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Lucky
Lindy PAGE
TWO: My brother said that dad had been found in his office, hours after his Wednesday night group. The Wednesday night group that he used to run in our converted basement in our house in L.A., the same group I had listened in on all my life. The one where, after my father had moved out when I was 15, he hired me to videotape through one-way glass. He made training films on how to run group therapy sessions. They knew they were being filmed, but not by the 15-year-old daughter of their therapist. But this time I wasn't there to listen at the door, or watch through glass. Then I realized my brother hadn't said the word dead. Maybe he shot and missed. If we didn't say the word, it wouldn't be true. I just won't say it, I thought. "The funeral will have to be by Sunday," he said. Jews have to be buried within 72 hours. My family's Jewish only in times of trauma. But he had said a word I couldn't ignore -- funeral. Funeral meant dead. No doubt about that. He hadn't missed. He killed himself. This is something that never occurred to me. He was a successful psychiatrist. He had money. He had a Mercedes. He had a new wife. Okay, I knew that his marriage wasn't going so well -- it had turned bad, mostly due to his sleeping with young female patients. But what did she expect? After all, she had been his patient when he was married to my mother. They had an affair for three years. But I guess you always feel you will be the different one. Well she wasn't. And now she wanted a divorce. He couldn't handle another divorce, he told me in a conversation over sickly sweet drinks at Trader Vics in Beverly Hills, one of the last times I saw him. My parents had a particularly ugly divorce, fighting over everything, including me. Now my stepmother as an adversary was an even scarier thought. But was that a reason to die? To kill maybe, but not to die. He seemed to me much more of a man who would kill someone else. He had a mean temper. His eyes would flash red and his golfer's tanned skin would sallow. I'd hide when I saw that coming. I wished he would just hit me and get it over with. His anger was fierce. It came from deep inside him. A man like that doesn't kill himself. What I didn't know until later was that my brother had suggested to the police that perhaps my stepmother killed him, maybe because the same thoughts went through his mind. This wasn't to be a good start in the messy estate negotiations between my brother and stepmother. Me? I kept out of that fight. I just threw the papers away. Couldn't drag me into that snake pit. But
there I was still on the phone with my brother. And just down the
hall a man I didn't know very well was asleep in my bed. Boy was
he going to get more than he bargained for that night. I didn't
want to hang up the phone. I knew when I did I would have to talk
to the cowboy, and I would have to say the word dead. It would make
it real, and it couldn't be taken back after that. If I never said
it and just pretended I never got the call, I could forget. I'm
big on denial. After all, my dad and his wife were in L.A., and
I wouldn't be seeing them for a while anyway. It would just be like
normal. I wouldn't have to admit it until say… Christmas. No
one was going to come up and see my show anyway. My father didn't
approve of me being an actress. He had too many neurotic patients
that were famous and unhappy. He thought it was a terribly unstable
way of life. Ironic, since the only instability in my life so far
had been caused by him.
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I
thought I heard wrong. Shot? With a gun? Did he even own one? Then
another flash of Dad taking me to a firing range when I was 13,
to teach me how to shoot a rifle. I did it, even though I was scared.
I always wanted to please him. I almost fell over with the first
shot, but then steadied the rifle against my shoulder and shot a
few close bullseyes. I have a good eye -- always did. He taught
me to play pool too. I was a shark in college. I won beer money
from many unsuspecting young college men. 
