California Fire And Life

38

His mother didn't approve, Letty says.

No kidding? says Jack.

They've finished lunch and they're walking along the marina. Hundreds of sailboats and motorboats bob with the outgoing tide.

A twenty-two-year-old high school dropout? Letty says. From some farm? Mother Russia hated her. If you have to marry a shiksa, you can't find a rich shiksa? From an established family?

"Good thing she didn't know Pam was half Mexican," Letty says. "She would have had a stroke. Maybe it wasn't such a good thing…"

Anyway, Mother Russia hated her.

But Nick knows he's holding the trump card.

"Grandchildren," Jack says.

"You got it."

Nick is getting up there and Mother Russia is getting nervous that the family name will die with her bachelor son. And also, the usual rumors are going around: He's thirty-five and unmarried?

Anyway, Mother Russia summons Pam and Nick into the living room of the living dead and says, "My son is infatuated with you, but that's just because he can't get into your pants."

Pam says, "Mrs. Valeshin, if he ever does get into my pants, he'll be more infatuated than ever."

This makes Mother choke on her tea and gives old Nick a woody that lasts at least until the honeymoon.

Huge wedding, held outside at the House. They have a rabbi and a minister, who talk a lot about how they share a common cultural heritage and after all, Jesus was a Jew. It's plain that Nick's paid them not to step too hard on the religious thing, so they're a little vague on the details but very heavy on the humanism. Anyway, Nick and Pam exchange rings and step on glasses and they're pronounced man and wife.

"Wait a second," Jack says. "You were invited?"

"As her friend" Letty says. "I'm ashamed to tell you that I went. Mi madre had already worked herself to death, stepfather too drunk to give a damn. And I didn't want to ruin it for her. She was happy. Christ, Mother Russia was freaked she wasn't Jewish – if they'd found out she was half Mexican they would have annulled the marriage and made her do the dishes. Or half of them, anyway."

Splashy reception, of course, right there at Monarch Bay, and I was hoping for balalaikas and guys doing that dance where they squat and kick but there is none of that. This party is so Orange County money you could fall asleep standing.

But Pam, she is a princess.

To the manor born, like she's taken lessons or something.

What I kept hearing as I wend my numbed body around the party: Where did he ever find her?

And it's said in admiration.

Envy.

Pam's a star.

If the movie ends there, Letty says, you have fucking Sabrina.

But the movie doesn't end there, Jack thinks.

It ends the way everything ends.

In ashes.