My Dark Places - James Ellroy [40]
School was a drag. My arithmetic skills were subzero and my social skills were subpoor. Reyes and Danny were my only pals.
My father visited me at noon recess one day—a divorce decree violation. A kid shoved me for no reason. I kicked his ass in full view of my father.
My father was proud of me. The kid snitched me off to Mr. Tubiolo, the vice-principal. Tubiolo called my mother and suggested a conference.
They met and talked. They went out on a couple of dates. I reported the details to my father.
My mother got me a beagle puppy for my tenth birthday. I named her “Minna” and smothered her with love.
My mother laid a mind fuck on me in conjunction with the gift. She told me I was a young man now. I was old enough to decide who I wanted to live with.
I told her I wanted to live with my father.
She slapped me in the face and knocked me off the living-room couch. I banged my head on a coffee table.
I called her a drunk and a whore. She hit me again. I made up my mind to fight back next time.
I could brain her with an ashtray and negate her size advantage. I could scratch her face and ruin her looks so men wouldn’t want to fuck her. I could smash her with a bottle of Early Times bourbon.
She pushed me over a very simple line.
I used to hate her because my father did. I used to hate her to prove my love for him.
She just bought my own full-tilt hatred.
El Monte was prison camp. Weekends in L.A. were brief paroles.
My father took me to movies on Hollywood Boulevard. We caught Vertigo and a string of Randolph Scott westerns. My father laid out the straight dope on Randolph Scott: He was one notorious homo.
He took me by the Hollywood Ranch Market and gave me a crash course in homos. He said fruits wore mirrored shades to measure crotch bulges covertly. Fruits served one good purpose. Their presence expanded the pool of available women.
He wanted to know if I liked girls yet.
I told him I did. I didn’t tell him that full-blown women jazzed me more. Divorced mothers were more precisely my type.
Their bodies had these neat imperfections. Heavy legs and bra-strap markings drove me crazy. I liked pale-skinned, red-haired women especially.
The concept of motherhood excited me. I was up-to-date on the facts of life and was titillated by the fact that motherhood began with fucking. Women with kids had to be good at it. They were practiced. They developed a taste for sex during holy matrimony and couldn’t live without it when their ordained unions went kaput. Their need was dirty, shameful and thrilling.
Like my curiosity.
Our bathroom in El Monte was tiny. The bathtub faced the toilet at a right angle. I caught a glimpse of my mother drying off after a shower one night.
She saw me looking at her breasts. She told me that the tip of her right nipple got infected after my birth and had to be removed. Her tone was in no way provocative. She was a registered nurse explaining a medical fact.
I had pictures in my mind now. I wanted to see more.
I spent hours in the bathtub, feigning interest in a toy submarine. I saw my mother half-nude and nude and stripped to her slip. I saw her breasts sway. I saw her good nipple pebbled up from the cold. I saw the red between her legs and the way steam made her skin flush.
I hated her and lusted for her.
Then she was dead.
7
Monday, June 23rd, 1958. A bright summer day and the start of my sunny new life.
A nightmare woke me up.
My mother did not appear. Tony Curtis and his black stump-guard did. I shook the image off and let things sink in.
The boo-hoo stuff was behind me. I spilled some tears on the bus—and that was that. My period of mourning lasted half an hour.
I’ve got the look of that day memorized. It was incandescent powder blue.
My father told me the Wagners were coming out in a few days. Mrs. Krycki had agreed to look after my dog for a while. The funeral was