Some Kind of Miracle (18 page)

“I’m afraid they’ll see me,” Sunny said.

“Don’t look,” Dahlia told her.

“It’s not me looking at them. It’s them looking at us, and I need a cigarette.”

Dahlia turned the key and pushed open the door to the institutional ladies’ room. There were four rectangular mirrors above a bank of four sinks.

“I can’t do it,” Sunny said. “I’ll pee in my pants instead. You tell them to leave me alone.”

“Here, go into this cubicle right now,” Dahlia said, turning Sunny away from the mirrors and propelling her into a stall with a toilet.

“No.”

“Sunny, go in. Close the door so they can’t see you. I’ll keep them busy.”

After Sunny hurried into the cubicle and slammed the door and Dahlia heard the lock click shut, she walked over to the mirrors. She was bleary-eyed, and she had to get Sunny something to calm her and take her back to the house to sleep, because she had a massage to do in less than an hour. I’m trapped. How could I think this was a good idea? She could hear Sunny in the cubicle fumbling with her clothes.

“You have to be tough with them,” Sunny shouted out loudly to Dahlia. “Tell them you know what they’re trying to do.”

Now Sunny would come out and have to wash her hands. How was she going to stand at the sink and wash her hands without looking in the mirror above the sink? Dahlia wondered.

“Tell them!” Sunny hollered now.

Dahlia pulled the lever on the paper towel machine three times. She wet and soaped the first piece of paper towel, saturated the second with warm water, and left the third one dry.

“Goddamn you, Dahlia, tell them!” Sunny shouted from the cubicle.

“What do you want me to say?” Dahlia asked her.

“You should say, ‘I know you are up to no good, and when people are evil, they always pay the price. So don’t think you can get away with anything, because
God can see you, and he has ways of making sure the devil gets his due.’ Say it.”

Dahlia looked at her own weary face in the mirror, and as Sunny repeated the message, Dahlia delivered it into the mirror line by line, and the irony of the situation that was making her deliver those words into the mirror at herself didn’t escape her. “I know you are up to no good, and when people are evil, they always pay the price. So don’t think you can get away with anything, because God can see you, and he has ways of making sure the devil gets his due.” It was true, she thought, and she was already paying the price for her greed.

Sunny emerged smiling from the cubicle, and a queasy Dahlia whisked her toward the bathroom door, as far away from the mirrors as possible. Then she washed, rinsed, and dried her cousin’s hands the way she remembered her mother washing and drying her hands and Sunny’s after they’d played all day at the beach.

“I can’t make her take it,” Joe Diamond told Dahlia as they stood in the foyer of his office. “I can give you six weeks’ worth of a drug I think she ought to try and hope that you can convince her to do it. It’s not going to be a quick fix. There’s no such thing with this illness. It may not even work at all. There may be times when she seems even more agitated than she was before she started taking it. But by the end of four weeks, you could see some subtle changes.”

“Four weeks?” Dahlia emitted a nervous laugh. “Oh, believe me, she’s not staying in L.A. that long,” she told him. “First of all, she’ll lose her spot in the
board-and-care if she does. She has to go back to San Diego or to a hospital or something. It’s going to take me a month just to clean my house after what she did to it.”

Joe Diamond went on talking quietly to Dahlia, as if she were the one who was the mental patient, in a voice that let her know he was completely disregarding what she had just said and instead was forging ahead with his plan. “There are plenty of what we call atypical antipsychotics for her to try, drugs that might bring her around to feeling a lot more like herself. New ones that have very high success ratios. But like they say in the twelve-step programs, ‘It only works if you work it.’ Somebody has to watch over her.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “at those board-and-care places, nobody is going to monitor her or worry about how compliant she is, or pay attention to how the crossover to a new drug is working, how to find an effective dose, how to monitor the side effects versus the benefits. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to do it. It’s fraught with relapse and disappointment. Like the myth of Sisyphus, the rock rolls back, and it requires really big shoulders to keep pushing it up that hill.” He was trying to sell Dahlia, and she wasn’t going to buy it.

“I don’t have big shoulders,” she said, thinking how much her own shoulders ached right now. She shook her head at Joe Diamond as he handed Sunny a bag of samples.

“Then I guess you’d better take her back to San Diego,” he said, patting Sunny gently on the arm.

“I have no clients on Saturday,” Dahlia said. “I’ll drive her back then.”

“Okay,” Sunny said, staring at her feet.

Dahlia hated the look of disappointment she saw on Joe Diamond’s face, and all the way home she told herself that no songs were worth what she’d have to put up with to keep Sunny around for another month. On the way down to the van, she’d seen Sunny pause and freeze for an instant as she stared at a building on Ventura Boulevard two doors from the one they had just exited. It was a tall modern building that glistened brightly as the large panes of reflecting blue glass mirrored back the passing cars and trucks and people in the street.

“That must be their headquarters,” Sunny had said under her breath as Dahlia turned her and moved her toward the van.

On Friday morning she took Sunny to Nordstrom in Westwood and let her choose three new outfits, the prices of which added up to two hundred dollars. While Dahlia put the charges on her already overburdened Visa card, Sunny watched a man in a tuxedo sit at a baby grand piano on the first floor and play old standards to entertain the shoppers. Okay, Dahlia thought, looking over at her cousin as Sunny watched the man, fascinated. I am about to get rid of her and I’m feeling guilty, so I’m buying her the clothes
I
can’t afford. I don’t need a therapist to tell me that.

On Friday evening, after Dahlia massaged Leroy Berk and then his sister who was visiting from New York, she massaged Margie Kane and then Risa
Braverman. Then she came home and made burritos for Sunny, which were Sunny’s favorite dinner, and while she was washing the dishes, she heard Sunny talking to someone out in the backyard. Dahlia sighed. What had she mistakenly left out there that had a reflective surface? But as she approached the door, she could tell that the conversation Sunny was having was a quiet and tender one. Not hostile and raging like the ones she had with mirrors.

“You’ll be okay. I love you, and I’ll make sure nothing bad will happen to you, I promise. Maybe when I go away, Dahlia will take over for me. I’ll ask her tonight before we go to sleep.” Sunny was sitting under a tree talking gently into her hand when she spotted Dahlia. Her eyes were red, and her face was tear-stained as she slowly lifted her hand to show Dahlia what was in it.

“This little squirrel must have hurt itself, because it was stuck in some ivy just outside the window of my room, so I’ve been taking care of her. I’m so worried about leaving her. Because I see her getting a bit stronger, and it warms my heart. Look at her little face, and her sweet brown eyes. I’ve been feeding her with this dropper you had in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom. You’d be amazed at how much better she is already. And I’m afraid if I leave her she could…” Sunny’s lip trembled as if she might cry. “I mean, I named her and everything, and she really seems to perk up when I’m there. Will you take care of her when I leave?”

No shot I am taking care of any damn squirrel, Dahlia thought. The minute Sunny’s out of here, I send that nasty rodent to the SPCA.

“What’d you name her?” Dahlia asked, trying to sidestep making any promises.

“Rose. After your mom. She has that sweet nature that reminded me of Aunt Rose. Look how frail she is. Even her tiny chirping sounds are so faint. When I go back to the Sea View, promise you’ll take care of her?”

“I don’t think so, Sun, but maybe you could take her with you.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. She needs to be near her family who live in the trees around here. Don’t you remember how our mothers always told us about the importance of family?” Sunny asked.

“Yeah,” Dahlia said. “I remember.” Then she walked closer to get a better look at the squirrel. Cute little thing, she thought, if you like rodents. And then she listened as Sunny, trying to calm the damned thing, hummed a gorgeous lullaby she was improvising on the spot.

H
ere’s how it feels to massage Risa Braverman: frightening, Dahlia thought. Rubbing tenderly, carefully, and trying not to shudder visibly when your hands slide over the number on her arm that evokes images of what Dahlia knew could never be as frightening as the nightmare Risa had survived in Auschwitz. Dahlia had read enough about the horrors of the Jews in Eastern Europe that when she found herself complaining about her problems to Risa, she stopped short, realizing how inane they were. Today she heard herself going on and on about Sunny and was just ready to apologize when Risa laughed a bubble of a laugh.

“So you let her stay? Because of the squirrel? And now she’s actually been living in the house with you—and the squirrel, too?” Risa asked, her face down in the faceplate as Dahlia worked on her back.

“Just for the time being,” Dahlia said. For a woman in her eighties, Risa was unusually muscular and lithe, and she was always eager for conversation, usually questioning Dahlia about her life. “I mean, first I let her stay because I couldn’t tear her away from this baby squirrel, which is now getting really active and has just about healed. It’s kind of amazing how she cured it. And brilliantly enough, she named it Rose, after my late mother, so I’m sure that’s what must have made me get all mushy about the damn thing. Then, all of a sudden, my massage business picked up a lot, and I was too busy to realize she’s been at my house for nearly three weeks. But I have to do something, or she’s going to lose her place in that board-and-care in San Diego, and that would be a huge problem.”

“You are a good person. In the old country, we always had the families living with us. The meek and the halt and the lame. And in my family…that was everybody,” Risa said, and she let out a laugh at her own joke. “It is the way it was supposed to be. You take care, you are responsible for others. But nowadays nobody does it, because they don’t have such a good heart like you.”

A good heart. A flare of shame rose through Dahlia. A good heart had nothing to do with it. Her motive had been to get the music out of Sunny.

“Oh, I agree. I think we were meant to take care of one another in this world,” Dahlia said.

Risa lifted her head and looked hard at Dahlia. “We had a woman in my barracks named Leah who had only one possession left.” Dahlia sat on the bed. Risa rarely told her stories about the Holocaust, and Dahlia
wasn’t going to rush her or interrupt her. “Somehow she had managed to keep from the Nazis her mother’s wedding ring. She knew someone who worked in the kitchen, and she traded that ring to him for bread. Then she shared the bread with the rest of us. She didn’t have to share, but she did. When a working woman like you takes the time to go and get a person like your cousin who needs you so badly, and then lets her live in her home, it is a mitzvah. You know what is a mitzvah? A wonderful deed.”

It was time for Risa to turn over, and when she sat up she grabbed tightly on to Dahlia’s arm with her veiny, skinny hand. “You are a righteous human being, and I am proud of you,” Risa said intensely. Dahlia couldn’t look into her eyes, certain that a woman who had witnessed as much evil as Risa had would see right through her ruse.

Sunny had okay days and bad ones. She was still refusing to take any medication, but on the whole she seemed slightly less agitated, relieved to be in what were, compared to the life she’d been leading before Dahlia came for her, idyllic surroundings. And when Dahlia looked at her little “tree house,” as Sunny called it, through Sunny’s eyes, her tiny place took on a kind of rustic beauty, nestled there among all the greenery. Maybe it did need a paint job, but it was cozy and quaint. And now that Dahlia had removed the soap from all the places where Sunny had smeared it, the house was back to normal.

Happily, Sunny hadn’t made any more attempts to destroy anything. She played solitaire on the com
puter and watched TV. Her worst times were at night, when she would pace for a while, then put herself down in front of the piano and create the most amazing tunes. Dahlia would sit up in bed, not wanting to walk out there and distract her, but she listened carefully and marveled at how consistently haunting and melodic all the songs were. And often she would write lyrics for them, lyrics she would never show Sunny but instead put aside in the hope that someday Sunny would change her mind about selling the songs.

“Sunny,” she said to her one night when the song Sunny played was so soulful that Dahlia had to go into the living room to get closer so she could watch her cousin’s hands on the keys to see how she was playing it, “that song is so special. What are you going to do with it?” she asked.

“Hold it in my heart,” Sunny said as she got up from the piano bench and walked into her bedroom.

The Jet Delivery truck rattled to a stop next to Dahlia’s carport, and the chunky woman in the white shorts and black shirt pounded on the door. Dahlia opened the door and sighed when she saw the big envelope from Harry Brenner. She felt rattled when she opened it to find a stack of papers with a note on top printed on stationery that had a G clef next to Harry’s name:
Hey, doll. Sign here and make some big bucks. Faith is gonna do your song, but you have to get these contracts back to me ASAP. Your manager, Harry.

She could hear Sunny rummaging around in the kitchen, and the papers felt hot in her hand. She was holding a contract that said Dahlia had written the
music and the lyrics to the song “What’s Happened to Me?” and another contract saying that Harry, as her manager, would take 15 percent of Dahlia’s earnings on this and every other song she wrote and sold hereafter. Then there were some other papers she didn’t understand, papers that, if she’d received them under ordinary circumstances, she would probably have run by a lawyer. But how could she ask a lawyer if these papers were okay? They were a lie. She shouldn’t send them back to Harry. She should burn them and tell him the truth. This was her last chance to get out of it. Last chance to be honest.

“Hey, Dahl, aren’t you supposed to be doing another massage soon?” Sunny called out. Dahlia’s heart was pounding, and she suddenly had a nagging headache. “
You are a righteous human being, and I am proud of you
.” She could still see the look in Risa’s eyes when she’d said that. And now she was going to send this contract off with a lie. Maybe it wasn’t too late to change her mind. Of course Harry Brenner would laugh her out of any chance she ever had to be in the business if she called him and told him she was withdrawing the song. And if she told him Sunny wrote it, Sunny would have to sign it over so Faith Hill could sing it, and there was no way in the world Sunny would ever do that.

Unless maybe there was some chance that Dahlia could make her change her mind. Sunny did seem a little more stable this last week or so. Rose, the squirrel, was hopping around in the backyard every morning, and that seemed to have a positive effect on her. Dahlia had to take another shot at making Sunny un
derstand what a big deal selling this song could be. She wouldn’t have to mention that she had passed off the song as her own. She could just say she’d penciled in some lyrics that seemed to fit and had happened to play it for Harry and that he liked it, and then she’d mentioned to him that her cousin might be interested in the two of them selling it.

“Just on my way out,” she called back to Sunny.

She couldn’t wait. Harry had made it clear that she had to do something right away about these papers. That meant she had to send them back to him accompanied by a letter that said “Here is my signature” or “Here is the signature of the person who actually wrote the song” or “I am withdrawing the song because I didn’t write it by myself and don’t have the right to sell it.” No. That would be a mistake. Dahlia shuffled through the papers again and again. These days the music business was so screwy that selling a song, unless you were a known insider, was nearly impossible. A huge star wanted to record this one. To hold it back would be really dumb.

Sunny came into the room carrying a stack of Seth’s old magazines. She loved sitting for hours turning all the glossy colorful pages of the ones that still arrived in the mailbox daily because Seth had never bothered to send in his change of address. Now she collapsed on the sofa, and Dahlia wandered over to sit across from her until she looked up.

“Feeling okay today?” Dahlia asked.

Sunny nodded. She was thumbing through
Us
magazine. “I’m always a little better during the day. Not so
great at night. But I make it through by coming in here and playing songs.”

“Your songs are awesome,” Dahlia said, thinking that was a good segue into the subject and hoping she didn’t sound as phony as she felt.

“Thanks,” Sunny said innocently. “You always liked my songs.” Dahlia saw Sunny stop to look closely at a photo in
People
of Jennifer Aniston. “Can I tear this out?” she asked, holding it up.

“Sure,” Dahlia said, wondering why on earth Sunny wanted a picture of Jennifer Aniston. She steered the subject back to the songs. “I am a thousand percent sure the world will like your songs, too. You could probably sell them for a lot of money.”

Sunny put the magazine down and looked her cousin in the eye. “Dahlia…I don’t want a lot of money,” she said evenly. “I want something that no money in the world is ever going to buy me. I want my brain to be still. I want my world to not be badgered by demons. I want peace. But my music is a part of me, and I am going to keep it that way. I don’t want to give it away or sell it. I won’t let someone else have a piece of me, because to me it’s like giving away my arm or my leg.

“I write songs for me because I need to. Because they flow out of me. I don’t write them for the world. You like sharing yourself with the world. You sold a song because that meant something different to you than it does to me. You sell your services to go and touch naked people. That’s you, not me. I couldn’t do that. I’m not selling. I write songs for the same reason I
breathe: because I’m supposed to. I may not have much, but I’m keeping what I have inside me. When we were kids, I did those shows for other people, and I always hated it. So please stop trying to get me to do it.”

Dahlia held in the torrent of words that rushed through her mind. I touch naked bodies because I have to eat, and I couldn’t sell my songs. But you can and you should, because you could buy the mental hospital and all the doctors in the world to help you if you did. In the meantime I can’t afford you. I can’t feed you and let you live here forever. I need to pay for this life, and you could pitch in and buy us both a better life with your songs, especially if you’d let me write them with you. But instead of saying any of that, she went into the kitchen and made them both lunch.

After lunch Sunny went outside and lay on her back in the grass, her arms spread and her head arched up to get as much sun as she could on her face.

“Back later,” Dahlia called out. No, no, no, she said to herself as she walked out of the house toward the van. It’s ridiculous for Sunny to hold these fabulous songs in her heart. I will sell this song in spite of her. And I won’t worry about it until the check comes and it’s such a big one that she has a tax problem. She may not think she needs money, but she does, and when she gets it, she’ll love the feeling of having it so much that she’ll want to write more songs, and I’ll write the lyrics, and we’ll be as famous as her precious Leiber and Stoller. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

I am doing the right thing, Dahlia told herself again and again as she put the signed contracts on the passenger seat of the van and drove down the hill to drop them at a FedEx box. Besides, she thought, there was always a chance, a good chance, that nothing would happen with the song. But she couldn’t let this opportunity pass. Even as she held the FedEx envelope up to the slot in the drop box, she felt afraid, knowing that this was a crime, not sure what the worst part of the crime was. Tricking Sunny? Lying to Harry? Surely Harry didn’t give a damn, as long as he owned a piece of the song. Sick, I am sick, Dahlia thought. Why don’t I just go home and write my own songs?

She knew how fickle artists could be. One minute they loved something, and the next minute they hated it. Sometimes a song could get recorded by the artist and still never make it to the CD after the producer and the artist listened to the way it sounded up against all of the other songs. Maybe, after all of Dahlia’s raging guilt, there wouldn’t be anything to worry about. Maybe Faith Hill would change her mind.

Certainly Dahlia was not about to tell her massage clients that she wasn’t going to be a masseuse anymore so she could go back to the music business. Her massage business was actually starting to pick up even more. Margie Kane had left her cheating plastic surgeon husband and, contrary to her fears, had moved into a beautiful condo in a high-rise on Wilshire and was calling Dahlia twice a week to come and give massages to her and to her new boyfriend, a yoga teacher. And since Marty Melman had hurt his
back, he needed Dahlia to come in to work on him several times a week, so he was being a little bit nicer to her, and the money was good.

That evening she steered the mirrorless van up Marty’s driveway, promising herself no matter how obnoxious he was to her, she’d ignore it. She’d breathe deeply and not let him rattle her. “
You sell your services to go and touch naked people
.” Imagine Sunny saying that to her! How about
healing
naked people? That’s what she did. Sunny was getting on her nerves. It was definitely time to get her back to the Sea View.

Dahlia jammed on the brakes when she saw Marty’s Rolls-Royce backing out of the garage with a tanned and dressed-up Marty at the wheel, and angrily she pulled up behind him to block his exit. He’s leaving. He’s going out on a date, he’s completely forgotten about me, the son of a bitch. When Marty saw it was Dahlia’s van that was in the way of his backing the Rolls into the driveway, he leaned on the horn, and it blared loudly. Dahlia jumped out of the van and ran around to the driver’s side of Marty’s elegant silver automobile. She could smell his aftershave wafting toward her.