Outside the Ordinary World

by Dori Ostermiller

  He looked up then, smiled his broken, cynical smile—not at all like his father’s. “I like it when you use profanity, Ms. Sandon. It inspires me.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe I’ll swear some more if you finish the assignment, okay? Just hang in there.” But he didn’t hang in; twenty minutes into class, he got up and left, tossing his crumpled papers in the wastebasket.

  I forced myself not to follow, tried instead to focus on the other students—there were seven left, and they all needed my help. “Watercolor is deceptively difficult,” I kept saying. “You have to let go of your expectations.” I paced the studio, my feet smarting in decades-old cowboy boots. I had a sudden, bizarre impulse to rush home and scour my closet. I pictured fifteen years’ worth of shoes and jackets and tights heaved onto the center of the unmade bed.

  “So just let’s get a wash today, guys. Just get this first step done.” I circulated among my remaining students, trying to stay focused, but my eyes kept darting to the doorway, wondering if he’d come back, wishing I could help.

  Sometimes you just have to do what’s needed, regardless of what you’re feeling, I mused as they filed out the door an hour later. I couldn’t believe my mother had given me advice that resonated, but there it was. I called home to check on the girls.

  “Can you grab a pizza or something?” Nathan’s voice splintered with exhaustion. “I can’t deal with dinner prep tonight.” We’d been clipped and guarded with each other since the argument, each keeping track of our own contributions, each watching the clock. It always came down to time, and who was doing more, or working harder, or getting a sliver of need met once in an age. When did life get so flat? How did people remain alive to one another?

  The pizza would be twenty minutes, so I decided to do some work of my own: inhaling, I sat down at my easel, took out a clean sheet and began. But the colors were all wrong today, the grays too muddy, the bristles stiff in the joints. The tendons in my hands ached like an old injury, and I had the wrong kind of mind—I knew it. The kind of mind where nothing was enough. Unscrewing a tube of cerulean blue, I flashed on the early days: Sundays, Nathan and I used to walk the dirt road behind our house and climb the railroad bridge by the fairgrounds, where we’d watch the parachutes come down. We’d sit side by side, listening for the high drone of the airplane, poised for that perfect moment of silence as the engine was cut, our eyes scanning the atmosphere. It was a contest: who’d be first to glimpse the small, bright specks—three, four, five of them piercing the cloud cover, falling weightless as paper clips toward the earth’s magnetic swell? He always grabbed my knee when he spotted them and I’d stop breathing; I could practically feel the wind pulling their cheek muscles taut. Then, the whoosh, whoosh, as one after another parachute opened, tugging the divers temporarily heavenward, buoying them in the clear July sunshine so that for a moment, it must have felt as though they would never descend.

  Sighing, I dabbed at my watery mistakes with a sponge, wiped off my palette knife, tried again to get the shade right.

  And then suddenly he was beside me, his breath alighting on the ridge of my ear like a soft, treacherous moth.

  “Roses aren’t native to New England,” he whispered, “they’re transplants, like us.”

  Even without looking, even after all these weeks, I’d have recognized that particular dark flavor of sage and garden dirt and smoke. “Don’t stop working,” he said, reaching to tug a stray curl from my eyes, tucking it behind one ear. “I want to watch you for a while.”

  I can barely remember what we talked about that evening, leaning on our elbows at the worktable, fingertips brushing across the metal expanse, my heart resounding in my ears. I think we spoke of gardening—my late-blooming roses and acidic soil, how to add peat and work in compost. I’m sure we talked about Eli, how he’d stormed out, how he’d been storming out of classrooms and kitchens and therapists’ offices since his parents’ divorce. Tai spoke of his ex-wife, who suffered from agoraphobia, how it started with bridges and Chinese restaurants. I thought of Nathan, who had done nothing, not really, to deserve my disloyalty, whose most egregious crime was that of working too hard, too long, for our mutual dreams and in the grind of it, somehow losing the original joy.

  I don’t remember the exact words we spoke in those forty-five minutes before I picked up the black-olive pizza, went home to my family; just that his lips fanned out inside the oval of his beard, broad and lonely, and it reminded me of the Northern California coast for some reason—a kind of beauty shot through with loss. His eyes were clear and creased, as if they’d taken in the world and found it dire, and funny. A scar hovered beneath his left eyebrow. I ran my index finger over that pale ridge and saw him shiver as something passed through him. I wanted to place my finger, just so, on the very thing that moved me—was it the sensual mouth? The strange, ocher-rimmed pupils? That crazy smile with its shadow of ruin?

  I can’t recall what we said as we parted, after our second devastating embrace, but something had shifted. He didn’t kiss me in the darkened studio, or later, in the empty parking lot, and I wondered why, and wished for it all the more.

  One always has a choice, my mother had said, and I believed her. Why, then, did it feel like a passage had opened and I’d not walked, but fallen through?

  1974

  THERESA CHAPMAN’S HOUSE WAS NESTLED IN A CLUMP of eucalyptus on three acres at the top of La Loma Way, about a ten-minute walk from our house. So many pale pink oleanders grew in front that I missed the house the first time I came, and might have walked on by if I hadn’t heard the barking. Theresa’s mother was a potter who also took care of her war-damaged son and bred border collies. There were other animals, too; a palomino mare grazed in a triangular pasture, unfazed by the dog racket, and up the hill, three pygmy goats stood like statues on a mound of stone. In the months to come, this place would become my sanctuary.

  I thought Theresa the luckiest girl in Orange County. Dad had never allowed us to have pets, aside from one diabetic hamster and a tank of lethargic goldfish. Mom said it was because of the dogs: when Don was just a boy in Nebraska, his own father, in a fit of drunken rage, had taken all the family dogs behind the barn and shot them in the head, one by one. Apparently Dad was unable to speak for six months following this incident. Even after he regained his voice, he never forgave his father.

  I was standing at Theresa’s front door, trying to decide whether to knock or ring the bell, when a small, muscular woman came around the side carrying a bucket. Her hair was gathered in a loose ponytail, and she wore rubber boots and Bermuda shorts beneath a soiled purple tee. She held up a gloved hand, motioning for me to come around back. I knew from the amber eyes and freckled skin that she was Theresa’s mom.

  “Theresa said it was okay if I came.” I followed her across a patio cluttered with clay pots.

  “She’s up in the barn.” She pointed toward a brick path, swiping at a smudge along her cheekbone. She was pretty, in an unkempt sort of way. My own mother wouldn’t have been caught dead in such a getup.

  Since my father had gone away, she’d taken some modeling jobs for a few local boutiques, and her wardrobe had expanded to include metallic gold tube tops, hip-hugger shorts and a scary assortment of wigs. Two Sundays ago, I’d discovered a redhead flipping the avocado omelets, and just this morning she’d been wearing white gaucho pants and a green paisley halter, her bobbed-and-dyed hair a brunette bubble floating above her shoulders, which were freckled brown from the yard work she’d taken over since he left. She glowed, like a woman newly aware of her own appeal. I had stood in the hallway, watching her through the same wooden slats through which I’d spied my father ransacking her desk a month earlier.

  “I don’t know, Sammy. It sounded like a hotel lobby. He might’ve just been having a drink, though.” And then, “I’ve no idea when he’s coming back—maybe never.” She laughed grimly, twirling the phone cord around and around her wrist, as if it were a tourniquet. Up until that moment, I’d
almost believed the story she’d been telling everyone: Dad had left Orchard Hill early because he had an emergency “work situation” and now he was attending a medical convention and visiting his cousins in Vegas. She’d been so convincing.

  Why would she lie to me, of all people? I wondered as I reached the Chapmans’ horse barn, peered inside the half-open door. Hadn’t I earned the right to her confidences?

  I found Theresa cleaning one of the two stalls, hair pulled back the same as her mother’s, jeans splattered with manure. The other stall housed a well-groomed bay gelding. I opened my palm to receive his soft, whiskery muzzle.

  “I didn’t know you had horses,” I said, my voice thick with jealous awe.

  “That’s Georgie. He only likes a few people, so I guess you must be groovy. The one outside is Magdalena.”

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Shoveling shit—wanna help?” She tossed me a shovel and we worked in silence, flinging horse manure into a wheelbarrow. I loved the sharp smell of the soiled shavings, the small bulge of Theresa’s biceps as she lifted and flung horse apples. She flung one at me; it landed with a muffled thud on my thigh.

  “What are you staring at?” She laughed.

  “Nothing.” I flung one back.

  “You were.” She tossed a shovelful in my direction. “You were looking at my fat butt.”

  “Your butt’s not fat.” I lunged toward her, shoving a handful of hay down her shirt.

  “Compared to your snake ass.” She pushed me into the shavings.

  When her dad came into the barn a few minutes later, Theresa and I were covered in pine shavings. He stood in the doorway, hands on hips. He was a contractor, and had the ropey body and leathery face of his trade. His brown hair was silver-tipped and a smile threatened to break through the stern gaze.

  “You must be Sylvie.” He shook his head at our dishevelment. “You girls get cleaned up, Terri—we’re taking your mom’s stuff to the craft fair. I need help loading the truck.”

  “But, Dad—Sylvie just got here!”

  “Don’t make me ask again, you hear? Sylvie can come back.” He turned and left the barn, but not before winking at me; for some reason, my throat tightened with emotion.

  “Can you come later?” Theresa stood and brushed the shavings from her legs. “My dad’s always making me do stupid chores.”

  “At least he’s around,” I said. A fat white cat waddled into the stall, slunk around my legs and I reached to scratch her head. “Jeez, how many pets do you have?”

  “That’s Persia—she’s about to pop.” Theresa sucked on a strand of copper hair. “You want a kitten?”

  “Yeah! But my dad won’t let me.” I scooped up the pregnant cat, felt her sweet vibrations against my neck. “He’s like that.”

  “But if he never comes back, you can do whatever you want, right?”

  A few days later, on the morning of my twelfth birthday, my father called to sing to me. I heard someone paging Dr. Remming behind a clanking noise, and I realized he must be at the hospital. I wanted to ask where he’d been staying, when was he coming home, but was stunned into silence by his nasal baritone, wavering over the notes of the birthday song. I hadn’t heard him sing unaccompanied since two summers before, during a road trip to the Sierras, when he’d uncharacteristically burst into song: “If ever I would leave you, how could it be in springtime….”

  Even more surprising, my father had tried to teach me to fly-fish on that trip. He’d taken up the sport during the previous spring and spent obsessive hours practicing in our swimming pool, tugging at his big rubber waders, casting his fly into the Jacuzzi. Alison and I sometimes hid in the living room to spy on these elaborate practice sessions—we’d peer through the corner windows, waiting for him to catch his fly on a bush so that we could throw ourselves to the floor in convulsive laughter. I suppose we wanted revenge for all the times he’d asked us to sit in the belly of some boat in the near dark, damp and yawning. Dad wanted us to be tiny sports-women so desperately, he’d drag us out of our sleeping bags before dawn on every camping trip, parade us down the dock, telling us that whoever caught the most fish would get a dollar, or a candy bar, or a ride on his shoulders.

  I always wanted to ride on my father’s shoulders, careening into tree limbs and bumping my head on ceilings as he lurched around pretending to be Bigfoot. But even for that rare pleasure, I couldn’t pretend to like fishing.

  By the time I stood watching him fly-fish on the banks of the Feather River, he’d gotten quite good, his arm moving fluidly as a dancer’s, feet planted on the slippery rocks. “If you wanna be really expert,” he informed me, “you have to get into a kind of rhythm with it.” I yawned. I was supposed to be memorizing his technique and guarding his orange fly box. I felt honored by this charge—he had asked me to join him, for once—but also burdened, and restless. I couldn’t help wondering what Mom, Gram and Ali were buying at the outlet stores in Grass Valley.

  “Pay attention now, sporto,” my father called from the center of the river. I nodded and squared my shoulders, noticing his use of the old nickname. “You’re not going to learn a damn thing if you just stand there yawning.”

  “I’m watching,” I blurted, and we locked eyes for a tight minute before he went back to his sport. I frowned at his supple form, wanting to run away. Instead, I picked up a handful of pebbles and started tossing them into the river a few feet from where he stood. One, then another, plunk, plunk. My father, mistaking the plunks for the splashes of jumping trout, suddenly became excited and aimed his fly toward the spot where I’d thrown my stray rocks. “You see that, sporto?” he yelled. “Did you see that sucker jump?” Delighted, I continued to plop sly stones in the river, maneuvering my hip-booted father farther downstream, like a neat remote-control boat. “Now we’re onto ’em, kiddo!”

  We spent over an hour like that—me tossing stones into the river, him following eagerly after, chasing our imaginary splashing trout, until finally, exhausted and fishless, he looked up in time to see me lob a big, square rock over his head. I remember his face, foolish and blank as the recognition settled in, and the creeping shame in my own stomach. It was then, I think, that the rivalry between us sprouted flowers and thorns.

  We walked back to the cabin in silence, him marching a good ten feet ahead. I still carried his orange fly box, but as we walked up the cabin’s steps he turned to pry it from my hands. I held on, refusing to turn it over—as much as I’d hated my fishing lessons, as thoroughly as I’d ruined our day together, I couldn’t give up my charge like this, with such obvious defeat. I held on churlishly.

  “Damn it, Sylvie,” he growled, grabbing my wrist. “What are you playing at?”

  “I want to hold it,” I said through gritted teeth.

  “The goddamn game’s up,” he snapped. Then he loosed my wrist and backhanded me hard across the face; my feet left the steps and I found myself sprawled on the ground. The box had come unhinged and my father’s flies were scattered in the mud and sticking to my clothes. I plucked one off my T-shirt and looked up, but he had already turned away, slamming the door.

  I stood, swallowing blood and the need to cry. Then I began collecting the flies, replacing them in their minute compartments, the browns with the browns, the yellows with the yellows, the tiniest ones hooked into squares of Styrofoam, as if everything depended upon this meticulous arrangement. Each fly was beautiful in its symmetry and palette, and I could imagine how they’d sprung to life in his hands. Each had so clearly required his attention, forethought, maybe even love. Each had turned out just as he’d planned. I admired and hated them.

  So I didn’t know what to say when Dad came back a week before school started, driving a brand-new car. His white Lincoln was gone, and in its place was a bright red T-top Corvette. He came home on a sweltering Sunday morning and took Alison for a ride around the neighborhood. I felt the blood drain from my temples as they sped down the street, Ali’s hair rippling like a b
anner. I had to sit on the lawn with my face between my knees.

  “Well, Sylvie.” Mom plopped onto the grass beside me. “I wonder how long he’ll be around.”

  “Is he staying?” I tried to sound as cool and detached as the grass poking into my thighs.

  “He might be, I’m not sure yet.” She pulled her knees to her chest, started peeling the polish from her big toe. “I guess it all depends.” On what? I wanted to ask. On whether we say the right thing about his new car? On whether we stop getting letters from Mr. Robert? “Do you want him to stay, angel?” she asked without looking at me.

  “I dunno,” I said. Although he’d left before—for a weekend or a week—this time it had seemed easier for the three of us to spill into the sharp hole he’d made. We sat on the kitchen counters rather than at the dinner table, eating potato salad and Jell-O from round Tupperware containers, banging our bare heels against the pine cabinets. We spoke to each other in double Dutch and pig Latin, created fruity concoctions in the copper blender, made over each other, teasing each other’s hair into frenzied shapes. Mom hauled Ali and me to all her Mary Kay parties, where we worked as models. While the women oohed and aahed over our youthful complexions, our mother worked the room, doubling her sales. When we returned home from these expeditions, she’d curl on the living room floor for hours.

  I figured things must be pretty bad when she started appearing at my bedside. I’d wake from a bad dream to see her silhouette sketched into the moonlight. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay.” Her breath was sharp and light, like kumquats. “Wanna come sleep in my room, angel?” I’d nod, grabbing my pillow, and trail after her down the long hallway. I slept in a tight line on my father’s side of the bed those nights, pressing my face into his powdery scent.