Memorial

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.

Once Joan got most of her tears out and Raymond leaked some more as well, he offered her tea — she liked that, he could have said how about a beer or pot of coffee, which would have been fine, actually, any of it would be fine, what was she saying, what did it matter, fuck my endless judging, still, tea was what he suggested, jasmine, saying that his girlfriend I hope he doesn’t have a young girlfriend, she’s probably younger than me oh shut up shut up hadn’t been well, she was “in hospital” (OG Victoriana-sounding phrase) adding with wizened not uncharming sprightly twinkle that his “gal” was “Preg. Nant” oh God she’s probably like 17 that made Joan cry then later laugh at the thought she could or should have blurted out I’m pregnant too! and also how surreal that maybe soon she would have a sister she had always wanted a sister, the tears not as heavy now as when she 1st arrived but still in shock. Watching her cry, for a million reasons Raymond Rausch sweetly seemed to feel bad for her, or with her, bad about that, about everything, and wishing/not knowing how he could help. She thought maybe he thought maybe he’d said too much? or the reference to a baby on the way Baby On Board

was insulting because of the fact she had been a toddler he’d discarded. But how nice that was, really, at his age, that’s what her sunrise smile showed him, all unspoken, how nice though at his age ancient daughter suddenly materialized before him, how nice and mystically twisted the multiplicity of lives, the knot of this life, all life, their life he was trying to remember what he used to call her, what was the nickname and said it had taken him by surprise — the pregnancy — and she wasn’t a young woman — the girlfriend—what does he mean by not young—and that she had to go to hospital and stay put awhile on doctor’s orders.

She asked if there was anything he needed. I guess this is my time. To ask of my parents what is needed. My time to caregive. No, he said, he was going to have a nap (she could see him in his frailty and that her visit had packed a wallop). He thought he would lie down, she knew he meant the bedroom not the easychair, but Joan was welcome to stay and watch television, he made the invitation to be cordial, and that was lovely, truly, it was genuine, she stanched the tears again, saw he was knocked out, her visit knocked him out, knocked both them out. Her father was an old man.

Your route guidance is now complete.

They embraced when she left and she wept again and this time for some reason was embarrassed, Ray sensed it, she took a hard look at him now, all this time not having bothered to age him up in her head the way computers did on CSI, adding 70-odd years to the dad she hardly remembered, no, nothing, she saw nothing, she looked for Chess in his bones as a last resort but no, nothing, she would need to visit Beverlywood, maybe there existed a single photo Marjorie hadn’t sheared but Joan wasn’t sure; she flashed on movies about people who find lost loved ones that turn out to be impostors, arthouse films and even Vertigo (one of Pradeep’s favorites), and in the same instant she thought, Stanford grad-student mode again, it’s the idea of it, Myth of Reintegration, regeneration, that’s what mattered — instinctively Joan thought, No, this isn’t the case, he is no impostor. This is my father, Raymond Rausch — and there would be time to tell him everything that had happened since he left, though she would ask nothing in return, ever, wouldn’t care to hear his explanations (if he had any), both too old for that, the porno cliché that Now was all that mattered was true, if he wanted to share it would be at his pace, the pace of myth, or maybe at the pace of what she, Joan Hennison Herlihy née Rausch could take, that was how to go, how they would do it, slowly but surely they’d turn, no urgency, competition/animosities long past, she had given the Memorial her best shot, the commission awarded to someone else, and now she was building something in her womb that needed no plan, committee, or ruling, no client permission, persuasions, consensus. There was nothing to decide. The site was selected and end-date affixed…

A burden lifted.

She felt even lighter as she swung onto the freeway, and — this time, aural navigation deactivated — wound her way home unguided by voices.