DECEMBER 4, 2002
MY SUMMER WITH THE MOVIE STAR
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
…We stopped at a market on the way down the Pacific Coast Highway that was pretty because it ran along the edge of the sea through all the little towns of Manhattan Beach, Hermosa and Redondo. We bought bread, a carton of milk, sliced boiled ham, lettuce, a miniature jar of mayonnaise, and plastic knives to make up a little picnic as we rode along, not wanting to waste valuable time.
I was beginning to feel like a human being again, though he still wasn't talking my head off. I kept waiting for him to ask me what went on up there, or start tirading me again about his father and, I guess, Carol, too, now that I knew she was his mother.
If I had been even half-way mature I might have realized that what went on in that house was the last thing he wanted to hear. How could he ever see me again, or take me out, or be my friend, knowing what his own father and mother had done to me? I thought about how he salvaged me off the little dirt road, just like he took me to safety after the Feldman fiasco, when I was bawling on a bus bench. David Feldman and Bertram from Connecticut! It must have happened one million years ago. For all I care now, they could get married at high noon, and I would be happy to carry Bertram's train and personally throw the rice.
I looked at Phil's profile as we drove. It was a nice, normal profile, not cut out for movies, thank god. I thought he was exactly the kind of boy I might be lucky enough to marry some day if that person didn't find how badly soiled I had gotten, and if I could figure out a way to get EG removed from my ass.
***
As we came into a little town, called San Clemente, on the Highway, which was still 101 at that point, he said he wanted to stop for a cup of coffee, and he spotted a diner on the other side of the highway. He made a left hand turn into it, much faster than I thought he should; it was a six lane highway after all. I saw the car in the first lane heading for us that looked like it wasn't going to slow down. But I guess Phil didn't, or he wouldn't have made the maneuver. The car hit us broadside, and it must have been doing a good seventy, probably because the driver was in a big hurry to get home after losing all his money at the Del Mar Race Track.
I never lost consciousness. But I was sure I had a broken back. I was screaming and crying and telling them to keep their hands off and not move me, thinking, as always, of myself and the tremendous pain. When I finally got around to wondering what happened to Phil, it wasn't because I had my eyes open and could see him. It was because he was breathing funny. Like he was breathing underwater. When I looked over at him, half-way behind the wheel and half-way out the door on his side, I could see blood streaming from his mouth and nose, from both places at once. He was breathing through it, so it bubbled like something on a stove.
Despite my screams to be left alone, they pulled me out of the car, and laid me on the hot pavement. A big crowd was gathering around, the fathers practically holding their kids on their shoulders so they could get a better look at a major wreck. My tennies were actually blown off my feet, and I could feel where my bra had snapped in several places, and there were little tiny holes through all my clothing, which I later learned were caused by the literal force of the impact. Another thing I found out later--my purse and my coat were among the missing. Stolen, if you can believe it, from accident victims.
Later, when I was lying in the receiving station, and a doctor was washing up, getting ready to look me over, I heard someone on the phone in the hallway. "Better call the coroner," the man said.
"Why do they have to get the coroner?" I got up on my elbows and yelled at whomever was on the phone, as loud as I could, clear from where I was lying in the other room in my broken bra and clothes full of holes.
"Routine procedure, Miss," the doctor said, as he very gently pushed me back down on the table. "We always report major accidents to the coroner."
He must have thought he was dealing with a child. I knew Phil Godland was dead. I knew whose fault it was too.
***
The reason I thought I had a broken back was just because everything else from the waist up was broken, half my ribs and one collarbone. I had a young and modern doctor, who said if he put my collarbone in a cast, it might make a little bump in the bone, which wouldn't look attractive later when I was wearing evening clothes or a strapless dress. So, instead, he made me lie in one position, flat on my back, in the Santa Monica Hospital until it healed up.
That was one reason. The other reason was I don't think my parents, considering my mental state, wanted me out of the hospital, going to Phil's funeral or anything else.
Oh, yes, indeed, the doctor saw the famous EG. He looked me over from head to toe, and it was obvious he didn't think it was a birthmark.
"I see you have a tattoo," he said, smiling like he couldn't believe it, like he has just discovered I had two heads.
"Yes," I said.
"Do you folks know you have this tattoo?" he asked.
"No," I said.
When he pulled the sheet back up, and had me on my back again, he looked me square in the eyes and said, "I think you have had enough trouble so I won't mention it to anyone. But from what I can piece together, I think I know whose initials they are, and if I were you I wold have them removed."
I couldn't answer. I just nodded my head, and started crying.
"I'll give you the name of a good plastic surgeon before you leave here," he said. He left the room, shaking his head.
Ezra and Carol never came near the place, not even to keep up appearances in front of my parents. But they sent some roses--nothing lavish or movie starish--which arrived about the second day with Carol's formal calling card on them. No message, that was all.
***
Thinking they were doing me a big favor, the hospital actually put me in a room with a girl from my own English class, who had had an appendectomy.
The first thing she said, practically before hello, was" "That thing Feldman made you read in class about the Sparks was bullshit."
I slammed my pillow down over my face, and said, "I know."
Later, she showed me pictures of Ezra and Carol attending their son's funeral, both wearing dark glasses. My parents went to the funeral, too, though they never really did get to know Phil. In fact, my father had never officially met him.
They told me they were just sick about his death. But I could almost see them in our dinky kitchen, after visiting me, talking about how it could have been me, lying dead, and how glad they were it was the boy instead, unfortunate as it was.
I assume you know how I feel about it. Phil was dead because of me. He only went down to Tijuana that day to help me, and also to show me that I wasn't such a total loss, and could rejoin the human race, as far as he was concerned. It wasn't his fault his mother and father were perverts, but his kindness to me resulted in his death, which I now realize is one of the ways life repays acts of kindness.
I cried a lot in the hospital, but I tried to keep it down because of the other girl, who was getting out, anyway. I was lying flat on my back the whole time, so I would put the pillow over my face to cut down on the noise. Every time I did it, I would remember Phil telling me to stop crying in this little apartment, and how he wanted to continue living there, and how he wasn't living there anymore. His clean, white shirts and blue jeans and tennies were sitting up there in the closet of his little place, and there was nobody to wear them, and everything he had on was probably taken out and burned at the funeral home because of his blood all over it.
I cried because Phil was a nice boy who tried to keep me intact, and from finding out, sooner than necessary, how many pits there are waiting for you to fall into, if you just keep stumbling along with a lot of misplaced faith in your ability to cope. In those days, I couldn't cope with a water stain on a silk blouse, so how could I cope with you-know-who and his wife up there at that house? Phil knew, and he tried his best to get me out of there, and for his trouble he was officially declared dead and, now, his clean, young body was filled with embalming junk, and he was lying in the earth out in that Westwood cemetery that's next to the Buick dealership. And all the while, Ezra and Carol are still walking around on top of the earth and, for all I know, playing their gin rummy, and having a few friends up.
I wondered whether it was better to be dead and innocent, or alive in a hospital, knowing you are a hopeless, over-sexed smartass with a red and blue tattoo on her ass to prove it.
I might as well continue with the truth. Toward the end of my stay in the hospital, and just to pass the time, I tried one little, tiny fantasy involving my new doctor--the young, modern one who refused to set my bones--not my regular old fart. The fantasy failed to develop properly, even with the great material at hand, such as having a young, good-looking doctor poking your ribs, and asking if it hurt. When I thought it over, it was obvious why the fantasy didn't work. I had already indulged in too much reality.
Note: Re-read my description of the mirror in the guest bedroom up at Ezra's. If you ever see a mirror like that one in a room where you will be undressing to go to bed and, especially, if you see it in a house in the hills above Sunset Boulevard, or in one of the canyons around Beverly Hills, just leave, that's all. Don't stick around to see how things turn out.
