Despite the Anger and the <i> Angst</i> , Really, Everybody’s Fine

I’d been on the wrong end of the phone all day--the one opposite snappy, indecently cheerful public relations people, abrupt editors, bill collectors and people wasting time. I’d also been on the wrong end of the computer. Four working versions of the same article, and not a clue as to which one to use.

I hit the remote and scanned the TV for comfort--an extremely unwise thing to do. You’d think experience would teach me the idiocy of this act. But I zapped away, playing sensory-input roulette. There was an infomercial on “relationships,” explaining that when women order you to “get out,” they really mean “take me in your arms.” So what do they really mean, I wondered, when they say “I love you”?

Zapped some more. There were talk shows full of dirt-poor trailer-park people who are having unnatural relationships with their veterinarians, barbers, orangutans, whatever. Zap. Bosnia. Zap. Lingered for a few moments on Ice Cube’s video, “It Was a Good Day.” Ice Cube wore his trademark fearsome scowl, like a guy with bad lumbago, and blabbed about driving drunk, his grand sexual prowess and how “Today I didn’t even use my AK/I have to say it was a good day,” or some such delicate sentiment.

It drove me right out of the house. Went for a walk to clear my mind. Through the calm neighborhood, under the lavender jacarandas, past the blooming magnolias, past the figure of Woody Woodpecker performing a sex act etched in concrete on the corner. Formulated a vague goal of ambling down to the market for some of that Mattus ice cream I’d read about--the stuff that supposedly tastes like Haagen-Dazs, but with only 3% fat. You know, health food.

I paused, as usual, at the local newsstand, in hope of finding rewarding reading material. My eye fell on a People cover about Barbra Streisand. The lady has been dining with Attorney General Janet Reno and reading about Thomas Jefferson, the cover announced, then posed the question: “What Does Barbra Really Want?” or words to that effect. I felt a desperate compulsion to tell someone that I didn’t give a healthy damn what Barbra “really wants,” resisted it, and gave up on the newsstand.

Passing a doughnut joint in the growing dusk, I saw Pete. I don’t know if that’s his name, but that’s how I think of him. He looks like Rasputin and Popeye’s father, Poopdeck Pappy. He was sitting on the sidewalk, as always, with his boom-box. Unlike always, the boom-box was turned off and he seemed sober--which is to say, he looked mighty unhappy.

I preferred the Pete I know--sitting on a corner, radio blaring Beethoven or Wagner, bottle of whiskey in hand, lecturing wildly about the travails of life to anyone who might listen or drop some change in a cup. I especially enjoyed one of his diatribes directed at television--specifically, at a portable TV he set in his lap and was viciously berating. I smiled as I imagined what he might have said to that “relationships” infomercial.

Sorry to say it, but Pete seemed happier drunk. I asked him how he was, and he grunted.

At the market, of course, there was no Mattus ice cream--despite what the newspaper ads had promised. Well, I needed that 3% fat about as much as I needed another publicist on the phone. Turning to head home, I passed Pete again, and this time he’d been joined by one of those guys whose faces are ruddy either from wine or Thorazine, or both. “Change?” the guy asked. I resisted an impulse to say, “good idea, “ and crossed the street, where another sidewalk dweller asked for money. I said nothing. “Whatsamadder?” the guy yelled, “No speak English?”

Reaching the intersection, I waited for the light to turn green, then stepped off the curb. Big mistake. A junky gray jeep not quite the size of Godzilla downshifted and blasted right through the red light, scattering traffic, and me. It looked like something out of “Mad Max.” The driver was shirtless, about as big as the Statue of Liberty, and apparently felt the full influence of his Constitutionally guaranteed freedom. The sound of his engine pushed my chances of developing tinnitus up a micro notch.

Shaken, I persevered--past yogurt places, an 8-foot-high latex statue of Sigourney Weaver’s pal, Alien, in the Sharper Image, past young people with earrings stuffing “ ‘50s-style” burgers down their gullets. Past lone sidewalk diners at a jazz cafe, staring up at a new moon hung in a sky that wasn’t quite blue and wasn’t quite black.

I paused at the window of a picture-framing place to look not at the routine watercolor flowers, but at a framed plate--an antique piece of china, actually. The plate had been painted modestly, even daintily, with leaves and flowers in mild greens and lavenders and gold trim. Also in the frame was a wedding card inscribed to one Karen Marie Staves, and the words: “This plate was painted by a friend of mine in the Congregational Church in Boise, Idaho, and presented to me on my wedding day in 1921. With good wishes for many, many happy years together.” It was signed, “Mrs. Vida Troyer-Smith.”

It hit me how human lives inevitably boil down to relics. The lucky ones get displayed in windows.

At the next intersection, the light changed to green, and once again I stepped off the curb. Once again, it was a big mistake. A shiny new Toyota zipped right around the corner, ignoring the pedestrian right-of-way. The driver, a young woman, wore a frown as fearsome as Ice Cube’s, and--it wasn’t my imagination--waved me out of her way. I yelled something less than politically correct, and she returned my comment with the good ol’ raised finger. I considered letting myself feel disgusted, but decided against it. On balance, as exchanges go in L.A. these days, ours was about equivalent to “how ya doin’?”

I shuffled on down to the video store to peruse the same movies I usually find myself perusing there, and never renting. The eight screens in the place were showing a movie full of contemporary young Americans full of angst. During the 10 minutes of the film I heard, I would estimate that roughly every sixth spoken word--shouted word, really--was either the beloved epithet beginning with “f “ or a popular three-letter vulgarity for the posterior. The characters seemed very, very angry, and to have very limited vocabularies. I said to a fellow browser, “great movie.” He said nothing, and moved away.

I wound up renting “Everybody’s Fine,” a Giuseppe Tornatore-directed film with Marcello Mastroianni. He plays a father who takes a trip to visit all his grown children and finds that their lives are all irrevocably complicated and anguished. It has poignant music by Ennio Morricone, and touches of magic and whimsy. In the end, Mastroianni, deeply saddened by the reality of his children’s lives, goes to his wife’s grave and tells the headstone, “Everybody’s fine.” I’ve seen it three times. I think it sort of sums things up.

As I made my way back home, the sky had finally decided to turn more black than blue, and the new moon hung there like a fine white brush stroke.

And I kept thinking about that plate.