The washing machine had just switched to "rinse." I heard it change gears and start hesitatingly into its spin cycle, which is when it tends to creep across the floor - it's getting old and cranky and must be treated gently. At the same time I heard the telephone ring. I was torn between the two of them, but ... who can resist a telephone?
It was Stacy ... you know, Stacy down at the Westlake Village Guardian. "Hello, Mr. Buschman? Mr. Crosby says you should get yerself on over to Lotte's apartment? He gotta call from the police? She's dead?" Stacy cannot make statements; she states questions ... then she began to cry. When Stacey starts to cry, you have no choice but to hang up on her. Like Niobe, she's all tears and done for the day.
The washing machine still had fifteen minutes to go, and in its delicate condition I wondered if I could trust it to go it alone. After all, I reasoned, the Guardian publishes every two weeks; it wasn't as if we might hit the streets with an 'extra' for the likes of poor Lotte. But journalism is a mighty tough mistress, and except for TV anchorpersons, it demands the utmost in dedication and sacrifice to all who practice its trade. So I crossed my fingers, wished the best of luck to the washing machine, clapped my baseball cap on my head, and took off for Lotte's apartment on Westwood Avenue.
Lotte lived on the second floor above a 60-minute film lab. She'd lived there ever since her two daughters moved out and left her to fend for herself. On my many walks up and down Westwood Avenue, I would look up at her dirty window and see her looking down at me. I wondered how she ever got up those narrow stairs with her cane and her bad back. I don't know what she did with herself after she got up there ... other than looking down at passersby, there wasn't much else to do. It wasn't enough to make her life worth living.
There were two police cars parked in front of the photo shop with their blinkers going and their radios spitting out unintelligible combinations of numbers and letters. Ryan said, "Stuck her head in the oven -- guy in the shop smelled gas all morning -- didn't think nothin' of it 'til his dog began howlin'. Then he went up and knocked on her door."
"Thanks, Ryan--can I go up and see her?" I'd known Ryan since he was a boy. He dated my daughter for a year or two. I'd forgotten his name was Donleavy, but there it was in white letters on a black plastic badge pinned to his shirt. It's not easy being in a position of authority in a small town like Westlake Village. Your doctor's underwear hangs on the dryer in his back yard, and you watch your minister pick his nose on his front lawn. How can you take orders from a policeman who used to date your daughter?
"Fraid not, not 'til the coroner gets here. I don't think you wanna see her anyways."
"Why's that, Ryan?"
He shuffled his big feet a bit, then looked away. "The pilot in the stove ... y'know? It musta been off and, well, I guess, then maybe it went on again ... maybe she didn't know it, don't see how she coud'a."
"Lotta maybes, Ryan -- she's got kin, did you know? She's got a daughter in Harrisburg and another over in Castle Gardens, a dental technician."
Ryan left me then, as the coroner arrived. In single file they stomped up the narrow stairs to Lotte's apartment while I waited below.
The morgue people drove up. Two kids, early twenties ... what drove them into a business like this?
One of them groaned, "Looka them stairs! We can't get the gurney up there ... shit! We gonna havta' carry her down."
So my last remembrance of Lotte was that tortured face of hers in the dirty window. The coffin was mercifully closed ... she had broiled her face when the pilot finally kicked in. She didn't know it, thank God, and it was a miracle there hadn't been an explosion. Her daughter, Sarah, couldn't come in from Harrisburg -- not with the three children and her husband in rehab. The other one in Castle Gardens was spaced out. She came for the funeral, but I doubt if she really knew what was happening. I tried interviewing her for the paper but gave up quickly ... all she could say was, "Ma's gone ... Holy Jesus, I can't believe it, Ma's gone!"
Back at the office, I confessed to Lucas Crosby, "I don't know what this town's gonna do without her. Really, Lucas ... I can still see her zig-zagging up the street with Ardsley behind her." Stacy started to blubber again.
"Cut it out!" Lucas said, "Y'got the human tear machine goin' again. I don't know what it is with you anyways, you and your freaks! You ain't happy unless you get to writin' about some half-wit or other ... Lotte was a gargoyle, her and that Ardsley nut..."
I watched him run himself out of steam, his fingers drumming nervously on the dirty blotter of his battered desk. "Why don't we give her half a page ... but f'Christ's sake no pitchers, huh?" He looked at Stacy. "Jesus, Stace, you're a mess. Between the cryin' and the bubble gum, y'gonna choke yourself to death." He turned to me, "Lookit her mascara runnin' down, she looks like a friggin' clown ... go home, Stace, and pull yourself together."
I think Lucas Crosby has softened since my term of employment began at the Guardian. Perhaps it's age. Perhaps it's Stacy. Perhaps it's me. In any case he's not the foul-mouthed Scrooge he used to be, and as a result he's lost some of the raw and unrefined character that made him so appealing.
The funeral at O'Dell's was sparsely attended. The seven o'clock mass club came; Tim Clancy couldn't find anyone to take his place at the bar so he dropped in the morning of the wake. Ardsley, her friend, guide, and protector, does not spend his evenings in Westlake Village and must have dropped in during the day. I noticed he had signed the guest list in a shaky hand, "A. Adams", and in the space where his address should have been, he wrote, "Lotsa luck." I puzzled over that for a time and came to the conclusion that, without him to guide her every step of the way in the Promised Land, she would indeed need all the luck in the world.
Father Stan read the service at the wake, but due to the inclement weather the morning of the funeral, he designated his young Jesuit to lead the cortege to the cemetery. The crowd consisted of Lotte's older daughter, wearing a white nurse's uniform and a red sweater, the funeral director, Ardsley, (whom I picked up at the Dairy Barn..."C'mon, Ardsley, put your STOP sign on the back seat. Let's take a day off and say goodbye to Lotte."), and me.
On the way back to town Ardsley asked, "Did'ja see her back there in the parlor yesterday?"
"Well, yeah, in a way ... I was there. I guess nobody really saw her, Ardsley, the coffin was closed."
"I seen her ... I opened it."
He sat there, both hands on his knees. He had taken off his overseas cap and stuck it under the strap of his epaulette. His shiny brown head, round as a melon, held a vision of Lotte none of us white folks dared to see.
"She was all in plastic," he started. "Just like the Grunts in Korea. That was my job, y'know ... shippin' the dead home, and that's the way Lotte's goin' to the Heavenly Land, in a plastic bag. Her face was a sight to see, lemme tell ya'. How they gonna know it's Lotte, huh, Mister B? Cain't tell her by the look of her."
"I guess they got ways, Ardsley, they must have ways." I dropped him at the school crossing. "Don't forget your STOP sign, Ardsley."
There is an anger welling up within me, an anger born of loss. It's not the same, not nearly the same. We are fast losing the citizens of distinction that made us unique among the towns lying just east of Eden. Lotte's gone, and how long can Ardsley go on without her? They were two parts to the equation. We should have loved her more; we should have made her know she was loved. Now the belle of Clancy's Hollow Leg saloon is one with eternity. Somehow I feel as though a page has been torn out of the history book of Westlake Village and discarded like a dirty paper towel.
(Copyright 1998 by Harry Buschman - No reproduction without express permission from the author)