Capturing Beauty

by

John Presco

Rosemary’s Baby Daughter

Yesterday, I made an attempt to communicate with my little sister who is stuck in a giant monolith in the Mojave Desert. It is a place the elderly and infirmed go to die. After two phone transfers, I hear a muffled woman’s voice. She is mumbling. My heart is racing! Am I talking to my baby sister, who my niece described as near brain-dead?

“Who are you? Is Vicki Presco there?”

“Vicki is up in her room. She may not be able to come down and talk to you!”

“She can walk?”

“Yeah, she can walk, alright. She has a tendency to wander! She’s afraid of her fellow patients in the rec room where the phone is.”

“There’s no phone in her room!?”

As a writer, I admire loaded answers from non-authors, that say so much. I own a picture of ‘Wandering Vicki’ who has to be given a extra dose of meds, or, she will be on a vision quest with the coyotes. But, she can’t get by the ghosts in the rec room, that remind her of the dream our niece Shannon had, where she saw the Family Mascot in purgatory. Of course there are no phones in the rooms of the rebels who don’t want to be there, and want to call up their SOB son for putting them there.

Not able to get the full picture of what was going on, my niece offered to come get me and drive me to Sunridge to see for myself. Mind you the executor of Cristine’s estate assigned a ‘Caretaker’ to handle us and our affairs, with disastrous results.

Here are the sane questions my first flame helped me with last night.

Here is the reply I got this morning. I reply to that reply, and…..it’s over! My relationship with my beloved lsister, is no more. The manager says she is “sorry” but it is not a courteous “sorry” but a fuck-you sorry from their attorney. Well, fuck you too! There is no consideration of my feelings. For this reason I make Vicki the McGuffin of my story. I will attempt to describe the utter grief I felt when I beheld the Coo-Coo Ark. I saw the trapped souls out on their balcony. They say some swimmers made it to shore from Alcatraz.  I never saw my sister as a prisoner.

“How in the fuck did you end up here? This can’t be your fate!”

“Hi John,

I am so sorry but I can’t answer any of your questions unless you have power of attorney.” 

https://rosamondpress.com/2018/08/19/mary-morton-rosemond-of-iowa-2/

“Man the bus! We drive to Bullhead City at dusk! This does not augur well!”

Vicki was with Keith when he took Sue Villiani out of Camarillo State Hospital. Sue had been Christine’s good friend. Her parents put her in the coo-coo’s nest against her will. I saw an attorney after Mark Presco drove me there, and, they would not let me see her. Rosemary told her three oldest children she had scholarship to the Funny Farm that can be seen in Rosemary’s home movie. She had befriended a doctor who wanted a star patient. When alas I learned of Vicki’s condition, I thought about Vicki’s mother. She would say this is the worst thing that ever happened to her, and, then add Vicki. Nothing bad was ever supposed to happen to her.

https://rosamondpress.com/2015/06/06/rosemary-rosamond-rides-again-2/

Victoria Mary Presco is the youngest of the four children Rosemary Presco gave birth to. There was a fight over Vicki as long as I can remember. I have erased many of my childhood memories because of the fighting scenes like the one below. Our father, Victor Presco, told me Rosemary had turned Mark, Christine, and myself, against him at an early age, and, thus he formed a close bond with Vicki. You see, Captain Victim was a victim of Rosemary’s propaganda, thus he never tried to form a close bond with Vicki’s siblings after the divorce. Vicky was his namesake. Vic was a big believer in propaganda. He served in the Merchant Marines and knew all there was to know about war and the military. His pretty young secretaries who worked in his Loan Shark business in his home, called my father  “Vic the Nazi” because during the break for lunch, he would put on one of his Nazi Germany videos and explain how Germany could have won the war.

Vicki joined the Navy to hide from her insane second husband, Ken Prather, who was trying to murder my sister. He had knife wounds all over his body. At our family reunion in Bullhead City, my surviving sister tried to explain why she wasn’t as fucked-up and coo-coo like her siblings due to Vic and Rosemary’s battle royal.

“You guys protected me, insulated me from the terrible fighting.”

This is partly correct. The truth is, both our parents told our baby sister she was not like us. Indeed, she was a very special child who must beware of what we say about Vic and Rosemary, who are the sane ones. The eldest Presco Children are Little Propagandist who have our own agenda. We want to be free from parental rule so we can be naughty. Vicki was the ‘Good Child’. Vicki was the ‘Loyal Child’. Vicki would never betray Mr. and Mrs’ Presco, especially after they got divorced. Captain Vic never came for the naughty ones to take them to Roseville to see Grandma Melba. That’s her standing between my parents. Guess who’s side she is on. Guess who she is protecting? Melba married a professional gambler who gambled in the Barbary Coast.

The Mayor of SF attended Victor Hugo Presco’s funeral. His son was supposed to buy a headstone. But, I suspect he dumped my grandfather off the Carquinez bridge just before dawn after wrapping Hugo in some rusty old chains. He then went on a three day binge with the money his father’s friends collected in a hat.

“Are you catching this, Joe? Look at the look the She-Witch is giving my son! Rosemary s the destroyer of family unity. We would all get along if it were not for her!”

When I was seventeen I did a large canvas of the mudflats with large raindrops falling.  I had done a painting when I was thirteen that had the Tears of God raining down. Vicki will make you cry from that place that lie between life…..and death. There will be tears, and God’s pain. There will be several loud claps of thunder, loud enough to wake the dead. The Coo-Coo Ark……..will be raised up!