Outside the Ordinary World

by Dori Ostermiller

  Somehow, I knew. Maybe her waxy cheeks and swollen eyes confirmed my knowing, or the fact that she didn’t yell at me, not really, for walking through the foothills all night alone. Perhaps she sensed that my life was already on fire without the fuel of her wrath. As we coasted down our street, I glimpsed the moon—a tender sliver of light upturned over Highway 5, beyond the Pacific. It looked so irreproachable, that moon, so ridiculously pure and remote. I stared at it as I took in my mother’s broken, mechanical words, anguish and horror pumping through me like a drug. Still stared at it as we sat in the driveway, Alison rushing out like a wild thing to bury her face in my lap.

  “It’s Daddy, it’s Daddy, it’s our daddy,” she wailed, pressing her grief in my open hands, though neither of us had ever called him this in his life.

  Shortly after 2:00 a.m., he’d crashed his beautiful Corvette on Newport Freeway, hitting the center divider at ninety-five miles an hour. The shattered car had flipped and spun like a toy across the highway, then exploded into flames. There was no way he could have been saved, according to three witnesses, who all described how suddenly the car ignited in that wind, how fiercely it burned—so intensely, catastrophically bright, it hurt their eyes.

  That was the image I held on to, after all the others were gone.

  2004

  THE STORM HAS SETTLED IN FOR THE DURATION. RAIN taps relentlessly against the skylights as we set the table in Gram and Poppy’s dining room, and I’m suddenly reminded how the rain came after he died—in torrents, in buckets. How the moisture slid right down the parched, wind-battered foothills, flooding the gutters of our neighborhood, washing away lawn clippings, Ping-Pong balls, grocery receipts. Ali and I watched from the corner windows, dazed and speechless in the orange family room chairs, missing our first days of school. I remember wanting to run into the deluge and lie in the backyard. Maybe then the rain would take me, too.

  It’s dusk now—gray light falls over Gram’s deep walnut table, the ancient linen curtains, the Mexican tile floors layered with Oriental rugs. Poppy’s grandfather clock ticks from the corner of the living room as Alison and Mom and I bring in platters—sautéed green beans and lasagna, garden salad, lentil loaf and cheesy bread. It’s the food of my childhood, and I could almost convince myself that I’m a girl again, except that my hands ache like a catastrophe, and the words my mother spoke out in the drizzle echo in my head—Do you love this man? Is he worth risking everything?

  Since our conversation, an undeniable weight has settled in my mind and chest, and I can hardly bring myself to make the requisite kitchen small talk, can barely meet my mother’s meaningful sidelong glances. When I look at her, my eyelids sting. Though we’ve spent an hour preparing this meal, I have no appetite for food. My dread is compounded by the growing darkness, and the fact that our teenagers are not home from the mall yet. Hannah called nearly an hour ago to say that they were on their way. They should be back by now.

  “Do you want me to call Han again?” I ask Ali as we place the remaining dishes on the table, call the men in to supper. “I left a message ten minutes ago.”

  “I know—I just tried Donny’s phone and he didn’t pick up.” Ali flops down in a chair, looking spent. A few fat golden strands have slipped from her chignon and her bruisy dark circles are visible beneath fastidious layers of concealer. The faint network of lines around her eyes are in the same pattern as mine, the same as our father’s—I could almost find him by tracing a finger over my sister’s skin.

  “I’m starting to wonder if we should call the police,” she says.

  “The police? Come on, Ali,” I half whisper. “They’re just being teenagers, testing out their limits. They’ll be back soon—I’m sure of it.” She nods, but I feel less confident than I sound. I don’t want Ali to know how little I can predict what Hannah might do these days.

  Gram calls for water from the living room sofa, unable to walk the six yards to the dinner table, unable to eat solid food. Poppy goes to her, fills her cup. Earlier, I watched, entranced, as he fed her a bowl of applesauce—spoon by tiny silver spoon, her shrunken mouth opening and closing like a baby bird’s as he whispered endearments. “There you go, little mama. That’s my girl.” Then he wiped her mouth with a soft cloth, rearranged the pillows behind her head. These small, nurturing gestures seemed so natural for him, so effortless, that I begin to wonder if this tenderness toward her has been there all along, masked by the habitual dismissals and gruff demands. Perhaps there are worlds between every couple that none on the outside can detect, I muse as everyone comes to the table—Mom and Robert, Alison and Kurt, Uncle Peter with his new “lady friend.” As I seat Emmie beside me, trying to pry the chess pieces out of her fingers, I’m wondering about the marriages in this family. Sheila and Nick are both on their second. Since his divorce from Janie, Peter bounces from one relationship to another. Mom and Robert have reached an amenable but rather proscribed middle ground. Alison and Kurt seem jointly addicted to their acquisitions and status.

  As for me—I’ve been obsessing over the text message I received an hour ago.

  Been trying not 2 do this but things bleak here…Eli’s enlisting. Miss you, world flat w/out you….

  It’s taking every fiber of my will not to rush out into the rain to call him.

  As my grandfather offers his familiar inaudible prayer, I stare around the table at my family. Despite the rigors of Adventism, the sanctity of marriage and the influence of Poppy and Gram’s nearly seventy-year union, none of us are doing so great in the relationship department. There is no map here showing me the way.

  Sonia, Uncle Peter’s new Russian girlfriend, asks how I like living back east. “Peter tells me you’re the Bohemian of the family.”

  “Bunch of damn communists in that part of the world,” mutters Poppy, helping himself to salad.

  “Not exactly communists, Avery. Just bleeding-heart intellectuals,” explains Robert, winking at me. I smile, grateful for his support, despite the irony.

  “She has a successful studio,” Mom asserts. “She’s a talented painter.”

  “This is yucky, Mama.” Emmie smashes two fingers into her lasagna. I don’t have the energy to argue with her tonight. I’m watching Mom mouth something across the table to Robert, who nods at her. If thirty years of marriage has done nothing else for them, it’s enabled him to read her lips, the precise tilt of her head, the imperceptible hand gesture. Nathan and I have yet to master this subtle form of communication.

  In the middle of dinner, a car hums up the driveway, blessedly and finally. Ali jumps and rushes from the room, intent on meeting the kids head-on. I stay at the table, trying to get Emmie, who’s climbed onto my lap, to open her mouth for a green bean. I’m in no hurry to confront Hannah at this moment or to join in my sister’s righteous tirade.

  A few minutes later, as the men are arguing over Tiger Woods’ dominion in the golf world, Ali calls my name sharply. I plop Emmie in Mom’s lap and make my way to the spare room, where Hannah and Ben are slumped side by side on one of the twin beds, their heads lowered before my sister, whose face is livid and blotchy.

  “You wanted to know how much trouble they could get into in a couple of hours,” she snaps. “Well—now you know!” She yanks Ben’s chin upward so I can see the tiny silver stud on the left side of his freckled nose. Hannah has a similar adornment. “They pierced their noses, of all things—without permission and without any thought to the consequences of their actions,” my sister announces in her best Assistant D.A. voice. “And Ursa and Donny, who know better, did nothing to stop them!” I glance at the older children: Donny leaning against the wall, scratching his head in forced nonchalance. Ursa cowers in an armchair.

  “You’ve proven yourselves pretty incapable of handling the kind of responsibility we trusted you with.” Hands braced on hips, feet spread wide on the tile floor, my sister cuts a formidable figure, despite her small stature. I find myself sympathizing with her boys, and with all Santa Barbara crim
inals. “And you have to take those—things—out of your noses, however it’s done. Right, Sylvie?”

  Hannah looks at me, arms crossed, eyes beseeching. “You never said I couldn’t, Mom,” she says softly. Alison bark-laughs at this.

  “We never said you couldn’t, like, hijack people’s cars, either. But some things shouldn’t have to be spelled out!”

  “Let me see it.” I inspect the tiny azure stone, embedded in the tender ravine along the side of Hannah’s nostril. “Well, actually, Ali, nose studs have never made it to our forbidden list. I mean it’s not really the same as stealing cars—”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going to let her keep it!”

  “Can I keep mine, too?” Ben pleads.

  “Absolutely not! It’s fine and well for you, Sylvie.” My sister spins round to face me, gold eyes blazing, hair fallen from its clip. “But my family still belongs to the Church.”

  “Right, of course, Ali.” My pulse quickens. “I can see how that complicates things. Much simpler being heathens like us. Come eat dinner, Han.” I turn to leave the room, jaw clenching.

  “Oh, that’s just great.” Alison’s voice has shed its professional veneer. “Just leave the mess to me. Just—just run away, little sister—you’re so good at that!”

  I swing back to face her, heart thumping in fury. “I’m sure you’ll figure out a way to micromanage things back under your control,” I snap. “That’s what you’ve gotten so good at.”

  I’m breathing with difficulty as I make my way back toward the dining room, where Emmie is now calling me. My desire to sneak out for a smoke and an illicit phone call is waylaid by the sound of another car in the driveway; most likely Nick, come to find Ursa. I decide to meet him first and explain things—to cushion him from my sister’s rage—so I open the massive front door and step out onto the rain-slick patio.

  But a second later, it’s not my cousin who emerges from the new car in the carport. It’s Nathan, grinning broadly as I gape at him. He comes toward me through the mist, like a figure in a dream, clutching his navy duffle bag. His left wrist is encased in a white plaster cast.

  “What are you— What happened?” I ask, stunned.

  “I couldn’t really work anymore,” he says. “So I decided to join you.”

  Later that night, Nathan tells the story again before the fire, while Hannah, Emmie and Ben decorate the Christmas tree Kurt has set up. Ali offered to drive Robert—still recovering from a bout of bronchitis—back to the apartment, taking Donny and leaving me with a chilly hug good-night. Knowing my sister, it will be weeks before the old affection seeps back into our rapport, though she ought to be appeased. Hannah, in an uncharacteristic fit of selflessness, offered to take her nose ring out, too, and now she and Ben both sport inflamed-looking little holes. Every so often, one of their hands floats up to investigate the injury.

  “So anyway,” continues Nathan. “This storm was a bi—a doozy,” he corrects, remembering not to curse in front of my family. “Ice and rain and sleet—in New England we call that lovely combo a ‘wintry mix,’ like it’s a cocktail or something.”

  Only Kurt laughs at this joke. My dislike for him lessens a notch.

  “Anyway, I’m working on the stairs, replacing some treads when I notice water dripping down the hallway wall—some sort of leak, right?” He gestures with his uninjured hand.

  “Don’t tell me you went up there to fix it?” my mother calls from the dining room, where she’s polishing silver. She’s been remote since Nathan arrived, floating on the periphery of every conversation. I wonder (not without a hefty dose of irony) if she’s uncomfortable holding my secret, afraid she might inadvertently give me away. “Don’t tell me you climbed on the roof in that weather, Nathan Jones?”

  “Well, I did, Elaine. I had to do something—I mean, the water was dripping onto the brand-new treads.”

  “Sounds like you oughta just put that house back on the auction block,” remarks Poppy from the couch. He’s sitting by Gram, whose chin is slumped on her chest.

  “Aren’t there people you can hire for this sort of work?” asks Kurt, a look of extreme distaste on his pale features.

  Nathan laughs grimly from his seat on the stone hearth, long legs stretched before him. Despite his fall, his face glows from the limelight, the warmth of the room, the days spent working outside. Sitting on a hard blue chair facing him, my cell phone still burning a hole in my pocket, I find myself thinking what an attractive man he is; but it’s a detached appreciation, as if I’m taking in the beauty of a stranger.

  “I knew there were a couple of shingles that needed replacing up there,” he continues, “so I took up my pry bar and some flashing to make a temporary patch. Well, it isn’t long before my pants are soaked through and they trip me up as I’m coming down the ladder, and—” Here he holds up the cracked wrist. Emmie trots in from the guest room with a fistful of markers, ready to embellish the cast.

  “Daddy, Daddy,” she’s chanting as she settles on the floor near him.

  “Jeez, Dad,” says Hannah, hanging a glass angel on the tree, “you’re lucky you didn’t get seriously messed up!”

  “I know. And here’s the really strange part. Apparently, I hit my head on a rock when I came down and was knocked out. Just lying there like a rag doll in the flower bed. In the middle of an ice storm. You can imagine.” He winces. “I don’t know how long I would have stayed there either—it could’ve been bad. But our crazy old neighbor Roz Benton comes by in her VW bus and sees me. Calls an ambulance.”

  “Roz just happened to be coming by at that moment, in the middle of a storm?” I narrow my eyes at him as the chill spread over my shoulders, down the length of my spine.

  “That’s like totally psychic or something,” says Hannah.

  “She’s been weirder than usual.” Nathan shakes his head, peering up at me. “She comes by at all hours, sometimes on foot, sometimes in her bus. Says she’s looking for Lucy—must be the name of one of her goats.”

  “Lucy?” I remember the day we stood in her kitchen after the goat accident—how Roz remarked that Emmie looked like someone named Lucy. “I think Lucy’s a person—someone she used to know.”

  “Is this neighbor dangerous?” asks my mother.

  “No, nothing like that.” Nathan chuckles, holding out his cast for Emmie to draw on. “I’ve heard people say she’s got early signs of Alzheimer’s. But I’m sure glad she was wandering around that night. I’ll tell you one thing—the whole incident made me rethink my priorities.” He stares at me, then down at the purple ballerina Emmie has drawn on his cast.

  We’re all quiet until Gram wakes and begins coughing—a deep, tearing sound that rattles her fragile body over and over. I can almost hear her bones knocking. She’s clawing at Poppy’s blue sweater as he startles from his seat, grabs a handful of tissues from the coffee table and holds one to Gram’s mouth, patting her back. When he removes the tissue, it’s splotched with blood. The coughing subsides, but Gram looks purplish. I swallow a lump of sorrow and alarm.

  As I wash my face before bed, memories of my father’s dying continue to surface—that feral wind followed by a lashing rain, as if the earth itself were raging and then weeping. Theresa sitting on the corner of my pink quilt two days after the accident, saying, “You’ll feel better after the service—I did, after my Nana’s funeral.” She and Rose had filled our kitchen with sunflowers and bags of ripe avocadoes, and now she stroked her fingers along my cheek in a gesture that was strangely maternal. Her own tawny, freckled cheeks glowed in the afternoon light and I didn’t tell her about the recurring nightmares, the broken man who dropped through my dreams, the perpetual feeling that I was growing and shrinking at once. I could no longer tell what size I was. When I spoke, my voice was dim, then deafening, and I doubted a service of any kind was going to help.

  Besides, my mother had decided against a funeral. She wanted to remember him as he was, she said. She didn’t want to dwell on the gruesome
parts, didn’t want others whispering about the odd and tragic circumstances of his death. And she just wasn’t up to having people around. Still, over the next two weeks, an endless stream of visitors wound through our house, needing coffee, bringing soup, murmuring in the courtyard.

  I stayed in the kitchen near my mother, at first, wrapping the cakes in cellophane and brewing more coffee, suddenly understanding the need for company after a loss: the necessity of feeding and washing and answering the door kept me from caving in on the images burning at my core. Standing at the kitchen sink, stacking dishes for Mom because she refused to leave her bed one morning, I couldn’t stop my mind replaying the scene—his car hitting the center divider at a hopeless speed, flipping across the highway and shattering like a roughly handled plaything. I couldn’t help wondering: Was there a flash of sorrow or regret before the end? An instantaneous vain yearning for the living?

  “Why didn’t you call, after you fell?” I ask Nathan as we lay in our parallel twin beds in Gram and Poppy’s guest room. Hannah and Emmie have moved into the den, to accommodate their father. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I’m startled and ridiculously hurt by his seeming distance, and the fact that he hasn’t once kissed me—not even a peck—since he arrived.

  He’s silent. By the dim hallway light, I can discern the outline of his square cheekbones, the fine lips and tapered nose. I remember first taking in those features that scorching July day when he built a fence around my yard—how he reminded me of a cross between John Hurt and Chevy Chase, only sweatier, and more handsome. How he listened to the English Beat on his boom box, hips swaying a little when he thought no one was watching. His attentive kindness was like a balm, soothing the chafe of too much transience, too many wrong men. Now he just looks like himself, or rather, a spent, weathered version of himself.