Bright Angel Time

by Martha McPhee

  “Why do you wear such funny dresses?” he asked. He looked deep into me. He could stare for a long time. But I could stare even longer.

  “What?” I snapped. I wore a black velvet dress. It was clean, with white linen piping. My legs were naked. I could feel a draft on my skin and in my hair.

  “Why don’t you wear shorts? Why those frilly dresses?”

  “Why don’t you cut your hair?” I asked, and he was quiet. His hair was tangled worse than mine. I thought the knots would never come out with a brush. It would have to all be cut off. I thought I would like to cut it all off.

  Quartz. Quartzite. Radiolarian chert. There was so much radio-larian chert. A beautiful burgundy, red and beefy, laced with thin white calcite lines like gristle. Graywacke. Shale and slate. I pointed out everything I could to Finny. I could have spent forever exploring. I told Finny that I was going to be a geologist like my father when I grew up.

  “It will be easier for you to understand about rocks when we get to the Grand Canyon,” I said. “Their story is written out in the rocks there like words in a book. Rocks with beautiful names: Vishnu Schist, Coconino Sandstone, Muav Limestone, the Toroweap Formation and Bright Angel Shale.” I sang the names to him as our father had to us.

  “How do you know we’re going there?” he asked.

  “I just do,” I said. “Like I know you’re going to love me.”

  “No I’m not.”

  “You are too,” I said. My eyes penetrated his. I could already tell that a little brother was the most wonderful thing in the world. I could tell he liked thinking I knew a lot of things, that it made him feel secure around me. I felt so grown-up and wise.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m tired of your games. They’re stupid.” He paused. “Your dad’s gone, Kate.”

  “What?” I snapped. Slowly I lifted my head and looked down on him, piercing him again with my eyes until he had to look away. I told him never to say that again. From my pocket, I pulled my rock of gold and rolled it between my fingers. I told him my father gave it to me and that it meant he was with me always. Finny admired the rock, though I would not let him touch it. I held it there, the gold flakes sparkling in the sun, taunting him. But inside, I was tremendously sad.

  I ignored Finny. It only took an hour; after an hour he was mine again and would play whatever I wanted. Something changed in me in that hour as I saw Finny come back around to my side. I realized that I had a lot of power, that his love and trust made me the possessor of something grand – I’d never felt this before with my sisters, in my old life. And that power made me both mean and more in love. Mean because I wanted to see how far I could push Finny, as if each concession of his to each push of mine meant he loved me all the more. And his love was imperative, with it I could save the family. His loving me meant that it wouldn’t matter if Anton stopped loving Mom. I understood Julia for falling in love with Nicholas. I understood the trick, the key – why Mom wanted us to get on with Anton and his kids so well.

  Sometimes Mom would ask my sisters and me to do little tasks for her, simple things she could often do more easily for herself – drying a pot when both the pot and towel were in her hands, digging a hole for a bulb in her garden when both the bulb and the hoe were in her lap. But she wanted us to do the favor anyway, because if we did it proved and confirmed our love for her.

  I made Finny do a lot of things. I made Finny fall backward to me and each time I caught him I knew that he belonged to me a little more than the time before. I wondered if that was how Anton had felt when we’d fallen to him. I told Finny to be my slave for a day and do whatever I said. I promised I’d be his slave the next day. In the stout collector’s bag I had him carry the rocks we found, I had him do my dinner job, I had him convert the table into my bed. I ordered him around in front of the others and though they warned him not to trust me, he agreed to it all. Fool, I thought, but I loved him.

  ♦

  “Bone’s a bastard,” Timothy said. “That’s why he’d be so stupid as to be your slave.” Alone in the camper. “He doesn’t know he’s a bastard yet, so don’t say anything or Dad’ll get real mad and you don’t want to see Dad mad.” He wore a floppy purple velvet hat. His eyes were wide. “He’s illegitimate. He wasn’t planned. A mistake.” He wasn’t planned, illegitimate like he shouldn’t exist. Timothy and I stared at each other until our eyes watered and we had to turn away. “Dad had an affair and they had Bone. So his mom is different from ours. That’s what bastard means. Mom adopted him, but he’s still a bastard.”

  This was another way our two families merged, through each other’s secrets. We traded them like baseball cards, trying to outdo one another with our stories, trying to prove that our respective lives were more complicated and therefore more exotic.

  “His name is Finny,” I said, trying to ignore Timothy. It was close inside the camper. Jane and Caroline had dinner going on the stove – beef hash and baked beans. Steam oozed from the bean pot. The lid rattled. A salad had already been brought to us from the Esalen kitchen. The lettuce had wilted around the edges. I pictured little Finny, naked. I wanted him now.

  “Dad has lots of affairs. Your mother’s an affair. Say something,” Timothy insisted. Bastard, I thought, but I felt sorry for Timothy. I couldn’t imagine losing my mother. It was bad enough to be without her for three days. I missed her, little things: her fingers braiding our hair. I thought about ‘sensitivity training’ and wondered where she was now. Timothy looked tiny standing there, even though he was bigger than I. I wondered what he missed about his mother. I wanted to be nice to him, but couldn’t.

  Outside, the sky turned red through the trees and I could hear some of the others talking. “Mom’s pregnant with your dad’s baby and she’s going to have it and they’re going to get married,” I said. It was a lie, of course, but she had been pregnant. She’d gone to New Orleans to have an abortion. Julia had said the doctors would stick a vacuum-cleaner hose inside of Mom and suck until it sucked the baby out. I had worried the vacuum would suck up more of her than that.

  “She’ll have a bastard then, and we’ll have another bastard brother hanging around that Mom’ll have to adopt and it’ll be my brother and not yours, because you’ll be gone and Mom’ll be back.”

  My eyes stung with tears, but I did not cry. I would not cry. If I loved Finny that would never happen. If Julia loved Nicholas it wouldn’t happen either. I repeated that to myself like a prayer. Sofia came in, opened the refrigerator and looked inside and then shut the door and then opened it again and took out an apple. Nicholas came in and popped open a beer and guzzled it. Caroline came in and poured herself a glass of wine. She leaned her head over the stove, holding back her long hair with one hand, lifting the bean-pot lid with the other, to check the beans. I would ask her about Finny. Julia raced in and out. I’d ask her about Mom. Finny came in and plopped down at the table. His blue eyes studied me. He was jealous when I spent time with Timothy.

  My father had had an affair. That’s what Mom said. Affair. I thought of the bulldog ants and sexuality oozing all over the place. I thought of all the naked people at Esalen, thought about them fucking. I’d never seen a person fuck, but I knew how they did it from the diagrams that Julia drew. I was glad Mom had had an abortion. I couldn’t stand the idea of a brother or a sister of mine out there alone without Mom, my sisters or me. I thought of an escaped balloon drifting fast up to the sky. I didn’t look at Timothy, but I could feel his eyes on me.

  “Are you guys doing dinner jobs?” Sofia asked us. She was always asking about doing dinner jobs – overseeing who was doing what and doing a whole lot of nothing herself. “Like a smaller version of Anton,” Jane would say.

  “Come off it,” Nicholas said to her. Sofia managed to make everyone turn against her, even her own brothers and sisters. Everyone was talking at once, flooding in and out. Sofia’s fingers clamped a cigarette elegantly and she blew smoke rings. Finny flicked on the dull overhead
light, shadows spread over everything. A moth orbited the bulb, crashing into it, falling, flying into it again. Finny tilted a plastic Baggie of marijuana and spilled a heap of it on the table and rolled bones for Anton.

  “What’s your dinner job, Kate?” Sofia asked.

  “Give it a rest,” Nicholas said, impatiently. He was protective of the little kids and for that I loved him.

  “But they’ve got to understand what Dad’s like,” Sofia said.

  “Sofia,” Caroline said. I imagined Anton playing poker and remembered him at our house. And even though that was gone, I wasn’t afraid of him. I looked around for Jane.

  “Yeah, Kate,” Finny said without looking up. He was mad at me because I hadn’t been his slave and had laughed when he said it was my turn. “Sucker,” I’d said – Timothy’s word, he used sucker all the time.

  We had adopted a cat once, I remembered. An orange cat with beautiful, thick long hair. We gave it a home so it wouldn’t be killed. Dad shaved that cat because Mom had cut my hair very short. I had had really long hair and Dad had loved my hair and when he saw it cut off he shaved the cat. He actually hadn’t shaved the whole cat, just a spot, but over time the story had grown.

  “If you don’t do a dinner job you’ll get extra work,” Finny said. He wanted me to react. It was clear by the way he held me with his eyes, and I almost did react just to make him feel powerful. I swore to myself I would never be mean to Finny again. I would protect him.

  “Dad’s good at giving extra work,” Sofia said. The way his kids talked about him, Anton grew in my mind and I began to believe Jane really had seen something in him that Julia, Mom and I hadn’t. A breeze came through the window and the whole camper smelled up with the smell of boiling beans. Timothy went outside, no longer interested in the bastard. I breathed in cigarette smoke. It smelled good. I wanted to talk to Mom. Then I wondered about home. I saw our empty house and wished I could crawl into my bed. I wondered how long we’d be gone. I thought about Toad and didn’t feel very beautiful and the slate didn’t seem very clean any longer.

  “You guys don’t have your car anymore, do you?” Sofia asked. She knew damn well we didn’t have our car. I hated her. “What if you want to leave?” I saw our car on that long stretch of road, driven by the foreigners, I saw us – my sisters, Mother and I – standing on an island, isolated, here, unable to escape. We were absolutely powerless, with no money and no car, like beggars. I wanted my twenty dollars back, I had to have my twenty dollars.

  “We trust you,” I lied.

  My rock fell out of my hand onto the table. I hadn’t even realized that I was holding it. Sofia snatched it up and examined it. It flickered in the light.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “It’s gold,” I said proudly and then wished I hadn’t. I was afraid she wouldn’t give it back. I didn’t trust her.

  Finny looked up and stared at it. “It’s from her father, it’s her father,” Finny said. Ten tiny cigarettes were arranged in front of him in a perfectly ordered row on the linoleum table that would later become my bed.

  “It’s ugly,” Sofia said and handed it back to me.

  ♦

  Mom came out of sensitivity training just the same as she went in. She wore the same stiff blue jeans, the same floral shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a red bandeau that matched her lipstick. The only thing different about her was that she talked a lot about living in the present and being here now. She and Anton were glad to be back with us. I studied them to see if they were in love. I had so many questions to ask her, there was so much I needed to know. I clung to her side, never wanting to let her go. “My silly-billy girl, what’s wrong with you? Don’t be such a worry wart.” Anton gave us all wet kisses at the roots of our hair.

  We went to lunch that day with Helmut Kimp and his wife, Heda. Helmut Kimp was fat, with a chin that looked as if it were being gradually reabsorbed into his neck. From his round face dangled lots of moles. I counted eleven, of different shapes and sizes. Some looked as if I could easily clip them off.

  We all sat at a long table at an outside restaurant on a terrace overlooking the ocean. The restaurant was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, something that Julia let us all know. The big kids sat at one end and the little kids with the grown-ups at the other. Wind chimes rang and water trickled over a fall. Tourists snapped pictures of the ocean. Japanese lanterns swayed in a light breeze.

  Anton and Helmut drank beer and talked about the war and communists, and like a thunderstorm Nicholas and Anton were fighting. As Anton argued, his body seemed to inflate, making him enormous. I’d never seen him go like that before. Some of the big kids, including Jane, chimed in about Vietnam. Sofia rolled her eyes and said, “Anytime you want to get in a fight, bring up Vietnam or abortion.” She smoked a cigarette that Anton kept telling her to put out.

  But mostly Anton talked about love with Helmut, Heda and Mom. They had little fights, precursors to the big one to come. Mom flirted in her way with Helmut, cocking her head to the side and letting her curls fall in front of her eyes while encouraging him in everything he said – in his dreams. I couldn’t hear what his dreams were, but I knew that Mom was encouraging them simply by the enthusiasm in her voice. She was always good at encouraging people in their dreams.

  Anton tried to ignore Mom, turning to Heda Kimp, a blond with a high forehead and long hair that parted in the middle, foun-taining around her face. Wrinkles fanned out from her eyes. She was older than Mom, but very pretty. Her shirt was black and painted with thin, lacy swirls of gold. Anton scribbled furiously on index cards, notes for his book. In his breast pocket he kept a wad of index cards and several pens. Mom had told Jane, Julia and me that Anton was very jealous. Once, back at home, he’d burned Mom’s slides from our trip to Europe simply because Dad was pictured in them.

  “The definition of romantic love is: I am you. You are me. In order to have this love we need sexual equality. You cannot have a marriage that remains romantic in a slave-master relationship,” Anton said to Heda. Anton studied Mom, who was sitting close to Helmut. I wanted her to stop flirting with Helmut. I could tell Anton was getting mad. Anton went on: “Man and woman must be equal. Marriage cannot survive until we have equality of desire and options. Eve and I cannot survive unless she desires me with the same intensity that I desire her.” Heda leaned in toward Anton, fascinated by what he said. “Or you and Helmut,” he added. His lips were big and wet and I watched sunlight playing on them.

  I looked around the table at all of us kids, and thought about us trying to love each other. Julia teased Timothy and Nicholas teased Julia. The three got up and shot some film. Caroline and Jane were deep in conversation. Sofia was giving advice to all of us. Finny and I talked to each other with our eyes. We all seemed comfortable, in the right place – blended, merged in our own world. Anton talked on about love.

  Heda’s accent was heavy. Lots of Zs. She laughed. She said she’d heard Anton had been a Jesuit and asked him why he left the society. Now they flirted. Anton sat back in his chair. He said there were other things in life and winked. His wink took you into him, into the inside of his world. “The Virgin tempted me,” he said, slowly, slickly, and he told a story of falling in love with a statue of the Virgin when he was a novice at Grand Côteau in Louisiana. I knew this story. It was one of Mom’s favorites. Heda laughed as he spoke. She was a flirt, but Mom didn’t seem to mind. By the time Anton finished his story his accent had turned completely Texan.

  “Isn’t this beautiful,” Mom whispered, looking around. The air was damp and cool. Cormorants and gulls dipped and dived, plunging toward the water. Nicholas, at the other end of the table, shot some film now of all of us. I wanted to ask Mom about the bastard.

  Some gypsies floated by, reading palms, predicting futures. Anton paid one gypsy a hundred dollars, which he pulled from a wad in his wallet, to hear we were a solid family on the threshold of a rich and adventurous life. I saw that wad and was certain he had e
nough to give me my twenty dollars back.

  The discussion moved on to chapter fifteen of Anton’s book, which was on jealousy, and Anton was trying to convince Helmut that he was jealous.

  “Jealousy is a natural part of humanity,” Anton said.

  “I’m not a jealous man,” Helmut Kimp said. He pulled at the whiskers of his beard just below his lips and it seemed he was pulling strands of spit from his mouth. I wondered how such a beautiful woman could be married to such an ugly man.

  “You are,” Anton said. “You just don’t know it. Have you ever been challenged?” And Anton winked at Heda and then at Mom.

  “Sure. Yet I am not jealous.” Helmut Kimp also had a thick accent, guttural, with heavy Us. “If you trust, there is no reason for jealousy.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Helmut,” Anton said, his voice beginning to rise and his body began to swell again, as it had during the fight about Vietnam. “If you love someone deeply enough, you will be jealous.” Finny’s eyes squinted just like Anton’s and then they rolled as if to say, “Here we go again.” I thought about his mother. I bet he knew about her somewhere inside. But I didn’t care about all of this. I was thinking about my twenty dollars, hoping Anton wouldn’t swell when I asked him for it.

  “Let’s not turn jealousy into a virtue,” Helmut said. Helmut looked around the table. He seemed to be noticing, as if for the first time, how many of us there were, taking us all in. A silence. I was afraid he was seeing something I couldn’t see. “You’ve got a real tribe here, Anton. My lord, there are eight kids. What are you going to do with them all?”

  “Teach them to appreciate the world. To love and to trust.” Anton smiled and Helmut laughed.