Mary Elizabeth Leach Raines

Mary Elizabeth Leach Raines
The Laughing Cherub

6.25.2010

LUST IN THE LEMON ORCHARD - The Obituary that Should Have Been

LUST IN THE LEMON ORCHARD:
The Obituary that Should Have Been
by Mary Elizabeth (Leach) Raines



On January 15, Aaron B__  passed away at his home in Santa Monica, California following a long battle with cancer. He was 79.

I found this online. It was the obituary of my longtime friend, Aaron. I was sad to see that he had died, and I was appalled that these bleak words wound up being the final summation of his life.

Anyone reading such an obituary would form a picture of someone exceedingly dull and, well, gray: an elderly man, wrinkled, decrepit, seriously ill, declining helplessly into nonbeing, the victim of a malignant disease. As I looked at the words on my computer screen, I wanted to scream, “No! That’s not who he was!”

When I think of Aaron, I don’t see any gray, except for a few scrumptious silvery strands in his thick, dark hair. No, I see vivid splashes of intense color! And exclamation points! The sparkling blue of the Pacific ocean! The cop-magnet red of Aaron’s cushy Mercedes!! The brilliant yellow of ripe lemons hanging from trees with glossy green leaves!!! Even white came alive when Aaron entered the picture. Envision, if you will, the seductive white of rock salt glistening on the rim of a foamy margarita…!!!!

The first time I noticed him, I thought Aaron was the coolest guy I’d ever seen. We met at a writer’s conference in Santa Barbara, California. It was the 70s. I was 28 years old.

I’d published a few short stories, and was excited about becoming a Real Writer. When I saw the conference advertised in the back of a magazine called The Saturday Review, I decided to drive the 3,000 miles to California in my Plymouth Barracuda. I’d never been to the West Coast before. It was my first time driving cross-country all on my own.

Aaron was a smooth talker, aloof, oozing more confidence than anyone I’d ever met. His garb was what cool guys who had money wore in the 1970s: aviator sunglasses, an expensive black leather jacket, and a shirt that opened part-way down his chest. He had a style of sitting and walking—his lean, strong body just a little hunched over as though he were constantly poised for that most intimate of embraces—which broadcast to any woman bothering to take notice that he was a good lover. And the women noticed. At least this one did. To seal the deal, I was sure that a man like him would never look at someone like me, which made him even more desirable.

Aaron was nearly fifty when I met him, and he was good-looking. After we became friends, he admitted nonchalantly that he had paid a lot of money for his good looks. Genes had given him a long hooked nose and no chin. His appearance was simply one more thing in life to master, and he mastered it magnificently by hiring the best plastic surgeon he could find, years before such surgeries became commonplace. That’s just the way he was.

Even without Aaron’s presence, this Writer’s Conference hosted a pretty spectacular group, unequalled before or since. Ray Bradbury, the famous science fiction writer, was there. So were Charles Schultz, (the man who wrote the comic strip Peanuts), Joan Didion, Ross MacDonald, Maya Angelou, Alan Pakula (who was writing All the President’s Men for Robert Redford), Eudora Welty, and Alex Haley (author of Roots). Eva Marie Saint, the famous actress, showed up. I went to a party with academy-award-winning author Budd Schulberg, who had written On the Waterfront (he was married and forlorn, and there was no hanky panky; he simply walked me to the party and we sat mutely next to one another with our drinks on the edge of someone's bed...but hey! It was Budd Schulberg!), and one night I had a wonderful sexy argument over dinner with best-selling author Gay Talese about whether women would ever pay for male hookers the way men pay for female hookers. (I argued that yes, women would. Talese said no, they wouldn’t. He was right. But I was young.)

Alongside all these greats, in my view Aaron was by far the choicest man at the conference. Of course, he was completely out of my league, or so I thought. Aaron revealed to me later that he’d had his eye on me from the beginning.

I guess I was pretty enough at the time, even though I didn’t know it, with reddish-gold hair (the color it really is now I won’t say), fresh full cheeks (still have those damn cheeks), a lusty heart (yup, still there), and the delicious, nubile body of a 28-year-old (nope). That week I wore the low-cut polyester sundresses that were all the fashion rage, and flirted with abandon, and drank far too much liquor, and also chain-smoked, because everybody chain-smoked in those days. It was all a ruse, of course, for in truth, I was dreadfully naïve.


An enthusiastic conference-goer, I always sat dead-center in the front row when the authors spoke. Once while in my usual seat awaiting the entrance of a speaker, feeling ultra-chic as I held a cigarette in one hand and a plastic cup of rosé wine in the other, an older woman came up to me and whispered, “Honey, your boob is out.” I looked at her quizzically. “Your boob’s hanging out,” she repeated in a slightly more vicious tone of voice. “Did you want it like that?”

I looked down, and sure enough, I’d pulled a massive Janet Jackson! My right breast had somehow tumbled out of my dress and lay exposed, a little bare apple, for the whole world to see. I was embarrassed and quickly tucked it back into my sundress. Throughout the rest of the conference, I kept looking down at my chest and rearranging my halter straps compulsively like someone with a weird tic.

Aaron entered the picture one night when some of us attending the conference met in a cottage to read aloud to one another from our work. Aaron read a piece he was working on. It was graphically violent, but well-written. The other women cringed squeamishly. I liked it, and said so. Then I read something of mine. It was kind of sexy. Aaron took notice. But then, he noticed everything. Perhaps, even, my moment of exposure.

A few days later, he casually invited me to go for a ride in his red Mercedes. He drove me to a posh restaurant overlooking the ocean, where he bought me my very first margarita. Being with Aaron made me feel sophisticated. I loved the leather seats of his Mercedes. I loved looking out over the Pacific. I loved sitting next to this handsome, intelligent older man. I loved the taste of the rock salt on the rim of my margarita glass. I loved the taste of my margarita!


Aaron and I did a lot of glancing back and forth, and something was building between us, but we didn’t touch…not yet. Not until he drove me to the lemon orchard.

It was a day of firsts: my first ride in a Mercedes, my first margarita, my first elegant restaurant, and now my first lemon orchard. I’d never even seen a lemon tree before, much less an entire orchard of them! Aaron drove the car over a rutted dirt road and only stopped when we were deep inside the rows of lemon trees.

When we got out of the car, it was whisper silent, more still than just about anyplace I have ever been. Neither Aaron nor I said a word. Instead of speaking, he looked into my eyes and slowly walked to the nearest tree. He reached up and twisted a lemon off a low-hanging branch. Not taking his eyes from mine, moving closer, he plunged both thumbs into the lemon and ripped it in two. I don’t know how someone can rip a lemon in two and make it seductive, but it was the most sensual thing I’ve ever seen anyone do. Aaron handed me half, and then slowly bit into his part of the lemon, sucking the tangy juices, eyes still locked on mine.

Finally, neither of us could stand it a moment longer. I will not write about what happened next, because this is a PG-rated blog….

Our lust for one another was short-lived, but we remained good and dear friends for the rest of our lives.

Aaron, of course, did a lot more than seduce me in a lemon orchard, like: write two books, start his own extremely successful hamburger chain, get rich as a stock broker and financial consultant, act in two movies, produce movies, open an upscale restaurant, and schmooze with famous film stars. He was an outstanding artist, a gourmet cook, and a cultured man. He had a tender gift for working with plants. He was a veteran who’d served in the Korean War. He “pumped iron.”

He did not always succeed. He once laughingly told me how he had been approached by some guys to invest in their film script. Despite his own proclivity for what some would call graphic violence, he turned them away because their script contained massive profanity and violence with almost no plot; it was later produced as a movie called Rambo.

Even with his occasional failures, he grew wealthy. Then he hit rock bottom as an alcoholic and drug addict, spent four years in prison for some complex financial fraud, and, humbled and sober, proceeded to climb his way back up again.

No matter what befell him, Aaron’s manner was polished and gentle...and incessantly cool, of course! He was one of the most accomplished men I’ve ever known, and whatever he touched glowed with color. And exclamation points!
In spite of his many life adventures, Aaron never forgot our orchard escapade. He continuously, joyously loved to remind me of that time. I never forgot, either.

Here is the way his obituary should have read:
Aaron ___, a man who could wordlessly seduce a woman by ripping a lemon in two with his bare hands, died today, and the colors of the world may never be quite as vibrant and bright again.

(c) 2010, Mary Elizabeth Raines


Look for Mary Elizabeth Raines' novels and stories on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Eating.../dp/0972614656