Stars Screaming (36 page)

Louie bought a hot dog at the snack bar and ate it standing up while he paged through a leftover copy of that morning’s
LA
Times.
Because he wasn’t looking for it, he was taken by surprise when he saw his mother’s name listed among the obituaries in the Metro section.

Sandra Burk

Funeral services for Sandra Burk will be held at the Hillside Cemetery in Culver City at 2 p.m. today.

Preliminary autopsy findings indicate that Ms. Burk died of acute alcohol poisoning in her apartment at 1102 Huntley Drive in West Hollywood. She was 39.

Since she moved to Los Angeles from Santa Rosa in 1981
,
she had worked as a cake decorator
,
a veterinary assistant
,
and a part-time receptionist for Apex Pest Control. She was also a volunteer for the American Red Cross and coordinated the Bloodmobile Drive for her neighborhood.

Burk
,
a graduate of West Central High
,
in Harrisburg
,
Pennsylvania
,
spent two years at the University of Wisconsin
,
where she planned to major in philosophy before she dropped out to marry her former husband
,
Raymond Burk
,
the screenwriter and playwright. They were divorced in 1971.

Her son Louis
,
a student at New York University
,
is her only survivor.

Louie stood uneasily at the counter, his face looking slightly troubled as he read over the obituary for the second time. When he was done he pushed the newspaper aside and rolled his neck a little before he looked up. Standing across from him, sipping coffee from a paper cup, was a thoughtful-looking black man with horn-rimmed glasses and a small goatee. A large black case that was shaped to contain either a stand-up bass or a cello was propped up against the counter next to him.

“My mom died on Friday,” Louie said, his voice cracking. “It’s in the paper.”

The black man put down his coffee and his blank face underwent a change that softened his features. “You mind if I have a look?”

“Go ahead,” Louie said, pointing. “She’s the fourth one down. Sandra Burk.”

The black man ran his finger slowly down the page. “Tarzan died yesterday,” he said. “How about that?”

Louie looked confused. “Tarzan?”

“Buster Crabbe. He was in all these serials when I was a kid. Flash Gordon. Buck Rogers. My mom used to take me,” the black man said. He took out a pack of Kools and fired one up. When he finished reading Sandra’s obituary, he frowned and shook his head. “Thirty-nine. She was a young woman.”

“It’s just a bunch of words. That’s not who she really was.”

The black man made a sound of agreement as he adjusted his glasses. “That’s right. Just words. Too bad there wasn’t a picture. I bet she was good-looking.”

“She was . . . when she took care of herself.”

“Tall?”

“Five-eight, I think.”

“Good-sized. Dark hair?”

“Except during the summer, when the sun bleached it out. I didn’t see her all that much. She left when I was little.”

“How little?”

“I was five.”

“Yeah? That’s how old I was when my daddy took off. His name was Louis, too. Just like you.”

“That’s not my name,” Louie said. “They spelled it wrong. It’s Louie without the
s.
I was named after the song, ‘Louie, Louie.’”

“No kidding?”

“Really.”

“Whose idea was that?”

“My mom’s.”

The black man smiled as he inhaled on his cigarette. “The more I hear about your mom,” he said, “the more I like her.”

“Everyone liked her. Everywhere she went she made friends,” Louie said. “That newspaper doesn’t tell you anything about her.”

“Tell me about her, Louie.”

Louie stared at the black man, holding his gaze for a second before he turned around to check the clock. “I have to meet my dad’s plane at one.”

“We got fifteen minutes. Tell me some things, anything you want. Right off I know she liked music, because she named you after a song. Right?”

Louie nodded, smiling. “Yeah. And she liked to dance, too. One time she danced for money,” he said.

“For money? You mean like—”

“She danced naked in this bar,” Louie said, surprising the black man, who raised his eyebrows while he maintained an amused grin. “My dad got fired from his job and we needed the money. She did it to give him time to finish this script he was writing.”

“Takes a fine woman to do something like that,” the black man said, nodding. “I’m a jazzman. Took me ten years and three wives before I could make a living with my ax. Not many women want to suffer through the hard times with a man. Sounds like she was willing to give it a shot.”

“But she still left. She just took off one night while it was raining. I didn’t see her again for almost two years. By then she was in prison. She shot a guy,” Louie said, looking closely at the black man’s face to see if he believed him. “She killed him.”

The black man returned Louie’s stare as he stirred the end of his cigarette into the coffee pooled in the bottom of the cup. “My father killed a man,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Killed him with a knife after he caught him cheating at cards.”

“Did he go to jail?”

“Not for that.”

“For what?”

“Other things. Burglary. Armed robbery. He held up a bank,” the black man said. Then he lit up a fresh Kool and smiled. “How’d you get me talkin’ about my pop?”

“Do you ever see him?”

The black man waited for a second, recoiling slightly before he said, “No. He’s dead. He died in the joint.”

“Did he ever see you play?”

“Nope. But he heard me on record.”

“I’m an actor,” Louie said, and cringed when he heard the boasting in his voice. “I mean I’m studying to be an actor.”

“That’s cool.”

They were quiet a moment. Then, in a matter-of-fact voice, as if he were talking to himself, Louie said, “I’m scared.”

The black man looked at him, unblinking. “Go on. Tell me about it.”

“My mom. She’s dead, okay. But I never really knew her. I maybe have seen her four times since I was a little kid. I know I’m supposed to be sad, but I don’t feel anything.”

“Yes, you do. You’re angry.”

Without hesitating, Louie said, “I want to smash someone in the face.”

“That’s good. Feeling angry is good. You can feel angry and not act angry. I learned that. It took me a long time.”

Louie nodded. Then he said, “I want to cry, too.”

“After my pop died, I couldn’t cry for a year,” the black man said. “Then one night I was gigging at this place down in the Village. Right in the middle of this tune, out of nowhere, tears started leaking out of my eyes, big-ass crocodile tears I couldn’t stop. I cried through the whole set and an encore. Cats in the band knew some shit was comin’ up but they didn’t say a word. God knows what the audience was thinkin’.”

“I wish I could have told her I loved her before she died.”

“She knows you loved her.”

“I don’t know that for sure.”

“I do.”

“How?”

“I just do. Black jazz guys know things like that. Your dad’ll say the same thing.”

“My dad’s white.”

“He’s a writer. They got a sense of things.”

Louie glanced at the black man, who nodded toward the clock.

“You got five minutes. You better get movin’.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Nice rappin’ with you.”

“Same here,” Louie said, and started walking out of the snack bar. Before he pushed open the door he turned around. “You know my name but you never told me yours.”

“Louis. Louis Jackson, Jr. But my friends call me Louie.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Swear to God?”

The black man raised his left hand and put his right hand over his heart. “Swear to God.”

A smile slowly spread across Louie’s face. “That’s weird. No, that’s really weird,” he said, still smiling as he stepped through the door.

Sandra’s simple burial plot was located in a small patch of grass directly in front of the Al Jolson memorial, a huge monument on a hill just across from the main mausoleum. Gene and an attractive woman dressed in black were already at the gravesite when Burk and Louie parked in the lot next to the chapel. Burk assumed she was Naomi Levin, the rabbi who had called him earlier in the week.

“Tell me about Sandra,” she’d said, in a voice that was both cautious and caring. “The more I know, the easier it will be to speak about her at the service.”

“She was kind,” Burk said. “That’s where I would start.”

“With her kindness.”

“Yes.”

“In what way was she kind?”

“If she liked you, if you were her pal, she would do anything for you.”

“And you were her pal, Ray?”

“Yes.”

“And these things she did, describe them.”

“She helped me believe in myself.”

“In what way?”

“As a writer, as a father, as a . . . lover.”

“And yet—”

“What?”

“She left you and your son.”

“Yeah, she did. She left us.”

“But you always knew she cared.”

“Always.”

“Always,” the rabbi said, repeating the word in a way that reassured Burk, making him feel absolutely certain he was right. Then she changed the subject. “I spoke to your son.”

“When?”

“Just before I dialed your number. He was very sweet, very helpful. At the end of our conversation he said he didn’t want me to read the Twenty-third Psalm at the funeral. He wouldn’t tell me why.”

“He has a thing about numbers. Twos and threes together. It goes way back to when he was a kid.”

“I see.”

“A good-luck bad-luck thing.”

“That he never grew out of.”

“Apparently not,” Burk said, and the conversation stopped for several seconds. Then, pushing gently, the rabbi asked Burk if Sandra was a good mother. “Yes,” he said. “She was a wonderful mother.”

“Louie said she loved horses.”

“She liked to go to the track. She was an expert handicapper. But she loved all animals.”

“You guys had a dog for a while, didn’t you?”

“A beagle. He got lost. Did Louie tell you the story?”

“I wasn’t sure whether to believe him.”

“It’s true. It happened. The dog jumped out of the car in traffic. It was hot and all the windows were down. Louie screamed. Sandra didn’t hear him. She had the radio turned way up.”

“What a terrible way to lose a pet. Maybe that’s why she volunteered at the animal hospital, to make amends. I talked to the owner. He said she was witty and smart. All the customers were charmed by her, especially the gay men. He said she loved to bathe the animals and tie bright ribbons in their hair. But he had to let her go when he found out she was stealing pills and making long-distance calls at night.”

For a moment there was silence. Gradually, Burk felt a vast loneliness spread through his body and surround his unhealed heart. “I miss her,” he said. His voice was smaller now, harder to hear. “I miss her a lot.”

“I know. I can tell.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Grieve, Ray. Start now. You have time,” the rabbi said. “You have all the time in the world.”

Sandra’s funeral was over at two-thirty. By then the sun had clouded over and three new mourners had joined the small group standing on the gently sloping hillside. Two were women in their seventies, both small and pale, wearing brightly colored paisley scarves tied around their short white hair. Standing between them was a boy around Louie’s age. His features were slightly mismatched and he wore a dirty T-shirt with a cartoon character on the front.

“Could we say a word or two?” one of the women asked the rabbi, who glanced at Burk.

“We were her friends,” the boy said, making a proud face.

“Wayne worked with Sandra over at the vet’s,” said the woman who spoke first.

“She looked in on us every day. She brought us groceries when we were sick,” her friend said, then looked over at Louie. “She talked about you all the time. She carried your picture in her wallet. She carried yours, too,” she said to Burk. “The one at the beach, when you were in college. You had white goop on your nose, and your shoulders were splotched from your peeling sunburn.”

“When one of your movies went on television she made us tune in,” the first woman said. “We popped popcorn and had a grand old time.”

“Iris was in the movies,” Wayne said, nodding at the woman who had just spoken. “She was in
Son of Fury
with Frances Farmer and
Our Hearts Were Young and Gay
with Gail Russell and Dorothy Gish.”

“Wayne’s Lu Ann’s grandson,” Iris said to the rabbi. “We brought him up by ourselves after his mother joined that commune up in Oregon.”

“They don’t want to hear about that,” Lu Ann said. “This is Sandra’s funeral. Let’s talk about her.”

“I’d like to mention her smile,” Iris said. “Among other things she had a lovely smile.”

“But she could get angry, too,” Wayne said.

“Her emotions ran to extremes,” Lu Ann said, “not unlike Frances Farmer, as long as her name was brought up. The Hollywood big shots ruined Frances,” she said. “The Hollywood big shots and the press.”

Wayne came around the grave and stood next to Louie. Quietly, without looking at anyone, he said, “I know what it’s like to grow up without a mother in the house. I hardly ever got a letter.”

“My mom wrote me,” Louie said.

“I know. And you got a dad. That’s good,” Wayne said, tipping his head toward Burk. “Sandra was really proud of him. She kept all his clippings and reviews. When you clean out her apartment, you’ll see.”

“Wayne’s father was a surf bum,” Lu Ann said.

“He lives in Hawaii,” Iris said. “Took off when he found out Dana was pregnant.”

Lu Ann said, “Dana’s my daughter. Ever since I can remember she ran with the wrong crowd.”

The rabbi said to Burk, “We can end the service now if you like.”

Burk glanced at his son. “What do you think, Louie? You have anything more to say?”