West of Westport

Part 5 of “Alabaster Christ”. Read the whole novella here.  

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“Who are you bringing to bed tonight?” Emily’s mother would ask every night at eleven o’clock sharp.

Emily’s father would rise majestically from his Barcalounger in front of the TV set and almost always announce, “I believe I’ll bring Poe to bed tonight, dear.”

Mother and Father would then trundle off to the master bedroom in the back of the house — with a splendid view of the never-used swimming pool in the back yard — and she would settle in to watch The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson while he read his beloved Edgar Allan Poe until he fell asleep. Poe was the only author Fred Langstrom would read and he pored over the same dog-eared books repeatedly right up until the day he died.

“That’s called monomania,” Emily’s former analyst Dr. Miller, had explained to her once. “It’s an obsessive interest in a single thing or idea.

“Hmmm. That would make sense,” Emily said with her best profound grin. “Dad always was a sorta single-issue guy: a baloney sandwich every day for lunch — every day — and he would only buy Cadillacs, always voted Republican even when he didn’t care for the candidates. He went to the same barber for thirty years until that guy, Mr. Shapiro, died and then Dad took to cutting his own hair or he’d have Mom do it.”

Emily lay in bed one night pondering her father’s monomania, thoughts spurred on by a movie she was watching on Turner Classic Movies. It was an old one from the 60s, “The Pit and the Pendulum” with Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and a very young Jack Nicholson. Emily thought the name of Nicholson’s character, Rexford Bedlo, was just about the dumbest name she had ever heard and was probably not a character in Poe’s story, she surmised, because Poe was a genius, Father never tired of telling her so, and a genius would’ve invented a better name than Rexford Bedlo.

She was thinking of using monomania as a theme for her offering at the monthly meeting of the Studio City Women’s Poetry Guild (SCWPG) the following Monday. She was still pissed off at Guild President Madeline Yamazaki for moving the February meeting to the Santa Monica Library. Didn’t the stupid Jap know what a long drive it is from Studio City to Santa Monica? But Japs invented fuel-efficient cars, she figured, so what the fuck did they care how long they sat in traffic? Hey, as long as we’re not burning up too much fossil fuel and we’re getting good mileage everything is cool in the world and we can all drive from Studio City to Santa Monica when booking a conference room at the Beverly Garland Hotel just down the street would have been as easy, if not easier. Emily directed the issue to the back of her mind by remembering what her Father always said: “The Japs don’t think like white people, honey.”

Emily pawed at the nightstand for the spiral-bound journal and the Pilot Precise Rolling Ball, clawed at the book until she found a blank page, and scribbled the first couple of lines in florid red ink:

Daddy loved his Poe

And I loved my pie

Not a bad start, she thought. Emily set the journal aside so she could meditate on the theme. She believed that all good poetry came from entering into a zen-like state where the only thing the mind fixates on is the matter at hand, which, of course, would be whatever you tell it to fixate on.

Emily found the clicker underneath the calico-colored bedspread and turned away from Turner Classic Movies. It was time for the late night repeat showing of “Showbiz Tonight” on CNN. She couldn’t remember what time Nancy Grace came on but the TV Guide was in the living room and she hated going into the living room at night. Too many shadows.

Paul Newman’s face came up on the TV screen. File footage, a little blurb in the upper right corner read. Emily turned up the volume because she loved Paul Newman and was alarmed that this story might be news of his passing.

The Westport County Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut, the guy on “Showbiz Tonight” was informing Emily, announced its lineup for the upcoming season last week and the roster of planned productions includes Paul Newman directing John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”

Emily’s mouth dropped open. “Kismet,” she said aloud.

Paul Newman and John Steinbeck. How could it be anything but kismet? She had always been a huge Paul Newman fan. When she was a young girl she was a card-carrying member of the Paul Newman Fan Club, one of many worldwide, but this club, Emily recalled, was run by a plump girl in Des Moines who had some crippling form of diabetes or something like that so she had nothing better to do all day than stay home and mail out 8×10’s of Paul Newman along with the fan club newsletter.

And then there’s the Steinbeck connection. Earlier in the week Emily had embarked on an ill-advised journey inspired by Oprah Winfrey: She attempted to read Steinbeck’s way-too-long book, “East of Eden.” She couldn’t get through the novel to save her life, she readily admitted to Madeline Yamazaki two days prior over lattes at the Starbucks on Ventura Boulevard, but she saw a spark of talent there that she admired.

“You’ve never read Steinbeck?” Madeline accused with an arched eyebrow.

Very judgmental little Jap, Emily thought.

“No,” she replied icicly. “I know a lot about him, saw a fascinating A&E Biography, but I never read him.”

“You tried to start too big,” Madeline scolded. “Start smaller. Try reading ‘The Pearl’ or ‘Of Mice and Men’ first.”

“Are you trying to say ‘East of Eden’ is over my head?”

Madeline laughed. “Not big in that way, silly. Length-wise. ‘Of Mice and Men’ is just barely one hundred pages. You can read it in an hour or two.”

Just to make Madeline happy, Emily went home and ordered ‘Of Mice and Men’ from Amazon after agonizing for an hour over which copy to purchase: the Steinbeck Centennial Edition for thirteen dollars or the mass market paperback edition for a mere six bucks. In the end she reminded herself that she rarely spent the money that Father left her, so she splurged and bought the six-volume boxed set John Steinbeck Centennial Collection for fitfty-two dollars, even if it meant owning another copy of “East of Eden.” She could always give it to someone as a Christmas gift.

Emily shifted her meditation to thoughts of Steinbeck and Paul Newman as “Showbiz Tonight” droned on. It didn’t take long for inspiration to hit. She scooped up pen and journal and wrote:

There was a man from Monterey

She paused, pen over paper. What rhymes with Monterey? she wondered. Hey. Ray. Gay. Fey. Was Steinbeck gay? She didn’t think so. She scratched out what she wrote and started anew:

Paul Newman lived in Westport

Steinbeck died in New York

Far from home

She examined what she wrote and deemed it a pretty good start. The ladies at the Poetry Guild were really going to like this one, she thought, because she was going to totally immerse herself in the theme until a great poem came out the other side. Tomorrow she would get a bunch of Paul Newman DVDs from Blockbuster and when that John Steinbeck Centennial Collection arrived — which should be tomorrow, Emily figured, since she clicked the button for two-day shipping — she vowed to read every one of those books from cover to cover. Except “East of Eden.” She couldn’t go there again.