A Small Matter (10 page)

“Please come with me,” Kasha said. Kasha had
a pleasant open face and a long dark braid. She moved with the
confidence and poise of a dancer. Vickie knew from experience that
Kasha’s outfit, a slick black-and-white Gucci number, was designed
to reinforce her role as an advocate for the world-class machinery
clustered around them. They stepped into the showroom where a
handful of highly polished machines silently and shamelessly
displayed themselves.

“I don’t believe in power selling,” Kasha
said. “I try to create a space and be supportive. Tell me where
you’re coming from and we’ll take it from there.”

“Where I’m coming from is I could use a
drink,” Vickie said.

With a head nod, Kasha summoned an assistant
from the wings.

“Would it be too much to hope for a martini?”
Vickie said.

The assistant departed swiftly on his
errand.

“So tell me, Vickie,” Kasha said. “What’s
important to you in your driving life?”

“Speed,” Vickie said. “But I’m not sure where
to go from there. Right now, I’m on too many levels at once. I’m
getting married tonight at midnight. My fiancé’s having a bypass
done in the morning. I found out yesterday that I’ve got a
pancreatic malignancy to deal with, and I’m buying a new house and
selling my old one.”

“I must say,” Kasha admitted, “that’s not the
usual answer I get to that question.”

“To fully answer you,” Vickie said, “the car
won’t be for me--it’s for my brother--a sort of farewell present,
you might say.”

“You mean, you think there’s some chance your
cancer is going to win?” Kasha said.

“There’s a big chance,” Vickie said. “Short
of a miracle, I don’t see how I can survive it.”

“Tell me,” Kasha said. “What is your brother
like?”

“He’s hard to describe,” Vickie said. “He’s
kind of different, the sort of man that some would classify as an
underachiever--he’s not your typical L.A. power type. But I think
that’s what makes him so special.”

The assistant arrived with the martini--well
chilled, with two olives.

“Oh, that’s good,” Vickie said.

“What does your brother do?” Kasha said.

“He’s a martial artist,” Vickie said. “But
it’s not as flaky as it sounds. He takes it seriously. He follows
the spiritual teachings about respecting life and so forth. He
calls it his “journey to simplicity”.”

“Sounds like a threatened species,” Kasha
said.

“He’s the type who believes money can’t buy
happiness,” Vickie said. “That’s why I’m here. I thought a new car
might help him enlarge his boundaries a little bit. I’m his older
sister. I guess I feel it’s my responsibility to keep working on
him. I thought the car might influence him to try some new
directions. I mean, life can’t be all sweat and meditation--once in
a while you’ve got to get out and step on the gas!”

“You’re right,” Kasha said. “And you’re in
the right place--a Mercedes is so much more than a car--it’s really
a kind of mood therapy on wheels.”

“My brother became a cop,” Vickie said. “So
he can drive as fast as he wants. Which car here is the
fastest?”

Kasha pointed to a silver convertible with
black and red leather trim.

Vickie drained the last of her drink. “I’ll
take it,” she said.

“You will?” Kasha said.

“It’s this one, or nothing,” Vickie said. “My
brother will be here in a few minutes. Can you have it ready that
fast?”

Kasha was momentarily caught off balance. It
wasn’t every day a woman pulled up in a limo and selected the most
expensive vehicle on the floor the way an adult might select an ice
cream cone for a child.

“By the way,” Vickie said. “How fast is
it?”

“That’s the Roadster,” Kasha said. “It’s got
a V-12. It’ll blow away anything out there.”

“That’s good,” Vickie said.

“Don’t you want to hear the price?”

“No,” Vickie said.

“I feel I should tell you the price,” Kasha
said. “It’s a little over a hundred and fifty thousand.”

“That’s fine,” Vickie said. “Have the car
ready for my brother when he gets here. He’s a short, muscular
blond guy named Dalk. He’ll probably have his new Sergeant’s badge
clipped on his belt. He thinks he’s meeting me here. He doesn’t
know about the car. I want it to be a surprise. Thanks for the
drink.”

“Thank you,” Kasha said.

“There’s one other thing,” Vickie said.

“Name it,” Kasha said.

“When my brother gets here, I want you to
confiscate that old heap he’s driving and burn it. Under no
circumstances is he to be allowed to keep it.”

With that, she turned and left behind the
world of leather and metal, intent on greater pursuits. “Take me
back to the Valley,” she told her driver. “And drive slow. I’m
going to lie back and take a little nap. When you get to Sepulveda
and Vanowen, pull up to a bar--The Lamplighter. I’ll buy you a
drink.”

The stretch pulled out onto Wilshire and she
closed her eyes, drifting into a dreamless half-sleep, setting
aside for the moment the arduous tasks of buying expensive presents
and, of course, dying.

Chapter 15

A crisp, brisk breeze swept a few dry leaves
across the parking lot, the energy of it quickening Vickie’s spirit
as she stood on the sidewalk outside The Lamplighter. A black Ford
Explorer pulled up and a middle-aged priest with a good head of
hair stepped out.

“It’s been awhile, Father Larry,” she said,
giving him a brief hug.

“What’s it been? A couple of years?”

“Time passes swiftly,” she said. Father Larry
was right--it had been a couple of years since they’d seen each
other--the last time being when the Father had celebrated her
deceased husband Jack’s funeral mass.

“It’s a beautiful night,” he said.

“It is,” she said. “I’ve always felt a
special magic in the air this time of year, you know, when
everybody’s out picking their pumpkins and cleaning their
chimneys.”

“I like the fact that we steal an hour when
we set the clocks back,” he said. “At my age, being an hour younger
has taken on a whole new meaning.”

“October always seems to promise everyone
that perfect Saturday,” she said, “where you can spend a sunny
afternoon planting bulbs and snacking on bright red apples.”

“Mulroney filled me in,” he said.

“Can you marry us?” she said.

“I can,” he said.

“Can I buy you a drink?” she said.

“That would be nice,” he said.

They went inside and hailed the
bartender.

“Black coffee for me,” Father said.

“How about an espresso?”

“No thanks,” Father said. “The truth is, if
I’m going to stay awake to perform your midnight wedding, I’ll need
lots of caffeine, and contrary to popular belief, there’s more
caffeine in a regular cup of coffee than there is in an
espresso.”

“Make it two blacks,” Vickie said to the
bartender. “But brew it up fresh and pre-heat the mugs before
pouring. We want it to be nice and hot.” She guided Father Larry to
a booth. The place was quiet--a couple of guys shooting pool in the
back and a little Jeopardy on the overhead tube; the afternoon
people having gone and the evening people being still at their
suppers.

“I hear you’re going to die soon,” Father
Larry said.

“You come right out with it, don’t you?”
Vickie said.

“I’m a priest. Do you want to talk about
it?”

“It’s funny,” Vickie said. “Lately, I’ve been
volunteering information about my condition to people around me,
but it’s been awkward. You’re the first to simply sit me down and
ask me if I want to talk.”

“Does it disturb you?”

“Oh no!” she said. “I’m glad. You’re the
first person I’ve been around who isn’t upset by the whole thing.
It makes it so much easier to be with you.”

The coffees arrived and each took an
exploratory sip.

“Are you scared?” he said.

Vickie chuckled softly. Father smiled--the
smile of a friend--devoid of the sympathetic saccharin most people
offered.

“Death doesn’t freak you out, does it?” she
said.

“Sure it does,” he said. “Death freaks
everybody out. But you didn’t answer my question. Are you
scared?”

Vickie chuckled some more and Father smiled
some more. The chuckle expanded to a giggle. “Oh Father,” she said,
struggling to get control of the giggles, “When you asked me if I
was scared, I started to say I was scared to death! Do you get it?
Scared to death!”

Her giggle flamed its way to her emotional
powder keg and blew sky high, propelling her into full-bodied,
convulsive laughter. The laughter excited a stabbing pain in her
lower abdomen, a pain which grew sharper and more severe with each
mirth-born heaving of her insides. “Oh!” she cried. “It hurts! I
can’t stop laughing! Father! You’re watching somebody about to die
of laughter right here at this table! Oh! It hurts! Oh!”

Vickie fell to the floor, doubled up and
writhing, the convulsions of her laughter pushing her farther and
farther into the pain until the pain pushed back with sufficient
force to shut the laughter off. With the laugher gone, the pain
subsided, leaving her body and soul suspended in an aftermath of
great, deep, sweaty peace. Father Larry waived away the bartender
and the two guys from the back room who’d rushed out to help, and
by himself assisted her back into the booth, where she labored for
some minutes to return to some semblance of normal.

“I’ve been running scared,” she said. “When I
got the news about the tumor, I ran away from the doctor’s office.
I refused to set another appointment to discuss treatment.”

“Is your marriage to Mulroney a part of that
running away?” Father Larry asked.

“No,” Vickie said. “The marriage was
something we’d both been secretly wanting for awhile. The bad news
about my health pushed our love for each other out of hiding and
into the open.”

They sat and sipped their coffees a
moment.

“Father, will you hear my confession?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” he said. “It’s
something I hoped to accomplish by my visit here before the wedding
ceremony tonight.”

Vickie bowed her head and made the sign of
the cross while Father intoned the ritual words of welcome from
Holy Mother Church to its penitent daughter, inviting her to
remission of sins and the recovery of lost graces.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” she
said. “The truth is, ever since Jack died, for the past two years,
I’ve avoided the Church--way deep down, I’ve been angry with God
for taking Jack. For a long time, I’ve been walking through a dark
tunnel of anguish and despair.”

“That’s understandable,” Father said. “What
brought you out?”

“Mulroney,” Vickie said. “He walked with me
through the tunnel and showed me the light once again. While we
were walking through it, I guess we fell in love. I was about ready
to give God another shot when I got the bad news from my doctor.
It’s strange, though--the bad news seems to have provoked me
somehow into wanting God again.”

“Illness is the big one for bringing people
back to God,” Father said. “When we’re sick, we experience our
limitations and our powerlessness which reminds us of our need for
something greater than ourselves.”

“I’m sorry that I wasted the years after
Jack’s death feeling sorry for myself,” Vickie said. “I was really
into self-pity because I thought that I’d have to be alone for the
rest of my life. I figured I’d have to grow old without a husband,
and I couldn’t handle it--little did I know I’d be joining Jack
myself in a short few years.”

“I can see you’re sorry for your sins,”
Father said. “I’m assigning you a penance of two Hail Mary’s--one
for each year you were away from the Church.” He spoke the words of
absolution and her “Amen” concluded the sacramental procedure.

“There’s an interesting duality at work here
in the lives of yourself and Mulroney,” Father said. “Through your
marriage, you’re reaching out to God for the graces of your new
life together, while at the same time, through your respective
illnesses, you’re reaching out for the graces reserved for the
dying.”

“I need to get off the fence,” Vickie said.
“I promised Mulroney I’d seek the cure, but the truth is, I’m not
sure I have the guts to face the procedures the doctors have got
planned for me. This is going to sound awful, but deep inside me,
I’d rather die than fight back. This may sound a little sick, but
one of the reasons I want to marry Mulroney is so I’ll have
somebody to take care of me when I’m dying--in a way, I’m sort of
using him. I’ve wondered if I love him, or just need him.”

“Love and need are closely intertwined,”
Father said. “Perhaps you’re being a little selfish--you’d do well
to think more about his well-being than your own.”

“I encouraged him to go for surgery to save
his life,” Vickie said.

“But you did it for your own selfish
reasons,” Father said. “I’m not saying you don’t love him, but it
looks like there’s room for improvement.”

“I’m dying,” Vickie said. “My body is eating
me alive--there isn’t time for any more improvement.”

“There’s always time,” Father said. “We’re
not going to solve all your problems tonight--I’m suggesting that
you begin to seek out for yourself the true meaning of
compassion.”

“You’re lecturing me, a dying woman, about my
lacking compassion? Where’s your compassion for me?”

“It’s right here,” he said, pulling out a
small vial of oil. “Hold out your hands.” He anointed her forehead
and hands with the oil. “Through this holy anointing,” he said,
“may the Lord in His love and mercy help you by the grace of the
Holy Spirit. May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise
you up.”

“Father?” she said. “The last rites? That
sent a shiver right through me. After all, I’m not dead yet!”