Don't Let Me Die In A Motel 6 or One Woman's Struggle Through The Great Recession (19 page)

“What?”
I
thought she had just said something.

“What is the situation with the horses? 
Why is ‘B
oard
’
an expense?
Do you still have them?”

“Well. . .”  I contemplated lyi
ng, but
hated that
.
  “Yes.”

She went into full
c
orporat
e
crisis
mode
.

“
Amy
!
Haven’t we discussed selling them?
Just give them away!
They need to go – now!”
I was surprised she wasn’t
clicking
through
a
PowerPoint
presentation
.

“Well…” I stumbled, clutching
at
the errant spreadsheet.
“I haven’t really been able to pay for them.
The last time
was $400
in February – as you
see
.
”
I pointed to a lonely cell.

“Unacceptable!”
Each strand of her shoulder-length hair, dyed a light brown, seemed angry.
I looked at her face – drawn from year
s of stress; from
trying to do it all and
in the process
make everyone happy
.
“I will
not
p
ay for tho
se horses!
I will withdraw my support if they’re not gone by the end of the month.”

I looked down.
She had already reduced my monthly stipend to
$1,600
.
A punishment for hanging on.
“Alright.”
This time I meant it.
I would leave them at the barn
to be sold.
I would
abandon
all of my tack, so this
too
could be
traded
for back-board.

I would cut off my
bottom
limbs and become a centaur without legs.

I mentioned
early on
that this
book
would contain
a death
.
So let’s start at the
very
beginning, to quote a wise nanny, Maria
.

It was February, 2010.
Rachel’s money had kept us afloat until January, when – huzzah! – I
scored
another
gig, this one at
a
fashion
firm
called CoutureBay.com
.
If
you think the film business is wild, it’s nothing compared to fashion
.
I had three bosses in as many wee
ks, each one gone so fast I can’t
remember their names.
I think that one was a woman.

IT
sat at
a
giant
counter in the middle of the ope
n floor,
bookended
by racks
of 7 For All Mankind jeans; DKNY
jackets
;
Burberry scarves and hats
.
Everyone who worked there – except for IT – looked like a
budding
model, thigh-high boots matching
D&G
bag
s
on
zero-fat
young
bodies.
The guys didn’t walk – they
glided
.
My presence there was hilarious:
I cared as much about fashion as Anne Hathaway in
Devil Wears Prada
before she
starts wearing
Prada.
But
steady
work
– and an income I
earned
myself –
were fiercely glamorous
to me
.
I
would trundle
Aurora to school, then
take
the Metrolink train downtown.
See,
we
do
have transport in L.A., as long as you’re going
at least eighty
miles
.

During these halcyon days, one morning I got a call.
It was Tanya, who had
had
the temerity
, years ago,
to move to
Northern Cal
.
For this, she
is
unforgiven.
She told me something
distressing
:
her childhood friend Greg, whom I’d known for thirty years, was ill with
pancreatic
cancer.
He didn’t have much longer.

I visited Greg that weekend, meeting Tanya at his immaculate
Silver Lake condo
.
He had had his share of tragedy:
a massive heart attack in his forties brought on by a lawsuit from America’s Favorite Mouse
.
Greg had been in the right, but
Brazil
-like
hordes
of lawyers had
run him down
.
He’d felt the magic
all right
– right in the
. . .

“Greg.”
I sat in a chair by his bedside,
trying not to look shocked at his gauntness.
His head seemed
twice its size
on a shrunken, pajama-draped body.
Tanya brought in McDonalds, since that’s what he was craving.
He
took
a few small bites.
“Do you believe in an afterlife?”

“Not really. I think it’s a construct to keep the masses from desperation.”
Greg was really smart.

“I do.
I’m like a Medieval peasant, hoping for a better world in the next.”

He smiled, putting his Big Mac down.

“Listen, I want to ask
you
a favor.
If you can, from the other side, could you please show me a sign?
Anything.
I just want to know there’s something beyond this misery.”

“
Sure, if I can
.”
Greg was a nice guy.

I was shocked
two weeks later
when I
heard again
from Tanya
.
Greg didn’t have
much
longer.

“Jesus, we were just eating
fries
together!”
I re-directed my car, not using GPS for some reason.
I was so flustered I went the wrong way on the 5, heading toward the wilderness of Santa Clarita.

“Hey, it’s me.”
Tanya’s voice on the phone.
“You don’t have to come.
He’s passed.”

“I still want to.”
I righted my course, walking from the condo parking lot to Greg’s nicely carved
white
door.
Tanya was there
with her sister Mara.
Twenty years ago,
I’d seen her baby being born.

“Birth and death,” I
told her
.

I went softly into Greg’s bedroom.
He was still there, in the bed.
Have you ever seen a corpse
outside
a funeral home
?
This was my first time.
His eyes were still open, and he clutched the blankets with both
bony
hands.
His jaw hung slackly and unnaturally open.
This was the true face of death:
not the Hollywood version.

“Greg, my old friend,” I whispered.
“You’re in a better place, trust me.
One without any
lawyers
.”
I walked out, into the foyer, between Greg’
s room and another where Tanya and her family
grieved
.
I stood there like The Fisher King,
suspended
between life and death
.
Instinctively, I looked up
to the eaves of the condo.
I’d read
that
this is where the soul, newly freed from heavy flesh, floats to meet its fellows, staring down at its
cast-off
shell
in wonder
.

The
mortuary
came for the body.
Two guys expertly shrouded
it in
winding
cloth.
I gave the stretcher an escort to the door in silent tribute to my friend.
He was my age and he was gone.
Smart, creative Greg was gone, but
roug
es and villains
abounded
.
This
was God’s
judgment
that passeth all understanding.
At least to
those of
us on this
stultified
plane.

###

Three months later, I was driving the truck at night, Aurora and David in the back.
We were on the Ventura West, heading home to Canoga Park.
Suddenly,
David yelled
.

“Whoa!
What’s that on your face?”

“What?”

“Aurora!
There are words across your face!
I think
that
one of them says ‘sorry.’”

I glanced in the rear-view mirror.
There was nothing on the freeway that
could have reflected light; no
electronic device
switched
on
in the truck.

“What was it?”

“I know.”
My voice
was quiet and low.

“Greg?”
Aurora
piped up.
She knew about our last conversation.

“Yes.”
I had a strong sense of him at that moment.
He was saying ‘sorry’ since it had taken so long to
contact me
.
I wasn’t freaked out –
in fact,
I
was
relieved.
So t
here was a World To Come.
Death wasn’t
just earth scraped over a coffin
–
it
was the beginning of something that we
, sight constrained like a horse in blinkers, could only infer from scattered signs.
One day, we would put it all together.
One day, we would
ascend the Tree Of Life
and come to face-to-face with ourselves.

June 2010.
Things were going well.
I’d
been called back to CoutureBay to
add
another
feature
.
Aurora wasn’
t acting up
since she
had David to torture.
There was one thing I hadn’t done, and it was driving Nigel
nuts.
I hadn’t had my year
ly mammogram.
W
hen the time
had come
, six months
a
go, I’d been
too depressed to go.
Now, he was pressuring me
daily
.
This was n
ot just obsession
–
for once.
It was
crucial
for me to
have this test
, since I’d been diagnosed with breast cancer
back
in 2007.

It hadn’t
really
been that bad.
They
’d
caught it at Stage Zero,
in situ,
and after a lumpectomy, I’d been able to do Mam
m
osi
te
radiation.
This
is
a technique where a catheter
i
s inserted and radiation,
constrained to
a balloon, targets
the cancer site.
Instead of the usual seven weeks, it involved only
ten
treatments, twice a day.
I was
able to work
between sessions.

Still it
wasn’t a complete cakewalk.
One afternoon, Mary called and asked me to
come to
her villa,
about
twenty
paces away.
I had to ask her to
walk
to me.
I
was
actually
too weak to make it
.
But beyond this short-lived
fatigue, my brush with the Big
C hadn’t been
too s
cary.
I
told everyone it was no big
gie
;
that
I was completely fine.
I walked in the Susan G. Komen Race For the Cure, wore a pink shirt, and
was
awarded
a Survivor’s Medal
.
It was a short blip in an otherwise healthy life.