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mallorys_cameraWhat is it about road trips? You fill your tank with gas, you tell the world to kiss your ass…
Really, only three Not Fun moments:
DAY 1: Haunted Landscapes
So, taking off, we drove up Carmel Valley Road which was like going backwards in time into California's primeval memories of its own creation – sere brown hills, dark green live oaks, blue, blue sky: reagents of a mystical landscape. Max drove, we chattered. He thinks the universe started on February 25, 1987 though all the evidence at my disposal strongly suggests it started on April 11, 1952.
Dovetailed into Greenfield. "What is it about all these towns?" asked Max, staring at some dusty signs for a broccoli festival, nine months past. "They all have to be the capitol of some obscure food group."
"Why else would anyone pay attention to them?"
Max rolled his eyes. "Well, I don't know about you, Mom. But the promise of broccoli is not about to lure my well-earned tourist dollars out of my pocket."
"Whose well-earned tourist dollars?"
"Okay, yours." He grinned. "But still my pockets."
Dusty place, Greenfield, bathed in midday glare, its main drag a cheerless expanse of windowless drinking establishments and empty storefronts. We found a Mexican restaurant. Head meat was the big item on the menu.
Then we got back into the car and drove a few more miles till we hit Mission San Miguel Arcangel which is sort of like one of those strange, ruined cathedrals along the Camino Real in Chiapas except due to California's pressing need for tourist attractions, it hasn't been officially abandoned. Very bleak place albeit so perfectly preserved one can almost hear the screams of the Indio neophytes as Father Junipero Serra applies the lash. I'm fairly sure the Bates Motel is just up the road and this is the place where Norman and Mom spend Sundays. Cracked fountain in the front courtyard under the shadow of a dead century plant. Olives and pomegranates.
Inside, a claustrophobic gift shop specializing in laminated saint cards and airless rooms filled with heavy, oppressive 18th century canvases under thick coats of yellowing lacquer. Some odd touches – next to an old cot ("Junipero Serra slept here") there are a pair of untied sneakers, and outside in the back garden we see an old man with staring Rasputin eyes and a gray beard to his waist come shuffling towards us, an unraveling sweater pulled over a traditional black monk's robe. If I'm remembering correctly, this mission is still run by the Franciscan Brothers, perhaps as a rest home.
Thence to the Madonna Inn where Max had an enormous hot fudge sundae and I looked on enviously, and thence to Lisa's.
Day 2: Hot Sauce
One of my ostensible missions on this trip was to check out hot sauce stores throughout Southern California. There's one in the Fairfax Farmers Market called Light My Fire, another three called Hot Licks spread out through Long Beach and the San Diego metropolitan area. The LA store also has a branch in Las Vegas. Franchises waiting to happen. For the past couple of weeks I've been thinking a hot sauce store makes much more sense than a bookstore: a business I could start from scratch, that would only require a 300 foot sales space and which has a clear exit strategy attached – I could sell out to whichever of the two nascent empires wanted a toehold in the rich turismo crescent of Monterey Bay. I put in a bid on the bookstore the day I left Monterey but it was a lowball bid though not an unreasonable bid – fair market value for the inventory (most of which I do not want) and the equipment, a little over for "good will" and the lease. I love books, spicy foods make me hiccup. But a hot sauce operation makes infinitely more sense from an entrepreneurial point of view.
LA operation is more streamlined, less kitsch-heavy. More different types of hot sauce, too, with funny labels (obviously catering to the collectibles market) rated on a scale of 1-10. San Diego franchise featured a sample tray with crackers and waters plus a line of boutique capsicum extracts for bikers to take into the high desert when their PCP connection dries up.
Max and I ended up having such a good time together driving through LA, getting lost in Long Beach that we didn't even end up having out annual road trip fight. I felt a real pang when I said good bye to him at the Hare house. The full strain of being the Holly Golightly mother.
DAYS 2-4: Crazy Artistic Geniuses
Arrived in Normal Heights to find Abe in an absolutely horrible mood for mysterious reasons: his life is actually going quite well, his book Fried Butter was just selected by the New York Times as one of the year's most notable, his house has appreciated $100,000 in the last year, his publisher and agent are lobbying hard to move him to NYC where it will be easier to land him high-paying gigs for the New Yorker. As always he cooks superbly – for a while we talk about the superiority of Le Creuset to all other cookware.
Then after the second bottle of wine we switch to his love life. Or lack thereof.
"So. Have you gotten a divorce yet?" I ask. Fools rush in. Etcetera. He grows even stormier, mutters something about how since Cynthia is the one who filed for divorce but never went through with it, there's nothing he can do.
"Well, I think that's symbolic," I say. "And if you ask me, as long as you remain married even on paper, you're going to stay in emotional retrograde."
The rejoinder who asked you? is a bit too obvious. He waits until well into the middle of the third bottle of wine to launch the counter-attack. Then he cocks his head to one side, smirks at me, starts to say something. And stops himself ostentatiously.
"What?" I ask.
"Should I?" he wonders. "What the hell. You know, however long it takes you to clear your throat, that's fine. I mean, if it takes you five years, ten years – that's five or ten years off your literary career but what the hell. It's your life. However. If I were interviewing you, if I were bringing my reportorial skills to your… case, shall we call it, I'd see some interesting contradictions. Here is a woman who's had an interesting life. Everything I know about you is interesting. And yet here is a woman who insists upon remaining invisible inside her own work. Dr. Freud! White courtesy telephone."
"I don't like writing autobiographical stuff," I say stiffly.
"Hmmmm," he says. "Hmmmmm." He does the Cheshire cat thing with his smile. Then he throws a Robert Lowell quote at me, something along the lines of "Why not just say what happened?" as if it should have some resonance for me. Abe does a very funny schtick about Robert Lowell's graduate seminar with Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Personally I find all three of them almost unreadable.
"Ukrainian sex slaves," he says, shaking his head. "I mean, really. All this obsession with structure is just a little bit unhealthy, wouldn't you say? I mean, if the story is there, it tells itself."
"Have you ever tried to write fiction?" I ask in desperation.
He roars with laughter. "What do you think my book was?"
"That was fiction?" I'm genuinely confused. "I thought it was a memoir."
This must be the punchline to some traveling salesman joke I don't know. He is practically rolling on the floor, clutching his sides. "Memoirs are fiction, silly wabbit."
I am starting to get seriously pissed off. Also losing my voice since I've been trying to match him cigarette by cigarette and he is a chain smoker. Finally I end the evening by grabbing my journal and reading him the thing about Rabbi Bruce and the Jew's relationship with Israel.
"See?" I say. "It's boring."
"No, some of that is pretty good," he allows.
"For something that only took me twenty minutes to write," I say. And toddle off to bed. He has kindly given up his bedroom, sleeps on the couch. Pretends to prefer it. Snores badly.
Next day I take him on the hot sauce store tour. He is game enough. We do lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant – I note how easy it is to let him order for me, let him do all the heavy lifting on the big opinion front throughout the day. He's fascinated by the ill-fated saga of the Vogel sisters and the Men Without Hats. By late afternoon, though, the black mood is upon him again. "Here's the thing about New York," he says. "Here's the thing. I don't want to go there alone."
"It's a big step," I allow, nodding. "But if you want a career, you have to do it. You owe it to yourself, Abe. You're a brilliant, brilliant writer. You have a shot at the top tier. In my never humble opinion. Don't sabotage yourself by throwing up roadblocks."
"You know what I want?" he says. "I want a Manhattan."
So we go to a bar where he proceeds to have eight Manhattans and I nurse two relatively chaste Old Fashioneds. I can't tell whether it's the alcohol or ten years of friendship lurching into that territory all male/female relationships stumble into eventually but all of a sudden I realize he wants to sleep with me which means he has to convince himself he's emotionally attached to me. I can see the obsession rising to the surface like bubbles in champagne.
"The trouble with me is I keep falling in love with women like you," he says. "So let's talk about you. Specifically let's talk about your relationship with Ben. Your marriage. Why did you stay with him after last summer?"
"Three reasons, really. We get along really, really well. I mean we speak the same language. For me, that's a very rare thing. There's no translation process at all. And then there's Robin. He's very attached to us both, it would break his heart if we split up. And I'm just not going to do that to him –"
"So you're gonna stay unhappy?"
"I'm not unhappy," I said. "Don't you read Buddha? Diminished expectations are the key to happiness."
"You know how I was talking about how humans resist change because every ending is a little death?" Elbow dig, elbow dig.
"Read those subtitles," I said. "Yep, sure did. But see, I'm not sure they're an accurate translation."
"So what's the third reason?"
"The third reason? Well. If we break up, that's it for me in the romance game. Because, see, there is no way I'm ever going to do the single woman cruising for a relationship thing ever, ever again. The mere thought of going out on a date with someone fills me with nausea."
"What's so scary?"
"I didn't say terror. I said nausea. Besides. If I won Lotto tomorrow, all my problems with Ben would be solved."
The traveling salesman was back. Abe was roaring with laughter, clutching his sides. "You bet they'd be solved! You know why? Because you'd be calling from the Ritz Carleton!" He does the phone call with the funny voices. "Waiter! Another bottle of champagne! No, I told you – not the Moët, I want the Laurent-Perrier. What was that you were saying, Ben? You love me? Can you hold the line for a second? The new nanny's here. Hi-i! That's little Robin in the corner over there. Can you take him somewhere for the next ten years? Money's no object."
It becomes the schtick for the rest of the evening.
On the way back to his house we do Robert Rossney from the Well. Apparently back when Abe was buying his house, he called all the old Well people desperately trying to get them to intercede with Cynthia since though she was resolute in her determination not to advance divorce proceedings, neither would she speak to him. Rossney actually took the call. Warned Abe that if went near Cynthia, he (Rossney) would kill him (Abe.) Since Abe is built like a bull and Rossney is built like a large chunk of Brie cheese, this is pretty funny. Then Rossney tells Abe that if Abe is having troubles, he should come live with him and Sonia, they'd find Abe a job.
"Hello, Robert?" screeches Abe. "Remember how you said I could come live with you if the going got tough? Well, the going isn't actually tough – in fact, it's kind of chocolate creams and white dove territory. See, Patty is leaving her husband for me and well, we need a place to run away to – there's little Robin's welfare to consider too – and we thought immediately of you. Still live in Denver? What high school district? Not Columbine, is it?"
Abe cooks another superb dinner and I retire at the relatively early hour of midnight. Around two in the morning I awaken to hear Abe's voice ranting back and forth outside the bedroom door in the hall. Something about rapists and baby killers. For a moment I'm paralyzed – is he having the psychotic break that always seems to lie close to the surface? No denying he's a creative genius – a creative genius after the Robert Lowell school. Then I think: nah, he's gotta be talking to someone on the phone.
Next morning we went out and bought a single lotto ticket apiece. "I had a blast," he said, kissing me good bye.
I did too, but I was glad to be driving off. Abe is exhausting.
Day 5: Ordeal By Cousin Jenny – Pasadena - Home
Don't know why I subjected myself to this. Jenny and her husband are b-o-r-i-n-g though their baby is extremely cute. Got in and out of there as fast as I politely could.
Huntington Gardens were lovely as always. Decided I really hate all 18th century English portrait painters but especially Gainsborough and Romney. Had a lovely tea with some exceedingly neat Well people – Anita, Ruthanne, Carmen, Randy and Shannon. And finally – home.
Really, only three Not Fun moments:
- Leaving Max in Tustin
- Waking up in San Diego at two in the morning, hearing Abe ranting, "Rapists! Baby killers!" outside the bedroom door. And wondering: is he having a psychotic episode? Or merely talking on the phone?
- Ordeal By Cousin Jenny
DAY 1: Haunted Landscapes
So, taking off, we drove up Carmel Valley Road which was like going backwards in time into California's primeval memories of its own creation – sere brown hills, dark green live oaks, blue, blue sky: reagents of a mystical landscape. Max drove, we chattered. He thinks the universe started on February 25, 1987 though all the evidence at my disposal strongly suggests it started on April 11, 1952.
Dovetailed into Greenfield. "What is it about all these towns?" asked Max, staring at some dusty signs for a broccoli festival, nine months past. "They all have to be the capitol of some obscure food group."
"Why else would anyone pay attention to them?"
Max rolled his eyes. "Well, I don't know about you, Mom. But the promise of broccoli is not about to lure my well-earned tourist dollars out of my pocket."
"Whose well-earned tourist dollars?"
"Okay, yours." He grinned. "But still my pockets."
Dusty place, Greenfield, bathed in midday glare, its main drag a cheerless expanse of windowless drinking establishments and empty storefronts. We found a Mexican restaurant. Head meat was the big item on the menu.
Then we got back into the car and drove a few more miles till we hit Mission San Miguel Arcangel which is sort of like one of those strange, ruined cathedrals along the Camino Real in Chiapas except due to California's pressing need for tourist attractions, it hasn't been officially abandoned. Very bleak place albeit so perfectly preserved one can almost hear the screams of the Indio neophytes as Father Junipero Serra applies the lash. I'm fairly sure the Bates Motel is just up the road and this is the place where Norman and Mom spend Sundays. Cracked fountain in the front courtyard under the shadow of a dead century plant. Olives and pomegranates.
Inside, a claustrophobic gift shop specializing in laminated saint cards and airless rooms filled with heavy, oppressive 18th century canvases under thick coats of yellowing lacquer. Some odd touches – next to an old cot ("Junipero Serra slept here") there are a pair of untied sneakers, and outside in the back garden we see an old man with staring Rasputin eyes and a gray beard to his waist come shuffling towards us, an unraveling sweater pulled over a traditional black monk's robe. If I'm remembering correctly, this mission is still run by the Franciscan Brothers, perhaps as a rest home.
Thence to the Madonna Inn where Max had an enormous hot fudge sundae and I looked on enviously, and thence to Lisa's.
Day 2: Hot Sauce
One of my ostensible missions on this trip was to check out hot sauce stores throughout Southern California. There's one in the Fairfax Farmers Market called Light My Fire, another three called Hot Licks spread out through Long Beach and the San Diego metropolitan area. The LA store also has a branch in Las Vegas. Franchises waiting to happen. For the past couple of weeks I've been thinking a hot sauce store makes much more sense than a bookstore: a business I could start from scratch, that would only require a 300 foot sales space and which has a clear exit strategy attached – I could sell out to whichever of the two nascent empires wanted a toehold in the rich turismo crescent of Monterey Bay. I put in a bid on the bookstore the day I left Monterey but it was a lowball bid though not an unreasonable bid – fair market value for the inventory (most of which I do not want) and the equipment, a little over for "good will" and the lease. I love books, spicy foods make me hiccup. But a hot sauce operation makes infinitely more sense from an entrepreneurial point of view.
LA operation is more streamlined, less kitsch-heavy. More different types of hot sauce, too, with funny labels (obviously catering to the collectibles market) rated on a scale of 1-10. San Diego franchise featured a sample tray with crackers and waters plus a line of boutique capsicum extracts for bikers to take into the high desert when their PCP connection dries up.
Max and I ended up having such a good time together driving through LA, getting lost in Long Beach that we didn't even end up having out annual road trip fight. I felt a real pang when I said good bye to him at the Hare house. The full strain of being the Holly Golightly mother.
DAYS 2-4: Crazy Artistic Geniuses
Arrived in Normal Heights to find Abe in an absolutely horrible mood for mysterious reasons: his life is actually going quite well, his book Fried Butter was just selected by the New York Times as one of the year's most notable, his house has appreciated $100,000 in the last year, his publisher and agent are lobbying hard to move him to NYC where it will be easier to land him high-paying gigs for the New Yorker. As always he cooks superbly – for a while we talk about the superiority of Le Creuset to all other cookware.
Then after the second bottle of wine we switch to his love life. Or lack thereof.
"So. Have you gotten a divorce yet?" I ask. Fools rush in. Etcetera. He grows even stormier, mutters something about how since Cynthia is the one who filed for divorce but never went through with it, there's nothing he can do.
"Well, I think that's symbolic," I say. "And if you ask me, as long as you remain married even on paper, you're going to stay in emotional retrograde."
The rejoinder who asked you? is a bit too obvious. He waits until well into the middle of the third bottle of wine to launch the counter-attack. Then he cocks his head to one side, smirks at me, starts to say something. And stops himself ostentatiously.
"What?" I ask.
"Should I?" he wonders. "What the hell. You know, however long it takes you to clear your throat, that's fine. I mean, if it takes you five years, ten years – that's five or ten years off your literary career but what the hell. It's your life. However. If I were interviewing you, if I were bringing my reportorial skills to your… case, shall we call it, I'd see some interesting contradictions. Here is a woman who's had an interesting life. Everything I know about you is interesting. And yet here is a woman who insists upon remaining invisible inside her own work. Dr. Freud! White courtesy telephone."
"I don't like writing autobiographical stuff," I say stiffly.
"Hmmmm," he says. "Hmmmmm." He does the Cheshire cat thing with his smile. Then he throws a Robert Lowell quote at me, something along the lines of "Why not just say what happened?" as if it should have some resonance for me. Abe does a very funny schtick about Robert Lowell's graduate seminar with Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. Personally I find all three of them almost unreadable.
"Ukrainian sex slaves," he says, shaking his head. "I mean, really. All this obsession with structure is just a little bit unhealthy, wouldn't you say? I mean, if the story is there, it tells itself."
"Have you ever tried to write fiction?" I ask in desperation.
He roars with laughter. "What do you think my book was?"
"That was fiction?" I'm genuinely confused. "I thought it was a memoir."
This must be the punchline to some traveling salesman joke I don't know. He is practically rolling on the floor, clutching his sides. "Memoirs are fiction, silly wabbit."
I am starting to get seriously pissed off. Also losing my voice since I've been trying to match him cigarette by cigarette and he is a chain smoker. Finally I end the evening by grabbing my journal and reading him the thing about Rabbi Bruce and the Jew's relationship with Israel.
"See?" I say. "It's boring."
"No, some of that is pretty good," he allows.
"For something that only took me twenty minutes to write," I say. And toddle off to bed. He has kindly given up his bedroom, sleeps on the couch. Pretends to prefer it. Snores badly.
Next day I take him on the hot sauce store tour. He is game enough. We do lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant – I note how easy it is to let him order for me, let him do all the heavy lifting on the big opinion front throughout the day. He's fascinated by the ill-fated saga of the Vogel sisters and the Men Without Hats. By late afternoon, though, the black mood is upon him again. "Here's the thing about New York," he says. "Here's the thing. I don't want to go there alone."
"It's a big step," I allow, nodding. "But if you want a career, you have to do it. You owe it to yourself, Abe. You're a brilliant, brilliant writer. You have a shot at the top tier. In my never humble opinion. Don't sabotage yourself by throwing up roadblocks."
"You know what I want?" he says. "I want a Manhattan."
So we go to a bar where he proceeds to have eight Manhattans and I nurse two relatively chaste Old Fashioneds. I can't tell whether it's the alcohol or ten years of friendship lurching into that territory all male/female relationships stumble into eventually but all of a sudden I realize he wants to sleep with me which means he has to convince himself he's emotionally attached to me. I can see the obsession rising to the surface like bubbles in champagne.
"The trouble with me is I keep falling in love with women like you," he says. "So let's talk about you. Specifically let's talk about your relationship with Ben. Your marriage. Why did you stay with him after last summer?"
"Three reasons, really. We get along really, really well. I mean we speak the same language. For me, that's a very rare thing. There's no translation process at all. And then there's Robin. He's very attached to us both, it would break his heart if we split up. And I'm just not going to do that to him –"
"So you're gonna stay unhappy?"
"I'm not unhappy," I said. "Don't you read Buddha? Diminished expectations are the key to happiness."
"You know how I was talking about how humans resist change because every ending is a little death?" Elbow dig, elbow dig.
"Read those subtitles," I said. "Yep, sure did. But see, I'm not sure they're an accurate translation."
"So what's the third reason?"
"The third reason? Well. If we break up, that's it for me in the romance game. Because, see, there is no way I'm ever going to do the single woman cruising for a relationship thing ever, ever again. The mere thought of going out on a date with someone fills me with nausea."
"What's so scary?"
"I didn't say terror. I said nausea. Besides. If I won Lotto tomorrow, all my problems with Ben would be solved."
The traveling salesman was back. Abe was roaring with laughter, clutching his sides. "You bet they'd be solved! You know why? Because you'd be calling from the Ritz Carleton!" He does the phone call with the funny voices. "Waiter! Another bottle of champagne! No, I told you – not the Moët, I want the Laurent-Perrier. What was that you were saying, Ben? You love me? Can you hold the line for a second? The new nanny's here. Hi-i! That's little Robin in the corner over there. Can you take him somewhere for the next ten years? Money's no object."
It becomes the schtick for the rest of the evening.
On the way back to his house we do Robert Rossney from the Well. Apparently back when Abe was buying his house, he called all the old Well people desperately trying to get them to intercede with Cynthia since though she was resolute in her determination not to advance divorce proceedings, neither would she speak to him. Rossney actually took the call. Warned Abe that if went near Cynthia, he (Rossney) would kill him (Abe.) Since Abe is built like a bull and Rossney is built like a large chunk of Brie cheese, this is pretty funny. Then Rossney tells Abe that if Abe is having troubles, he should come live with him and Sonia, they'd find Abe a job.
"Hello, Robert?" screeches Abe. "Remember how you said I could come live with you if the going got tough? Well, the going isn't actually tough – in fact, it's kind of chocolate creams and white dove territory. See, Patty is leaving her husband for me and well, we need a place to run away to – there's little Robin's welfare to consider too – and we thought immediately of you. Still live in Denver? What high school district? Not Columbine, is it?"
Abe cooks another superb dinner and I retire at the relatively early hour of midnight. Around two in the morning I awaken to hear Abe's voice ranting back and forth outside the bedroom door in the hall. Something about rapists and baby killers. For a moment I'm paralyzed – is he having the psychotic break that always seems to lie close to the surface? No denying he's a creative genius – a creative genius after the Robert Lowell school. Then I think: nah, he's gotta be talking to someone on the phone.
Next morning we went out and bought a single lotto ticket apiece. "I had a blast," he said, kissing me good bye.
I did too, but I was glad to be driving off. Abe is exhausting.
Day 5: Ordeal By Cousin Jenny – Pasadena - Home
Don't know why I subjected myself to this. Jenny and her husband are b-o-r-i-n-g though their baby is extremely cute. Got in and out of there as fast as I politely could.
Huntington Gardens were lovely as always. Decided I really hate all 18th century English portrait painters but especially Gainsborough and Romney. Had a lovely tea with some exceedingly neat Well people – Anita, Ruthanne, Carmen, Randy and Shannon. And finally – home.
