Mendocino and Other Stories

by Ann Packer

  She shifted in the chair. “I was just starting to date your father when Daddy got sick,” she said. “I took the train from New York City to New Orleans, and Daddy himself met me at the station, weak as he was. First thing he said to me was ‘How's your love life, Hellie?’—he was always asking me that. I told him I was dating a fellow from Columbia University. Daddy asked was he Jewish, and when I said no he said too bad he wasn't because it would've given him a reason to make me break it off. He said a university professor wasn't anybody a girl like me ought to marry. I told him I wasn't about to marry anyone, and he said to me, ‘Hellie, the one to marry is the one who makes you burn.’ ” My mother laughed. “I was twenty-one years old,” she said. “I thought that in all the world no father had ever said such a thing to his daughter. He said, ‘There's never been a university professor who knew a thing about that.’ And you know what? He was right.”

  She stood up. “I was twenty-one years old,” she said again. “Your father and I gave off some heat together and I took it as a sign.” She set the stone on my desk and came over to sit on the edge of my bed. In the dark her hand found my ear, and she stroked it. “I kind of had fun tonight in my new dress,” she said. “Do you know what I mean?”

  I nodded.

  “He's nodding,” she said. “Nodding off.” She leaned over and kissed my forehead. “Don't worry about anything, Buddy,” she whispered. “None of this has to do with children.”

  INGRID TOOK THE two photographs, my mother's wedding ring, and, saying it might come in handy someday, a Pyrex casserole.

  I took the lamp and the card that said N. D.

  The rest we arranged to have sold along with the house, while my mother's voice whispered, Buddy, the silver? The good linens? Buddy?

  The lamp I needed. The card I put in the bottom of a drawer, to come across years from now when I've forgotten about it again, like an old program that reminds you not just of the glittering lit-up stage, but of afterward, too: the dusty red velvet seats and the sound of rain falling outside, rain that's been falling for a long time.

  The stone I keep on my coffee table, as I have since I've had a coffee table, with the “Thank You” side up, which I suppose reveals something about me, I'm not sure what.

  AUGUST 4TH, AND it's Papa Louie's birthday again! Up from San Francisco, Berkeley, and Sacramento, down from Auburn and Truckee, daughters and grandchildren and even a great-grand, nieces and nephews and cousins, and friends, for Papa Louie has many friends and admirers; they come to Placerville. They come to swim in the pond, for hamburgers grilled by Uncle Don, Miriam's homemade bread and butter pickles, and pears, pears, pears; Papa Louie lives on a pear orchard and attributes his long, long lease on life to the numerous pears he eats every day. A perfect pear is a beautiful thing! The hipsters come up from L.A., and from Menlo Park come Ellen and Matt and their sadness.

  BUT AT TEN o'clock it's still quiet, not yet hot. Back from the first of his three daily walks around the perimeter of his property, Papa Louie lies on the bed in his study and addresses himself to a set of calculus problems from a college textbook left at the house long ago by someone—who knows who. One of the acceptable things about losing your memory, he thinks, is that you can solve the same problems from the same book, over and over again. Find the slope of …

  Miriam, the eldest of his three daughters, stands at the oven in the kitchen, impatient for the last pear tart to brown. Up since six, she's been, because the tarts must be fresh: this is her father's one desire. Who wants a ninetieth birthday party? But by God, if you're going to have one, at least give them a nice pear tart. Ten nice pear tarts! Miriam sighs. Her sisters will arrive in an hour, wanting to help, and she'd love to tell them: No, it's too late, I've done it all myself. The day that happens! What she'll really say is: Nonsense, chickies, let's relax and have an iced tea before the mobs get here.

  She goes to the study door, hesitates a moment, and knocks.

  “Miriam?” her father says.

  Who else? She doesn't exactly live with him, but she's in Sacramento, close enough. Yet she hesitates again—to be sixty-six and afraid of your father! “Yes, it's me, Dad,” she says.

  “Well, what is it?”

  She opens the door. “Would you like a cold drink?”

  “No,” he says, glaring at her, “I wouldn't.”

  She nods and closes the door again. If only he would let her shave him! But this he reserves for the weekly visits of Pansy, her youngest sister. “Pansy has the stillest hands,” he says. Pansy, who doesn't even care how he looks. “Oh, let him,” she says—wander around in pajamas all day, eat with his hands, pass gas at the table.

  Miriam goes back into the kitchen and checks on the tart: a little anemic-looking, but she takes it out anyway.

  THE SAN FRANCISCO contingent is stuck on the Bay Bridge: a baseball game at the Oakland Coliseum has traffic backed up almost to the city. No one mentions it, but they're all thinking of the same thing: the earthquake, almost a year ago now. Who can bear to be stuck on the Bay Bridge ever again?

  Louisa, Papa Louie's middle daughter, is in the backseat; although her daughter Lucy is thirty-six, she still likes to ride up front, and what reason can Louisa give to deny her? “Try the left lane, dear,” Louisa says to her husband.

  Keith puts the turn signal on and turns the wheel so the car is pointed, more or less, to the left.

  “There,” Louisa says.

  Still they don't move. Louisa twists her rings around her finger and wonders how Miriam is getting along with the preparations. She wanted to go up last night, but somehow something prevented it, she can't think what right now—and then she remembers: Ellen. Ellen called just as she was going to suggest to Keith that they call Lucy and leave that very minute. She talked to Ellen for an hour, and by then it was too late. Poor Ellen! Louisa doesn't know what to do about her younger daughter.

  She leans forward. “I hope Ellen will make an effort today,” she says. She doesn't mean it like that, but Lucy turns around and gives her a reproachful look—as if Louisa weren't just broken up over it all! She only wants what's best for her daughter, her baby. “I mean for her own sake, Lucy,” she says.

  Lucy shrugs.

  The cars in the far right lane have begun to move. “Oh, look,” Louisa says. “Now they're moving.”

  Keith switches the turn signal and turns the wheel all the way to the right.

  UNCLE DON HEFTS a twenty-pound bag of charcoal into a wheelbarrow and pushes it to the stone barbeque twenty feet away: he's not so young anymore himself, although he's nothing like ninety. Papa Louie is Don's half-brother—half brother, half friend, that's what Louie always said!—and Don wouldn't dream of begrudging Louie or his girls an afternoon of barbeque duty. Anyway, the barbeque's close to the house, so he can get a cold beer whenever he feels like it. None of that keg stuff for Don! Miriam keeps a case of Bud in the second fridge for him; it's their secret.

  PANSY SITS IN the backseat of the Jaguar her sons bought together last month. Two grown men sharing a car! But Jeremy and Stuart are like they were at five, bickering and in love.

  Next to Pansy sits her grandson, Elias, Jeremy's child. Last night, when the boys arrived at her house in Berkeley, Pansy could hardly believe the change in Elias: four going on forty, the poor thing. Jeremy had him decked out in something absurd, and Stuart kept saying, “Ma, look at Elias's boots,” and “Ma, wait'll you hear Elias on the piano.” First thing out of the car in Placerville, Pansy's going to go in and lock the door on the piano room.

  She looks across Elias's curly head—was his hair always so curly?—at Jeremy's girlfriend: Jane, or Jade as she seems to be called now. “Have you and Jeremy been enjoying the beach?” she says; in May Jeremy bought a house in Malibu.

  Jade turns her lovely head and smiles at Pansy. She doesn't answer, but this isn't unusual; indeed, Pansy didn't expect an answer.

  “Ma,” Stuart says from the front seat, “wait'll you see Elias swimming!” He tu
rns to look at his brother, and Jeremy shakes his head ever so slightly, a gesture meant only for Stuart.

  “Do you like to swim, Elias?” Pansy says.

  Elias looks up at her, his eyes so like the boys' when they were young: wide and brown and innocent.

  “Answer Grandma,” Jeremy says.

  “Oh, no,” Pansy says. “He doesn't have to.”

  MIRIAM IS CHANGING into her party dress—such as it is—when she hears the sound of the first car coming down the long driveway. She hasn't decided which pair of sandals to wear, and now she doesn't really have time to choose carefully. She puts on a pair with inch-high heels, an absurd thing to wear at the ranch but she thinks they flatter her legs, the only part of her still worth flattering. She hurries over to the mirror. A barrel with chorus girl legs, that's what Dad said the other day. She puts on lipstick and goes to the window to see who it is, Louisa or Pansy, but it's neither of them, and Miriam draws back to avoid being seen. She didn't recognize the people getting out of the car—Pansy's new neighbors, maybe, or friends of Louisa and Keith—and she allows herself to imagine that she can hide in here until one of her sisters arrives.

  LUCY SHIFTS IN her seat, and her father pats her leg and then returns his hand to the steering wheel. Her mother, she thinks, has fallen asleep.

  “Have we passed the Nut Tree yet?” she whispers.

  “About twenty minutes ago,” her father whispers back.

  When Lucy and her sister were little, the drive up to Papa Louie's seemed endless, and they always begged to stop at the Nut Tree for treats—you could get delicious little miniature loaves of nut bread. Now here Lucy is, thirty-six years old and she's still being taken by her parents to see Papa Louie. For a moment she's so envious of her sister it feels like an engine racing in her. Ellen, married. Ellen never even wanted to get married! She wanted to be a nurse and go to Africa. Lucy wanted to get married—at eight she spent an entire summer making lists of the names of men she might marry. She had the wedding all planned: ten bridesmaids and a flower girl who was, somehow, her own eight-year-old self. Ellen was six, and she made lists of the names of the children she would bear.

  It's like roads to Rome. All Lucy's thoughts these days lead her to this place: Ellen's grief, the baby stillborn at eight and a half months. Lucy's grief is that Ellen won't talk to her about it, will barely talk to her at all.

  THERE ARE TEN or twelve cars parked along the narrow drive down to Papa Louie's, and Jeremy slows the Jag down to a crawl: not a scratch on this baby is the motto. The house comes into view, and behind it, way in the distance, the mountains south of Tahoe. Jeremy loves it here, perhaps the one secret he has from his brother.

  “I need a toot,” Stuart says under his breath.

  “Let me get Elias settled,” Jeremy murmurs back.

  He slows even more as they pass the twenty or thirty people already assembled on the terrace, then he eases the car around the back of the house and stops under the one anomalous peach tree. Pansy is out of the car before he's even cut the engine, saying something about Miriam.

  “Let's go, troops,” Jeremy says. “Party time.”

  He gets out of the car, leans into the backseat to help Elias out, and finds Jade staring at him blankly. “Babe?” he says.

  She opens her door and unfolds her long, beautiful body, which is clad in something black and stretchy and minimal. She stands up, and to Jeremy it's like a command: adore me. He does. She is twelve years younger than he, twenty-three and utterly empty-headed, but it doesn't matter: it thrills him just to contemplate her arms.

  “This is it, Babe,” he says. He makes a grand sweep of his arm, encompassing the pear trees, the house, the pool, the gorgeous view across the hills to the mountains: the good fortune they all have to be here, and especially the good fortune he has to be with her.

  “Toot time,” Stuart says, patting the breast pocket of his Hawaiian shirt, and Jade turns toward him, smiling.

  “Jeez,” Jeremy says, “I think maybe Mom didn't hear that, you want to try again?” He looks, guiltily, at Elias—but what's toot to his son but the noise a train makes? “What do you say, champ?” Jeremy says.

  “Thank you,” Elias says.

  “I love it,” Stuart says. “Where's Ma? She's got to hear this kid.”

  BUT PANSY IS in the house, in conference with Miriam. “Just go ask him,” Miriam is saying. “He'll listen to you.”

  “Does it really matter, Mim?” Pansy sidesteps Miriam's gaze and goes to the refrigerator. She didn't know it until she stepped into the kitchen, but she's dying for some pear juice.

  “On the door,” Miriam says. “By the milk.”

  Pansy finds a bottle of clear, pale juice and pours some into a glass that's sitting on the counter.

  “That was going to be for Dad's iced tea,” Miriam says.

  “Sorry,” Pansy says. “I'll wash it, OK?”

  “Could you just please go in and ask him?”

  Pansy takes a sip of her drink. “Ask him what, hon?”

  How, Miriam asks herself, can someone so vague get along living alone? Pansy's exactly like Dad, in fact. “To get dressed,” she says. “Honestly, Pansy.”

  “All right,” Pansy says. “But first I'm going to lock the piano room.”

  “Aw,” Miriam says, “why? Remember last year after most everyone had gone, and Jeremy played the piano and we sang?” Miriam can't remember what the song was: something by a rock band, a song the kids knew. “Such a lovely place, such a lovely face”—that was part of it.

  Pansy considers telling Miriam that she's worried about Elias, but decides not to. “Mom's teacups are in there,” she says. “There were so many little kids last time, it just seems safer this way.” She puts the empty juice glass in the sink. “What do you want him to wear?”

  “Clothes!” Miriam says. “And see if you can shave him.”

  THE HEAT. IT'S ninety-seven already, and climbing. Harvest starts Monday, and if you know what to look for you can just smell the pears: a hint of cinnamon in the orchard.

  A couple dressed in silks and linens comes walking down the driveway. She's in high white heels and isn't having an easy time of it; the driveway's unpaved. This is their first time at this party, and to see the little groups standing around in shorts and sundresses, kids running barefoot, and Don in his greasy chef 's apron loading briquets into the barbeque—it's nearly too much to bear.

  “How cozy,” she says. “Too bad we didn't rent a child to bring along, or a dog. Don't you think a dog would behoove us?”

  He ignores her. He's thinking: stash the jacket and tie, roll up the sleeves, lose her. Then find the old man, right away, and say something cool and easy. “It's really a pleasure to meet you, sir.” “I've been looking forward to this day for a long time, sir.” He wipes the sweat from his forehead. He doesn't know a soul here, doesn't even know who sent him the invitation—probably someone who'd heard that his father had died.

  “Oh,” she says, “burgers, yum. I don't know when I last had a burger.”

  All those times his father wanted him to come along. All those times he said no. “Shut up,” he says. “Just shut the hell up.”

  RIGHT AWAY LUCY sees Jeremy and Stuart and Jade, sitting with their feet in the pool. She fills a plastic cup at the keg, and then, saying hi to people, hello, nice to see you, she weaves through the crowd and joins them.

  “It's the hipsters,” she says, kicking each of her cousins in the small of the back. “How's the hippest place on earth?”

  “Hip,” Stuart says.

  “The hippest,” Jeremy says.

  “Hi, Jane,” Lucy says. “We met at Pansy's birthday, in April.”

  “Yes,” Jade says. “I remember.”

  It shouldn't be legal, Lucy thinks, to look like that—at least not when Lucy's around! “Nice to see you again,” she says. “Nice of you to put up with this character here.” She means Jeremy: her cousing, she thinks affectionately, remembering the long-ago t
erm.

  “It's Jade,” Jade says.

  Lucy looks at Stuart—he's rolling his eyes, meaning what? “Forgive me,” she says. “I was sure it was Jane.”

  “It was in April,” Jeremy says. “Now it's Jade.”

  Lucy kicks off her shoes and sits next to him. She puts her feet in the water, but she's no longer thinking about any of them, cousings or their silly girlfriends. Here come Ellen and Matt.

  WHAT MATT SEES is kids, everywhere: and he tightens his hold on Ellen's arm. He doesn't remember there being nearly so many kids last year, and in trying to recall last year in any kind of detail he comes smack up against It: last year Ellen was pregnant, just—the news was maybe a week old and they were giddy with it.

  He glances at her: she's pale and thin, so thin. She was worried about not being able to lose weight after the baby was born, but it's been just four months and she's slender and tense as a stick.

  “There's Don in his apron,” Matt says, for something to say.

  “Stop!” She shakes his hand off her arm.

  “What?”

  “I don't—want to be seen. I'm cutting through the trees, you can—I don't care what you do.”

  She leaves the driveway and begins to walk in an arc that will take her around the nearby two-acre plot of pear trees—the home trees, Papa Louie calls them—to the back of the house. Everyone, Matt knows, has seen them.

  He follows her. “Wait,” he says. “Ellen, wait, I'm right behind you.”

  LOUISA KNOCKS AT her father's study door. “Papa Louie?” she says. “It's me, Louisa.”

  The door opens and there he is, like her sisters said: in boxers and his old seersucker robe. “Hi, Louie,” he says.

  “Hi, Louie.” She goes in and kisses him. “Happy birthday—you're not getting older, you're getting worse.”

  “I've got a question for you, Louie,” he says. “Come into my office.” He walks her over to the bed—slowly, slowly—and they sit down on it, side by side.

  “So?” she says. “Don't keep me waiting.”

  “I want you to tell me how I got here.”