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Loss of a Lady
by
Harry Buschman
From The Westlake Village Collection.
Note: This rather rambling chapter from Westlake Village
was written in
observance of the death of Lotte Gemstone.
The washing machine had just switched to "rinse," it changed gears noisily
and started its spin cycle. As the rpm's increased it started to vibrate and
tried to walk across the floor. I blocked its path with a chair. It's getting
old
and hot-tempered now and must be treated with understanding -- at the same
time I heard the telephone ring.
I was torn between the two, but .... who can resist a telephone? It was
Stacey. Stacey down at the Westlake Village "Guardian."
"Hello, Mr. Buschman? Mr. Crosby says you should get y'self on over to
Lotte's apartment? He just gotta call from the police? She's dead?" When Stacey
is
overwrought she speaks in question marks. Then of course, she began to cry.
When Stacey starts to cry, you have no choice but to hang up on her. Like Niobe,
she's all tears and done for the day.
The washing machine still had fifteen minutes of spin cycle to do, and in its
delicate condition I wondered if I could trust it to finish without me. After
all, I reasoned, the Guardian publishes every two weeks; it wasn't as though
we might hit the streets with an 'extra' for the likes of Lotte. But
journalism is a mighty demanding mistress, and, (TV anchor-persons aside) it
demands
the utmost in dedication and sacrifice to the lesser people who practice its
trade. So I crossed my fingers and wished the best of luck to the washing
machine. I clapped my baseball cap on my head, and took off for Lotte's
apartment on
Westwood Avenue.
Lotte lived on the second floor above a 60-minute film lab. She's been there
ever since her two daughters moved out and left her to live it out alone. On
my many walks up and down Westwood Avenue, I would occasionally look up and see
her looking down at me through her dirty window. I wondered how she got up
the narrow stairs with her cane and her bad back. I don't know what she did with
herself once she got up there -- other than looking down at passersby, there
wasn't much else to do. As it turned out, it wasn't enough to make her life
worth living.
There were two police cars parked in front of the photo shop with their
motors running, blinkers going and their radios spitting out unintelligible
combinations of numbers and letters.
Officer Ryan told me, "Stuck her head in the oven -- guy in the shop smelled
gas all morning -- didn't think nothin' of it 'til his dog begin to howlin'.
Then he went up and knocked on her door."
"Thanks, Ryan -- can I go up and see her?" I've known Ryan for years -- the
only kid I ever knew who kept the promise he made to himself when he said he
wanted to be a policeman when he grew up. He dated my daughter for a year or two
and I forgot his name was Donleavy, but there it was in white letters on a
black plastic badge pinned to his shirt. It's not easy being in a position of
authority in a small town like Westlake Village. Everybody knows you. Your
doctor's underwear hangs on the clothes line in his back yard, and you watch
your
minister prying up dandelions on his front lawn. How can you take orders from a
policeman who used to date your daughter?
"Fraid not, not 'til the coroner gets here. I don't think you wanna see her
anyways."
"Why's that, Ryan?"
He shuffled his big feet a bit, then looked away. "The pilot in the stove,
y'know? It musta been off when she did it, and .... well, I guess, then it musta
went on again, maybe she didn't know it. From the look of her I don't see how
she could of."
"Lot of maybes, Ryan -- she's got kin, did you know? She's got a daughter in
Harrisburg and another one over in Castle Gardens, a dental technician at the
clinic."
Ryan left me then as the coroner arrived, and in single file they clumped up
the narrow stairs to Lotte's apartment while I waited below. Then the morgue
people drove up. Two kids, early twenties .... what drove them into a business
like this?
One of them groaned, "Looka them stairs! We can't get the gurney up there,
shit! We gonna have'ta carry her down."
So my last remembrance of Lotte was her tortured face in her dirty living
room window -- the coffin was mercifully closed. She had broiled her face when
the pilot finally kicked in. She didn't know it, thank God, and it was a miracle
there hadn't been an explosion.
Her daughter, Sarah, couldn't come in from Harrisburg -- not with the three
children and her husband in rehab. The other one in Castle Gardens was not much
help. She came for the funeral, but I doubt if she really knew what happened.
I tried interviewing her for the paper but gave up quickly .... all she said
was, "Ma's gone .... Holy Jesus, I can't believe it, Ma's gone!"
Back at the office, I confessed to Lucas Crosby, "I don't know what this
town's gonna do without her. Really Lucas .... I can still see her zig-zagging
up
the street with Ardsley behind her." Stacey started to cry again.
"Cut it out!" Lucas said to me, "Y'got the human tear machine goin' again. I
don't know what it is with you anyways, you and your freaks! You ain't happy
unless you get to writin' about some half-wit or other .... Lotte was a
gargoyle, her and that Ardsley nut!"
I watched him run himself out of steam, his fingers drumming nervously on the
dirty blotter of his battered desk. "Why don't we give her half a page? But
f'Christ's sake no pitchers, okay?" He looked at Stacey. "Jesus, Stace, you're
a mess. Between the cryin' and the bubble gum, y'gonna choke yourself to
death." He turned to me, "Lookit her mascara runnin' down, she looks like a
friggin' clown .... go home, Stace, and pull yourself together."
I think Lucas Crosby has softened since my term of employment began at the
Guardian. Perhaps it's age. Perhaps it's Stacey. Perhaps it's me. But whatever
it is, he's not the foul-mouthed Scrooge he used to be, and as a result he's
lost some of the raw and unrefined character that made him so appealing.
The funeral at O'Dell's was sparsely attended. The seven o'clock mass club
came; Tim Clancy from the town saloon couldn't find anyone to fill in at the bar
so he came the morning of the wake. Ardsley, her friend, guide, and
protector, does not spend his evenings in Westlake Village and he must have
dropped in
during the day. I noticed he signed the guest list in a shaky hand, "A.
Adams," and in the space where he should have written his address, he wrote, "Lot'sa
luck." I puzzled over that for a time and came to the conclusion that,
without him to guide her every step of the way in the Promised Land, she would
indeed need all the luck in the world.
Father Stan read the service at the wake, but due to the inclement weather
the morning of the funeral, he designated his young Jesuit to lead the cortege
to the cemetery. There were four of us on hand to say goodbye; Lotte's older
daughter, wearing her white nurse's uniform and a red sweater, the funeral
director, Ardsley, and me. I stopped to pick up Ardsley, the school crossing
guard
at the Dairy Barn .... "C'mon, Ardsley, put your STOP sign on the back seat.
Let's take the day off and say goodbye to Lotte."
On the way back to town Ardsley asked me, "Did'ja see her back there in the
parlor yesterday?"
"Well, yes, in a way .... I was there. I guess nobody really saw her,
Ardsley, the coffin was closed."
"I seen her .... I opened it."
He sat there, both hands on his knees. He had taken off his overseas cap and
wedged it under the strap of his epaulet. His shiny brown head, round as a
melon, held a vision of Lotte none of us white folks dared to see.
"She was all in plastic," he started. "Just like the Grunts in Korea. That
was my job over there, y'know .... shippin' the dead home, and that's the way
Lotte's goin' to the Heavenly Land, in a plastic bag -- I tell'ya it ain't
right, Mr. "B". Her face was a sight to see, lemme tell ya'. How they gonna know
it's Lotte, huh? Cain't tell it by the look of her."
"I guess they got ways, Ardsley, they must have ways." I dropped him at the
school crossing.
"Don't forget your STOP sign, Ardsley."
<><><>
There is something unique in the least of us. Whatever failings we may have,
we contribute something to the human equation.
Lotte wasn't much to look at, and too much of her at any one time made you
wish she'd go away. Her raucous voice, foul tongue and gin tainted breath were
more than any of us could take except in small doses. But now she's gone,
forever gone and I'd gladly forgive her failings to have her back again.
As if to balance the see-saw of the life they shared, Ardsley, too, is no
longer with us. He stares out the barred window of the King's Park mental
institution wondering, no doubt, how he got there. There's always the chance,
however
slim, that Ardsley may return ... but not Lotte. The belle of Clancy's Hollow
Leg saloon is one with eternity and somehow you feel as though a page has
been ripped from the history book of Westlake Village. Its ragged edge, left
behind, is all we have to remind us of her and the other giants who lived among
us.
It's time to walk again, our first robin arrived yesterday and stood ankle
deep in the dirty gray snow that still lies piled beside my driveway. Walking
helps to sharpen my senses and I see things I hadn't noticed before. When doing
so, my mind stops rewinding the silent movie of yesterday and moves forward
again.
I have given up walking alone. Parents grow antsy when solitary old men walk
through the school yard. Dogs, sensing our impotency will stare us down and
lift their legs in disdain. So it's best to convoy. Seymour Slansky is my
natural choice ... a man who has graciously accepted the crumbs that life
offered
him, and moreover, someone I can keep abreast of on the uphill walk to the Dairy
Barn. Tony Sargassa is another. While Seymour is older than I, Tony is
younger. Tony, in fact still has a shop on Westwood Avenue not far from Lotte's
old
apartment.
Seymour made men's pants on 36th Street and sixth Avenue in his younger days.
They are made behind the bamboo curtain today. Tony repairs household utensils, lawn mowers and electric motors. They are both victims of changing times
... people prefer new things to repaired things and even Latin-Americans with
green cards cannot compete with Indonesian children in the clothing game. I was
made redundant by a computer that will work seven days a week and ask for no
employee benefits. All three of us, though superannuated, are content to live
the life that's left for us in Westlake Village ... we harbor no grudge against
the changing times, but we often wonder just what the hell happened.
We have one wife between us, she is Tony's Rita ... a formidable woman and
much as it pains me to say it, I believe Tony envies Seymour and me. Tony and
Rita were married as adolescents and whatever magic bloomed in their young
togetherness has turned to wormwood. Seymour and I stand outside the Sargassa
house
at 7 A.M. on our walking days and watch Tony emerge shaking his head and
holding up his middle finger to the kitchen window.
"You'll be sorry for that, Tony," I tell him. "Even your wife is better than
no wife at all."
"Too long, too long," he grumbles. "We know each other too long. Too many
kids ... I never seen a day go by when one of them don't have a fight. Now what!
They're all married ... they still fight. Trouble is, the boys. They all
married a woman like their mother.
"You have too many children," Seymour says... "What is it with you people?"
Tony falls into step with us. The three of us have to huddle by the side of
the road as a school bus roars by and nearly blows us into the ditch. Its
driver, a female gorgon driving with one hand on the wheel and the other holding
a
coffee container stares belligerently at us and ignores the stop sign at the
corner.
"You ever have a school bus pick you up at your door, Tony ... you Seymour?
Bet your ass you didn't. I walked four miles to school." I'm incensed, and
furthermore in the panic to get away from the bus I've stepped in dog shit.
"Look
at that! ... you can see the school from here. It's three Goddamn blocks ...
what kind of kid can't walk three Goddamn blocks to school?"
Tony says, "Kid walks three blocks to school in this neighborhood, he'd be
run over by a school bus."
We walked quickly past the school. Seven empty yellow school buses idle at
the curb, their diesel exhausts fill the early spring morning with deadly fumes.
In the drivers seat of each of them sits a clone of the female gorgon who
only a moment before drove us into the ditch. Each of them is smoking, and each
of them glare at us as we hurry by. It is sobering to think that parents put
their children's lives in the hands of these people.
"I suppose you guys know it's exactly three months today that Lotte passed
on?" I pose it more as a statement than a question. Neither of them knew her as
well as I. Her death has had a curious effect on me and I find it hard to face
the fact that she can no longer be seen careening like a rudderless frigate
along Westwood Avenue.
"Poor schlimazel," Seymour sighs.
"She used to come sit in my store while I worked in the back. Pain in the ass
... she'd bend my ear all day if I let her."
That's the difference between Tony and Seymour. Tony has few kind words to
say about anyone but can be counted on to give you a place to sit and talk.
Seymour empathizes with everyone, he feels your pain far more acutely than Tony,
but he is a tattered remnant of the tribe of Abraham who exist only because
they saved themselves. At this point in my life I need them both; one for
understanding, and one for when the going gets tough.
At the dairy barn we buy our papers ... a Jewish daily for Seymour, the news
of the Middle East. Sand and strife and new settlements on the west bank, ...
or is it the the east bank? I can never remember. It is so far away from all
the things that matter to me. But to Seymour it is the Promised Land of Canaan.
Promises made so many years ago that only he and his tribe remember them.
There is an Italian paper there too, but Tony will have none of that ... he is a
dyed-in-the-wool New York Daily News man. Sex, scandal and sports, those are
the things that matter most to him. They are the extension of the nightly TV
news of yesterday. I buy the New York Times. The bloodless Times that everyone
quotes and no one reads. It gives me a leg up on Lucas Crosby and the Westlake
Village "Guardian".
We three have little in common, yet we are so bonded by time, scars and
brittle bones that we cannot break away from each other. We stand there with our
newspapers, knowing full well they were written for people with a stake in life
far greater than ours. There are no newspapers written for Seymour, Tony and
me.
"What now?" I say. I have nowhere to go until Lucas opens the doors of the
Guardian and kicks out the cat. That might be ten or eleven, it is a bi-weekly
after all. Tony opens his repair shop when the spirit moves him. There are days
when he doesn't open it at all ... a toaster oven can wait, life can go on
without a hair dryer. Seymour is not anchored in Westlake Village. He is a
passenger on a ship in a dead sea with a cargo of God's chosen people, looking
for
a place to land. In other words none of us has anything to do. I suggest the
park. The teenagers on half school days practice baseball there in the morning.
We can watch them and play chess after we clean the pigeon shit from the
pre-cast concrete tables that have been set up along the third base line. We
agree
... each for a different reason ... each of us with a different agenda.
Everyone makes an accommodation with life. It’s like finding a comfortable place
to
sleep at night -- a featherbed or a bench in the park -- a corporate jet or a
back seat in a Greyhound bus; whatever you have the money to pay for.
I have never beaten Seymour at chess. I've come close, but when I get him on
the hook I panic and my attack is thwarted, I falter and finally beat myself.
Tony's easy, he storms across the board blindly from the opening gun and with
his unprotected pieces picked off one by one he soon finds his king abandoned
and cowering in a corner.
"Go ahead," he says, "you two play .... I'll play the winner, then I gotta
get to work." Tony really doesn't want to play, but he'd rather play than go
home to Rita.
While I mop the pigeon shit from the table, Seymour gets the chess pieces
from the field house. The sleepy eyed high school baseball team is loosening up
on the infield and Tony is the lone spectator sitting in the wooden bleachers
on the first base side. Tony knows as much about baseball as he does about
chess, but he is a very vocal spectator. "Get that glove down, don't let the
ball
get under your glove ... Block it with your body ... keep your feet under you
... be ready to pivot and throw ... pivot and throw!!" The kids on the field
pay absolutely no attention to the elderly Italian man shouting at them from
the bleachers.
Seymour picks the black knight. Hah! A slight edge for me ... I love playing
white and going first.
In six moves Seymour has penetrated my center and bottled up my bishops. I
try to engage him in conversation as he concentrates, "How's your daughter,
Yehuda?" I ask, knowing full well she's living with a Christian boy in
California.
"I go to visit her at Pesach, she tells me she is pregnant. Your Queen is in
check." He looks up at me and realizes I have no idea what Pesach is. "Pesach
is a high holy day ... I advise you to resign, my friend ... while you can do
so with honor."
To those of you in the summer of your lives, such a morning would predict a
dismal day. Neither Tony, Seymour nor I can convince you otherwise. We too were
young once, and in the summer of our lives we did not value the gift of
December, until December came. We look at each other on this fair spring
morning,
each of us with his own agenda, each for a different reason, and we pray for
the soul of Lotte.
©Harry Buschman 1998
(3320)
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