Where I Live Now. Lucia Berlin

Jesse was with her, looking pale, hungover.

      “Hey, man. Don’t worry. It’ll be fine,” I said. He nodded.

      She put a scarf over her hair. She was clear-eyed and apparently calm, wearing a dusty-rose dress, patent leather pumps, a little bag.

      “Jackie O goes to court! The dress is perfect,” I said.

      They kissed goodbye.

      “I hate that dress,” he said. “When you get back I get to burn it.” They stood looking at one another.

      “Come on, get in the car. You’re not going to jail, Carlotta, I promise.”

      We did have a long wait for gas. We talked about everything but the trial. We talked about Boston. The Grolier Book Shop. Lochober’s restaurant. Truro and the dunes. Cheryl and I had met in Provincetown. I told her Cheryl was having an affair. That I didn’t know what I felt. About the affair, about our marriage. Carlotta put her hand over mine, on the gearshift.

      “I’m so sorry, Jon,” she said. “The hardest part is not knowing how you feel. Once you do, well, then, everything will be clear to you. I guess.”

      “Thanks a lot.” I smiled.

      Both the policemen were in the courtroom. She sat across from them in the spectator section. I spoke with the prosecutor and the judge and we went to his chambers. The two of them looked hard at her before we went in.

      It went like clockwork. I had page after page of documentation about the police, the paperwork from the security check which did not find marijuana. The judge got the idea about the police report even before I really got into it.

      “Yes, yes, so what do you propose?”

      “We propose to sue the San Francisco Police Department unless all charges are dismissed.” He thought about it, but not for long.

      “I think it appropriate to dismiss the charges.”

      The prosecutor had seen it coming, but I could tell he hated facing the policemen.

      We got back into the courtroom where the judge said that because of a lawsuit pending against the San Francisco Police Department he felt it appropriate to drop all charges against Carlotta Moran. If the policemen had had flashlights, they would have bludgeoned Carlotta to death right there in the courtroom. She couldn’t resist an angelic smile.

      I felt let down. It had been so quick. And I had expected her to be happier, more relieved. If the other lawyer had handled the case, she’d be locked up now. I even said this to her, fishing for compliments.

      “Hey, how about a little elation, er, gratitude?”

      “Jon, forgive me. Of course I’m elated. Of course we’re grateful. And I know what you charge. We really owe you thousands and thousands of dollars. More than that was that we got to know you, and you liked us. And we love you now.” She gave me a warm hug then, a big smile.

      I was ashamed, told her to forget the money, that it had gone beyond a case. We got into the car.

      “Jon, I need a drink. We both need breakfast.”

      I stopped and bought her a half pint of Jim Beam. She took some big gulps before we got to Denny’s.

      “What a morning. We could be in Cleveland. Look around us.” Denny’s in Redwood City was like being in the heartland of America.

      I realized that she was trying hard to show me she was happy. She asked me to tell her everything that happened, what I said, what the judge said. On the way home, she asked me about other cases, what were my favorites. I didn’t understand what was going on until we were on the Bay Bridge and I saw the tears. When we got off the Bridge, I pulled over and stopped, gave her my handkerchief. She fixed her face in the mirror, looked at me with a rictus of a smile.

      “So, I guess the party’s over now,” I said. I put the car top up just in time. It started to rain hard as we drove on toward Oakland.

      “What are you going to do?”

      “What do you advise, counselor?”

      “Don’t be sarcastic, Carlotta. It’s not like you.”

      “I’m very serious. What would you do?”

      I shook my head. I thought about her face, reading Nathan’s letter. I remembered Jesse holding her throat.

      “Is it clear to you? What you are going to do?”

      “Yes,” she whispered, “it’s clear.”

      He was waiting on the corner by Sears. Soaking wet.

      “Stop! There he is!”

      She got out. He came over, asked how it went.

      “Piece of cake. It was great.”

      He reached in and shook my hand. “Thank you, Jon.”

      I turned the corner and pulled over to the curb, watched them walk away in the drenching rain, each of them deliberately stomping in puddles, bumping gently into one another.

Mama

      “Mama knew everything,” my sister Sally said. “She was a witch. Even now that she’s dead I get scared she can see me.”

      “Me too. If I’m doing something really lame, that’s when I worry. The pitiful part is that when I do something right I’ll hope she can. ‘Hey mama, check it out.’ What if the dead just hang out looking at us all, laughing their heads off? God, Sally, that sounds like something she’d say. What if I am just like her?”

      Our mother wondered what chairs would look like if our knees bent the other way. What if Christ had been electrocuted? Instead of crosses on chains, everybody’d be running around wearing chairs around their necks.

      “She told me ‘whatever you do, don’t breed,’” Sally said. “And if I were dumb enough to ever marry be sure he was rich and adored me. ‘Never, ever marry for love. If you love a man you’ll want to be with him, please him, do things for him. You’ll ask him things like ‘Where have you been?’ or ‘What are you thinking about?’ or ‘Do you love me?’ So he’ll beat you up. Or go out for cigarettes and never come back.”

      “She hated the word ‘love.’ She said it the way people say the word ‘slut.’”

      “She hated children. I met her once at an airport when all four of my kids were little. She yelled ‘Call them off!’ as if they were a pack of dobermans.”

       “I don’t know if she disowned me because I married a Mexican or because he was Catholic.”

      “She blamed the Catholic church for people having so many babies. She said Popes had started the rumor that love made people happy.”

      “Love makes you miserable,” our mama said. “You soak your pillow crying yourself to sleep, you steam up phone booths with your tears, your sobs make the dog holler, you smoke two cigarettes at once.”

      “Did Daddy make you miserable?” I asked her.

      “Who, him? He couldn’t make anybody miserable.”

      But I used Mama’s advice to save my own son’s marriage. Coco, his wife, called me, crying away. Ken wanted to move out for a few months. He needed his space. Coco adored him; she was desperate. I found myself giving her advice in Mama’s voice. Literally, with her Texan twang, with a sneer. “Jes you give that fool a little old taste of his own medcin.” I told her never to ask him back. “Don’t call him. Send yourself flowers with mysterious cards. Teach his African Grey Parrot to say ‘Hello, Joe!’” I advised her to stock up on men, handsome, debonair men. Pay them if necessary, just to hang out at their place. Take them to Chez Panisse for lunch. Be sure different men were sitting around whenever Ken was likely to show up, to get clothes or visit his bird. Coco kept calling me. Yes she was doing what I told her, but he still