Amputation, page 11
She daydreamed of leaving politics and becoming a physician’s assistant again. Of going back to where she started, going back to the thing that had given her the most joy. When she mentioned it to Tony, he said, ‘If it makes you happy, KB, just do it. I learned years ago that Karen Bass can do anything she sets her mind to.’
The person she should really talk to was Zahra, though she didn’t feel quite strong enough yet. She was too ashamed to show weakness, always had been. Zahra was the one whose counsel she trusted most but she just wasn’t ready. And she didn’t want to burden her dear friend. She already had a challenged granddaughter …
After the fires, her security team doubled.
It was the worst of times and it was the worst of times. It was the time of death threats and reality cholera—disinfo enemies were storming the deflector shields and ransacking the mothership. The most righteous were being stripped naked in the anarchic, sadistic simulacrum of life 110called social media. It took a million dollars a year to protect her friend, Janisse Quiñones, the LADWP’s brilliant, defamed chairwoman, and the MAGA Avengers would soon find a way to remove her bodyguards, as they had with Fauci, Bolton, Pompeo. It was the time of assassination—everything everywhere all at once. All she ever wanted was for her constituents to be safe!
But everyone was burning.
And all she could think of was the baptism.
‘Hello, Squirrel-girl,’ said Zahra.
‘Hi baby.’
‘How you doin over there?’
She laughed out loud then sighed. ‘I’ve seen better days,’
‘Don’t let em get you down, okay? You coming to church on Sunday?’
‘I don’t think so—wish I could.’
‘Getting ready for the waters, huh.’
‘I am so ready. I think about it every day.’
‘So does a certain granddaughter of mine. The caregivers can’t get her out of the tub.’
‘That’s adorable. I love that Aali and I are going to do this together. Zahra … I wanted to ask you something.’
‘Shoot.’
‘When we were in her bedroom—the walls—the writing …’
‘How bout that? I call it ‘Love Letter to Auntie.’’
‘It was so … interesting. Do you know what all that’s about? The words?’
‘It’s you, Squirrel,’ she laughed. ‘Those are your words!’
‘My words?’
‘We had a little conversation on her talk board. That girl went through all your speeches with a fine-tooth comb. And made a mosaic. She spelled that word out, Karen—‘mosaic’!—she’s got a bigger vocabulary than us both.’
111 ‘But how? How did she make it?’
‘She enlisted the caregivers to do the cutting and pasting. That girl can be very persuasive. But they didn’t breathe a word cause Aali wanted it to be a secret. If they told me, they knew there’d be hell to pay!’
She thought for a moment. ‘Zah … would you mind taking some photos? Of the wall? Or having a caregiver do that?’
‘I’ll do it myself, right when we hang up. Anything else, Madam Mayor?’ she said sarcastically.
‘Don’t you Madam Mayor me.’
‘Any chores or errands?’ she teased. ‘Want me to go to Erewhon for your favorite truffle hot sauce?’
‘Hush now!’
‘I guess Madam Mayor does make you sound like you run a brothel.’
‘At times, talking to some of those consultants, it sure feels like it.’
They laughed then spoke more seriously about Karen’s grandniece. Zahra said that Aaliyah had been having seizures, something that happened with Fragile Xers but was always worrisome. ‘They’re petit mals,’ said Zahra. ‘Not her first rodeo. It’s the grand mals we want to watch out for.’
A half-hour later, the photos came.
Karen mirrored the text on the big screen in her living room. The words of the pastiche were in a childish, cursive font. Some of them were abbreviated or cut off, as if the caregiver helpers got careless. She tried making sense of it.
madam vice president, you are an inspiration for women and the LGBTQ community & have been an impactful leader on one of our most critical issues, housing. We are also graced by cali’s 1st female lieut. governor. TY for your leadership!
the 4 of us … californians, leaders, Women. & let’s not forget our all-female board of supervisors! we are all going to make so much history together in a state that has enshrined in our constitution a woman’s right to decide what happens to her body!
112 i am so honored we have locked arms together for the people we serve because there’s no more finger pointing between the city and the county. together we have brought change to the city of angels. stronger, healthier, happier, Safer—
Inside Safe will be our new approach to moving people inside from encampments. locking arms, we are breaking ground
my #1 job as mayor is to keep angelenos Safe
angelenos need to both be Safe and to Feel Safe as we build our new LA.
we may have had a rainy season so far but the last few years have seen record wildfires in LA so we must be prepared for fire season. chief, please stand. first woman fire chief
we are conducting a national search make our city a national model for animal welfare. the goal is to save animals’ lives. so we must all lock arms together, LA. & lock paws!
my admin. will launch an office of community Saftey to meet with neighbors, store clerks, dog walkers, and teenagers who know what’s actually going on behind the statistics
As she did when first reading them, the mayor felt woozily evanescent.
* * *
Esther
Years ago, before moving to Henderson to oversee casino operations, Morty was a fixture at the legendary, out-of-the-way deli in the Valley. Lately, though, he found himself spending more and more time in California, at the house in San Marino that he once shared with his wife. The widower enjoyed sitting in the back of his Rolls-Royce Wraith, listening to Sinatra and ruminating on his life while being chauffeured to the Brisket. The place was always packed but when the old man called to say 113he would be there at 1 p.m., the owner put a reserved sign on the table, something he did for no one else.
The waitstaff knew that his daughter died in the Palisades fire. After the initial flurry of condolences, no one brought it up again, for which Morty was grateful. He turned eighty-eight the day after Esther died and the servers knew that too. (He always tipped them with hundred-dollar bills.) With camp stealth, one of the Latino gals deposited a slice of four-layer chocolate cake with a single unlit candle lying beside it; before she scooted away, Morty noticed the furtive glance at his ragged sleeve and knew she was clueless about kri’ah, the tearing of garments after the death of a loved one.
There had been no service, no singing of psalms, no hespedim—no eulogies and orations. As complicated as his love for his daughter was, any kind of memorial had been overridden by his morbid fear of a crowd showing up with genocide placards. The Kaddish would only come from the throat of ghosts—her mother Ruthie, and Isaac, his other dead child. Esther’s twin.
Morty spent the last few years seeking counsel about his wayward, heretic daughter. Her wrongheaded, foolhardy, dangerous activities had destroyed his health. Rabbis near and far made house calls and did their best to walk delicately, sometime too delicately, around the ‘problem’—they didn’t want to offend their largest donor. Some of his powerful friends were the same way, not wishing to tread on his wounds (good people like Alex Karp and Bill Ackman) but others (like the Resnicks) had more strident dispositions and were less guarded. But all of them, especially Miriam Adelson and Alan Dershowitz, shook their heads over the burning, impossible question, the one with no answer:
What the hell happened to our Esther, our shayna maidel?
‘I knew deprogrammers, back in the day,’ said Dershowitz. ‘Deprogrammers were a thing. And let me tell you, Morty, they were artists. They were tough—not to be fucked with.’ Alan was a real gish 114galloper but his spirited monologues gave the frail old man great comfort. ‘Parents would come to me when their kids got swallowed up by the Moonies. They looked like dead plants, those poor people, they were withering on the vine. I’d introduce them to some very competent folks who’d snatch up their kids. Their services weren’t cheap, either. They’d get them in the middle of the night, they’d kidnap em—Esther needs to be yidnapped!—and steal them away in vans with blacked-out windows. There’s some wonderful movies about that terrible time. Saul Rubinek—remember him? Marvelous actor. Ticket to Heaven, wonderful movie, see it and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ll have my office send you a DVD. The Sex and the City gal was in it. The Canadian … what was her name? The one who told Sarah Jessica Parker to go fuck herself. The deprogrammers would get their hands on these kids and put them in safe houses. They went to the mattresses! Sometimes it took days, sometimes weeks to get their heads out of Reverend Moon’s ass. But they were always successful. And you want to know something else, Morty? They were grateful. Those kids couldn’t thank their parents enough, for the rest of their fucking lives. And that’s what we need now. The IDF needs a branch of haimish warrior-magicians! When the Jews kidnap, Morty, it’s not for torture and rape! But no one can get that through their brainwashed heads—I shouldn’t say brainwashed because the biggest Israel haters and propagandists have been bought and paid for—and the hardest nuts to crack are woke Jews. Which makes sense because we are a stubborn and perverse people. But Morty, it’s a scourge. The Arab mayor of Paterson, New Jersey, just called his city the capital of Palestine! They’re changing the name of Main Street to Palestine Way! It’s like a Philip Roth novel come to life! And our dear, beautiful, mind-controlled Esther flew out for the ceremony! She’s consorting with monsters in Doha! I saw her on Fox, tearing down hostage posters on the Upper West Side! She’s not just tsuris, Morty, she’s Soros!’ He stopped his rant, sighed, and threw up his hands. ‘These poor, sad children need to be saved. That sounds a little Jesus-y but it’s true. They need to be saved—from themselves.’
115 She was the love of Morty’s life and tough as nails.
In so many ways, she was just like her father.
The twins were going to be bat and bar mitzvahed together but Isaac died the month before, joy-riding with his best friend from shul. When Ruthie said they were going to cancel her ceremony at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Esther was livid, red-faced, rageful. So they went ahead with the bat mitzvah and it was the most sacred, heartrending, transcendent moment of Morty and Ruthie’s lives. That day, their daughter became their teacher. At the party that evening, Esther told them, ‘I am going to be a rabbi. And Isaac will be my forever-cantor—in here.’ She put her hand over her heart and Morty broke down. He was in awe of her. Ten years later, Ruthie got breast cancer and Esther went to every doctor’s appointment and every chemo, pushing aside the private nurses to change her mother’s diaper at the end. She bathed her and gave her morphine jabs. At the memorial, Esther sang the kaddish, with Yehudi Menuhin accompanying on violin.
Without her, Morty would have been lost.
He came to rue the day that he created his daughter’s trust. (A week after his wife died.) Two hundred million dollars would become available to her when she turned forty. In the years before the trust matured, Esther behaved perfectly. She built a successful kosher bakery and wholeheartedly wove herself into the Jewish community. She leaned left but that was typical for her generation. Still, she had a traditional side and threw herself into the role of advisor to Jewish Women International, the ADL, Nechama—even the Zionist Organization of America. A rockstar fundraiser, she was obsessed with keeping the flame of Israel burning. But when she came into full possession, she began to disengage; slowly, it became obvious to Morty that was the plan all along.
She occupied herself with Esthergen, which now had a dozen shops on each coast, and he thought that was a good thing. But after October 7, she ‘went rogue,’ as Dershowitz liked to say. Soon, the whole world wide web was agog at the images of the privileged transgressor, this Jezebel 116in a keffiyeh, bull-horning at rallies and hoisting mockeries: queens ’n queers for a free palestine and israel = cancer of the middle east. Entranced supporters called her Mother Courage (and behind her back, Mother Donor).
Esther devilishly made sure that solicitations of money from Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow and a hundred other frightshow 501(c)(3)s like Families Over Billionaires—‘a dark money leftist nonprofit,’ screamed Morty, ‘founded by a jewkiller Swiss billionaire!’—bombarded the inbox of Altschuler Resort Properties:
Help end the narrative that Israel’s oppression and murder of Palestinians makes Jews any safer.
Help provide infrastructure for over one hundred local organizing bodies national, and for major campaigns fighting for divestment from Israeli genocide and apartheid.
Help advance a Judaism aligning with our spiritual and moral commitments.
The articles began to appear in Haaretz, The Guardian, The New York Times.
The fiery, outspoken, raven-haired sixtysomething heiress to the Altschuler casino dynasty—her father, Morty Altschuler, whom she describes as ‘a proudly deranged O.G. Zionist fabulist,’ disinherited her because of her views—is a fixture at marches and demonstrations, where she’s known to say things through a megaphone that would knock the tefillin off the members of her former shul. She told this journalist, ‘There never was a so-called Jewish nation and—wait for it—the Exodus from Egypt did not happen! The Pentateuch is a hustle. There is no Jewish DNA. You feel me?’
At the time of our interview, Esther had just returned from Doha, where she met with ‘friends, old and new.’ Her detractors say those ‘friends’ include Khalil al-Hayya, the most senior Hamas leader outside Gaza. When I mention that, she says, ‘I could say it’s a lie but you know what? My beautiful Jewish nose is big enough that I don’t worry about it growing any bigger!’ Her musical laugh did not bely the beautiful singing voice that so enthralled the congregation when she sang at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, of which Morty Altschuler is still the largest donor.
Her widower, a young grifter, kept reaching out but Morty told his office to stonewall. ‘Rocky Horror Show,’ as Dershowitz liked to call him, had 117been named a temporary executor by the court, so it was a messy and unfortunate situation.
But the old man knew one thing: there was no way that moocher was going to enjoy the fruits of his labors. Morty’s attorneys were making a forensic sweep of his daughter’s assets, liquid and otherwise. Regardless of any legal outcome, he knew some people who would make sure it went his way. He’d see that goyisch sonofabitch burn in Hell like his wife before he got his hands on any blood money.
* * *
Stephen
‘Evie, it’s Maria.’ Her tone was businesslike; Evie braced herself. ‘They got him free and he’s being airlifted to Cedars.’
‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Oh God. He’s alive then?’
‘They won’t give me any information. Any. But I have calls out to Steven— Spielberg—and Peter Slavin, the Cedars CEO.’
‘Oh Maria, I’m so scared!’
‘I know. I know. Where are you?’
‘On a plane sent by CBS.’
‘Good for them.’
‘I’m with Peter and Madeleine.’
‘Good.’
‘Maria, is he—did they say what kind of shape he’s in?’
‘No.’
‘My poor husband! Did they say how long he was trapped?’
‘I just don’t have any details, Evie.’
‘Okay.’
‘But a captain I spoke to said the tree was protecting him. Evidently, it was wet from retardant. He said it was a miracle—’
118 ‘Oh God, we need miracles. We’re going to need more miracles!’
‘—because the house is gone, even the chimneys.’
‘Oh Maria! Your beautiful house …’
‘When will you land?’
‘In three hours.’
‘Come straight to Cedars, okay?’
‘Of course. Was he—does anyone know if he was conscious? Or talking?’
‘No.’
‘I mean, when they rescued him …’
‘I’m hoping someone calls me back soon.’
‘Where are you, Maria? Where are you staying?’
‘At the Beverly Hills Hotel but I’m almost at Cedars.’
‘Thank God you’ll be there. I just don’t want him to be alone.’
‘He’s strong—you know how strong he is. If anyone’s going to get through this, it’s your fucking husband.’
‘Yes yes yes! He’s a maniac.’ They laughed. ‘Maria, I was so worried! It was so strange not to hear from him but I was at a conference up in the mountains and thought maybe the calls weren’t coming through—but then I started getting texts from the kids. They were watching the news and the terrible, terrible winds—and—we just thought the cellphone towers went out.’
‘It’s so crazy, Evie. The police chief drove me through the city and it is just … gone. If you were driven through there and didn’t know what happened, you would definitely not think it was a fire, you’d think it was a terrorist attack. Gelson’s, Ralphs, the churches … the neighborhoods. The Alphabet Streets, the bluff—gone. There’s no city! There is no city. And Malibu. Hundreds of houses on the beach …’
‘Oh my God.’
‘It’s so much worse than what you see on the news. There’s just … no way to comprehend it. Two cities—Altadena! If you haven’t been, Evie, you have no idea how perfect and charming and gorgeous Altadena was. Was! Because it’s gone. It’s like science fiction.’
