Irene Hervey

            On Saturday morning I continued to edit the chord positions for “Glass securit” by Serge Gainsbourg in my Christian’s Translations blog. I should have it published on Sunday and then I’ll start learning the penultimate Gainsbourg song on the 1987 list. 

            I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the third session of four. It was still going out of tune a lot. I didn’t have the chance to change the G string on Friday but I should be able to do it tonight. 

            BMO online banking has been down since at least Friday and so I haven’t been able to pay my rent. 

            I weighed 86.4 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning in ten days.

            Around midday I went to Freedom Mobile to pay for my February phone plan. Then I walked to Vina Pharmacy to renew my Betaderm prescription. The druggist said it would be ready in ten minutes. I told her I’d pick it up next Saturday and she was surprised. She asked, “You don’t want to wait ten minutes?” I answered, “No I don’t”. That’s a lifetime for three quarters of the living things on Earth. 

            I went to No Frills where I bought five bags of grapes, a pint of blueberries, bananas, a pack of two artisan naan, three jars of Basilica sauce, a jar of mango-lime salsa, a jug of orange juice, and two containers of skyr. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos before lunch. I had Triscuits with five-year-old cheddar and a glass of lemonade. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            When I got home BMO banking was still down. I tried calling them but it’s too complicated by phone with all the numbers I have to punch. I went directly to the BMO website and discovered that I could access my account after all and that it was the link I’ve been using for years that had died. But the message I’d received was deceptive because it said they were working on the problem. I made a new link and paid my rent. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos at 17:45. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 19:04. 

            I changed the G string on my Martin. It took me half an hour. 

            I started reading the essay “Monuments, Unreal Spaces and National Forgetting” and got a quarter of the way through before dinner. It’s an analysis of The Buried Giant and what it symbolizes about how entire societies are compelled to forget the atrocities of war in order to maintain peace. A spell was placed on a dragon’s breath so that it would generate a mist of forgetting. It immediately made me think of our selective memories of WWII. If we think of the collective consciousness of all of the combatants that participated in that war we can analogize that collective as a dragon. Remembrance Day in commemoration of the fallen fragments of that dragon at the same time generates a periodic breath of forgetting other things about the wars such as the death of 50 million non combatants, which is two for every fallen soldier; and also the estimation that 900,000 German women were raped by the “heroic” Allies during the war.

            I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 1, episode 19 of Burke’s Law. 

            In a car being stacked in a junk yard a young woman’s body is found. She was shot twice somewhere else and taken to the junk yard. Tim’s mother has flown in from San Francisco for a visit and she wants to meet the Captain Burke that her son is always talking about. While they are all chatting in Burke’s office the report on the dead body comes. She had callouses on her feet and mustard under her fingernails. Burke says that’s nothing that can identify her. Tim’s mother embarrasses Burke by showing him up and saying that the woman would have to have been a waitress. Then Burke’s chauffeur Henry comes in and confirms that. He recognizes the woman as a car hop in a drive-in restaurant on Fairfax. Burke and Tim go to the drive-in where they meet Clarissa the hostess and go to talk with Hatton, the manager. He identifies the picture of the body as April, one of his employees. He gives him April’s address where she lived with six of the other car hops. He says a lot of male customers came specifically for the car hops and made dates with them. He says Clarissa is April’s cousin and gives her address as well. The place April lived is a big house with a pool in the back. April had several thousand dollars in the bank. Burke calls Sgt Ames and tells her to go undercover and get a job as a car hop at the drive-in. He says to get the license plate number of anyone who asks for April. Burke goes to see Clarissa and she lives all by herself in an even bigger house with a French maid. Clarissa says at the time of the murder she spent the weekend in San Francisco and drove up there and back. Burke says if that’s true then he knows she didn’t kill April. Ames reports that a psychiatrist named Dr. Bing asked about April. Burke goes to talk with Bing who says he was asking about April because her brother Richard is one of his patients. April had made Richard stop seeing him. Clarissa is also his patient. Ames reports that Red Decker the hockey player was asking about April and nearly had a fit when he couldn’t find her. Tim and Les go to see Red Decker at a hockey game. After denying that he knows April, Red finally admits that he met her and started dating her in Montreal where she was from. Later Red gets caught trying to steal the team doctor’s bag. He’s arrested, jailed but then gets out on bail. Burke and Tim go to Red’s home where they discover that Red’s wife Helen is a heroin addict and that she was an opera singer. They learn that April was a heroin dealer selling the stuff disguised in sugar packets. Burke and Tim go back to April’s place and catch Hatton going through her drawers. He says April was a boss and they were planning on selling enough junk to buy their own restaurant. They would drive down to Tijuana every two weeks to make a score. But on the last trip he went alone and that was the night April was killed. Burke takes Clarissa out to dinner. She says April wanted to be a dancer but on a skiing trip she sprained her ankle. Clarissa and Richard went for help but when they came back April’s feet were frozen and she couldn’t dance anymore. Tim and his mother arrive at the same restaurant and see Burke and Clarissa leaving. She recognizes Clarissa from her plane trip from San Francisco. Tim calls to tell Burke. Burke takes Clarissa home where Richard is playing piano. Burke sees one of the heroin packets and learns that Richard is an addict. Burke says that Richard killed his sister but Clarissa says he didn’t. Then Burke says he knows Clarrisa is the murderer because she didn’t drive to and from Frisco but took a plane. Clarissa says she killed April because she had a sick urge to destroy the artistic dreams of others. Because she couldn’t dance anymore April didn’t want her brother to play piano or for Mrs. Decker to sing and so she made them both addicts. 

            Tim’s mother was played by Irene Hervey, who studied at the MGM School of Acting and was signed as a contract player in 1933. She co-starred in The Girl Said No, San Francisco Docks, Frisco Lil, Bombay Clipper, Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, Hard Rock Harrington, The House of Fear, and Say It In French. She co-starred in the film serial Gang Busters. On television she played Aunt Meg on the Burke’s Law spin-off Honey West. She was nominated for an Emmy for her guest starring performance on My Three Sons. After retiring from acting she worked as a travel agent.