A RAINY DAY. THE LAKE HIDDEN IN A WASH OF GRAY LIKE A JAPANESE PRINT. NO SKY, NO SHORE, JUST THE FAINT BRUSHSTROKE OF AN ISLAND. PAVEMENTS WET, THE STUDENTS, COCOONED IN THEIR WINTER GEAR, SCUTTLE INTO their buildings, ballooned like Michelin tire men. Yesterday on these same streets the crack dealers in their hooded sweats pushed their girls around and threw mock punches at one another. Today it’s too cold. They’re huddled somewhere in their cars waiting for trade. I curse their activity, looking cool and hip while selling misery to somebody’s kids.
My spirits are gray today, too. My mother, with impeccably bad timing, died on Tania’s birthday, and that’s tomorrow. I don’t think she meant to. I believe her intention was to be gone long before, but when we went in to tell her it was Tania’s birthday she gave a great sigh and said, “Oh no.” We left my son holding her hand and went for a quick walk in the nearby canyon on a bright sunny day, and when we came back Carey said, “She’s gone.” And she had slipped away. I remember two men carrying a tiny load in a white sheet up the stairs and out of the front door. That’s what we become. Garbage disposal. Now she sits in a box on the shelf in my library. People say, “Why haven’t you buried or scattered her remains?” but this is much closer. Why is one place better than another?
Tania and I collected her ashes from Forest Lawn, and as I went to put the box in the trunk of the car Tania said, “You can’t put your mother in the trunk.” So we put her on the front seat. Driving home we became hysterical. What if I had to brake suddenly and the ashes flew all over the car windshield? What would we say to the police patrol man?
“What’s all that in there, drugs?”
“No. That is my mother.”
I think laughter in the face of death is a perfectly appropriate response to grief. At Harry Nillsson’s funeral, just as they were lowering the coffin, Alan Katz said, “Oh, I spoke to Harry last week, and he said he wanted me to have his royalties.”
The bad news from Camp Cleese is that the tall one is horizontal with flu. So poor John is sick, and our shoot in Chicago is canceled. I e-mail him good wishes and confess to disappointment. I was looking forward to seeing him, though not to the photo shoot itself. Vanity Fair e-mailed last week and asked for my sizes, and terrible visions of costumes ran through my mind—are they expecting us to dress up? Mind you, now that I think of it, it might be hilarious if we were all photographed in drag at our ages. A group of pissy old women, made up to the nines. Wouldn’t that be funny?
Tania is sick, too. She has laryngitis and has completely lost her voice. She has a deep, husky, sexy voice on the phone, but sadly I can’t keep her on for long—it’s too painful for her. Tomorrow is her birthday and then on Saturday she flies to see me in Chicago. I have now been with her more than half her life. Poor thing. She must be a saint. But a Scorpio. So watch it. According to that pseudoscience called astrology, Aries and Scorpios never get along. Well, twenty-seven years says “crap.”
Even my greedy bastard agent is sick. He has the flu. I wish him well, but he seems more concerned about the show’s numbers. Now that’s a real agent. Normally flu season starts around Thanksgiving. Indeed this festival is responsible for spreading germs throughout America. Everyone flies around kissing and catching something and then returning sick. Planes are the ideal vehicles for spreading disease. People are crammed together for hours sniffling and coughing, breathing in the air of their sick neighbors (recycled but not resanitized), and then they get off the planes already ill. The airlines give a free ride to every hitchhiking virus in North America. After Thanksgiving everyone is out of action. I have labeled this the “Idle Thanksgiving Effect” for the convenience of future medical science. It is particularly noticeable in L.A., where people are a little healthier for longer, since the depredations of winter are later and less harsh, but after Thanksgiving they all go down like ninepins. So get your flu shots today and fly masked! Better to look stupid than get sick. I am thinking of adapting some kind of burka. This female Muslim headgear seems ideal and would also protect against bad airline movies, but how to read underneath it? There’s the rub.