FATHER’S DAY AFTER HIS DEATH

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Overlapping Father’s Day is a mirage of life experiences tucked into memory prescriptions you take on a stormy day. A relic of my history rises and reminds me of the fear I once broke through.

It was 1983, and I was poised on a terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Venice Beach. It was March, the month my father died, and I stared at the horizon at dusk, imagining my freedom taking flight. Where would I go? Without his presence in Los Angeles, and my sister, who had already moved to New York, I was terribly alone. The replacement came in summer flings, with men who had crossed my path; a photographer, a New Jersey computer technician with a brassy voice and Joe Pesci humor, and every few days, Kenny, a former boyfriend, dropped by to smoke his pipe of philosophy and blow long-winded ideas on where I should move.

“I really want to move to Canada,” I said.

“For what? To go ice-skating?” He said between puffs.

“I have family in Vancouver.”

“What family? You’re an orphan now.”

“I am not. I have cousins in Vancouver. My father’s nephews.”

“Oh, yeah. When was the last time you saw them?”

“When I was twelve.”

“Terrific! That’s a solid-ass plan. So what will you do in Canada?”

“Get a job in real estate.”

“Lue! Wake up. You can’t get work in Canada unless you’re a citizen. Forget that idea. You’re better off staying here; look where you are: Santa Monica, the beach at your feet. Are you crazy?”

“I don’t belong here any longer.”

“You don’t belong to anywhere; what you need is to stop trying to be a big shot like your father.”

“I am not!”

“When was the last time you left the country? When you were eighteen? Go to Rio, you’ll have the time of your life, or Italy, or Greece–it doesn’t matter. Just take the chance and see how you land on your feet. You’re a dreamer; it’s about time you made one of your dreams come true.”

In the next few weeks, I met with Larry, my boss, who was liquidating his real estate portfolio to retire at 45. Larry wasn’t just an investment visionary; he was passionate about social, political, medical, scientific, and human interests. He was a genius.

“You can stay here another year–I’ll find something for you to do, but you’ll be bored,” Larry told me.

“Larry, I don’t know where to go.” I wiped a tear. He ignored it.

“You have to get out of LA. You’ll never meet anyone here. You think you’ll be introduced to someone riding up and down the elevator in Century City. I’ve spent a lot of time in Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe. They’re nice people. You have a chance there; go down, spend a few days, and tell me what you think. I’ll help you. Now, stop crying. “

I drove down in Dad’s black El Dorado, and parked at Del Mar Beach right next to the lifeguard station at the Poseidon Restaurant. I opened my suitcase, took out a bathing suit, and went into the beach bathroom. The tile was wet and smelled of seaweed and salt. I walked barefoot down to the beach. It was early spring, and the sand was unmarked. A few surfers jogged past me, blonde and bronzed like the Beach Boys. I followed them down to the seashore. In every direction, there was this untouched canvas of light and color; even the beach houses retained their natural sandy simplicity.

After I swam in the ocean, I went back to the bathroom, changed into dry clothes, and walked into town. A man with a beard rode past me on a horse and waved. I picked up a Reader and read the rental advertisements on the patio of Carlos and Charlie’s, the corner café. A roommate advertisement caught my eye: “Roommate Wanted to Share large two-bedroom overlooking Torrey Pines Reserve.” I called, and a man who went by the name of Smokey answered the phone. He invited me to come by for a look. His voice was predominantly ranch-friendly, so I took a drive over. It did occur to me on the drive that I was taking that chance Ken was blowing in my ear, and I was listening to Larry, who told me that people in San Diego were different.

“Hi, I’m Smokey. Come in—would you like something to drink? Too early for cocktails, unless you want one.”

“No thanks. How long have you lived here?”

His eyes were animal-alert, his face tanned, and his hair cut short but made to look long. His smile was unfiltered with hidden motives, and he was bull-legged.

”I moved from Pittsburgh; I’ll never go back except to see my folks. This is paradise. Don’t you think? I’ve lived here for two years. I rent out one room, because I hate full-time work. I’m more entrepreneurial. You don’t have to worry about my motives. I have a girlfriend, and I’m in love with her. She doesn’t stay here. I go to her house. You’ll have your space, and if you need a friend, I’m here. Come out on the balcony.”

I followed Smokey, and we stood on the terrace overlooking the lagoon and marshlands of the reserve. To the west, the ocean and the stump of Torrey Pines Mountain.

“Wait till sunset; you’ll never want to leave. Come look at your room. I can help you move if you want.”

The room was downstairs, his upstairs, and a stairway of trust in between.

“I’ll take it. When can I move in?”

“Whenever you wish.”

STILL A MYSTERY WHO MURDERED BENJAMIN ” BUGSY” SIEGEL

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STILL A MYSTERY WHO SHOT BENJAMIN “BUGSY” SIEGEL .

JUNE 20,1947

Several years ago, I received an email from a reporter in Las Vegas. George Knapp had read some of my memoir posted on my website and asked for an exclusive interview. He asked about my father’s relationship with Ben Siegel “Bugsy” and what I knew about their friendship, and why Ben Siegel was shot. I declined the interview, but George persevered. Three weeks later I agreed to the interview, because my father was not there to stop me.

We met in Del Mar at the Inn Auberge. I showed up with a notepad to remind me what not to say, a photograph of my father when he was a producer for Cecil B. De Mille, and a borrowed calmness that comes when I am approaching an extremely anxious situation.

My first interview about Dad was not anything like I imagined. George approached the subject with respect, and I relaxed and began talking, and talking, and talking. The only time I hesitated was when he asked if I knew who killed Ben, and I had to answer swiftly, “I think Bush did it.” He was not too impressed with the answer; but it saved me from theorizing.

At the end of the interview, I walked out of the hotel without regret. I said what I felt should be told; that my father’s best friend was Ben Siegel. If he loved Ben and my mother loved Ben, than there is a lot more to “Bugsy” than what the public has been told. The interview aired on a Friday night, and my life was no different from before. George got a call from someone who claimed my father once told him, Virginia Hill’s brother was the shooter. It sounds like my father; he enjoyed sending people down the wrong path. He always said, “You don’t inherit friends,” and so I declined to remain friends with family members of his group, because I respected his orders, even after he died.

I doubt any of his mob friends are still alive today. Many people have claimed they knew my father, but in essence, what they mean is they met at Ciro’s, or had a game of cards, or went to the racetrack. My father’s only friends were connected to organized crime. I learned this when he died; three people showed up for the service. He warned me to keep away from reporters, and not to trust anyone. Still, strange incidents followed his death that I was unprepared to handle.

A man I’d never heard of called and informed me, ‘Your Dad and Ben buried a safe deposit box in downtown Los Angeles. You should look for the key, there may be a lot of cash.’ My father was not about to leave this world without telling me he had stashed money in a safe deposit box. I will bet every dollar on that.
Another man, posing as a friend, came to my aid offering help settling the estate. A few weeks later another man I had never heard of, placed a claim on the estate for an old gambling debt of $5,000. The two of them were conspiring. Had I known gambling debts are erased when the bettor dies, I would not have allowed my sister to sell his Patek Philippe diamond and ruby pocket watch, which I suspect belonged to Ben Siegel at one time. The end of my father’s life was as mysterious as when he was living. That is how he liked it, and that is how he lived it.

I had to wait until my father was in his seventies to go to the racetrack with him. He took me to Santa Anita, we sat in the clubhouse, and he watched the track from behind tinted dark sunglasses. He was quiet and observant. He watched me eat and then handed me a twenty-dollar bill to bet on the Exacta. He told me how to bet and which horses to bet. I walked away from the cashier thinking I would be a big winner. Instead, I walked away a big loser. This was a setup, he picked the losing horses, so I’d get the lesson ” Even your old Dad loses at the track, remember that.’ There wasn’t anything exciting about going to the track, he made sure of that. I suppose he was concerned, that I had inherited a taste for betting. Lucky for me; I discovered Dad’s gambling didn’t pay off. When he was with Siegel in the forties, controlling the wire service he’d bet up to $50,000 in one day. And lose it on the next gamble. I don’t bet on sports, or gamble in casinos. I do gamble on life, and aim for the outlandish, improbable questionable odds.

Photo: Leaving Beverly Hills Police Department day after the murder.

WRITING FOR TRUTH LIKE DRILLING FOR OIL

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A momentary connection occurred to me last night after watching, “There Will Be Blood” about drilling for oil. The oil derrick is the outline, or the notes scribbled in a journal. Then the pipes are set in place, like words in a sentence, then paragraphs. Our characters come into view some muscular and brazen like the drillers, welders, rig workers and mud loggers. Once those elements are configured in the oil field or in sensory perception the story begins. The paragraphs build into pages and the pages build a story.

The writer digs for substance for soulful spiritual contemplation and he builds on it. Sometimes it comes like a gush of oil. Other times it bubbles at the surface and goes nowhere. When the bubbles recede, we move on to another location internally and externally and we begin to dig for a new well story.

These ruminations came to me after watching the film, especially poignant to me as my father at the age of fifty left a life of gambling and mafia assorted activities and learned to be an oil producer. He was introduced to Howard Hughes through Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello and Howard introduced Dad to a wildcatter in Houston named Lenoir Josey. My mother and father moved to Houston from Los Angeles in 1949 and into the Shamrock Hotel, that being the hotel used in the film Giant, and Edna Ferber’s book, about Glenn McCarthy, played brilliantly by James Dean. He built the Shamrock, and it opened on St Patrick’s Day 1949 (the pool was so large you could water ski across) Glenn became close friends with my father. I met him once in Los Angeles at a lunch with Dad. He was broken, by his loss of fortune. and friends. I recall a face withered by disappointments.

Josey as my father referred to him took my father under his wing and tutored him in the business of oil engineering and oil production It was a gamble and my father a life long gambler on everything loved being in the oil business. I didn’t intend to wave my father’s story into this but intentions in writing as many things in life surprise us.

If J. Edgar Hoover hadn’t refused my father’s request to reside in Houston to continue the oil business I would have been born in Texas. My father was forced to move back to Los Angeles and as Hoover predicted he went back to gambling. During his time with Josey, he amassed twelve oil leases in states across the Southwest and Midwest and when he died that part of his life was handed down to his children in royalty leasehold interests. That was when oil was $17 a barrel. But Josey had passed and his son no longer honored the handshake agreement between his father and mine and forced us to sell our leasehold interests for a shameful amount.

To be continued

EDITING OUR PATHS

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There are reasons to quit and more reasons not to. The one reason that hovers above all is that everything we do in life needs revision. We are never through evolving into more thoughtful, loving, or wise human beings. Every day, there is an opportunity to revise your valor and conviction.

Revising the position you walk, talk, judge, form opinions, contribute to your home, friends, and partners. Discovering what you’ve learned, dreamed, and mastered is your novel. Just as writing a new chapter when the knot tightens, and you are trapped by decisions that are outdated. Antiquities of a former persona.

Changes in life are like undeveloped photographic images, blurred. Mentally, the angles don’t fit, like schedules, routines, and commitments. Returning to former lifestyles and looking at old photographs, what I see is someone else.

This week, I walked into Scripps Clinic for laboratory testing. The last time was 2012, when I was with a former boyfriend. J was all encompassing, all consuming, generous, intelligent, outgoing, and he had to be near me like a new pet. I lasted a year, the obsession of closeness suffocated my spirit and my writing.

After the appointment, I looked across the street at Torrey Pines Science & Research Park, where I was appointed Marketing and Leasing Director in 1986 over 150,000 square feet of vacant space. I visualized myself taking clients, Qualcomm, and the Jonas Salk Institute through the newly built office buildings. My confidence was slightly off when scientists asked questions about the mechanics and cable routes, but I loved that job. My boss was the most intelligent developer I’d met; he carved me into a broad thinker, allowed my off-the-chart ideas and proposals to progress. Tears welled because the memory was enflamed by my long-distance running days up Torrey Pines hillside. I doubt I’d be running today, maybe scuffling. Life is a runway that we have to steer for ourselves. If we allow others to take the wheel, we are not authentic. No one is steering my wheel, and I have hit a lot of potholes and assholes along the way.

The puzzle is how to live, where to live, and for whom. It is the same with manuscripts; they improve with each revision.

SPIN OFF OF HUMANITY?

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The Earth spins at 1, 040 miles per hour from the equator according to Co-Pilot. Humans spin: ‘The average walking speed for humans is about 3 to 4 miles per hour’ in different directions. Our rotator, the interior speed dial in our futuristic culture, reminds me of chasing a speeding car. We accelerate one day, and a day later, we are behind. Why catch up with a runaway virtual speedometer? Because if we don’t, we lose something: opportunity if you are unemployed, confusion in conversation with digitally conscious youth, and skills to navigate your finances, health, and services. I’m about to search the speed at which an average person speaks, but I can’t believe I am doing this. I’ve observed a lot of conversations in this hotel, no pausing to think before speaking, the words leap like the answers and questions were premeditated, a script?

While I am sitting with a banker at Wells Fargo, thirty years younger, offering basic finance choices, projections, and a few new rules in banking. I offered my phone to demonstrate, some quirk,

” I can’t touch your phone,” he said.

” What? Why is that?”

“A customer handed one of our bankers their phone to check their account, and the banker swindled the customer out of thousands.” I gaped at him, and then he pulled up my account on his computer.

” Can I see what you’re doing?”

” I can’t show you my screen.”

” Would it be okay if I uncrossed my legs?” He leaned back in his executive chair and laughed out loud. Joseph was one in a million. I told him so, and he bowed his head. He understood.

The next adventure in livingness is looking for a new home, an apartment. Like seeking employment, managers and agents do not answer the phone. I have to fill out a questionnaire before even viewing the apartment. Once those algorithms observe my search, a dozen more websites hit my email with availability. In one day, I may receive two dozen invitations to view their listings. Half are not updated or deceptive, so it is like combing through a library for the one book you want to read. One building that I liked and requested a tour answered this way. ” Hi, I’m Ella, your AI leasing agent. How can I help?” I didn’t hang up. I love first-time experiences.

” I’m looking for a studio in the building.”

We have a one-bedroom, let me send you the link.”

” I don’t want a link. I want a studio.”

” I understand.”

” No, you don’t.” I hung up.”

On to the next, a beautiful one-bedroom, at the price of a studio. I emailed for a tour, a self-guided tour. Six emails later, after I filled out the pre-qualification document, uploaded a current government ID, and set the appointment. The next step was creating an account, a password, an identity verification text, and another confirmation. I cancelled the appointment because the closing of the Olympics was gazing at me from the corner of my eye, and I succumbed to the majesty of organic humanity.

”

RELOCATION REALITY

July 6, 2025July 6, 2025 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

“Young woman sitting on the books and typing, toned image”

The world we are living is not familiar; everyday it erupts with an inconceivable corruption, acts of violence, and viciousness against humanity. It’s not the Italian roast coffee that wakes me up, it’s world news. I feel less and less a part of humanity and more like a wild creature chewing on an old bone. My outlook on social clubs, synagogue and church congregations, membership clubs, group classes, and let’s meet up organizing makes a lot of sense now. Especially if you don’t have children or a life mate. The temptation to retreat into a decorous world of fantasy is irresistible. Experience taught me that losing it, giving up, hugging the pillow with film noir on the screen will revive me. It may take two days or more, permitting freedom to indulge in the abstract absurdity, tragedy, and comedy of life available to me. Two days are up: six noir films: Sleeping Tiger, Dangerous Crossing, Ruthless, Finger of Guilt, Wicked, and Cast a Dark Shadow. All suspenseful meandering around themes of greed, deception, romance, uneven love, and forgiveness.

It’s a great big wide wide world if you leave the doors open. Now that the house has sold, I am fortunate that all those years studying real estate and proving myself by placing money in the boss’s pocket, trickled into my life. The first triplex I bought was in 2002, the one that sold, The Follies House. The rent provided income and paid the mortgage. For my Gen X and Millennial pals, I say this: buy a duplex somewhere you want to live.

I’m feeling overwhelmed as I go through this four-story unit and decide what to keep, give away, and sell. Perplexed as I go through boxes of journals dating back to 1996. I assume I won’t live to preview them for new stories, but I sill feel a sense of belonging to them. I have learned after selling a dozen furnishings that once they are gone, it takes about a week to stop lamenting the loss.

MOODY BLUES TUESDAY

May 21, 2025May 24, 2025 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

MATISSE

Writing somberly is parallel to writer’s block. It’s not a block, really, more like a resistance to engaging feelings. If I place all the options on a puzzle board, this leads to the center. A fractured life impacts emotional posture and is not unlike physical posture. We slump or stand tall. We love instead of neutralizing, we are inspired instead of stagnant, we romance our passions, and we live to love. My heart is at the starting gate to love again, but the racetrack is missing. I’m undercover! I watch Blacklist or some foreign film in the evening. Most weekdays, I’m circulating between finance, selling furnishings online, shoveling snow, and researching acronyms because the news uses them so often.

The vortex of discontent is a punctured life. The windows of my home reflect the splendor of nature that plays all day long in the winter. I’m spending more time watching sky stage plays: clouds still, clouds moving, colliding, changing colors, sculpted into aberrations of animals and faces, than cognitive thinking. My collection of records and CDs accompanies the scenery. When I’m sorrowful, I listen to Ennio Morricone; when I need a lift, Vivaldi, Sundays it is Turandot or some other Opera. When I’m a go-go girl, Swing, Salsa, or The Stones, when I feel alone, Sarah Vaughn, Nancy Wilson, and Etta James, for writing inspiration Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Annie Lenox.

I don’t see any remedy commercials for a fractured heart. By tomorrow, the despair could vanish, like the rain that puddled us for the last two weeks. Everything I’ve experienced is good in the beginning. So, to begin, I will listen to Begin the Beguine.

“Begin the Beguine” is a popular song written by Cole Porter. Porter composed the song between Kalabahi, Indonesia, and Fiji during a 1935 Pacific cruise aboard Cunard’s ocean liner Franconia. In October 1935, it was introduced by June Knight in the Broadway musical Jubilee, produced at the Imperial Theater.

Henry miller writes in his book, “ Henry Miller on Writing” “Whoever greatly suffers must be, I suppose a sublime combination of a sadist and masochist.’ I suppose that a few of my friends have aligned me as such, and now that I write this, as in all writing, answers blink at you, and then the soul receives them like a wafer of wonder. Perhaps I am, but where that evolved and manifested, I have no time to think about it because the sun is out. I must sit in my newly designed sunroom, a small book library alcove that receives the sun at noon. When I returned with my phone to snap a photograph, the sun disappeared like a footprint in the sky. Every moment needs attention. It’s twenty degrees outdoors. I am modestly adjusted and receive a thousand weekly warnings to get a flu shot. My doctor has tried persuading me to get a flu shot for three years. I responded that I’d never had the flu and that my last cold was in 2012. He chuckled and asked the next question.

May 11, 2025May 30, 2025 ~ LouLou ~ 2 Comments

MOTHER’S DAY REMEMBRANCE

MY BEST FRIEND, Lucille Casey was a woman who threw the dice all her life. She gambled on her instincts as if they were already tested and approved. She never told me much about herself. When I learned of her struggles as a young woman and her chosen life, she became more real than when I’d known her. During the years we were friends, she handed out selected stories, abbreviated and censored. Being the inquisitive character I am, the shallowness of her stories bated me. I had to pry the truth out from other people who had known her.

Casey’s first gamble was at sixteen years old. She sent in a photograph of herself for the Redbook Magazine modeling contest. If she’d won, the Powers Modeling Agency in New York City would grant her an audition as a model. Casey was living in East Orange, New Jersey with her mother and sister. Her father had died suddenly, leaving the family without a financier. Casey’s mother was lost without her husband and unsuited to join the workplace. Casey didn’t tell her mother about the contest until she received the letter of congratulations.

John Robert Powers met Casey in his office on East 56^th Street and signed her as a Powers Girl. She was stunning to look at, photographed like a movie star, and was modest. John Powers did not look for aggressive, pouty-lipped fearlessness. The Powers Girls were captioned “Long Stemmed American Beauties” because they were wholesome, beautiful, tasteful, courteous, and virtuous. They were so far from the runway models of today that it is almost a reversal of the industry.

The models of the thirties were ordained to set the highest example of classic good breeding and education. John not only schooled them in fashion, and individual taste, he instructed them in moral integrity, independence, and community service. Casey went to school at John Robert Powers and became one of the top ten models in New York.

She was a blue-black-haired Irish beauty, with emerald green eyes and perfect teeth. She stood only 5’ 7″ in those days that was fairly standard. When I knew her, she was still thin and beautiful but she did not fuss about herself or spend a lot of time at her vanity. As a Powers model, Casey had a long line of gentlemen callers. Powers Girls were invited to all the nightclub and dinner show openings, sporting events, community galas, and fund-raisers. Social engagements were part of her job. Casey was not a woman of idle chat, in fact, a lot of people thought of her as restrained and unfriendly, maybe even snobbish. I think it was more secrecy. People were always prying into her life because it looked glamorous. There was another side to that glamour she didn’t want to put in the mirror.

One evening Casey had a dancing engagement at the Copacabana nightclub in New York City. She was on stage with some other dancers when a certain gentleman noticed her. The next chapter of Casey’s life began that night. At twenty-two years old, she fell in love with a man thirteen years older, of the Jewish faith, who lived in Hollywood. The consequences of her love forced her to change and adapt to a new lifestyle and different people.

She did not bury or rescind her love after she learned he was Bugsy Siegel’s partner and best friend and that Allen was a part of the Jewish Mafia. She asked him to reform his criminal activities. He agreed, provided she would marry him. We all know at twenty-two a woman believes she can change a man, and a man lets her think she can. Without that dream, many lovers would not have found their mates.

Casey did marry her love and spent her life trying to keep her children from harm and Allen from going to prison. I met her husband just after he tried to reform, and was beaten down by the FBI. I called him Daddy.

February 5, 2024 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

FEBRUARY 3^RD 2024 EXCERPT FROM A NOVEL IN PROGRESS

After weeks of metallic gray, the sun broke through, decorating Greta’s room. She is recovering on her bed, floating in Jazz instrumental music, remote in hand and undecided about what to watch. Last night, she socialized at her two taverns’, chatting with Weeds, a man with pockets full, which he offered Greta. For the next thirty minutes, he unplugged a breathless dialogue without inviting Greta, and she knew he was so lit up that he was unflustered when Greta said, ‘ Maybe take a break and eat your food.’ He continued to disentangle his weekly activities, what he thought about the waitress, some local gossip about the bartender who had been fired, where he grew up, and his wife’s battle with lung cancer. ‘ I am so sorry for you both.’ He thanked her and then sealed his tête-à-tête as he ate. Greta took this moment to bid farewell and crossed to the other tavern for crab fritters. The bar was uncluttered, and she sank into the stillness. Her mood flicked into an irritableness, a discourse with the state of her life. The resurgence of the week’s disputes, mishaps, and the approaching day she would be moving, and still directionless. It wasn’t until she was home, swathed in five blankets that she overcame the anxiety until she couldn’t find her phone. She searched all the prominent places, the car, kitchen, entry, and bedroom. ‘ ‘Oh, for the love of God, I left it at the tavern. How humiliating. Maybe I’ll find it in the morning.’ Over the last few days, she has practiced positivity, rearranging her thoughts like a chess board; instead of choosing fear and remorse, she repeated every morning, I’ve come this far; what could be worse than the last five years.

MENTAL WOWS AND BOWS

December 30, 2023January 6, 2024 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

May 10th 2017–FROM MY JOURNAL

Greta got into bed early and started watching Feud, a new series about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, played by Jessica Lang and Susan Sarandon. The film etches overcoming a middle-aged woman’s obstacles in life: men, finances, rejection, and loneliness.

A knocking at the door, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to see anyone.’

“Police, open up.” You couldn’t cut her tension with a semi-truck head-on. She opened the door to five male Policeman and a Medic.

“ Greta we are here because someone is very concerned about your welfare. I understand you made a reference to taking your own life.”

“ Who called you? It was Aaron right?”

“Yes. He said you made a remark that disturbed him and he wanted us to check on you. Did you say you wanted to take your own life?”

“Not in the way he interpreted. I’m not going to commit suicide I just need a break from tortuous gaslighting.”

” Who is gaslighting you?”

” My ex-partner of thirty-five years and his demonic girlfriend.

“How can you resolve this?”

“I don’t know, I’m trapped.” Then I noticed they were not convinced.

“I think you should come with us for an evaluation.”

“No, that’s not necessary, Really, look at me. I’m enjoying a movie. ” Greta got back on the bed in a gesture of defiance.

“We think it is.” We have an ambulance out front.

“What? Oh God. No, I’m not going.”

“You don’t have a choice. It won’t take long, if the Physiatrist thinks you are not in danger they’ll release you.”

“I’m not going in the ambulance.”

“Okay, you can ride with me in the patrol car.”

“Well, let me put on some lipstick. A girl can’t go to the Psychiatric Ward without lipstick.”’ They smiled, and in her pajamas and robe, she slid down into the back seat of the Patrol car avoiding neighbors’ observance.

The ward was a take-off of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. One woman was shaking and mumbling herself out of a drug withdrawal, the nurses were telling jokes, one man was in a hospital gown striding up and down the corridor, talking to himself and Greta seated on a chair watched. In the distance, she recognized Lally, a potential renter of her home.

” Lally, can you come over a minute?”

“ How are you? What’s going on?”

“ Oh God, I said the wrong thing to a friend, and he called 911.”

“ I’m sorry to hear that. Are you here for evaluation?”

“Yeah, can you do it?”

“ No, I’m assisting in another department. Don’t worry… I’ll talk to the Physiatrist so you get through quickly. It’ll be fine. Just wait here.”

I thanked him and ten minutes later I was led into a private room with bars on the bed. A nurse took my vitals, then a Doctor asked a few questions like,’ What day is it?’ and then she left without adding anything very comforting. Another knock on the open door and a petite female tiptoed in. She infused sincerity and concern into that bleak sanitary room, and I opened up the story from start to finish. She used expression, voice, and patience to keep me talking. She didn’t inflame the rage against Dodger, she suggested I find counseling and asserted that I was indeed in a very traumatic situation. ‘ I will call the the department supervisor and suggest you be released.’

The six hours Greta was in the hospital centered on the absence of a phone call or email from Dodger. Aaron must have told him to get the address. It’s about two am and Greta is thinking about her birthday; another sort of ménage of meaning, she feels like ten years have passed rather than one. Another doctor came in and released Greta, with a promise to call for counseling. She slipped into a cab in her pajamas and went home. Never had been so terrified of losing control.

The next afternoon brightened when Audrey showed up with roses, champagne, a gift basket, and a happy birthday balloon. She sang the entire birthday song and danced around Greta as she opened the gifts.

“It is a big deal! I always was taught to celebrate friends’ birthdays with everything,” her smile remained and Greta’s surfaced. She told her the story of the previous night and Audrey just sat there, eyes widened like two camera lenses, and told her. “I know you would never commit suicide.‘ She cradled Greta as they walked downtown for dinner. One of her gifts was five hundred dollars. Greta was so stunned she tried to return it, but Audrey blatantly resisted. At our dining table, she waved at guests and waiters with her long arms, “It’s her birthday.” She reminded Greta of her childhood when her father hired magicians and clowns to entertain at her parties. Greta felt sensationally spoiled, and that’s not always an indulgence, sometimes it is the only path to joy. The end of the evening placed her in front of Facebook where friends posted birthday wishes. It was a blessed day and a reminder that she is loved. Aaron was trying to help, and Greta felt his concern with appreciation. There is no replacement to cure your mental doubts than a visit to the Physiatriscat Ward.

Six years later, upright, achieved, and grateful for that day.

BARNES & NOBLE

May 17, 2017May 18, 2017 ~ LouLou ~ Leave a comment

BOOK NEWS!

You can order online or by special order in any Barnes & Noble Store.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/cradle-of-crime-luellen-smiley/1125198798?ean=9781537456034

Cradle of Crime: A Daughter's Tribute

MY FRIENDS ARE HOME

January 7, 2013 ~ LouLou ~ 2 Comments

My friends are beside me once again. It’s been five years since their faces like postcards of my life, are in my room, lifted out of the box. I can almost see their wisdom, and lessons floating above the birdcage hanging from the ceiling. I had forgotten how much I depend on them, a collapse of friendship because my room wasn’t really mine, I shared it with guests, and then New Year, rang out like a jazz quartet of answers to puzzling life questions. I am not sharing my bedroom anymore. And I am not looking for a job. And I am not going to stop wearing tightjeans, and high heeled boots.

Hello Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Carson McCuller, Nelson Algren, John Gardner, Damon…my books are home.