Some Kind of Miracle (21 page)

Dahlia was still shaking. All she wanted was to go home and for this to go away.

“Well, now I see that I’m just
your
little colored boy. Only I really exist, and I’m really writing the songs, and you’re taking the credit for them, Dahlia. Could that possibly be true? It is true, isn’t it? What were you thinking? I know. You thought I was so crazy that I wouldn’t notice or that I wouldn’t care. Well, I care. You money-grubbing, thieving, desperate con artist. I care.” Now Sunny scrambled to her feet. “I don’t want
to be anywhere near you,” she said, and walked toward the road.

“Sunny, where are you going?” It wasn’t safe for her just to walk away in all this traffic.

“Maybe back to the Sea View,” Sunny called back to her. “So what if people there are doped to the moon and pee in their pants and don’t know who they are? At least they don’t steal a part of your soul. My music is sacred to me. My work is sacred to me. I may be crazy to you, but I make music for me, and that’s the way I want to keep it.”

“I thought I was doing you a favor,” Dahlia shouted, so desperate that she knew she was lying and she didn’t care. “I was so positive the money could change your life for the better, that I did it even though I knew you’d be angry.” Now she was following Sunny. “You have to know I meant well. For the first years after you left, all I wanted to do was come and save you. Not just wanted to. I mean, I dreamed about it the way kids dream about growing up to be baseball stars or Miss America. Wished on every set of birthday candles that I could grow up and have enough money to come and get you out of all of those horror-show places where I knew you were trapped. Ride up on my white horse, not in that stinking tin can of a van, and say, ‘Gordon and Gordon are back together at last.’ But after a while it started to look like I could barely save myself. I couldn’t make it big. I tried. I’m still trying. I had to become a masseuse so I could eat and still write songs, so after a while I couldn’t even think about the idea of saving you, because it was all I could do to save myself.”

A dump truck clanked by loudly on Mulholland. Dahlia felt dizzy, and she hoped God wasn’t going to strike her down on that very spot, but she had to get Sunny to stop and believe her. “Sun, even if you don’t want to keep the money, if you have some big aversion to selling your songs, wouldn’t it really be sacred if you gave your half of what we earn to charity? And we could write a million fabulous songs together, just like Leiber and Stoller. We could dedicate the Sunny Gordon Pavilion at the UCLA Center for Mental Health. And the two of us would be there to cut the ribbon and sing ‘Stay by My Side.’”

Sunny stopped and looked at her and Dahlia held her breath watching her cousin’s tense face, hoping that her message had penetrated. But after a moment Sunny shook her head. “You’re rewriting history. You’re trying to cover your ass and your full-out thievery by lying to me about saving me and everything else. Well, guess what? I may be crazy, but I see right through you. You’re a selfish little con artist, and I don’t want you in my life,” Sunny said and walked away and this time she didn’t turn back when Dahlia called out to her.

“Sunny, come home with me.” Sunny kept walking. “We’ll work this out.” Cars were flying by, and there wasn’t any pavement where Sunny was walking, so sometimes she’d have to move from the shoulder of the road onto the cement and be inches away from the traffic.

“Sunny, this is dangerous!” Dahlia called out, but Sunny ignored her. Dahlia turned and ran back to the van, started it, and pulled out onto Mulholland,
slowly moving along across the road from where Sunny walked. “Sunny,” she tried, “Rose can’t make it without you. You have to come home and feed her.”

Cars behind the van were honking as Dahlia inched it forward, hoping Sunny would change her mind. The light was green at Beverly Glen, and she crossed the intersection, then pulled up at the curb with her hazard lights on so that cars whizzing by could see her and there was a chance that Sunny could see her, realize how perilous it was to walk around there, and come back to the van and get in.

Dahlia turned to look behind her, and sure enough she could see Sunny, now reaching the corner of Beverly Glen, taking an instant to think about it, then making a right turn and disappearing down the hill.

D
ahlia was a senior in high school when her mother bought herself the black silk high-heeled shoes to go with the new black beaded peau de soie dress she was going to wear to Rita and Gary Horn’s twenty-fifth anniversary party. Dahlia watched her mother carefully remove the party dress from the closet, the price tag still hanging from it, then smooth it out on her bed and go to her pretty turquoise Chinese silk jewelry box, where she pulled out several pairs of earrings before she chose two pairs of crystal and jet beads and laid them on the bed next to the dress. Then she stepped back and looked the picture over as if she were observing a piece of art, to see which glittery jet-bead-and-crystal combination would look best.

Dahlia had never seen her mother wear either of those particular pairs of earrings, but when she asked
her if they were new, Rose said, “Oh, I’ve had them for years.” Dahlia imagined that she’d worn them when she and Dahlia’s father were dating, at a time when she was still trying to look pretty, before she let herself become the frumpy wife who rushed out the door to work with wet hair and not a drop of makeup.

“It’s going to be the bash of the year,” Rose Gordon said animatedly, now pushing her dark hair behind her ears, holding up the glittery earrings next to her face, and moving close to the mirror. “There’s the party and a party before the party and a brunch the day after the party. Rita and Gary’s relatives are all coming in from everywhere.”

Later that afternoon Dahlia was in Hirsch’s Drugstore trying to decide which shampoo to buy when she looked past the vitamins toward the aspirin shelf and spotted a man standing there who seemed familiar to her. She remembered what her mother had told her earlier and was confident when she walked up to him and said, “Norman?”

The man was unquestionably Norman Burns, Sunny’s Arthur Miller. Dahlia hadn’t seen him since she was eleven, and his now craggy face and graying hair made him look even more like the famous playwright than he had when he and Sunny were dating. Norman squinted as he took Dahlia in without a trace of recognition, and she realized that the last time he’d seen her, she’d been a little girl of eleven.

“Dahlia Gordon,” she said, putting out a hand to shake. Then she watched as the name registered and he smiled warmly.

“Oh, my! Dahlia…all grown up. How are you?”
He walked toward her, the smile brightening, but when they touched hands and looked into each other’s eyes, a bolt of enormous sadness passed between them.

“You must be here for your aunt’s party,” Dahlia said, and Norman nodded, his eyes never leaving hers, as if he were looking for some message from her. Then his face became melancholy, and he spoke quietly so that nobody else in the drugstore could hear him.

“I still dream about her all the time,” he said.

Dahlia was moved and speechless. But she knew she had to say something. She could see his eyes begging her to say something.

“I’ll bet she still dreams about you, too,” she said, hoping that was enough.

“We had so much together. I should have married her, even though she had all those terrible problems. I know the problems seemed insurmountable in those days. But I could have helped her through them, and at least we would have been together. I always believed God meant for us to be together. But I was young and stupid, and I let my parents tell me what to do.

“Don’t get me wrong, Dahlia, my wife and I have two kids—a nice life. But Sunny…oh, that Sunny,” he said, shaking his head. “She was something more to me, we were—” Norman couldn’t go on. Tears welled, and he pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his khaki trousers and dabbed underneath his glasses at his eyes. “Forgive me,” he said. “I had no idea this was still so loaded for me. But seeing you brought it all back.”

Dahlia knew that at that very moment Sunny was in
Camarillo State Hospital having regular sessions of shock therapy, but she kept that information to herself, hoping Norman’s memories of Sunny were still of the Marilyn Monroe look-alike.

“If you ever see her—and I’m assuming you do, because you were like a little sister to her—please tell her I send her Godspeed and that she is never out of my thoughts for a day.” Dahlia remembered promising him that she would relay that message, but she was afraid she would probably never see Sunny again. And in fact she didn’t, until that first day at the Sea View.

Every time Dahlia thought about the horrified look that came over Sunny when they heard Faith Hill sing the song, it made her feel sick. Now, in her living room, she couldn’t get over the sound of Faith Hill’s big voice singing her words. What an arrangement. Not overproduced, not too subtle, but perfect and hot and memorable. In the kitchen she took the cordless phone out of its holder and slipped it into the pocket of her sweatshirt so she wouldn’t have far to go to answer it when it rang. If it rang. She’d been crazy to let Sunny go. She should get back into the van and go and look for her now. But where would she look?

She felt a gnawing in her stomach, reminding her that she hadn’t had anything to eat all day except the popcorn at the movies, but when she opened the refrigerator to see what there was, nothing appealed to her. “Please let her be okay,” she said out loud. “Let her call and tell me she’s okay.” She probably could call the police and ask them to go and look for Sunny,
explain her history, and then hope they wouldn’t say that Sunny had to be missing for a certain number of days before they could do anything. She tried to remember from the television cop shows she watched what the rules were about that. She wondered what the chances were of tracking down an unhappy forty-two-year-old woman in Los Angeles. Weren’t there too many residents who fit that description?

For a while she sat at the piano trying to work on some of her tunes, but soon sleep tugged at her, so she curled up on the sofa, holding the cordless phone in her hand as she fell asleep. It was four-thirty in the morning when the ringing jarred her awake, and she answered it with her eyes still closed.

“Mmmmm?” was all she could manage to say into the phone.

“Yeah. Is this Delilah Gordon?”

“Dahlia.”

“John Mulcahey over here at the mall on Westwood and Pico Boulevard. I’m the night watchman here. I was just walking around in Nordstrom’s, and I found someone here you ought to come and get.”

“What?” Dahlia asked, sitting up.

“I’ll tell you the truth,” the voice on the phone went on, “I didn’t have the heart to call the cops on her. I don’t even know how she got into the store, but I found her sittin’ there in the altogether down on the first floor playing the piano. Now, I happen to be a big music fan, and she was so out of this world, I’ll tell you the truth—not because of her nakedness, believe me. I’m an old married man with three daughters, I’ve seen it all. But the way she can tickle those ivories,
filled the whole place with that music of hers, and her singing was so gorgeous it made me want to cry. I’m tellin’ you, this girl could be a big star, just like—what’s that R-E-S-P-E-C-T lady’s name? Aretha. That’s it. She’s better than that Aretha.”

“How did she get in there?” Dahlia wanted to know.

“I think she might have walked part of the way and hitched part of the way. Then she came into the store and just stayed till they closed up around her. I came in and was doing my rounds and I heard music, so I followed the sound, and there she was, naked as a jaybird playing tunes on that big old piano they’ve got down there on the first floor. Now, that’s a first for me. And she didn’t want to steal anything. Nothing like that. All she wanted was to play that piano. If this is her mom, I’d like to offer a suggestion. You ought to get this gal a piano of her own so she doesn’t have to break into stores to do it. Oh, and on your way down here…come to the exit off of Westwood Boulevard. She’s all dressed and ready now, so if you could get over here real soon, we’ll be waiting for you in the parking lot out back. I’d bring her home to you, but I can’t exactly leave the place.”

“I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

Sunny and Mr. Mulcahey, the night watchman, a short, red-faced man wearing a uniform with a walkie-talkie hanging on his belt, were chatting in the empty parking lot at Nordstrom as Dahlia pulled the van into a parking spot. Mr. Mulcahey smiled as she got out of the van. Sunny was expressionless.

“Thanks,” Dahlia said to him, “for taking such good care of her.” It was dawn, and the morning air was brisk, and Sunny shivered as she climbed into the passenger seat of the van. Dahlia started it and waved good-bye to the night watchman. She wasn’t sure what to expect from Sunny now. More rage, or maybe an apology for the middle-of-the-night call.

“Thanks for coming, Dahl,” Sunny said as Dahlia pulled the van out of the lot.

Dahlia grunted an annoyed version of “You’re welcome.”

“I got a ride down Beverly Glen Canyon in a truck with some pool man,” she said quietly, “but a lot of the time I was walking, so I had ages to think about my song. Our song. I couldn’t stop thinking about how there we were just driving along and we heard it. I mean, that really did happen, didn’t it?”

“It did. And I should have asked you if it was okay. I’m sorry I didn’t,” Dahlia said. But she wasn’t sure if she meant it.

Sunny looked straight ahead out the window. It was still dark, and there was only an occasional car driving past them. “I was also thinking about my mom and dad and all the grief I caused them and wondering what it would have been like if they were still around to hear that on the radio today.” Dahlia turned onto Pico Boulevard and drove east. “And I realized that they would have loved that. They would have been the most proud, and isn’t it about time, after all they suffered over me, that I did something to make them proud?”

Dahlia wondered where this story was going. She
was exhausted and irritable and not wanting to listen to anything Sunny said, and what made it all worse was that Sunny didn’t seem to be the least bit chagrined at making her come out to get her at this hour. Now she was going on and on about her parents. “Can you imagine how many nights they said to each other, ‘What are we going to do with her?’ The times my mother must have cried and prayed, wishing she could fix me? Those poor people.”

“They loved you,” Dahlia said, “and they always handled it.”

“Yesterday I was watching
Oprah
, and Dr. Phil was the guest. Do you know who he is?” Sunny asked.

Dahlia nodded. She knew he was some shrink who gave advice to people in books and on Oprah Winfrey’s show.

“He was telling the audience that every parent can only be as happy as his or her saddest child.” Sunny shook her head and pressed her lips together until they were white. “I realize for the first time how much sadness I brought my mother and father for so many years.

“Not only the days I went mad when I lived in their house, but when other mothers and fathers were going to visit their daughters at colleges, they were coming to the mental ward, sitting in those awful rooms waiting for me to shuffle in, seeing all the other pitiful people wander around. Having to deal with their baby living like that. God, it breaks my heart to think about those forced cheerful faces they would try so valiantly to put on for my sake. I knew they did it out of love, and all those years I wanted to respond to
them, to thank them for being so devoted, for never missing a visit, but I was so drugged I couldn’t get past the wall of medication to get the words out.

“They never had a chance to see me grow into my music, and they were the ones who deserved to see it most of all,” she said, and then she was silent. When Dahlia stopped for a red light and looked at Sunny, she saw that Sunny was crying. “After all the waiting rooms they sat in,” she said, “don’t you think I ought to dedicate the Ruth and Max Gordon Waiting Room in every nuthouse in the nation?”

“That would be nice,” Dahlia said. “But I think probably giving money to research schizophrenia would be better.”

Sunny wiped away a tear with her sleeve and nodded. “So I was thinking about what you said, and I’m ready to go along with it under certain conditions.”

“What I said about what?”

“About us being the girl Leiber and Stoller. Writing songs together again like when we were kids, and then if we make money doing it, your half of it can go to you for buying all the useless stuff you think you can’t live without, and my half can go to build new places for other people like me. To take the place of the too much-medication places and the sit-and-stare-at-TV places. They could be clean and have good food and real doctors who come and check on the people and somebody whose only job is to say nice things to the people who live there. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”

“Awesome,” Dahlia said, suddenly awake and alert and afraid she might be dreaming. If she could harness Sunny’s gift, write lyrics to Sunny’s music, get
Sunny to be really productive, if they could be Gordon and Gordon back together at last, the partnership had the potential to be a gold mine. Okay, nobody
really
knew who was going to make it in show business and who wasn’t, there were no guarantees, but at least this was a shot now that they already had one great song on a Faith Hill CD.

“And I forgive you, Dahl,” Sunny said, sniffing as more tears fell, “because I understand you were desperate and had to do something. But my wish for you is that you would get once and for all that all money does is complicate people’s lives and make them think they never have enough, when they ought to know there’s nothing important that money can get you. Look how unhappy wanting money has made you. So if I do this, you’re gonna be okay if I give away my half completely. Except for rent and food. Right?”

“Right!” Dahlia said.

“And someday when you feel more secure and you’re not so desperate about it, you can give your money away, too,” Sunny said, but Dahlia only half heard that part. In her fantasy she was all dressed up and at the Grammys because some killer song of theirs had been nominated, and she and Sunny were walking up together to get their award.