Ben Stein's Diary / Good-bye Summer
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY Good-bye Summer by Benjamin J. Stein Monday A very early dinner at Morton's with my old pal Barron. We talked about how to buy a bank in a small town, then how to make it buy...
...The mechanic confessed he had no idea of what was wrong with the engine and had even less idea of how to fix it...
...Oh, life...
...love sushi...
...It was the next graf that threw me for a long, hard loop: I am on the hardest journey of my life...
...He's not afraid...
...Tuesday B ack in glorious L.A...
...Things are still not easy, but better...
...I wish Roy Ash were here, but he's not...
...I think I'll just keep them until I go and then I'll have them scattered with my ashes...
...I'll write more soon, I promise," she closed, "the next time on a happier note...
...My little genius understands language this beautifully at age seven...
...Suddenly, the lake that had seemed so dark and terrifying became liquid silk, holding us up, cushioning us, carrying us along...
...If I'm making a thousand dollars a day, why would I ever want to do anything else...
...I do not know why...
...Even when she got older, the father was always promising her money for things and then cheating her...
...I watched him jump into the hundredth puddle and I thought, "I would never have done that...
...Sometimes I think she saw me at 50, still struggling to get by and didn't want to be like me...
...Colleen was in school, but she also had to work, and I guess she got overwhelmed...
...I took him to play with his dog, Susie...
...Wednesday A fundraiser for our fine state attorney general, Dan Lungren, downtown at the ornate Bilmore Hotel...
...It's not really the fame...
...How could I have failed to note that there were in fact no life jackets on board...
...I walked under those T hat night it rained heavily in Sandpoint...
...We talked, and Kay seemed to have found peace...
...Oh, please, God, I thought to myself...
...If you're making a thousand dollars a day, and you lived frugally, you could easily save enough to retire and go back to your dancing, and send yourself to dance school for a really long time...
...she whispered...
...I have come to dislike funerals and viewings...
...We mark it by prayer and fasting...
...Anyway, I saw her at our 30th high school reunion in 1992, with her third husband, a solid-looking retired sheriff named Bill...
...I saw her father at a service for her in L.A.," Kay said...
...She wouldn't have grown up with fear and worry about money...
...I am fasting this morning while I read a prayer book that my late Uncle Hy gave to me thirty-six years ago...
...But I had to be responsible for them...
...Now, some might think that Jews think only of money...
...Yesterday at the Alpine Shops we looked at Thompson Boats...
...Then a few came running up to Tommy and me and told us how they loved "The Wonder Years...
...I went below deck and decided that it was time to pray...
...There were kids jumping over trash cans and shouting...
...A s we left the Safeway for the second time¡ªalways to buy lottery tickets for the little gambling maniac¡ªthe rain stopped and it was suddenly surprisingly warm...
...Then she started licking my face and then she actually pulled herself up so she was trying to sit on top of my head...
...The "mechanic" threw open the engine hatch and more smoke billowed out...
...She had been my classmate in high school starting in 1959...
...For me, it was just thinking about it...
...No checks, but my heart leapt when I discovered a letter in a hand familiar from twenty-five years ago...
...Very respectable, solid citizens...
...The cliffs on the lake were frames of our contentment...
...Did you just come from an audition...
...They did...
...Saturday T he scariest day of my life...
...I'm sure that's a lie, mostly because she said it, but anyway...
...Thank you, God...
...I asked...
...They didn't have anyone else.ask forgiveness for: "stiff-necked pride," "obdurate brow," "wanton looks," "usury and increase," "bearing tales," "haughty mien," and many others...
...David Braun had heard us...
...I don't know what to say," I said...
...He and his pal Alex were blithely offering to swim to shore¡ªabout half a mile if we went to nearby Warren Island, or about fifty times as far as Tommy has ever swum before...
...It was getting dark and there was not another boat in sight...
...He jumps in puddles...
...Wednesday I hate this...
...The hard part is that we had all been a team after the divorce...
...Bye, bye, Miss American Pie...
...It was a warm Rocky Mountain night...
...I shall miss her all my life...
...Everyone spoke well, but Lungren spoke extremely well...
...Your face and/or voice seem to be constantly on TV...
...I work very hard...
...Please don't let us drown...
...By the way," she said, "when you pick them up at the airport, they're in a carton with letters five inches high that say, 'said to be the remains of .. .' Isn't that nice...
...Apparently thesewere not sins in those days...
...I went up to look...
...I think she paid me back, but I'm not sure...
...Then he admitted that he also had no life jackets, no radio, no cell phone, and no fire extinguisher...
...The American Spectator December 1994 maples and oaks and pines with him and I could feel the warm breeze off the mountains...
...She sounded tired...
...We only wanted to work out, step by step, how one might do it, and see how hard it would be...
...she asked...
...He leaps from bed to bed in our hotel room...
...They ran around in front of the theater...
...Dancer...
...People who were muddling along have lost their jobs...
...No," she said cheerfully...
...As we passed by the Panida, the local theater, we saw that a rock concert by some local Spokane grunge group was ending...
...He's a real boy...
...Anyway, as I ate my tuna sushi, a stunning woman came in wearing short shorts, very high heels, a bandanna top, and dark glasses...
...No, we can't," I said, although I wished I could have just said yes...
...I like the crowd...
...The lights, the attention, the food table, the camaraderie: better even than sliced bread...
...I lay in bed holding the letter...
...We sat on a bench and watched the kids leave...
...How could I have been so stupid...
...Day for night and night for day...
...For most of my adult life, my happiest memories were of Santa Cruz back in 1972 when I lounged under a redwood and felt as if life would go on forever...
...Maybe because it's so good for you¡ªat least this week...
...I prepared to swim for it...
...I asked...
...Tuesday y om Kippur...
...Close," she said...
...For some reason, there's been a wild aura shift here...
...For Kay, the ideal work would have been dancer in videos, dancer in nightclubs, dancer...
...No," she said...
...The salesman was nowhere to be seen, so amechanic¡ªor so we thought¡ªshowed us around...
...It was such a beautiful evening, I decided I would drive out to my house in Malibu and fight with the spiders over who got to sleep in my bed...
...Dear Ben, I think of you often...
...She kept asking "What's the use...
...We walked back to the Edgewater...
...Mainly what Jews think about is food...
...I cried every morning on the way to work for three years when I was alone raising three girls with no one helping me...
...Now they want me to cut it and add quotes...
...On the beach in Malibu...
...That's it...
...He's my boy, but not like me...
...Quick...
...I went on to pick up Mr...
...I wouldn't even want to do it...
...That time, we danced a poor jitterbug—mine was the poor part, although I was a good dancer in high school...
...It was a thrill just to be in business with her, so to speak...
...They think there's no problem if they skip their responsibilities...
...I took off my red sweater and waved it frantically, to absolutely no avail...
...I'm just getting her into the spirit of play...
...As far as I could tell, there were no boats anywhere on the horizon except for one very far to the south...
...Used to be...
...I would have been afraid that my mother would have been mad at me...
...The guests of honor are Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett...
...It had a huge vacation cabin on it, and sure enough, there were two men working on it...
...She was a tall, slender blonde who greatly preferred hard guys to brainos, but she was still mildly friendly...
...Does it have life preservers...
...Are you an actress/model...
...We're not planning to do it, of course...
...Wouldn't that be great...
...We're stuck on a boat that's broken...
...I wish I could just stay here, bring Alex up here, and stay with him staying seven forever...
...I don't want to go back to school...
...Bennett talked about some Eskimos who supposedly banished offending juvenile delinquents to an island so that they could have time for deep meditation and reflection on their crimes...
...The chilly evening air was a tonic of health...
...I shouldn't act holier than thou, when I've done it myself and will probably do it again...
...But if you don't have it, you have to think about it," she said...
...He refuses to eat his vegetables...
...We were shopping for a motorboat...
...He's a beekeeper and the son of a minister...
...It's all my fault, all for the fool's errand of taking out a used cabin-cruiser that I really didn't need anyway...
...Every single time we passed a puddle, Tommy had to jump in...
...The shopping area is a little grubby...
...I don't want to go to school...
...I knew it would happen...
...Wow, I thought to myself, this is it...
...I laughed at the futility of it...
...Does it have a fire extinguisher...
...It's not difficult...
...He kept pulling at her collar...
...But there are always beautiful girls hanging around at the sushi bar...
...No sooner had we gotten out to about a mile from the yard than plumes of smoke came from the engine and it went dead, with hissing and crackling sounds coming from the engine compartment...
...I'm not a cop...
...I kept turning the letter over and over in my hand, hoping that it might magically change inside so that it was just a fan letter from an old flame, and not a letter filled with poison...
...Perfect at school...
...David...
...Yes, David," Peter said...
...We walked from Ivano's about half a mile to the Safeway, down leafy, quiet streets, with Tommy asking me how a street light worked, how a telephone worked, how his Mommy got to be a lawyer, what it was like to be an actor, if he could be an actor, if I knew what the differences were among different kinds of spiders...
...No small thing in the Jewish calendar...
...Not ever...
...I was supposed to have an article run in a city magazine...
...It's been nine years of waiting for the other shoe to drop...
...Please don't think about it...
...I'm still pondering it...
...Does it have a radio...
...Sometimes, on a good night, when it's just him and me walking through the tree-lined streets of Sandpoint or through the Safeway, I feel so happy I could just explode...
...We had just finished dinner at Ivano's...
...0 58 The American Spectator December 1994...
...In fact, some of the best experiences I have ever had have been working on TV pilots that never were shown on the tube at all...
...I want to get sick, Daddy," he said...
...Afterwards, I walked back to my car in a parking lot about a block.away...
...Thanks to a request by my old pal Ken Khachigian, I am the master of ceremonies...
...She used to ride around there and loved it for its greenery and peace...
...What can this mean...
...Pushing away the spiders and ants, I sat at my dining table and started to go through my mail...
...By this time, I was crying so hard I could barely read anymore...
...I thought that had been reported to be a hoax, but maybe I'm wrong...
...That's David Braun...
...How could I have failed to insist that he show me that the radio really did work...
...No, I'm not torturing her," he said...
...I like this kind of work if I can make that much money...
...Maniac that I am, I completely expected the first paragraph...
...It has everything," the man said...
...Oops...
...She was so thin...
...When I saw her ten years ago, I loaned her a few dollars, or maybe a few hundred...
...My neighbor, Dotty, who was happily working as a caterer, got fired because she delivered pigs in blankets and shrimp wrapped in bacon to a kosher Bar Mitzvah...
...The agent tells the client she's sure he'll get the part...
...There's no entry for being overweight, no entry for smoking, no entry for not picking stocks that go up, no entry for not being as rich as our neighbors, no entry for not being the most successful guy in your class, no entry for not being thin...
...School starts next week...
...Tommy and I went to the Safeway to buy candy, then to the Gas-n-Go to buy lottery tickets, then back to the Safeway, and then back to the Gas-n-Go...
...I keep remembering all the times she was depressed, and I'd just talk to her for hours...
...Plus one of my absolutely favorite California public-spirited guys, Lod Cook of Arco, is here, although only for the cocktail party...
...Are you in trouble...
...That we'd all suffer forever...
...Now do you want to see me or do you want to just talk...
...I thought of you because I am headed to L.A...
...At least Colleen isn't troubled any more...
...My idea of the ideal high school girl of 1961 will always be Kay, dancing the jitterbug, "Washington-style," in the girls' gym at Montgomery Blair High School after the game with Wheaton High...
...Maybe I'll have you do it...
...She then told me, as she ate an almost obscenely large serving of sushi, that she was from Vancouver, had moved to Vegas to dance, wound up hooking there, was now hooking in Anaheim, and was trying her luck for a few days in West Hollywood...
...Kemp talked about football and about Abe Lincoln...
...Oh, happy day...
...Ten years ago, I saw her in Malibu with her two daughters, April and Colleen, every bit as lovely and haunted-looking, every bit as blonde and thin and ethereal...
...Sorry...
...And I don't feel like I ever want to go out of the house or ever talk to anyone again...
...I haven't really done much," she said...
...But he can't hear us," I said...
...Well, more than a little...
...And I'd hold her...
...Wake Shakespeare from the grave...
...I would have thought it wasn't sensible...
...This is what it comes to What to do with the ashes...
...What do you do then...
...I just worked on that house yesterday," he said...
...She was so talented and artistic...
...But what I mostly notice is that the items most Americans I know would think of as sins are not even listed in the catalogue...
...He recommended a 1978 Sea-Ray...
...This is not true...
...Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Malibu, California...
...Hallo," he said...
...That means everything...
...I put her back on the floor, thanked her, and went in to watch Tommy read his book about spiders...
...It was a drizzly, cool day with the sun occasionally peeping through onto the lake...
...Any Beach Boys song, because I think the high point of my life was dating a Beach Boy, and then 'In The Still of the Night,' because that song still gives me shivers...
...This boat's in great shape," he said...
...Please, God, even though I am very stupid, please don't let Tommy drown...
...This from the twentieth-century Gladstone, yours truly...
...Everyone had been through a rough weekend with Colleen...
...I have been depressed many times...
...Can't you and me stay up here in Idaho forever and never go to school...
...It's Peter...
...Although she never kissed me, I loved her and kept in touch over the decades...
...This is now my ideal memory...
...Oh, well...
...When I arrived, the moon was so bright over my driveway that I could have read a book right there...
...The hotel clerk tells you you're the first one to complain about the noise...
...It was pretty close to perfect...
...I don't want for you to get sick and miss school...
...I think I'm going to have her cremated and either take her ashes to the beach in Malibu or else scatter them around the Eastern Shore in Maryland...
...My daughter Colleen, who turned 21 in January, committed suicide yesterday...
...I still owe you money," she said...
...I had lunch today at a sushi place near Sunset and Crescent Heights in West Hollywood...
...No jumping in puddles, you young fool...
...Perfect and I were up here in Sandpoint, Idaho...
...That's pretty early, so I guess I can't ever do it...
...Peter kept shouting...
...For some reason, thin, pretty women in L.A...
...He won't go to sleep when he's supposed to...
...Of course, that made Tommy jump in every puddle twice...
...We headed out to Hope with Peter and his son, cliff-jumping Alex...
...Five minutes later, like an outstretched arm of God, David Braun approached us in his pontoon boat...
...I told her suicide was selfish...
...At least she's at peace now...
...Instead of seething, I called Kay to see how she was getting along...
...I think that was the last straw...
...Are you a cop...
...Then she sat on my lap and put her paws on my shoulders...
...That's a riot in Sandpoint...
...That and how you're going to take care of your kids...
...This part of the book has a densely printed three-page list of sins that we The American Spectator December 1994 They feel it every time...
...It's no one's fault...
...At that point, I decided enough was enough...
...I asked when she sat down next to me...
...How often people tell lies in the course of the day...
...This is why I love Tommy...
...I think that the last weekend of her life, he was supposed to buy her car from her and re-sell it, and then he didn't give her the money...
...I guess our religion has changed...
...The boss tells the secretary to say he's out...
...Just stay in touch," she said...
...And so, with him at the wheel, we headed out onto the lake...
...I still can't sleep thinking of girls I two-timed thirty years ago, so I guess bank-looting is out...
...Moments later, literally moments later, I heard a cry over the waves...
...Stop it," I said...
...It's truly nothing," I said...
...I really think some people are so sensitive they can't endure the problems of the everyday world...
...Neither heard us, though...
...Just talk," I said...
...I have seen ballets and modern dance, hip-hop and the Electric Slide, but what I have never seen is more fluid, electric dance expressing human longing than Kay could do on the spur of the moment, even with a bad partner...
...I loved being at the head table at the Republican fundraiser, but I would rather be working on that movie...
...Tommy, of course, was not scared at all...
...It was from a woman I'll call Kay...
...I told her again how sorry I was...
...There's no way...
...A police car came and told the kids to get back on the sidewalk...
...I passed the trucks, paraphernalia, and crew of a film being shot near Pershing Square...
...What a great summer it's been...
...He'll save us...
...I have decided to keep one here...
...He will when the wind shifts," Peter said...
...I was supposed to have lunch with my physical therapist and she cancelled, with the bland assurance that she had an emergency come up...
...That's all you think about...
...I have Colleen's ashes on my table and I look at them all day long...
...I took off all of my clothes except for my underwear...
...We talked about how to buy a bank in a small town, then how to make it buy other banks, and then how to loot it or, as the Texas saying goes, "make it bounce...
...Thou shalt not bear false witness¡ªunless something better comes up...
...While I sat, glowing at the dining table, Little Susie started sniffing around me...
...Just stay and look at the box with Colleen's ashes...
...I don't want to buy trouble...
...And a great buy...
...He's got a pontoon boat...
...Fathers don't pay attention...
...No," I said...
...We're stuck...
...Most of all, over our tuna and mashed potatoes, we wanted to see at what stage the conscience choke-point came into play and prevented any further action...
...Stop it," I said...
...The producer tells the writer that he loves the script...
...The pilot tells the passengers it's just a small problem and they'll be underway immediately...
...My pal Peter Feierabend suggested that we also try a boat yard in East Hope that sells Four Winns...
...Inside the charmed circle of misfits, but I love it...
...We'd barely sur54 The American Spectator December 1994 vived...
...No," I said...
...What a strange world we live in, where lies are standard and we revel in the rare truth...
...They were obviously fired up by their evening...
...I just don't seem to have enough time to write...
...The Jewish Day of Atonement...
...I was very scared...
...Yet another friend, who recently went into bankruptcy, is having problems paying off his credit-card debt...
...He was his usual cheery self...
...Kay had been married twice, divorced twice, with no child support, a totally unreliable husband the last time, and little in the way of earning a living except secretarial work, for which she was ill-suited by temperament...
...One girl even took off her sweatshirt to reveal her T¨Cshirt, then gigglingly put back on her sweatshirt...
...It was getting darker...
...How much do you have on you...
...That's too old...
...Then she pulled herself up to my lap...
...The kids feel it...
...That's still ahappy memory, but it does not beat the feeling I had a few weeks ago in Sandpoint with my boy...
...Please don't let Tonuny drown or Peter or Alex or me...
...The pretty girl says she has the flu and can't go on the date...
...Another pal might lose a job because the magazine she works for is in trouble financially...
...There are entries for envy and jealousy and false pride...
...She also told me she made about a thousand dollars a day...
...I told him, if you had paid child support, if she hadn't felt the fear that she always felt, she wouldn't have been so afraid...
...You're torturing her...
...I had the world's biggest crush on her...
...Thus, the injunction to fast on Yom Kippur is serious business...
...Peter," he said, "I'm glad to see you...
...called Kay this evening...
...And I want them to play two songs at my funeral...
...Then, above deck, I 56 The American Spectator December 1994 heard Peter shouting...
...Can you save us...
...She's hysterical and can't understand why this is happening to her...
...Peter, a truly great swimmer, said he did not particularly want to swim naked to shore in a cold lake...
...My God, what demons she must have known...
...There was an island and we were drifting toward it...
...So there on my table was a letter from her...
...I was scared...
Vol. 27 • December 1994 • No. 12
