell, in a few years, the world would throw itself at her feet.
And when she smiled, there was so much joy in it, I couldn't help but wonder why she was so drunk. Maybe because she was so young.
Her lips tasted like cinnamon, but that was probably the gum. She drank Jameson's, and I don't for a minute doubt she'd never heard of it before I'd ordered mine. Still, she consumed it with swagger, wrinkling her little nose, but downing it like soda pop.
All the songs she sang were by Billie Holliday. Why a tone deaf blonde girl from L.A. chose to sing sultry blues I'll never know, but from that day on, I will always think of her when I hear Billie's songs, particularly if it's a Wednesday night, at some bar, with Karaoke, and silly, sweet, drunk college girls who have no idea how lovely they are.
SHE
She careened into my life like a natural disaster on rollerskates, crashing against the walls and leaving a swath of destruction of biblical proportion. And as I crawled from the wreckage she left in her wake, I saw for the first time that everything I had held as precious was shabby and worthless, gladly abandoned to ruin for another second in her arms.
She loved in sudden bursts, and once her love was spent, she was gone. She laughed with abandoned, raged with fury, forgave in a second, or never at all.
Yet I held her through that night as she wept, our bodies our only shelter, and though I will feel her absence every day for the rest of my life, I will treasure every second we were together.
And I know she's out there now, loving someone else, destroying his life in a good way, opening his eyes to what really matters, and then moving on.
I only wish she'd had better taste in men.
SUMMER INTERLUDE #1
As she peeled the orange, the scent of the fruit filled the room. She places a segment in her mouth, the odor perfumes her breath. I taste the tart sweetness on her lips and tongue, lick the juice from her fingers. Lying beside her, back when things were good, comfortable in our nakedness, our bodies brown from hours wasted lying in the sun, when we were young, I knew love for the first time.
Picking up the bottle of champagne from the floor, she sips the wine, and we kiss again, the cool sparkling liquid fills my mouth from hers, mingling with the lingering taste of the orange.
She laughs, playfully pushes me away, her hair falling back across her shoulders, as she again sips the wine.
That was the summer of champagne and oranges, of sand and the sea. Oh, the sadness was there, even then, but it was held in check, at least for a time, by our joy in discovering each other’s body, by the easy laughter of shared jokes, by love revealed every day in all its confusing, beguiling, overwhelming promise. The past was nonexistent, for as I said before, we were young. The future was a million years away, easily ignored. We were alive for the moment, immortals on Olympus, doomed in our hubris, but unaware of our damnation.
That’s the way it should be, at least once in your life.
And I can still taste the orange and the champagne.
SUMMER INTERLUDE #2
The day was so hot we lay in the bed naked, with the dying fan wanly pushing the air around the bedroom. For some reason that summer, French champagnes were inexpensive, and so we were a little drunk on either Moet or Mumms. Maybe more than a little drunk, but in that soft, blurry way.
Beth slept, fitful and restless, while I tried to read from a book that was lying close to the bed, but the heat and the drone of the wan fan, as well as the champagne, made it impossible to focus on the words.
I wouldn’t say I was happy then, for happiness has never really played a part in my life. So, not happy, but content? Possibly, though that too was a somewhat foreign feeling to me. Still, I didn’t feel the gaping hole of despair, which was about as good as it got.
As for Beth, I knew even then that I would never be enough for her, that I would always fall short of her needs, her expectations. I was nothing more than a stopgap, filling the spaces in between.
And yet … and yet she slept, as I lay beside her, through the heat of a summer day, listening to the slow moan of a dying fan, slightly drunk on French champagne, although I can’t remember if it was Moet, or Mumms.
LOVE, SWEET MISERABLE LOVE
I am love’s fool.
Sweet, miserable, love. It’s bipolar, taking you from the heights of ecstasy to the depths of despair, at least if you’re doing it right. And I, I have climbed that peak and plunged to those lows, a searcher and a vagabond. I have heard the sirens’ sing in my heart, and have thrown myself into the waves, to be flailed upon the rocks. But which is love, the swell, the rocks, or the siren’s call?
Battered, bloody, bruised and broken, I awake on some pebble strewn strand, crippled and scarred, but still I hear the song, it rings in my head like a promise, seducing, calling, laying claim to my heart, lingering in the shadows, whispering my name.
And when my wounds have healed, call me Ishmael, I will again sign on for the next voyage, to seek that elusive prize, love. Sweet, miserable, love.
A CONVERSATION AT PALISADES PARK
And so she said, "Did you ever wonder, you know, like, if maybe we …" she looked away then, the autumn breeze whipping the auburn strands of her hair across her face, "if we had …"
And my heart broke again, as I said, "… got together?" She nodded, not looking at me, sticking her hands deeper into the pockets of her jeans. Suddenly, I was 21 again, madly in love with her as I was at the time. The years fell away like so many promises, and I saw the girl I had loved then, loved first, had always loved, one way or another.
"Oh darling," I said, "if we had gotten together, the heavens would have fallen. The stars would've thrown themselves from the sky in jealous rage, angels would have rebelled…" and here, my voice cracked slightly, "... because if we'd gotten together, it would have been perfect. And perfection was never meant to exist in this world, the sight of it would've ended time itself."
She looked down shyly, then up into my face, our eyes meeting, and she smiled. After a second, she punched me lightly in the arm, and said, "Shut up!" and walked farther along the palisades.
But the smile stayed, the words said, and the moment passed. We walked along the cliffs a little way further. I counted the sailboats cutting across the blue waters of Santa Monica Bay below us, while she studied the clouds drifting across the sky.
"We would have driven each other crazy," She added.
"Yeah," I agreed, "short trip, though."
She laughed again. "Short trip, I like that."
BLUE SKY SUNDAY MORNING
She sent me to get a bottle of wine. It was 6 a.m., and somewhere in Santa Monica, a liquor store had to be opened. I was grateful for a chance to get some air, to escape the bitterness, the anger.
She'd finished the last bottle at about 3, and with it, things had settled into a numb detante, but all the things she wanted to say still simmered, ready to boil over. I'd long given up defending myself, arguing, equivocating, even agreeing. I just sat in the armchair, trying to comfort the two cats lurking in the corners. They hated to see us fight, though by now, they ought to have been used to it.
The day shouldn't have been so perfect. Santa Monica never looked lovelier, the morning sky already glistened though the sun was still to appear from behind the mountains. It should have been cold a gray, with a whisper of rain on the wind, not the promise of summer on the cool ocean breeze.
I walked to the Budget Mart, across from Hollister Park, but the Pakistani man who worked there 20 hours a day was probably sleeping on his cot in the storeroom, so I sat on the grass in the park, looking at the ocean, the curve of the coastline, the outline of Catalina. Once, I had possessed these things, or maybe been possessed by them, but now they were hers. I'd given them to her when I was young and poor and had nothing else to give. She'd laughed then, giving me her smile in exchange. Now, everything in my life was colored through her. I'll never see a sunrise, or a sunset for that matter, which isn't borrowed from her, and must be given back with interest.
Finally, the door opened to the market, and I crossed the street. "Good morning my friend," the clerk said, smiling as he always did. I picked up the cheapest bottle of Sauvignon Blanc I could find. He smiled knowingly as he took the cash, that grin that liquor store clerks have when dealing with alcoholics, though in truth, I'd only had two glasses of the previous three bottles, the last purchased five minutes before he'd closed up four and a half hours earlier. "Have a good day my friend," he said as I waved a world-weary goodbye.
Walking down 4th Street, I felt the sun on my face as it broke above the far hills, its warmth was wasted.
Climbing up the rickety wooden stairs to her apartment above the garage, I saw my overnight bag was sitting on the landing, a bad sign. The door was locked, and I knocked on the glass. She looked up from where she sat on the chez we'd bought at a little store in North Hollywood, wearing the silk dressing gown I'd got her for her birthday two years before, the hurt expression on her face I'd given her so many different times over the years. She looked away without responding, so I placed the bottle on the landing and took up my bag.
As I made my way home, the long walk to the Coast Highway, feeling the breaking of a perfect day, perfect in everything except in the wreckage that was our lives. The blue sky, on a Sunday morning. And I knew that this was not the end of the beginning, or even the beginning of the end, but the end in itself. But still, there was the blue sky, on a Sunday morning.
