The Chrysanthemum Palace

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MIRIAM GOT TICKETS FOR US to see a guru in Culver City.

She traded in her Taurus for a Mustang convertible. The wind was warm and gusty, and Meerkat¹ smelled of sea, sex, and rosewood oil: a stone summer groove. It was good to be on our own, away from “the kids” (that’s what we called them). Though it went unspoken, we were half spooked about any craziness they might get into while out of our immediate supervision. Regardless, we made a concerted effort to chill. We felt like parents playing hooky from their A.D.D.’d brood, except in this case we hadn’t found a sitter.

Tough titties.

The hall must have held a thousand people. There were a few celebrities — Garry Shandling, Cheryl Tiegs, Jeff Goldblum — nothing heavy. It was festival-seating, with everyone on folding chairs and lots of SRO overflow in back. A thin, leprechauney guy came out and spoke two hours, nonstop. I liked him right away. He said what I thought were typical guruish things but I really seemed to connect. He talked of that great stillness already in our possession from which truth and happiness emanate (yes, Badwater came to mind), a stillness we seemed intent on ignoring. Pain and suffering came from the inexhaustible need for money, food, sex. The guru said that merely becoming aware of the “forgotten stillness”—the stillness of the moment, the power of Now — was enough. “Why can’t people see how simple it is?” he asked, and everyone laughed. Funny but true. Apparently, he’d investigated all manner of disciplines and “men of knowledge.” One day, upon hearing a Zen master say “No thought!” the budding avatar realized he’d been deliriously happy the last few years for precisely that reason: he hadn’t been thinking. (The audience laughed again.) Thoughts were like clouds, he said, the difference being that no two clouds were alike… whereas thoughts were usually the same. “The sky would be quite boring if filled only with thoughts,” he said. The elfin sage jerked back his head, pointing to the heavens like an everyday Joe. “Look! Those two clouds are exactly alike.” Playing the part of another curious pedestrian, he exclaimed, “Hey! There’s that same cloud I saw yesterday—and the day before. Strange, but I saw it the day before that, too.”

I kept thinking about Thad and his father. Was I becoming obsessed? I dismissed the notion as merely another cloud. Then others blew in on the horizon: the thunderheaded cumuliform of Clea and her mom… the cirruslike wisp of Leif Farragon — you didn’t need a weatherman (or a guru) to see the sky was filled with spirits. To my surprise I had truly begun to care about Thad, just as I cared for Clea, and Miriam too for that matter. They were the special creatures who had fallen for whatever karmic reason (to use the contagious jargon of the acolytes) into my orbit and I into theirs. I suppose I was obsessed — by making meaning of it all. Perhaps that was foolish. As the wise and ageless sprite spoke, I meditated on the brevity of life’s duration and the significance of the drama that played out on one’s personal stage. I don’t mean to get corny or metaphysical but I couldn’t help thinking I’d be derelict not to further investigate the path upon which my own heart had led me.

On the drive home, I told Miriam about my experience. I talked about finishing The Soft Sea Horse, all the miserable things I’d read that Jack had said about his son, and the crazy ambivalence I’d felt in trying to hash everything through — so very democratic, like an honor student mastering both sides of a debate. She smiled, rather gurulike herself, without entering into the fray; her way of acknowledging I was now a rarefield member of Thadwatchers (or Micheleteers), an adherent of the Inner Circle.

Instead of returning to the hotel, we made love at my house — though it sounds a bit convoluted I think at least part of the reason was to avoid competing with the raw ecstasies of the night before — when Shutters stripped and shuddered, an event whose tomfoolery probably imprinted itself upon the overpriced, designer-seashell-strewn aura of that room for at least ninety days. (A discreetly placed plaque should read: MIRIAM AND BERTIE DIDN’T GET MUCH SLEEP HERE.) A few minutes after we came, in simultaneous, symphonic ciss boom-bah, Miriam fired up a cigarette, sucked in a fog bank of smoke, and set to a little musing herself.

“I was thinking… you know — when you were talking about The Soft Sea Horse. I’m not exactly sure what Thad told you when you were on the train — and I know you’ve read the book, but some things didn’t happen the way he wrote them. Like, he wasn’t in Amagansett — or the Vineyard — when Jeremy died.”

Knowing what I read was “fiction,” I was still bemused. “But it said they came over to the island,” I said, defensively. “After the drowning.”

“That’s what I’m saying. He wasn’t in the States, he was with him in Capri. When it happened. Morgana was busy with a nervous breakdown — they finally put her in Silver Hill. Or somewhere. Lillian Hellman made the arrangements. I think. That’s why Thad wound up going to Europe. What happened was, Morgana thought Jack was having an affair with Sophia Loren which he completely wasn’t, he was screwing two other actresses on that shoot. And the set designer too! The twins were playing in the water…” She closed her eyes, as if projecting a legendarily lost film on the back of her lids. “And his father, that motherfucker, blamed him for it. As usual! I mean, he blamed that little guy if it rained. Jack thought it was deliberate. That was his theory! Some sort of willful act on Thad’s part. The asshole. Bertie, can you imagine? The man was a shitty, shitty father, he never watched those kids, it was criminal, he was — a compulsive pussyhound. Anyway, it was just some creepy literary fantasy of Jack’s, a Henry James thing. And later on, I think he was pissed Thad wrote about it because he was going to, supposedly, but didn’t have the stones. Cajones? And he thought, How dare he! You know, scooping the big genius. Thad would never have been capable of hurting his brother, he worshipped him. But I guess capable and culpable are just a few letters off.

“Anyway, Thad got righteously blamed, and that’s a heavy thing to get laid on you at that age. At any age! Jack just poured out his rage — the rage toward Morgana that he’d always had, I mean way before those kids were even born—they were nothing but… burdens to him — oh right, I know he was supposed to love Jeremy so much—that’s part of the myth, OK? But you know, I don’t even think it was true. Jack had a death wish — for everyone else, not for himself. So when Jeremy died, he probably felt whatever form of guilt he was capable of feeling and then he poured this sick rage on that poor, poor boy. It so breaks my heart, Bertie. It so breaks my heart!”

¹ Knowing it may be cloying to some, I include the nickname out of breezy verisimilitude. Having gone this far — I think I’ve probably gotten footnotes out of my system, too — I’m afraid there’s just a bit more to be revealed under the irritating file marked TMI: I had taken to calling her that after watching a show on the Discovery Channel, postcoital.