A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion

Author:Joan Didion
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307787590
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-02-22T23:00:00+00:00

Charlotte stayed that night in a motel off 101.

She tried to think about the biscuits but they kept fading out. She tried to think about the gold pin with the broken clasp but she kept seeing it on the bomb.

Her grandmother was dead and Marin was gone.

She had never gone shopping with her mother, she had never seen her father on Demerol, the ranch had eight telephones on three lines and Marin was gone.

It was Pete Wright who had told her that her father needed Demerol before he died.

The night she got drunk at the Palm.

She tried to think about Pete Wright in her bed that night but could not. She tried to think about Leonard in the bed of the house on California Street but she could see that bed only as it had been the day she picked up the scissors against Warren. She could see Warren sitting on that bed and she could also see Warren standing in front of her bed in New York the Easter morning after she got drunk at the Palm.

“Look at the slut on Easter morning.”

She had screamed.

Marin had screamed.

She had picked up Marin and when Warren hit her again his hand glanced off Marin’s temple.

She had picked up the kitchen knife.

She had thrown up.

She and Warren had taken Marin to the Carlyle and she had not had enough money to pay the bill. The beautiful principessa, the headwaiter had crooned over Marin. The beautiful principessa, the beautiful family. King of Crazy, Queen of Wrong. The headwaiter did not know that. The headwaiter would see to it that the bill was mailed. Charlotte lay on the motel bed and she thought about the beautiful principessa and about the beautiful family and about all the bills that had been mailed and never paid. She thought about all the unpaid bills and she thought about all the days and nights when she had promised Warren she would never leave.

There was another unpaid bill.

“You can’t drink,” Warren had said that Easter morning and held her shoulders as she threw up. “You can’t drink at all, you never could.” And then he washed her face and he took her to the Carlyle and she did not have enough money to pay the bill. Look at the slut on Easter morning. Marin had a straw hat one Easter, and a flowered lawn dress. Warren gave her his coat.

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