Outside the Ordinary World

by Dori Ostermiller

  “Look, angel, the pink Caddy was a cop magnet. I got my only two speeding tickets in that thing. And this business will help me save up some money. Dad is right sometimes, okay?”

  “What do you need to save up money for?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe we’ll take a special trip this summer, to horse country or something.” She turned away, resuming her project.

  “We who?” I demanded. “We like the people who live here? Or do you mean we like Mr. Robert and us?” She was silent. “Mom?” I had no idea which answer I was hoping for, but it didn’t matter, because she wouldn’t give me either.

  On the night of the Easter cantata, I went to the church early with my mother to help the choir set up. My father and Ali were arriving later. I couldn’t remember the last time Dad had been to church with us. Perhaps this was his way of trying to show support for one of Mom’s “hobbies.” Or maybe he was rewarding her for getting rid of the car, starting the business, doing what he said. Maybe he thought these things meant she was still his.

  The choir members—plump elderly women and balding men—all knew me by now. All of them dowdy in their burgundy choir robes except for my mother, glamorous in her Florence Henderson do. I helped them all find their robes and black satin shawls, helped them set up shallow bleachers at the front of the sanctuary. Some of them called me “Elaine’s little clone.” They teased me about how my mom should be a star with that voice, and maybe I would be a great artist one day, too. I thought they were joking, having a little good-intentioned fun at my expense, until later, when I watched her transform into Claudia.

  She delivered her lines in a voice powerful and ethereal, arms spread, eyes rolling back and closing as her clear soprano rose to such heights, I thought the stained glass might shatter, or maybe my heart. It occurred to me then that my mother really could have been someone. As Pilate’s wife, on bended knee before the choir, she begged for the life of Jesus, pleaded for fairness, pardon, absolution, real tears dotting her choir robe.

  For some reason, I found myself thinking of Darian and her saints. Since that day in her room, I’d been careful never to look at her, and she hadn’t said a word to me, just stared at me once—a long, vacant waiting that I felt on the side of my face all through social studies. The next week, she was gone. According to gossip, her mother was an alcoholic and she’d been taken to an aunt in Eugene, or maybe a foster home. Nobody knew for sure.

  The day before Easter, I’d ridden my skateboard down her street, stopped in front of her house. The lawn was weedier than ever, and one of the windows boarded up. Tucking my skateboard under my arm, I crept around the house, through a tangle of faded oleanders, to Darian’s bedroom window. Peering in, I thought I saw her for an instant and jerked back, then realized it was just my own face reflected in the milky glass. I looked closer. The saints were still there, lined up and dusty on the sill. They looked ominous and hopeful, their faces pointing to the world outside. I wondered if she’d abandoned them on purpose, or if she just didn’t have time to gather them together. I wished I could get inside somehow, and take them for myself.

  2004

  I FIND MYSELF WANDERING INTO THE UNITARIAN Meeting House, the morning after my night with Tai. Between an optometrist appointment and a meeting with my accountant, I push through the plain oak doors, surprised they aren’t locked against me. Nathan and I have come here on a dozen occasions, testing it out, but each time I’ve felt somehow discouraged by the narrow podium, the bleached ceiling beams like the ribs of some great whale carcass. Today I sit in the empty sanctuary for fifteen minutes, hoping for clarity maybe, or virtue, or at least a respite from my sledgehammer of guilt, but all I feel is a familiar old silence.

  Several days later, I try the First Churches on Main Street and the next day, St. John’s on the corner of Chestnut. Here, the air is heavy with incense and flowers adorn the altar. Stained-glass windows along the walls depict every hour of Jesus’s days leading to the crucifixion: Gethsemane, Judas’s betrayal, the last-ditch redemption of the thief on the cross. I am still intimate with these scenes. Maybe, then, life is a series of reenactments—chasing down new frames for the stories that stalk us. I choose a seat in back, near the confessionals, remembering Darian and her saints. I’ve always envied the Catholics their rituals, but what would I even say, if I were allowed to whisper it to a priest—that I’ve made an art of my restlessness? Become my mother at last, despite the years and miles between us? And what of the other secrets, deeper even than Tai, that hover like smoke on the outskirts of memory?

  After a few minutes I get up to leave. What I’m seeking won’t be found in a church. I need to move through eddying leaves, glimpse new snow on the Holyoke Range, hear the thirsty call of migrating geese. I need a landscape big enough for this longing, air sharp enough to cool my inescapably primal thoughts—hot curl of laughter, bright well of an iris, his hands tracing my jaw, mapping my hip bones, unhinging me. His e-mails are all wild metaphors that stalk my dreams, catching me at the center.

  “What are we doing?” I ask him, staring at the ceiling. “What is this about?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he whispers, trolling his fingers through my insubordinate curls. “It’s about mining for God, isn’t it? Living near the bone.”

  “Can God be found in deception?” I ask. Weeks into this, I’m wondering if we’re even wading in the same river: two thirsty vagrants, both seeking some strong, bittersweet tonic.

  “God is anywhere you find yourself opening, right? Bowled over by life.”

  “Are you talking rebirth? Second chances?” I gaze around his room at bookcases filled with titles on Buddhism, masonry, mythology. Poetry by Neruda, Ginsberg, Mary Oliver. Facing the huge corner windows, his drafting table is blanketed with sketches and file folders—drafts of the landscaping book he’s writing. I want to memorize each thing, as if these details could answer something. At the same time, I wish I could delete him entirely.

  “Maybe rebirth, but not escape.” He straddles me beneath the off-white quilt. “This can’t be about escape.”

  “Why?” I laugh. “What do you have against escapists?”

  “Nothing, really.” The splashes of gold in his green eyes look like tiny brush fires. “I come from a long line of escapists—workaholic Rabbi father, depressive mother.”

  “Me, too. Except for the Rabbi part.”

  He plops down on the bed beside me. “My little brother died of heroin. My family was so good at escaping—well, they’re not here anymore.”

  “Tell me about that.” I stroke the lone, misguided curl that creeps down his neck, surprised at how hungry I am for his losses.

  “Mmm, it’s a long story—suffice to say that I try to stay present.” Flashing a knavish smile, he falls back on the pillows. Then, suddenly somber. “This isn’t about running from your life, is it?” I look away from his dark beauty, stare out the bedroom windows; November branches scratch at a sky as hard as slate. Beyond the hemlocks, I see vestiges of his wild garden, the Zendo he built from cedar, his stone labyrinth, which is supposedly what I came for today, why I drove up this mountain in the middle of another Tuesday, abandoning work.

  “We didn’t even make it to the garden,” I note. “We lost our way, like last week.”

  “I know. But I don’t feel lost.” He bites the fleshy part of my hand, then stretches like a cat. I stare at the curved mistake of his spine, hard error of a bicep, inky mishaps of his brows.

  “Maybe we’re looking for salvation,” I say. On the opposite wall hangs my painting, of the view from Orchard Hill—scrub oaks in the fog, amber hills and that scraggly old water tower. I remember painting it, five or six years back, standing on Gram and Poppy’s lawn while Hannah played nearby. Maybe someday I’ll understand this need to study a picture of my childhood from the refuge of someone else’s room. But right now I can’t quite believe I’m looking at that view from here, like this.

  “Not Salvation with a capital S,” Tai
comments now. “I can’t offer that.” Sitting on the edge of the futon, he peels me from the comforter. “But maybe with a small s.” With a calloused finger, he sketches the outline of one breast, the ghostly lattice of stretch marks left from nursing. “Come outside with me,” he offers. “I’ll show you how to walk the labyrinth.” But I’m reluctant to move. I feel heavy and drowned as a drunk, my insides still warm with him.

  “Do all Jewish men have such lovely smooth chests?” I ask, as if it’s the most natural thing, touching a stranger this way, killing off the life I’ve made with a flick of the wrist.

  “Ah—an adulteress and a racist.” I can see he’s teasing by the curl of his mouth, but that doesn’t stop the burn of rage in my belly. I sit up, swing my feet onto the cool wood floor.

  “I need to go.”

  “Sylvia. I’m sorry.” His hand on my back is still unfamiliar, precise fingers kneading my shoulders. “I was just playing—you know that, right?”

  “I have to leave anyway,” I snap. Emmie will be finishing rest time by now, Hannah going off to drama or history? I can’t remember which it is on Tuesdays and this suddenly seems pathetic, inexcusable. I miss them fiercely, as if I’ve journeyed to the very edge of the earth and stood on its craggy precipice, peering into the depths. It’s impossible that I’ve just been away a few hours, in the middle of a school day, unmissed. And what of Nathan? Does he sense, in the quietest part of his bones, how far I’ve traveled? I belong to no one now. I wonder if this is the very same loneliness that once caused my mother to enlist me as her confidant.

  “You’ve grown sullen,” says Tai, withdrawing his touch.

  “Adulteresses tend to be. The guilty are always morose, right?” I stand, slipping on underwear and bra, aware of his appreciative gaze, how stirring it is to be seen. However moody, guilty, afraid, I’m also not done here.

  “I’m not morose,” he points out. I turn to stare at him propped on an elbow, the sheet falling over his hips, skin especially olive against the ivory quilt. Everything here speaks of ease—pale walls and rice paper shades, canvas chair and sleeping dog, expanse of cool linen, his smile.

  “That’s because you’re a Buddhist,” I sulk. “I haven’t quite mastered your art of quiet surrender yet. Besides, you’re not betraying anyone.”

  “Right, but a Jewish Buddhist is always guilty.” He reaches for me. “Don’t go off angry.”

  “I’m leaving,” I repeat, though the thought of it exhausts me.

  “Here, let me teach you the art of quiet surrender,” he teases, pulling me easily back down, pinning me to the bed.

  “I don’t know what we’re doing, Tai,” I protest as he un-fastens my bra.

  “Maybe it is about second chances,” he whispers, tracing the swell of one hip. “Or, how about second comings?” He smiles, sliding his hand between my thighs.

  By the time we emerge, the sun is slipping down the arc of the sky and I still haven’t seen the thing I came for—the backyard design, the labyrinth. “It’s like us,” Tai says as we drift to his door, Yuki trotting circles around us. “A bit past noon, edging toward evening. It’s my worst time of day. I can’t believe you’re leaving me to it.”

  He walks me to the driveway, leans me hard against the cold van. I’ve grown used to the scratch of his beard, the taste of his tongue, how thirsty I am. Like whiskey, his kisses don’t quench; they just deepen the craving.

  “Here—” he whispers, extracting himself from my arms. “I want you to have this.” He digs something from his pocket, pushes it into my palm—a rough bluish stone shaped like an uneven heart, the size of a silver dollar. “It’s an agate. I found it while walking the beach north of Big Sur, when I lived there. Keep it.” He curls my fingers snug around it.

  I slide it into the front pocket of my jeans, where it will live for a while. Then I will myself into the car, recalling something Theresa once read me when we were both graduate students—how everything is memory and genetics: how we speak and dress, the ways we falter, those we’re drawn to—was it Freud? I remember asking her, What chance do I have?

  Skidding down the mountain, following a sharp arrow of geese, I’m confronted by the things I’ve left undone: brochures I abandoned at the printer, clients I’ve failed to call back. I’m running out of supplies at the studio, have yet to pay this month’s bills. I forgot the girls’ appointment for flu vaccines, and Theresa has left three messages on my voice mail—in the last one, she just sighed, “Sylvie, oh, Sylvie.” My hands throb against the steering wheel and the road before me undulates. I pull onto the shoulder for a moment, hazard lights flashing, allowing the traffic to shudder by until I can gather my wits for the agony of reentry.

  But I’m still dazed as I walk through Cloverdale preschool. I feel uncivilized among all the young mothers with their neat ponytails and ski jackets, their tote bags and wholesome smiles. Jillian Alstrom’s mom asks if we can please arrange a playdate after Jilli’s Music Together class, and I just nod dumbly, my bedroom hair flopping into my eyes. I am soiled and feral, unfit to be the mother of this child with the strawberry ringlets who clings to me. I wouldn’t be surprised to look down and find that my jeans were unzipped, my boots missing.

  “Can we go get ice cream, Mama?” Emmie asks as I hoist her into the car seat.

  “Ice cream in November?”

  “I want chocolate with chocolate sauce and chocolate sprinkles and a chocolate cherry.” She giggles, amused by her own excess.

  “Okay, honey.” I laugh. “We just have to pick up your sister first.”

  But when we get to Hannah’s school, she’s not there. I’m ten minutes late, so I decide she’s probably gone inside. My love stupor is falling from me like a damp towel as Emmie and I clip through the tiled hallways, searching. When we walk into Hannah’s homeroom, the teacher, Ms. Weiss, is already turning over chairs, setting them on desktops. I tell her we’re looking for Hannah and she frowns and cocks her head.

  “She went home with Ava Selinger. They took the bus to Ava’s house, remember?”

  “Uh, no, I don’t remember. I didn’t—”

  “She brought a note. It’s right over here.” She grabs a tiny slip of notebook paper off her desk and hands it to me. On it, in a fairly good imitation of my terrible turkey scrawl, is a note granting permission, signature and all. My stomach clenches. This is so unlike Hannah, I can’t quite believe it, and I tell Ms. Weiss so. “I don’t think she’s ever done anything like this before,” I mutter, chewing my thumbnail.

  “Yes, well, there’ve been quite a few uncharacteristic behaviors lately.” She glances at Emmie, unsure what the little sister should hear. “I’ve been waiting on a reply to my e-mail.”

  “You sent me an e-mail?” I’m remembering all the unopened messages in my in-box—the newsletters and grant deadlines, the pithy Christian forwards my mother sends…. Reading these messages not from him is always an unpleasant jolt, like coming out of a warm bath into the drafty fall bite of our house. I let them pile up, save them as Unread. Still, wouldn’t I have read anything from one of the girls’ teachers?

  “Oh, dear. Well, that’s the trouble with the new technology, eh?” Ms. Weiss smoothes her bobbed gray hair behind her ears. “E-mails are always so—”

  “What’s going on with Hannah? Is something up?” The pain in my wrists is firing up again. My eyelids feel singed.

  “We really ought to meet. I don’t have time for a conference this moment.”

  “Can you just give me the general idea?” I clutch the edge of a table while Emmie totters off to attack the chalkboard and colored chalks.

  “Just small, worrisome things. Nothing too egregious, but quite uncharacteristic—”

  “Like?” I struggle to stay poised, but it’s difficult. I’m as jagged as a bread knife.

  “Well, like a lot of missing homework assignments, which is unusual for Hannah, and a disruptive verbal fight with another girl—Isabel Fletcher, to be precise, though not a lot cam
e of it—and the stolen calculator, and the math test.”

  What fight? What calculator? “This is the first time I’m hearing about this stuff.” I crumple onto the edge of a chair she hasn’t upturned yet.

  “Well, it was all in the e-mail. The cheating was strangest, but look, Ms. Sandon, we need to set up an appointment.” She continues her work of upending the chairs. “I just can’t take the time right now.”

  “How about tomorrow?” I’m getting out my appointment book, my pen is poised, but Ms. Weiss can’t offer me a conference until next week, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I take it—women like me can’t be too choosy, after all.

  Driving to Easthampton to pick up my teenager from the Selingers’ house, I recall the night Mom and I drove to Orange to collect Ali from a club where she wasn’t supposed to be. Elaine still had the Mary Kay Cadillac, and I hid in the back, teetering between elation and mortification as she pulled up in front of The Blue Wave, catching my sister smoking a joint on the curb, Leslie Brown’s big black hand foraging under her tube top. My mother’s outrage was absolute as she dragged poor Ali into the pink car, announcing that Leslie and every other randy young boy were prohibited for the remainder of high school.

  I can’t quite muster up my mother’s brand of self-righteous wrath as I walk into Ava Selinger’s basement at 4:00 p.m., though I should be furious. Ava’s parents aren’t home and the girls are playing pool with two high school boys. Hannah takes one look at my face and grabs her backpack, comes to the car without a fight. It’s just not her nature to be seditious; I’m thankful for this, and try to go easy on her during the drive home.