L.A.WOMAN by Eve Babitz

Author:Eve Babitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

THE TOWN OF HOBOKEN, New Jersey, where Aunt Helen lived, was not atoned for by Frank Sinatra. Fortunately, I already knew what to expect from Hoboken because we passed through it on our way to London, and the first day I’d seen what Hoboken looked like with my own eyes before I’d broken and run for it, getting to the Village in New York City all by myself on a bus before I called my parents and explained where I’d be after I picked up a guy from Yale (an actor) and had a place to stay.

So it didn’t surprise me to see Aunt Helen standing in that drab little kitchen overlooking a grimy backyard which faced somebody else’s grimy backyard behind someone else’s little kitchen. And it didn’t surprise me that her four children spoke with foreign New Jersey accents and not like they were from L.A. or her children at all.

“Ten years you’ve tried to live here,” I would say to her after we lit a joint and had half of one giant Hershey bar with almonds, “and look at it—it’s still fucking New Jersey!”

“Yeah, but . . . ,” she said dreamily.

It was obviously meant to be forgotten—New Jersey—as anyone could see just by looking at her.

“Darling dear,” Helen said, changing the subject, “these boxes are so heavy.”

“I’ll say,” I said, “those sixteen-millimeter cans weigh a ton and so does the film.”

“What are you carrying such things for?” she asked.

“They’re Sam’s,” I said, “I’m taking them to L.A. We can’t figure out what to do with them.”

“Doesn’t he want them?” she asked, her voice so flushed with interest that all at once I knew she didn’t know he was dead.

“Don’t you know?” I asked her.

She looked at me with her large brown eyes, my sister’s eyes and my father’s eyes all the way from Russia, and panic branded through her usual haze forcing her to slump against the kitchen sink.

“No, I don’t know,” she said, “is he . . . ?”

“Of course,” I said, “he’s been dead for two years. Didn’t anybody write you? Heroin or something.”

She grabbed a dish towel and wept, flinging herself down into a chair so her elbows could rest on her knees.

“God, that’s right! You had a crush on him too,” I said, filled with wonderment once again at how peculiar adults always were. I mean, Sam was much too short for her anyway. How could anybody let themselves get a crush on a shrimp like Sam?

It was too dismal to stay in New Jersey any longer once Aunt Helen found out about Sam so instead I took a cab back to the airport and got on the first plane for L.A. We landed just at 6:00 P.M., the huge orange sun hung over the Pacific Ocean reflecting the sunset to anyone in the sky looking down as I was, and I was suddenly uncertain about what I would do. I thought perhaps I ought to call Goldie or some relative, but

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