“I’m stunned. You mean you could really predict an earthquake with this stuff?”
“Not predict, exactly, but record action in the area, which helps to predict. Two years before the Loma Prieta a Stanford researcher set up a very sensitive instrument to measure low-frequency electromagnetic waves in the Santa Cruzes. He put it up near where the epicenter was, later. He was actually tracking submarines. For two years there was no big change, but then, a few months before the quake, he noticed a moderate change, and then hours before a really big jump. Of course he only noticed that after the quake, but it shows you that movement and waves can be monitored. What we can’t do, even with the best and newest stuff, is predict just when, or precisely where. I depend on my feet to do that. I don’t wear shoes much up here.”
“What else do you have?”
“You are hard to impress, aren’t you? Nothing, really, except some books and magazines. I’ve got Elementary Seismology, by the grand old man himself, Charles Richter. He published it in nineteen fifty-eight, and it’s still the bible for the profession. I’ve practically memorized chapter fifteen, Seismograph. Theory and Practice. I still read it for fun. I’ve got Peace of Mind in Earthquake Country. It mainly covers how to build structures to withstand quake motions. Most of the pros have it. Of course, Kobe showed us how much use that was. And I take a bunch of magazines that the U.S. Geological Survey puts out, and some other stuff. Want to curl up with one of them while I shower and change?”
“No,” I said. “I want to shower with you. I guess you mean that showerhead sticking out of the tower leg just above Curtis’s water bowl, don’t you? I want to take a long, no doubt bone-chilling shower with you, and then I want to go up and fix that damned bouillabaisse at last and put it on to simmer, and then I want”—and I reached over and pulled the band of his shorts away from his back and reached in and squeezed both his muscular buttocks—“then I want to see how many times in one day you can do it. Get cracking, T.C. We’ve miles to go before we sleep.”
“Merritt, I do believe I have created an insatiable sex monster. When are you going to get enough of it?”
“When the fat lady sings,” I leered, and ran back across the yard and turned the spitting, rusty stream of the shower on, and ducked under it. I was right. It was as cold as glacier water. We stayed under it only long enough to lather up with T.C.’s desiccated soap-on-a-rope, and then dried ourselves off vigorously and gratefully on the thin Fairmont towel that hung on a peg beside the soap. My skin was tingling as I ran up the ladder to the top of the tower, and the trapped heat in the glassed-in aerie felt good. Behind me, T.C. checked the answering machine again, found it still empty, and fetched a bottle of Glenlivet from a cubbyhole under his counter. He poured two healthy shots into the squat, heavy glasses of cloudy old crystal, and handed me one. He plopped himself on the bed with his, crossed his legs at the ankle, and propped his head on the piled pillows. He had not dressed after his shower, and except for the strip of white where his shorts usually were, he was red-brown all over, felted with glistening black hair, and, to me, a very beautiful and serviceable man.
“Cook, woman,” he said, sipping single malt. “Your reward will be lavish and long.”
“In hours or inches?” I said, dragging the bouillabaisse ingredients out of the crowded under-counter refrigerator. They still smelled sweet and briny. I thought we were safe.
“However you want it,” he said.
“Just like you said. Lavish and long. Real long.”
“How about an incentive, instead of a reward?” he said, and I turned to look at him, and saw that despite the cold shower, he was erect once more. I laughed with pure, greedy joy, deep in my throat.
“If I don’t get this stew on we’ll have to throw it out and order in. But by all means, hold that thought.”
“Do you know the one about the old earl whose manservant came in and found him with a hard-on for the first time in years, and said, ‘Do you want me to call her ladyship, m’lord?’ Well, the old earl said, ‘Her ladyship be blowed; ring for the car. I’m going to smuggle this one up to London.’ Tarry too long with that stuff and I’m going to take this one into Palo Alto.”
“What’s a few minutes to a bunch of fish?” I said, and went over to him and fitted myself down upon him, looking down at his brown face in the last of the sun.
“Mmmm,” I said, moving slightly, leaning back. “I’m powerfully empty without this. What would you think of a life cast?”
“About what I’d think of a board with a bearskin nailed to it and a hole punched through it,” he said, beginning to rock with me.
“What’s that?” I laughed, gasping through the laughter.
“The traditional refuge of the Hudson Bay trapper after months in the Arctic without a woman,” T.C. said, closing his eyes. “Slow, Merritt. Take it slow, my love…”
We ended up eating Brie omelettes, much later. The bouillabaisse boiled itself dry, and we did not notice until the reek of scorching metal filled the tower room.
The fat lady sang at 8:30 P.M.
We were lying together on the bed, propped up on pillows, loosely touching at shoulder and hip, and he was playing his guitar. Actually, he was accompanying Sunnyland Slim, who was rolling out Do Nothin’ Till You Hear From Me on a plinky old piano. It was one of T.C.’s oldest records, and he handled it as a knight errant might the Grail. He had been instructing me on the movement of the blues from Mississippi to Chicago, and we had gone through Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James, and Walter Horton. I was absurdly happy. I loved the rich, wailing music; I loved the tall man who loved it too, and played it. I thought we might listen to it until the black mirror of the skylight grew pale, and then we would sleep. And tomorrow…tomorrow there would be more. Of everything.
When the phone rang I did not know what it was. T.C. stopped playing and sat very still. Sunnyland Slim went on plinking. Then T.C. got up and went slowly across the room to pick up the phone. On the way he pulled on his red-and-black checked shirt. It was that gesture that cut through my heart and down into my stomach. Only then did I realize that the phone had rung.
He stood with his back to me, leaning on one knuckled fist on the desk as he held the phone to his ear in the other.
“No need for that,” he said pleasantly. “She’s right here.”
I knew then that the days of gold were over. Whoever it was who sought me—Glynn, Laura, Pom, even Amy—it was that other woman who must answer.
“No,” I whispered aloud, tears of pure grief filling my eyes. “I’m not ready.”
He held the phone out, not looking at me, and I got up and pulled on my shorts and T-shirt and went slowly across the floor. I understood then his gesture with the shirt. Eden had been breached and we must now cover our nakedness.
I took the phone and tried to speak, could not, and cleared my throat.
“Hello?”
“What are you doing up there?”
It was Glynn’s voice, fussy and querulous. I had not heard that tone since she left childhood.
“I’m listening to Sunnyland Slim and fixing to wash dishes,” I said, trying for lightness. My voice sounded like dull old sandpaper in my ears.
“What’s up with you? You having a good time?”
“No. I’m having a shitty time. I have to leave, tonight, right now. You have to come get me. When can you be here? I have to tell Marcie’s stepmother—”
“What on earth? What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong is Marcie’s horrible, shitty mother,” my daughter snapped. “She just called and said Marcie and Jess have to come home first thing in the morning, on the eight o’clock plane. She didn’t get her child support check and Marcie’s dad promised it would be there by now and he says he sent it and she says he’s lying and if he doesn’t put them on that plane she’s calling the sheriff. Of course I can’t stay. So when will you get here? I want to tell them—”
I could not think. My ears were ring
ing and my mouth was numb. The other Merritt had gone far away indeed; I could not seem to find her. Finally I said, “Let me ask T.C.”
“Why do you have to ask him, for God’s sake? He’s not your keeper. Why can’t you just come yourself and let’s get this over with? I don’t want to have to talk to him and laugh at his stupid jokes.”
Pure, red rage swept me like wildfire.
“Your tone stinks, Glynn,” I said, trying not to shout at her, “and I will ask T.C. because it’s his Jeep and because he has been extraordinarily nice to both of us, and because I do not want to drive down the mountains in the dark by myself. Not that it’s any of yours business. We can start…”
I looked over at him. He sat slumped bonelessly on his spine on the desk, studying me, his face closed and calm. He held up five fingers.
“We can start in five minutes,” I said. “We’ll be there when we get there. Have your things out on the porch ready to go. And get your act straightened out. Neither one of us wants to cope with you in that mood.”
“Well, that’s just too bad about neither one of you,” she said nastily. I could hear the tears under her voice, and my anger abated, but only somewhat. But then she added, “What would please either one of you? For me just to vanish and let you keep on doing…whatever it is you’ve been doing up there?”
The red anger soared.
“You are way out of line,” I said coldly. “Be ready.”
And I slammed the phone down, and stood there, thinking that I had no idea what move to make next.
He came over and stood in front of me, but he did not touch me.
“I’m sorry, Merritt,” he said softly. “I wasn’t ready, either. I thought there would be more time.…”
I began to cry, dully and hopelessly, the tears running down my cheeks and dripping off my chin.
“T.C.,” I sobbed. “T.C.…I wanted to know what your second-grade teacher was like. I wanted to know where your folks went on vacation every year. I wanted to know if you hate boiled okra—”
“We knew from the beginning that it wasn’t going to be one of those loves, didn’t we? That kind of context, that kind of resonance—that’s for the long loves, baby. That’s for the loves that raise children and pay income taxes and look after old people and cuss the lawn service. We couldn’t have had that. You already have one of those, a perfectly good one, and I already had one. This one is separate and different, and apart from that other kind. This one makes up in depth what it lacked in width. But I’ll tell you this. Whenever you feel like you need to know something about me, stop and think a minute. Whatever comes into your mind will probably be right. Because I’ll be there telling you, always, and all you have to do is listen.”
I put my arms around him and scrubbed my face into his shirt and cried and cried. It was a soundless, wrenching sort of crying, endless, uncathartic. He held me very close, but softly, and kissed my hair and my wet face.
“You’ll have to stop crying now, Merritt, because I simply can’t stand it anymore,” he said presently.
So I did. I still don’t know why it was so easy. I suppose that there just has to be an end to tears sometimes, even when there is no end to pain. I looked up at him, and his dark eyes glistened wetly, and he let me go and turned away. I think it was then that my heart truly broke. After that there was mainly dullness and loss, and that was better than the raw grief. But only just.
We put Curtis in the backseat of the Jeep and went down the winding, dark mountain road in silence. It was still very hot and thick; Curtis panted restlessly in the backseat, and kept turning around and resettling himself, as if he caught the sense of pain. Once or twice he whined, and touched his nose to the back of T.C.’s neck. I felt the tears prickle again both times, but knew that I would not cry anymore. We did not speak until the lights of Palo Alto lay below us.
“We could meet,” I said. “You’re coming East in October, aren’t you? To see your boy in his season opener? We could meet somewhere in the middle; I could come over to…where? Birmingham, maybe.”
He was silent so long that I looked over at him, and saw that the white ghost of a grin flashed in his dark beard.
“A night in the Birmingham Days Inn? Dinner and a drink and a song or two around the piano bar? Condoms from a machine in the men’s room? Would you want that, Merritt?”
“It might be better than nothing.”
But I knew that it would not be; that it would be terrible past imagining.
“Don’t settle, love,” he said mildly and took my hand, and we rode the rest of the way in silence again, joined only by our intertwined fingers.
Glynn stood on the porch of the big Victorian. Her duffel and several shopping bags stood around her. She was alone. The yellow porch light spilled down on her, and even from the driveway I could tell that something about her was very different. Then it hit me: her hair. She had cut her hair, and it was curled around her small head in a medusa-like tangle of stiff-sprayed curls and whorls. For a moment she looked as if she was wearing a strange hat, a bright, complicated straw. Then I realized that she had bleached it, too.
“My God,” I said, and T.C. laughed. It was nearly the old laugh.
“How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen Palo Alto?” he said, and to my surprise I laughed, too. There was more pain in it than mirth, but it was a laugh. I thought in sudden, swift agony that laughter was going to be his last, best gift to me. He had saddled me with a new sense of absurdity.
Glynn picked up her bags and duffel and stomped toward us. She was wearing pink sandals that tied around her ankles and had very high platforms, and she teetered perilously. It spoiled the effect of what might have been a fine, angry prowl. She wore spandex tights down to her knees and a T-shirt cropped so that it cleared her waist. Every bone and knob and rib and hollow showed, and automatically I assessed the thinness. It was less than it had been, but it was still grotesque under the straw curls and the cerise spandex. When she got close to the car we could see that she wore vivid vermilion lipstick, and slashes of mauve blush, and her eyes were so thick with makeup that I could not see anything but spiky lashes and violet shadow in the dim light. I did, though, catch the gleam of gold in one of her nostrils. A ring. My daughter had a ring in her nose.
She should have looked entirely ludicrous, but in an odd, eerie way she was beautiful: instead of a young medieval martyr, a painted Mexican madonna, a hectically theatrical actress from a forties play. I could not speak.
“Well, go ahead,” she said grumpily. “Tell me I look like some kind of whore. That’s what Marcie’s dad said we looked like. Tell me I belong on the wrong end of Sunset Boulevard.”
“Hello, darling,” I said. “Nice language. I’m not going to tell you anything, except that you look thirty years old and it’s going to take me a while to get used to it. Hop in. Where are Marcie and Jess? Did you remember to thank Marcie’s stepmother?”
“Oh, God, of course,” she said. “Marcie and Jess are in Marcie’s room blubbering.” She got into the backseat, slamming the door. She did not speak to T.C. He lifted his eyebrows quizzically, but did not say anything. My face burned; the anger was starting up again.
There was a joyous woof from the backseat as Curtis recognized her, or perhaps it was her smell. I did not see how he could have found much else to recognize.
“Oh, Curtis; oh, hello, you old dog,” Glynn said in an entirely different voice, one that was soft and so vulnerable that my very womb seemed to turn over at the sound of it. I looked back and saw that she had her arms around him and her strange new face buried in his neck. I turned back and stared straight ahead as we drove back out of town.
“He’s missed you,” T.C. said amiably. “He asked when you were coming back so often that we had to promise him he could spend the night with you when you did get back.”
Glynn was silent a moment, and then she said, “Well, that should work out just about right for everybody, shouldn’t it?”
I whipped my head around, but T.C. touched my thigh and I fell silent. For almost the rest of the trip we did not speak.
He drove past the tower and down to the lodge and cut the motor. We all sat still for a moment, and then he said, “I’ll take you up to San Francisco whenever you’re ready. You ought to give yourselves two and a half or three hours if you have to get a flight after you get there. Or I can call the airport for you tonight—”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Glynn said sharply.
“I’ll come back up when I’ve gotten everything down here squared away,” I said formally. “I need to make some calls.”
“I’ll just bet you do,” Glynn said under her breath.
She got out of the Jeep and slammed the door.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to T.C. “I’m going to have to figure out how to handle this.”
“You want me to come in and talk to her?”
“No, she’s in too shitty a mood. I’m not going to let her talk to you this way.”
“I wish you wouldn’t let her talk to you that way either,” he said, “but that’s between the two of you. You really coming back up? You think you should?”
“I think I have to. I can’t just…I have to see you one more time.”
“I’ll put on some coffee, then. But if you change your mind and think it would be easier just to…let it stop here…I’ll understand. It might be, at that—”
“I have to, T.C. Don’t you want…a little more time?”
“Oh, my God,” he breathed. “What do you think?”
Fault Lines Page 33
