Free A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion Page B

been waiting’ in a taxi outside the courthouse the morning she divorced Warren.
    “She had a straw hat one Easter.” Charlotte had taken Leonard’s hand in the taxi but neither of them spoke until the house on California Street was in sight. “And a flowered lawn dress.”
    “Don’t think you have to get yourself pregnant just to prove he doesn’t have you any more, Charlotte.”
    “We took her to lunch at the Carlyle, I remember she was cold.”
    “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you can just run it back through the projector, Charlotte.”
    “Warren gave her his coat.”
    Upstairs in the house on California Street Charlotte took off her skirt and sweater and laid them on a chair. She took off the pieces of handmade navy-blue underwear and let them drop to the floor. At the bottom of a drawer she found a faded flannel nightgown and she pulled on the nightgown and she lay on the bed and watched the last light leave the windows.
    “And we drank a lot of Ramos Fizzes. And in the middle of lunch Warren said he had an appointment downtown. And when the check came I didn’t have any money. I didn’t even have two dollars for a taxi, Marin and I walked home.” She turned to Leonard. “She was three. Everybody admired her hat. I think I was never so happy on a Sunday. Why are you bringing him out.”
    “He’s her father, isn’t he.”
    “I can’t handle it.”
    Leonard sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the handmade pieces of navy-blue silk from the floor. They were very plain. They had no lace or embroidery. They had only the rows of infinitesimal stitches. “Maybe I want to see if you can. Somebody in the Azores went blind making these.”
    “Why do you have to bring him out.”
    “Because he gave her his coat,” Leonard said.
    “Somebody in the Philippines,” Charlotte said. “Not the Azores. The Philippines.”

8
    “T HOSE WERE FOUR TRULY WONDERFUL SPECIMENS YOU condemned me to fly out here with,” Warren said when he walked into the house on California Street at nine-thirty the next morning.
    Charlotte stood perfectly still. Warren looked as if he had not slept in several days. His eyes were bloodshot, his chin stubbled. He was wearing sneakers and a muffler Charlotte recognized as one she had knit for herself the winter they lived in an unheated apartment on East 93rd Street, and he was carrying not a suitcase but two shopping bags stuffed with what appeared to be dirty laundry. He was also carrying one red rose, which he handed to Charlotte without looking at her.
    “Four authentic gargoyles,” he said. “Some favor you did me. The four worst people in the world. Climbers. Vermin. Gargoyles. New York trash. Hogarth caricatures. 25,000 feet, no exit. Deliver me from favors. I need a drink.”
    “You repeated gargoyles,” Leonard said. “Otherwise vintage.”
    “The FBI is due at ten,” Charlotte said.
    “What’s that got to do with your getting me a drink. Me no get FBI joke.”
    “I haven’t heard that since it was still ‘me no get Indian joke,’ ” Leonard said. “Which I remember vividly from the night I introduced you to the Maharanee of wherever she was from.”
    “Lower Pelham,” Warren said. “She was the Maharanee of Lower Pelham.” He dropped the shopping bags on the floor in front of the fireplace. An aerosol can of shaving cream and a balled seersucker suit stuffed with dirty socks rolled out. “Get somebody to wash and iron that, Charlotte, all right? The suit just needs pressing.”
    “We don’t have any washers and ironers on the place today.” Charlotte retrieved the aerosol can before it hit the open fire. “Or any pressers.”
    “I can see you’re in one of your interesting moods. Tell me what else you can’t do for me today, Charlotte. You think you can give me a drink? Or can’t you.”
    Charlotte filled a glass with ice and splashed bourbon into it. Her hands were shaking. The veins on her arms were standing out and she did not want