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An insert card, in delicate looping script: Christmas With My Mother.
We’re back to reality, video reality. A slow glide over several framed portraits perched on bronze-and- glass end tables and then a smooth white mantle. Of a large man, variously handsome and pensive and tired, who sometimes smiles, but who sometimes can’t hide his disconcertion.
“My father died in 1997,” Carson says. “He had a heart attack leaving his office. Not a massive heart attack, his doctor said. More people survive this sized attack than die from it. But after a lingering, sad several days in the hospital, he died.
Over more home movies of the father stirring a martini shaker, at the beach in a swimsuit hoisting the mailloted Dianne over his shoulder cave man style, sleeping on a lounger with a newspaper cathedraled on his chest, bloody mary within reach.
“My father was not a religious person. Not that he articulated anything against religion. He simply had what he needed, I think, religion-wise. Although whatever that was I don’t think really helped much.
“After the ‘92 Rodney King riots, for example, my father really took to Rodney King’s admonition, ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ It was a question without any answer and he liked it that way. Part plea, part accusation. He would say ‘Why can’t we all get along?’ whenever something happened that he didn’t like in the family, at work, on the news.
“When Reginald Denny was beaten, when complete strangers descended on a man, a stranger to them, pulled him from his truck and beat on him for an abstract, unrelated reason, that was my father’s life-long catechism, suddenly revealed.”
“Yes, we’re on our way. You’ll be free? Great. My son promises it won’t take up too much time. Yes, I think he is. Very smart and charming.”
“My mother has had a different relationship with religion.”
Slight but indomitably large-headed like Nancy Reagan, brought prettiness with her into her advanced age, and if you rewind far enough, you might notice the resemblance to the gran dame we saw earlier. Minus the steel grip, chair-and-self-possession. Enormously round sunglasses nest on her translucently white-gray, still thick-haired scalp. A flowery scarf loops loosely around her neck. She’s looking at photos on a white piano.
“You were in the choir – “ Carson proffers.
“Oh I loved it. I loved singing. I loved the robes. Rising from our pew behind the minister in unison. The rest of the church was so quiet. And then we’d sing our hearts out. Mother and poppums loved it, loved seeing me up there."
Now she’s seated on a cream colored, Danish modern couch that doesn’t really give beneath her.
“When your father and I got married, it was in a church of course. Methodist. I chose it because that’s how I was raised. He didn’t really care and then I had the kids. Your brother and sister. And of course you. It really wasn’t a priority, back then. It just wasn’t. Back then, we were modern. That's what we thought. It was good to be – questioning. Anyone who wasn’t was certainly a little ... odd. Fruity, your father would say. And they were a little. Religious people then just were.”
We’re in a car, Dianne driving, winding through gently curving suburban streets with towering mini-mansions jammed into tiny hillside plots. Tight green lawns among the desert succulents. Sunny and warm, even in December.
“After my father died,” Carson narrates, “it didn’t take long for my mother’s great awakening to strike, as she calls it. She sold the house in Brentwood, sold her catering company, and bought a condominium here in Hosanna Hills.”
“Tell me about Hosanna Hills,” Carson says to his mother, driving. She answers with delicate diplomacy. Someone else – it’ll turn out to be Carson’s girlfriend Sasha – is now shooting.
“Well, as you can see, it’s a lovely place. With lovely people. We have all chosen to live here ...” she waves at a man watering an enormously spired organ pipe cactus, “... because of the affinity and love we have for one another and for the Lord.”
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| photo © Tim Ferris |
Carson would rather stick to Hosanna Hills. Over other drive-by shots of a golf-course; a football field sized, candy colored playground; a pedestrian plaza with fountain and music stand and mall, Carson says, “Hosanna Hills is what you might call an insta-town, founded fully formed on 1100 acres in the Southern Californian desert hills.
"It’s an evangelocal community. Evangelocal being the next step beyond mega-church evangelicalism. Because why stop at just one church?
"Of course they don't call it that themselves, any more. Liberal, non-believing media latched onto that term a few years back and still use it. Hosanna Hills is now just a planned Christian community.
“There are seven villages, two zip codes, nine schools including two high schools, a hospital, three libraries, 19 parks, PGA golf course, a mall, and its own graveyard: a columbarium.”
Standing inside the open arcade of the marble floored columbarium, a gurgling fountain bowl behind, Carson says to the camera, “It’s my favorite place here in Hosanna Hills. Hundreds of people who lived elsewhere in their lives wind up here for all eternity after just a couple years spent in Hosanna sunshine.
“It’s a peculiar trait of evangelocalism.”
“Look,” he points and the camera follows him. “Reindeer.” Sure enough, a small herd of wire reindeer, twined with unlit lights bowing to the green grass in the bright noonday desert sun. This bit has the feel of a homemade travel video.
“That's strange. Reindeer." She zooms in. The lens makes the reindeer shake.
"Wouldn't reindeer at Christmas be ... not allowed here?” Sasha asks from behind the camera.
Carson shrugs. The camera lingers on the reindeer.
“Maybe they’re here to scare off the condors,” she offers.
Carson smiles. “Let’s go find out,” he says.
Back in Dianne’s car again, on the Hosanna Hills tour. She turns onto the long, rising driveway of the Promontory Ministry at Hosanna Hills. It's huge, with spectacularly stained glass, gold crystal chandeliers visible from the street, and whitish concrete walls faintly yellowed, as if expertly aged and distressed. As we drive up, the camera finds an enormous nativity scene on the lawn, populated with hundreds of plastic, internally bulbed statues.
Carson’s shooting now. He says to Sasha, “That’s the nativity scene I was telling you about.”
“Wow....”
“It’s the life of Christ, from manger to mission and miracles, to bearing the cross through the streets of Jerusalem to Calvary.”
“Pretty neat, huh?” Dianne asks.
Carson finds Sasha in the back seat. “Pretty amazing,” she nods, staring out the window. “Amazing.”
“You should see it at night,” Dianne says.
“I do. I’d like to.”
Inside the foyer of the Ministry, a welcoming, open narthex with tinted windows, twenty foot hanging tapestries, chandeliers and a discreet glass counter with t-shirts, bibles and postcards, but no sales person. Glimpsed through open doors on the curved interior wall is the capacious, leather stadium-seated auditorium slash sanctuary inside.
“This is Mike Battle, Reverend Mike Battle,” Carson narrates. “Hosanna Hills is his creation and his mission.” Big Mike Battle, large hands, thinning pate but a rusty crust of hair circling lips and double chin, and a generous smile. He introduces himself to Carson and Sasha.
"Welcome!" he proclaims. "Glad you're here!"
Back in Dianne’s condominium, she sits on her sofa.
“When your father died, there was too much ... stuff. That huge house, the organizations, the country club. And my company, too. It was more than I could handle suddenly. You were all gone and of course your father hated pets. Not even a goldfish to come home to. And frankly, there was a moment when I just sat there, crying, but I decided, nope, God doesn't want me like this. He and I are just not going to accept all this. It's too much. Who am I trying to impress any more, now that Bill is gone? It's time for some simplicity.”
“I never took you for an evangelical, is all,” Carson says. She cocks her head with a frown.
“That’s a silly way to put it. If I were, why would I refuse to care how you three – what you three children are up to? An evangelical could hardly choose three riper candidates for preaching to."
“You mean me, Shannon and Humphrey.”
“Yes, that’s who I mean. Of course. The three of you could honestly do with some better guidance, but that’s really not any of my concern any more, is it? I did as much as I could, when I could. Probably not so well, but that’s it. Done.” As if feeling she’s allowed too much, she laughs at her own mischief, mimicking hipness. “Oh – well! It’s all up to you now. Mama’s done.
“Any way, to your father. When he died, it was surprising, as you probably know. I contacted Reverend Becker, you remember him – “
“ – Not really – ”
“Well, he baptized you. A fact you should be aware of and can’t change. I asked Reverend Becker to lead the funeral, even though your father wanted to go straight into a pine box. He told me once he’d rather be eaten by sharks when he was dead than be cremated. Not that he was ever in the navy. Any way, Reverend Becker did the whole thing, robes, hymns, eulogy. And – I have to tell you – that eulogy ... god, it was awful. Death, mourning, dust, tears, everyone dies, even the beasts, you can’t avoid it, the dead are victorious, the world is awful, all is vanity. I remember that: all is vanity. I went up to him afterwards, admittedly disappointed. Admittedly. But trying very hard not show it, being ticked off.”
“Really? What did you want?”
“In the eulogy? Well, my god: that my husband’s spirit will live on. That he’s sitting next to God or Jesus or golfing with the angels. I don’t know. Heavens. I mean ....” She raises a finger tucked under her nose. Mourning doesn't just stop.
“You can see, I’m getting upset again. But that's ok. Any way – to finish, please – I went up to him, thanked him, but asked, politely: Did he write the eulogy for Bill? Just for Bill? And he says, ‘It’s Ecclesiastes, with a touch of Revelations.’
“Bill – your father – wasn’t Revelations. He wasn’t Ecclesiastes. He was ... I don’t know. Dragnet. The History Channel. Mixing goddamned cocktails, I don’t know. Just not what Reverend Becker did to him, for him. A whole life spent and at the end all you get is bible verses from someone who doesn’t know you enough to give you, I don’t know, a pretty Psalm, for godsakes? There’s something especially wrong with that.”
/continued
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Next: Rockin' Christmas Eve services and reindeer explained.
"The Holly King" © CMMartin 2011
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