One cloudy Sunday, about midway back, I was seized with the startling realization of how deep and cold the water beneath us really was, how far we still had to swim to get to shore. Exhausted from too much partying the previous night, my feet cramping up like claws, I suddenly panicked. “Just take your time,” Nathan had coached. “There’s no need to rush; you know how to float.” As if on cue, the overcast June sky broke open, rain pelting our upturned faces. “I can’t make it back,” I told him. “I’ve gone too far.”
“Of course you’ll make it,” he crooned, moving beside me stroke for stroke in the black water, breathing, talking me through. He promised that he was a strong enough swimmer for both of us, said he could easily pull me back in if necessary. Trusting him, I’d found my courage, made my way to shore, and it wasn’t until we were panting on the damp sand that he admitted he’d been acting. “I was scared shitless and wiped out myself,” he gasped. “I really didn’t know if I’d be able to get us back.”
But it was a good act, well intentioned. And by believing it, I had made it true.
2005
DO ALL THINGS PASS? I WONDER AS I MUSCLE MY RENTED wagon off Interstate 280 toward downtown Lafayette. Or do they endure? Still pulsing with worry and fatigue as I turn left down Happy Valley Road, I’m thinking again about Hannah—her haunted eyes when I forced my way in her room this morning, to tell her about Gram’s passing. She looked so forlorn, scrunched on her bed amid the anarchic mess of her bedroom; I almost couldn’t bring myself to go. I leaned my head against the door frame and whispered, “We’re going to sort all this out when I get back, honey—I promise.”
Groaning up the familiar slope of Orchard Hill, I park near my three favorite redwoods, step into the fragrant mist. No one comes to greet me this time, so I make my way across the driveway, through the kitchen slider. The house is silent, though everything looks the same: same clutter of custard cups on the yellow counter, same broken transistor radio squatting by the sink, same Sierra Club calendar curling near the phone.
Someone snorts from the great room. I go in to find Poppy, asleep on the couch as if he’s taken up where she left off. I crouch down to watch. The tanned planes of his cheeks are finally slipping, a network of broken capillaries strung around his eyes. But the nose is still strong and fine, the jaw firm. His handsomeness has always reminded me of Nathan’s, or vice versa. Staring at him, I can imagine how my husband will look as an old man. A chill enters me, and I stand. All around us, Gram’s things are gathered on tabletops, collected in shoe boxes, spread out on scarves across the tile hearth. Clearly, Mom and Alison have been busy.
I discover them in the master bathroom, sorting toiletries into Tupperware containers, filling up trash bags.
“Isn’t it a little early for all this?” I ask, running my fingers over a ragtag of ancient cosmetics on the counter, staring at the shoe-box lids full of odds and ends—a tiny wooden bird whistle from Japan, a carved elephant from their trip to India back in the sixties, a striped hatbox stuffed with threadbare underpants. “Isn’t this a bit premature?” I ask after my mother and sister greet me, then continue their cleaning and collecting. It seems wrong to be going through her things so soon, with her soapy linen smell still floating through the hallways, her presence so tangible, I’m half expecting her to come shuffling around the corner.
“We can’t afford to be sentimental right now, angel,” Mom explains without looking up from her work. “There are people coming to see the house next week.”
“Coming to see the house?”
“Yes. We’ve got it listed with Uncle Peter’s agency.”
“You’re selling Orchard Hill?” The words feel punched out of me; apparently my rib cage is going to fold up now, my lungs collapse.
Mom stares at me, shadows of fatigue ringing her eyes. Her mouth wavers, then tightens. “Of course we’re selling it. You didn’t think Poppy would stay on here all alone, did you?”
“Can’t someone take over the place? Doesn’t anyone want to live here?”
“Are you volunteering, Sylvie?” Ali smirks, sweeping a gold leaf of bangs off her forehead.
For the briefest moment, I try to imagine it—selling our house, leaving our jobs, giving up my business, extracting the kids from schools and friends—the possibility is strangely exhilarating, though I’m not sure how we’d pull it off; we’re so in debt, I doubt we could even pay the movers.
“This place is terribly run-down. It’ll need at least a hundred grand in renovations,” Mom pronounces, sealing the deal. “You couldn’t even afford the property taxes.”
“But, Gram would be heartbroken,” I protest. The truth is, I’ve never even considered Orchard Hill as a commodity, a sketch filed in some probate office with frontage and zoning and taxes—a hunk of prime Bay Area real estate—but of course it is. I feel such a fool. “She’s not even buried yet,” I add in a watery voice. My mother and sister glance at each other, and Ali stands and stalks from the room.
“Ali’s just exhausted, angel,” Mom explains. “It’s great that you’re going to stick around for a few days and help out.”
“I was going to, Mom. It’s just that—”
“You’ve been caught up in your own drama, I know.” My mother’s voice sounds terse, but her face, when she stands to embrace me, is gathered with worry, unhinged by sorrow.
“How’s your family?” she whispers into my hair. “Have you given him up yet?”
Do all things come to pass, or do they endure? I’m asking myself again in the second row next to Mom and Ali at Gram’s funeral—or rather, her burial. We don’t have funerals in this family. We don’t mourn our dead in churches, or view their preserved bodies—God forbid—in open caskets beneath an altar, holy light shining through the stained glass. Gram’s peach, gold-trimmed casket is sealed up tight. Our family has small, graveside ceremonies, or in the case of my father, none at all. As Ali grips my hand in the drizzle, as Uncle Peter reads from the Beatitudes—Gram’s favorite—I’m remembering Mom’s words, twenty-nine years ago: Isn’t it better just to get on with things? she’d asked. To remember the dead as they once were and not dwell on the gruesome parts?
Now the preacher is saying the gruesome parts aren’t real—that death is just going to sleep, more or less, while we wait for the Second Coming. On that day of deliverance, he explains, True Believers will rise from their graves, young again and fully fleshed, rubbing the dirt from their faces, stretching toward paradise. I picture them disoriented and a little grumpy, like Emmie waking from one of her afternoon naps. Glancing around at my family members, I wonder which of them find comfort in his explanation.
As Sheila stands to recite another Bible verse, I find myself thinking about the Wallace Stevens poem Nathan used to read me on the roof of our old house, or in the midst of my 3:00 a.m. insomnia:
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Have I been looking for God in the wrong places—perhaps even Tai? Seeking my lost faith in his earthy spirituality, his Zen Buddhism, his belief in the power of labyrinths and landscapes and love? Have I been trying to resurrect magic? Maybe there’s another way. I reach into the pocket of my raincoat, feel for the blue agate, its rough satisfaction against my palm.
We are all wet by now and chilled to the marrow, ready to return to warmth and food and the other comforts of the living. The pastor says we needn’t grieve for our lost Gram, we needn’t be sad, since we will surely see her again. I close my eyes, letting the words burble together in my mind, the cool California air sting my cheeks. Whatever the preacher says, whatever these cousins and aunts and uncles believe, I want to gnash my teeth now, to tear my dress and howl at the indifferent fog rolling from the bay.<
br />
Sandwiched into my narrow twin bed that night, Alison’s familiar soft snores beside me, I know I won’t sleep, despite the exhaustion thrumming in my bones, twitching my eyelids.
I long to try Nathan and the girls again, but it’s much too late. So I creep down the hall to the den, where Mom is sleeping tonight—to keep an eye on Poppy, she said—only she’s awake, too. The light’s on and when I push through the door she’s reading National Geographic on the edge of her makeshift bed.
“You, too, huh?” I say, coming in and sitting beside her.
“Oh, angel—” She drops the magazine to the coffee table. “Just can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Which part?”
She glances at the ceiling. “How scared she was at the end. How she clung to me.” She shudders. “Even after all these years, she didn’t want to let go.”
“Does anyone?”
“Probably not.” She laughs dourly, pressing her eyes with the heels of her hands. “But Gram was so sick, and had such faith—I thought she’d be more peaceful about it.”
We’re quiet, breathing side by side, the grandfather clock clicking toward dawn. Finally I say, “Maybe faith and fear aren’t mutually exclusive, Mom. Maybe faith is just a decision you make, in spite of fear. It’s easy to be swept up by emotion.”
“Well, I know all about that, don’t I?”
“Yeah, you do.” I yawn. I’m so tired, my knees are quivering. “I forgot my sleeping pills—I was in such a rush.”
“Poppy gave me some Valium—should we take one?” I nod. “They work better with a little Chardonnay.”
“Mom! I thought you didn’t drink.”
“I don’t. Just a little Chardonnay now and then.” She grins and I understand that I’ve always adored and despised this in her—her hypocrisy, her inability to behave, despite her good-girl roots and first-rate intentions. She waits in her purple nightgown as I retrieve a bottle, pour our wine into Gram’s petite crystal glasses.
“Bottoms up, I guess,” she says, handing me a Valium.
“Actually, I don’t know how you ever had the nerve to do what you did, coming from this place, these parents. I don’t know how you managed it.”
“What? What did I do?” she asks.
“Mr. Robert. It was pretty courageous, considering.” It’s not the first time I’ve thought this. She runs a finger over her chapped lips.
“Oh, Sylvie—Dad and I were doomed from the start.”
I sit down in Poppy’s leather chair, facing her. “Tell me,” I say. “You said you would, when we had more time.”
She nods. “Well, you know I never should have married him at nineteen, but we were so in love. We thought happiness was just a room you could waltz into.” She smiles, forlorn. “We were stupid; we had no idea how hard it would be—children, poverty, his internship, me working nights…” Glancing at her watery reflection in the window, she smoothes the hair from her eyes. “Just kids ourselves, really, and your dad so wounded, so very…”
“What?”
“Very early on in our marriage, I had a miscarriage, Sylvie.”
“Wow.” I gulp my wine. “You never told me.”
“I know. It didn’t seem that important.” She shrugs. “I still don’t believe it was the cause of anything, really, but that’s when I started noticing him pulling away. Sensing his distance, how—how unsettled he was. You know he lost both his parents. I think he was terrified he’d lose us, too, that the abandonments would continue.”
“So, it was safer to just stay estranged?”
“I think that’s right. He started working all the time, coming home later. There were a couple of women, too—nurses at the hospital. It wasn’t all that serious, honey, but that wasn’t much comfort at the time. I was furious, and I hadn’t a clue how to bring him back. And then I met Robert at the office where I was doing secretarial work—long before you were born. He was married, too, of course; we were just friends. Good friends—” Here she smiles, rolling her eyes. “He used to take me to lunch on the Santa Monica board-walk when I was pregnant with Alison, bought me Coke floats. He’d talk to me in a way Don couldn’t—was afraid to. Funny, how we actualize our greatest fears, isn’t it?”
I nod, gripping my own wrist.
“And marriage is the very hardest work—you know that now.”
“Well, maybe not as hard as—mining rock quarries, or solving the hunger crisis.”
“It didn’t help matters that your Dad turned to the bottle.” She ignores my sarcasm. “And I to another man.” She sips her wine, grunts softly.
“And that your daughter kept telling you to leave,” I add.
She peers at me. Then sets her glass on the table and leans forward, taking my chin in her hand. “Sylvia dear,” she says, over-enunciating. “You were a child. You were not responsible for my choices. Or your father’s. Do you understand that?”
“In my rational mind, I do.” I turn my face away.
“Think about it, angel—would you hold Hannah accountable for yours?”
We’re silent as I refill our glasses. “No,” I finally concede, voice crumbling. “Of course I wouldn’t.”
“Well, then.”
“I just— Sometimes I wonder why you gave me your secret, Mom. Why you made me choose.”
She stares at me, her gray eyes withdrawing. There is something like defiance in the upward tilt of her jaw. Then her features begin to collapse pitifully; she covers them with her hands. I wait, resisting my habitual urge to reach out, alleviate, snatch back the hurtful question. After a few interminable moments the hands drop; her face is composed again, though blotchy, and her voice wavers as she says, “I was afraid to make the choice all my own, I guess, angel. I felt so very alone. So scared.” She leans back on the couch, shaking her head.
“I know,” I say. “I always knew how you felt.” I don’t tell her that, until very recently, I sometimes wondered if we were the same person. Mom sighs and I realize I’m still waiting. I want her to apologize. To say sorry for all the haunted years. Instead she reaches out, strokes my cheek with the backs of her cool fingers. Maybe it’s enough.
“What about you and Robert?” I ask. “Are you guys happy?”
“Oh, you know—happy enough. Considering the trail we blazed. I made a lot of wrong moves back then,” she concludes, slouching into the cushions.
I want to tell her that there are no wrong turns, that there is only the next step. It sounds so lovely, but I don’t really believe it. “Maybe you have to make a few wrong turns to find your way,” I offer instead.
“Maybe so. But your story’s different,” she continues, yawning. “You still have time—a chance to make things right. And a sweet husband who’s willing to work it out.”
“Well,” I say. “He might be.”
“What are you going to do?” Curling her mottled arm round a pillow, she stares up at me. Though still striking, she looks her age just now. It won’t be long before she’s the one needing care.
“I’m going to sleep on it,” I say, kissing her on the forehead, leaving her to her dreams.
I’m the first to wake the next morning. The drizzle has cleared. The thick, golden California light I love is blazing over the hilltops as I make my way to the kitchen phone, anxious to talk to Nathan and the girls.
“How you holding up?” Nathan asks when I find him at the new Ashfield line. “Did the black dress do its job?”
“Not as well as the other day.”
“That was really nice,” he says in a low drawl. “I’m wondering why the hell we waited.”
“Well—I guess that’s a conversation we need to have, isn’t it? What are you doing at the site so early?”
“It’s nearly nine here, remember? The girls are helping me with the flooring—well, in theory anyways.”
“Can I talk to them, please?” He’s silent for a long moment—hesitating? Or maybe saying something to them under his breath. I can hear Hannah’s muffle
d inflection, more silence, then Emmie’s tiny squeak.
“I did a headstand by the blue thing, Mommy. I was all upside down for a long time.”
“That’s wonderful, sweetie.” I laugh. “Are you guys doing okay?”
“Daddy gave us ice cream for breakfast, but I lost Pink Bunny.”
“Oh, dear. Well, she always turns up, doesn’t she?”
“Hannah doesn’t want to talk, Mommy. Bye.” Then she hangs up on me. I stand there, squinting into the dawn, chuckling despite my bereavement. A moment later, Nathan calls back.
“Sorry,” he says. “It’s pretty chaotic here.”
“Hannah still won’t speak to me?”
“I can’t figure out what’s up with that,” he whispers. “She seems to be holding it all together, otherwise.” I press my eyes shut, suddenly struck with the terrible irony of this—the enormity of what she’s holding for me. The anxious fatigue prickles over my scalp like a colony of red ants.
“Can you just give her a message for me?”
“What’s that?”
“Just tell her, we’ll take care of it,” I say, making my voice bright. “Tell her I’m here when she’s ready to talk. Please say those things.” He’s quiet for a while, breathing.
“It’s just a passing thing, Sylvie,” he tells me. “Just a blip on the wide water.”
“Nathan, remember how you used to read me ‘Sunday Morning’ when I couldn’t sleep?”
Outside the Ordinary World Page 30
