“I live right over those hills, you see,” said Mr. Robert, pointing, “and there isn’t one decent market, unless you count the five and dime, which is useful for things like, oh, little lace doilies, or twenty-year-old cans of evaporated milk.”
“Oh, Robert,” my mother said, laughing too loud.
“Mom, we’re gonna be late for dinner,” scolded Ali.
“Well, we do have to get back, but it’s wonderful to—”
“Now hold on, just hold on—I think I’ve got something in my car for you girls.” He turned and jogged, long legs practically boinging, back across the parking lot to a silver Mercedes, rummaging in the backseat. Then he returned carrying a rumpled brown bag. He reached inside, extracted a book, worn on the edges, entitled How to Draw Horses. “I hear you’re quite good at sketching.” He winked at me. My sister scowled.
For her, he had a brand-new eight-track of The White Album, and for my mother, a perfectly ripe avocado—her favorite food— “To prove that we do have good ones in my part of the world.” We all thanked him, even my sister, who suddenly seemed awed and speechless; he’d given her the only Beatles album she didn’t own. Then he opened all our doors.
“Why don’t we meet again, while you all are in town?” he suggested, as if we’d just finished having tea. He moved to my mother’s side of the car and handed her a small piece of paper. She shoved it in her handbag before waving goodbye.
By the time we drove back up Gram and Poppy’s driveway, the sky was turning indigo and the fog was rolling in from the bay; it rested on the distant hilltops like a sluggish snake. None of us had spoken since we left the market. Maybe it was just too hard to talk in a convertible. But my mind had been busily unraveling the implications of what had happened. Clearly, my mother had planned this meeting with Mr. Robert, but why? Why take such a risk here, at Gram and Poppy’s, of all places, when we were supposed to be sitting around the dinner table saying Sabbath prayers? Hadn’t she said she wanted to have a “nice, normal family vacation”?
We entered the house chilled and disheveled from the wind, and made our way to the dining room, where dinner was in progress. Poppy and Uncle Peter were in the midst of another argument. We heard their raised voices before we saw Poppy’s blanched knuckles gripping his knife and fork, Uncle Peter’s flaccid cheeks, the familiar vein throbbing above his left eye.
“I’m not saying he’s innocent,” Uncle Peter yelled. “I’m just saying it’s the status quo, Dad. The Democrats are just as—”
“If we’re as bad as the bloody Democrats, we sacrificed our young men for nothing!”
Only Dad looked up as we came in. Nick rolled his eyes. Sheila wasn’t at the table.
“What took you so long?” Dad whispered, but Mom didn’t answer; she just folded into the chair beside him, smoothed her napkin over her lap.
“Open your eyes, Dad!” Uncle Peter started in. “Do you really think this is the first—”
“My eyes are opened, young man,” Poppy bellowed, banging his silverware on the linen tablecloth, bits of veggie meatloaf flying from his fork. “My eyes saw soldiers in the Pacific blown to bits for this country, bowels hanging from their bellies, their goddamn heads shot off.”
“Good heavens, Avery,” Gram ventured bravely. “Do we have to—”
“Keep your mouth shut, Mama. You don’t know the first thing about it.”
“That’s no way to talk to her,” Aunt Janie tried in a minuscule voice, but we knew that Poppy would go on—there was no integrity in the world and folks no longer feared God—until the sorrow shone in his hazel eyes and he could no longer talk. I chewed my potatoes silently, secretly happy for this blessed argument that had diverted everyone’s attention from our tardy entrance; only my father seemed to have taken it in, his eyes drilling into the side of Mom’s head. I wondered how long she could keep from looking at him.
Finally, Poppy fell silent and there was no sound but the scrape of flatware on china, the men’s bovine chewing and smacking. After a while, he pushed back his chair and walked bearlike across the great room toward his bedroom, shoulders falling. I wished I could run to him, throw my arms around his neck and make him smile, as I used to.
It didn’t take Ali and me long to figure out that things were different this year. It wasn’t just that fireworks had been banned due to fire danger, or that our father and Poppy would be away fishing for the majority of our visit. We soon discovered that our cousin Sheila, who’d doted on us during past visits, was completely occupied by her new boyfriend, Phil, a sophomore at Stanford, where Sheila was heading in the fall.
Each afternoon while the men were gone, while Gram was napping, Sheila was off with her boyfriend and Nick worked on his dirt bike, Mom, Ali and I took a walk. We walked to the end of Happy Valley Road where the pavement curled around an embankment then dropped us onto a network of fire roads connecting Lafayette with Orinda.
We walked on the dirt roads in the dry heat until we saw Mr. Robert emerging through the dust like a mirage. Each day he came bearing odd gifts—two thin metal flashlights for Ali and me, a book of old cowboy poems, a bouquet of California poppies, a Perry Como eight-track for Mom. We’d greet him, then stand in the middle of nowhere, the fields around us buzzing in the midday heat, and exchange pleasantries as if we were in someone’s drawing room. He’d ask us about our family members as if he knew them: he wanted to know what Poppy was growing in his orchard, whether we were sick of veggie burgers (which Gram fed us every single day for lunch) and how would we like to get hold of some illegal fireworks? As he talked, he rubbed a fleshy hand over Mom’s sunburned forearm, or fanned his fingers across the curve of her back. Ali was mostly silent during these visits, arms crossed, eyes hidden behind sunglasses, flip-flop-clad feet kicking the dust, though she did perk up when Mr. Robert mentioned his teenage son, Randy.
After a while, Mr. Robert would begin walking us back. The first day, he walked us to where the asphalt took up. The next, he came up Happy Valley Road. The third day, he walked us all the way to the mouth of Gram and Poppy’s driveway, my mother’s hand swinging high in his. For a moment, I wondered if he was planning to escort us right up Orchard Hill, and my insides knotted. How would we explain him to Gram? But he stopped abruptly at the bottom of the hill, as if he’d smacked into an invisible wall. Then he blew us all kisses before turning and jogging back into the dust.
When we got back to the house that afternoon, I found Nick in Poppy’s garage, as usual, stretched out on the cool concrete, working on his dirt bike. I sat down on an orange crate to watch.
“Gotten hold of any illegal fireworks?” I asked.
“No, why? You got a connection or something?” He lay on his side, choosing lovingly from a metal box of tools.
“Maybe.”
“That’d be cool, baby face.”
I smiled at his bare brown strip of belly, the sandy blond hair falling over one eye. Ever since I’d been old enough to say his name, I’d adored Nick. I loved his grease-blackened fingernails and naughty smile, loved playing war with him in the forbidden bomb shelter. Most of all, I loved riding on Nick’s dirt bike. Speeding up the fire roads—my cheek pressed to my cousin’s back, head full of hot rumble and exhaust, the dry grasses ruffling by like water—was the closest I’d yet come to any of my dreams.
The summer I turned seven, Gram had broken it to me that girls didn’t own dirt bikes, that it wasn’t a proper pastime for young ladies. I wasn’t too distressed by this news because, that summer, I secretly believed I was turning into a boy. It had started in the car, during our trip back from Chicago; staring at my bare, sunburned feet, I’d noticed golden hairs sprouting on the knuckles of my big toes. I took this as a sign—proof that Jesus was answering my prayer and making me a boy like Nick. Soon I’d have freckled boy cheeks, dirty boy toenails, a shock of blond boy hair falling over one eye. Then I’d be able to come and go as I pleased, riding a horse or a dirt bike along the miles of fire roads surrounding my gran
dparents’ house, without anyone telling me to come in, wash up, set the table for dinner. I imagined the transformation would happen slowly, perhaps over months; this way it would be less of a shock for my mother. My father, on the other hand, would be pleased as punch. We all knew that his daughters were sore disappointments. Especially me, since after me there were no more chances. During the last month of my mother’s pregnancy, she suffered a uterine prolapse that required a C-section and hysterectomy. When my metamorphosis was complete, my father would throw his arm around my sinewy boy shoulders, ruffle my sandy boy hair and peer into my face like I mattered.
“Can you hand me that wrench in the corner, baby face?” Nick said, bringing me back. He rarely spoke during these sessions, but seemed to make room for me. There was a mute appreciation between us as he worked, as I handed him the right tool, or brought him a fresh Dr. Pepper from the fridge. It was like being in church—Nick’s greasy, lovely church full of squeaky song, tin angels, gasoline that could go up in a breath if you struck a match just so. The air was thick with reverence.
Two days earlier, I’d been at another kind of church with Mom, Gram and Alison. We’d fanned our faces with the yellow bulletins in the stifling sanctuary, hearing about the New Earth that God would prepare for the righteous, once the old, sinful one had been burned to stubble and ash—scorched by wrathful fire for a thousand years. I wondered how God could have gotten angry enough to destroy every single thing He’d made—even the California hills that shimmered gold across the valley.
I asked my mother and grandmother about this on the way home from church that morning. I asked them if God would destroy even the dearest things—the scrub oaks, wild poppies and the does that leaped my grandfather’s gates at dusk.
“Yep. Everything that burns,” Gram confirmed.
“But why?” I wondered. “Why is God so angry?”
“He’s had to put up with a lot of sinful baloney over the ages, hon,” Gram said. “He’s had to see just about every rotten thing men have done since the beginning of time. I guess that’s enough to make anybody pretty darn mad.” She said it as if she was the mad one, grasping the steering wheel with her knotty hands.
“What about women?” Ali drawled, staring out the side window. “Haven’t they sinned, as well? Haven’t they lied and cheated?” I glimpsed my mother’s stony profile.
“Why, sure,” Gram said as we began the steep ascent up the driveway. “Women do their share of sinning. But it’s the men as are always starting the wars, isn’t it? It’s them that can’t seem to help slaughtering each other.” We pulled into the carport, made our way to the kitchen, past Nick working in the garage.
“How come the men never do any housework?” I asked as the four of us busied ourselves with preparations for the midday meal. “And how come they get to go fishing and play while we go to Sabbath School?”
“Ha! I don’t believe Poppy’s been in church since your mom and daddy were married,” said Gram, handing Ali the green linen place mats. “He believes he’s got a personal arrangement worked out with God. Isn’t that typical of a man?”
“Not all men are the same,” said Mom, pouring milk into short glasses. “Some are less obnoxious than others.”
“Yes, well, obnoxious or not, it’s our job to stand by them,” declared Gram. “Little Janie doesn’t stand by Peter, and if you ask me, that’s why their marriage is faltering.”
“What do you mean, faltering?” asked Ali.
“I’ll be surprised if they make it a year,” announced Gram. “You mark my words.” She placed her hands on my mother’s shoulders, peering up into her face. “Poppy won’t take it well, if there’s a divorce. He won’t take kindly to it.”
My mother tried to move away, but Gram’s birdlike hold on her shoulders seemed to tighten. “I can see what’s going on, Elaine,” she said, over-enunciating. “It’s about young women not taking their God-given roles to heart. You hear me?”
“Please, Mom.” Elaine squirmed her off. “The onions are burning.”
July third came and went and still Dad and Poppy hadn’t come back. I overheard Mom talking on the phone the morning of the Fourth as Gram and I shucked corn on the front patio.
“Yes, well, I know it’s important to get a good catch, but—I know, Don. I know how he is, but you were due back yesterday.”
Pause.
“No, we’re fine. Just be home for the fireworks or—” She frowned. “Oh, right. I keep forgetting. Well, be back for dinner, then. It’s not like we’ve had a family vacation anyway. Not that we ever do.”
Pause.
“Well, I’m here, aren’t I? I’m still here.”
An hour or two later, while Gram was napping, my mother retrieved me from the hammock where I was working in my new sketchbook.
“Come on with me, angel,” she said. “I’ll need your help.”
“Where’s Ali?”
“She’s over at Sheila’s. Apparently, the boyfriend has gone to see family today.”
We walked down the hill, same as always, only this time we didn’t even have to venture onto the road before we saw him. He stood just beyond the gate, wearing denim shorts and a red-and-white striped polo shirt. He had two cardboard boxes beside him, sealed with duct tape, the words danger and flammable written in red letters across their sides.
“I can’t stay,” he said. “But I wanted you girls to have some fun.”
“Oh, Robert. Where did you get them?”
“Insubordinate teenagers are sometimes useful.” He smiled.
“What about the law?” I asked. “What if we get caught?”
“Laws, my little twerp, are for people who lack common sense.” He winked, but I continued to gawk, waiting for a better explanation. “If we all just took responsibility for our own actions, we wouldn’t need politicians telling us what to do. Isn’t that right, Elaine?”
“Ah, I see. Are you taking responsibility for your actions?” she asked him. “Is that what you’re doing today?”
“That’s why I need to get back, isn’t it?”
I wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but knew better than to ask. I examined the boxes, trying to get a glimpse of the contraband.
“Well, get going, then,” Mom finally said, bending over to hoist one of the boxes. “We wouldn’t want to keep them waiting.” She motioned for me to get the other box, then turned her back on him, trudging up the hill. “Come on, Sylvie,” she said. “There’s work to do.”
“What will we say?” I picked up the second box and followed. “About the fireworks?”
“Just say we got them from a neighbor,” she suggested. “Say there was some guy peddling them on Happy Valley Road. After all, it’s not that far from the truth.”
When they arrived at dusk, ice chests bursting with trout, neither my father nor Poppy protested the illicit fireworks as I thought they would. They were sunbaked and smiling, full of bluster about their fishing success. I watched my father lean down to kiss Mom on the cheek as she set card tables on the patio. She paused, then handed him the rest of the silverware and smacked him solidly on the bottom. Uncle Peter took his turn cranking ice cream while Poppy fired up the grill and a few minutes later, Aunt Janie and Sheila arrived wearing white eyelet sundresses, carrying platters of fruit. My father even offered to get out the croquet set.
It was, for those few hours before sunset, just like the old days—Ali and Sheila giggling on the plastic glider while Nick and I set up fireworks on the huge front lawn. Poppy played a few tunes on his harmonica, and Uncle Peter sang badly after too many glasses of wine. Nick offered to let me light some fireworks, and I followed his instructions to the tee, even pulling off, on my last attempt, a stunning sideways roll in the grass that landed me next to my father’s knee.
“Come ’ere, sweet pea,” he said, using the name he usually reserved for Ali. “Come sit with your old man and pretend you’re still my baby.”
It was strange and good to lean agai
nst his ribs, feeling the brittle thump of his heart, hearing his familiar nasal laugh echo inside him.
As I relaxed more into our comfortable slump, Uncle Peter asked Nick where we’d gotten the fireworks. My heart skidded, and before Mom or I could speak, Nick was explaining that we’d got them from an old friend of Auntie Elaine’s.
“Some guy she used to know lives around here, I guess,” he said. “Least, that’s what Sylvie said.” My father’s torso went rigid behind me.
“Really, now?” slurred Uncle Peter. “An old boyfriend of yours, Elaine?”
“Oh, sure,” Mom answered, examining her toenail polish. “Like I’ve got time for cavorting around with old boyfriends.” She laughed, then got up stiffly and made her way toward the kitchen. My father pushed me off his lap, set his ice cream on the lawn and stood stretching for a minute before going in after her. My insides went soupy, like the ice cream sloshing in his bowl. Ali dropped her face into her hands as I crossed my legs, trying to enjoy the rest of the fireworks, but this proved impossible, as Nick was getting reckless—lighting three or four fireworks at a time, coming dangerously close to catching himself on fire.
“All right, now, son. Take it easy—party’s over,” Poppy snapped as thin shards of my parents’ argument pierced the screens.
“What’s all the damn fuss?” said Poppy as, one by one, Janie and Sheila and Peter stood to leave, brushing off grass clippings. “What the hell is wrong with everyone?”
I glared at Nick, hating him for ruining everything.
But it was my fault, clearly, for forgetting the onerous obligations of secret-keeper. I knew this as Ali and I lay in our twin beds that night, listening to our parents’ heated voices ricocheting down the hall… Don’t tell me about respect… If you think I’m going to sit by while you make an ass… What do you care when you weren’t even here all week…?
Outside the Ordinary World Page 8
