House of Sand and Fog

by Andre Dubus III

  “Okay, answer that one.”

  Lester smiled at me, all the tightness in his face gone, nothing but the gentleness now. The piano player was singing an old jazz tune. Les touched the tines of his salad fork and started to talk about his boyhood in a town called Chula Vista on the Mexican border, and I should’ve been taking in every word but I was thinking of the chardonnay I’d ordered; I was thinking how it really was true I’d never had any problems with alcohol until I’d started doing lines, snorting those long white snakes straight to my head. Then the waiter was at our table with an ice bucket. Lester paused and tasted the sample splash in his glass. He said it was fine, but when the waiter started to pour, Lester touched his arm and told him thanks, but we’d prefer to serve ourselves. The waiter left and Lester filled his own glass, glancing at me before he wedged the bottle back into the ice bucket.

  “What was I rattling on about?”

  “Chula Vista.”

  “My brother Martin and I. We were the only anglos in the whole school and just about every day we’d get taunted into a fight with somebody about something.”

  “That’s why you plant evidence?”

  “Planted. I only did it once.” He tried to smile, but it wouldn’t finish itself on his face. “What’s wrong? Do you think I did a horrible thing?”

  “No, I think you did a good thing actually. I’m sorry, Les. Tell you the truth, the wine’s distracting me.”

  “I’ll send it back.”

  “No.” I rested my fingers over his. “See, whenever I think of my sobriety I don’t think of wine, I think of cocaine. That’s what I’m proud of staying away from. My husband—my ex-husband, whatever you want to call him—he was a bad drinker, and I haven’t ever said this before but I think I just let him sweep me up into his recovery program, you know? Whenever I needed to go to RR it wasn’t because I wanted a glass of wine, it was because I had to do a mile of coke.”

  Lester was giving me that long-eyed look again, squeezing my hand back as I spoke. “Don’t you mean AA?”

  “No, RR. Rational Recovery. Your Higher Power is your ability to reason. It’s all a crock of shit really, but—I don’t know.” I let go of him and looked out the window. We were facing west now and I was looking out across the northern edge of the city, over all the buildings and piers to the orange sweep of the Golden Gate Bridge and the ocean on the other side of it, the sky a band of red and purple. The restaurant had gotten more crowded and I could hear behind me the low din of people talking and laughing through their meals, the tink of silverware on porcelain, the piano player finishing the jazz number and going right into something else. But I kept my eyes on the ocean while the restaurant continued its slow turn away from it, then I heard Lester pouring something into my wineglass and I turned to see him holding the bottle of chardonnay.

  “You’re a grown woman, Kathy. Maybe you threw the baby out with the bathwater.”

  “But what if the baby was a demon?”

  “Then you toss it out for good and don’t look back.”

  “Do you ever look back, Les?”

  “All the time.” He smiled. “That’s my problem, Kathy—I’m sentimental about my fuckups.”

  “Me too.” I smiled and picked up my glass, felt the cool weight of it in my hand. He touched it with his and I kept my eyes on him as I raised the wine to my lips and tasted what I hadn’t even let myself smell in three years. For a second, I had the thought there was still time to spit it out, but if there was an enemy voice in my head it was the one that would keep this from me, the swallowing, the dry heat spreading out in my chest; it was such a familiar taste and feeling inside me, almost like it’d never left, that I suddenly felt more like my true self than I had in I didn’t know how long.

  “So far so good?” Les said.

  “Yes.” I sipped once more, then put my glass back down, holding the stem lightly with my fingers. “Tell me more about you, Les.”

  Our food came then. Lester topped off our glasses and I knew, according to the rationally recovered, I should be looking at this whole dinner as the B.E.A.S.T., nothing more than a Boozing opportunity with an Enemy voice in my head that I had to now Accuse of malice while my reasoning powers started giving me reminders of my Self-worth leading me to Treasure my sobriety and then successfully abstain. But there was no Enemy Voice in my head, I told myself. If there was, it would already be ordering a second bottle, which I didn’t feel the need for at all. So there was nothing to accuse of malice. And I didn’t feel like accusing anyone of anything anyway, not tonight. I was even feeling all right about the Arab family living in my house, the kind-faced woman who’d wrapped my foot, the people who had agreed to sell back to the county. Between bites and sips, Lester told me about his mother and father divorcing when he was twelve and his brother was nine, how his father, who was a customs officer, used to visit once a week until he got another job in Texas and the two boys only saw him twice a year when they had to go on a fifteen-hour bus trip to do it. He said his mother was a looker with long brown hair and high cheekbones and this quiet way about her that drew men right in. She was a typist at a lumber company and once word got out she was divorced, Lester and his brother were watching men come to the door for her almost every night. I sipped my wine. My face felt warm. I loved watching him as he talked, the way the candlelight showed the dips in his cheeks, made his crooked mustache look as thick as straw, his eyes deep and dark.

  “That’s why,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You had to protect your mother, so now you protect the peace.”

  “You think it’s that simple?”

  “Nope.” I smiled. “But I wish it was. I wish everything were that simple.” I looked out the window to see where we were and my own candlelit reflection looked back. On the other side was night and all the lights of San Francisco spread out below. I drank the rest of the wine from my glass and I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so free of all the shit that pulled at me like the gravity of two planets. I was feeling some of the wine, but not much. I’d eaten half of my baked potato and chicken. I looked back at Les and I could see he’d been staring at me.

  “Let’s go dancing, Lester.”

  “What about your foot?”

  “Shit, I forgot about that.” I laughed.

  WE RODE QUIETLY together. The Bayshore Freeway was lit up with orange streetlights, and Lester drove with his warm hand on mine and I was thinking about Nick, him and me driving west in the new Bonneville, driving all day and night. I took in Lester’s dimly lit profile. “Sometimes I think husbands and wives, maybe they’re just meant to get each other farther down the road, you know? Almost like it doesn’t really matter whether or not they stick around for the final act. Is that a sad way to look at it?”

  “Depends on your situation, I suppose.”

  “What’s your situation, Les? You haven’t breathed a word about it.”

  Lester flicked on his indicator, glanced in the rearview mirror, then steered into the exit lane. I could feel myself sort of go still while I waited for him to speak. He took the off-ramp, pulled his hand from mine to downshift, and kept it there.

  “My situation is my wife thinks I’m working overnight patrol till tomorrow morning. I guess that’s pretty presumptuous of me, isn’t it?”

  “Is that really your situation?”

  Les didn’t answer. We rode by the shopping center, the display windows partially lit, the dark parking lot empty. Les pulled up to my door at the Eureka Motor Lodge, and he turned off the headlights but kept the engine running.

  “I married my best friend, Kathy, that’s my situation. We have a son and a daughter, but for seven of the last nine years I haven’t wanted to give her more than a hug or a peck on the cheek.”

  The light from the walkway was catching the side of Lester’s face, lighting up only one half of it and making his cheekbone stand out more, his mustache, and I thought I knew what he might look like as an old man; handsome, sa
d, and quiet.

  “Do you still love her?”

  “Like a sister. I don’t have one, but I feel like I do.”

  “What about her?”

  “It’s not the same for her.” He was looking out the windshield at the door to my room. “I understand if you don’t want me to spend the night—and I’m not telling you this to make you feel obligated—but I’m not going home anyway. I do need to think.”

  I thought of Nick, the way his face looked the morning he left, like he was sure he was killing me by leaving. Lester almost had that same look now and I started to feel mad about it, but then he turned to me as if I’d just told him what I was thinking and he said if it were only him and Carol, he’d be gone, but it wasn’t; it was his kids, his daughter Bethany, his son Nate. “I’m sorry, Kathy. I don’t mean to dump any of this at your feet.” He got out of the car, opened my door, and helped me out. The engine was still running. I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him. “Turn the damn thing off and come inside.”

  That night we held each other under the covers, and he asked me question after question about myself, how I’d ended up in that small hillside house in Corona, what my life had been like until then, and I told him about growing up in Saugus with its shitty strip of neon car dealerships, Italian and Chinese restaurants and tanning parlors, shopping malls, my father’s small linen delivery business, how, when I was little, I would ride with him on his Saturday-morning runs delivering aprons and tablecloths to restaurants, drinking too many Shirley Temples along the way until I was giddy and my father smoked Garcia y Vegas while he drove and listened to ball games on the radio and sometimes I’d feel sick but I wouldn’t tell him because he hardly ever spoke to me, and I didn’t want to spoil my chances.

  I snuggled in close and pulled my leg up over his. His skin smelled good, like the ground somehow. I didn’t talk about my first husband or Nick, and I didn’t mention rehab again, or that it was my brother Frank who’d found me in my apartment, the white snake wriggled so deep inside me I was classified a suicide risk as soon as Frank and Jeannie admitted me. I didn’t mention any of this, and Les seemed content for now to hear of me only as a young girl, though he got quiet after that, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the girl I’d told him about, or maybe his own daughter at home. I fell asleep with my cheek on his chest, and sometime during the night we woke up making love.

  THE NEXT DAY, Thursday, he went home to his family and I spent the morning doing my laundry at the shopping-center Laundromat. I was still hopping on my good foot, but the other was feeling better, and after a lunch of cold Szechuan food in my room I soaked both feet in the bath. By the middle of the afternoon, I worked up the courage to call Connie Walsh’s office. Gary said again she was out but that they were making progress on the house. His voice sounded different to me, not as businesslike.

  “What kind of progress, Gary?”

  “My boss will kill me, but oh what the hell, the county has admitted their mistake, Mrs. Lazaro! Evidently, they should have billed a 34 Biscove Street all along, not Bisgrove. And apparently they’re willing to rescind the sale.”

  “By Saturday?” I stood up and danced across the carpet, completely forgetting my foot. Gary said he’d already told me more than Connie would appreciate and I should really talk to her about all this; she still had to work things out with the new owner. Then he told me to call back sometime tomorrow; he knew for a fact she’d be in the office.

  “I could kiss you, Gary.”

  “Goodness, no.” He laughed and hung up.

  In the late afternoon I cleaned my Thursday house, then drove to the pediatric office near San Bruno and went to work on that. I was working up a good sweat, and even limping along with the vacuum I was staying at a fast pace. Lester and I planned for him to meet me at the motor lodge at seven-thirty, and I was stepping out of the shower when he came, telling him the good news as I dried off and dressed in the bathroom with the door a little open. He walked in and hugged me and said we should go out and celebrate, but I was tired from trying to stay off my sore foot all day, and when I told him this he looked disappointed only a second or two before he left, then came back a half hour later with an avocado-and-black-olive pizza, a pint of chocolate ice cream, and two bottles of Great Western champagne.

  We sat cross-legged on the bed and ate half the pizza, drinking the first bottle out of Eureka Motor Lodge plastic cups. We started to kiss and Lester opened a package of condoms, but the bed was such a mess we made love on the floor near the bathroom and I was halfway to being loaded, or maybe I already was; behind my eyes were a hundred bees and I remember hearing something big go by out on the highway as Lester’s body froze up and he pushed into me one more time, let out a moan, and said into my ear, “I love you, Kathy.” I wasn’t ready to say that back; I laughed and pushed on his shoulders until he had no choice but to finish me off with his tongue. He did, and it didn’t take me long at all.

  We drank the second bottle in the bath. Les sat back against the faucet, his black hair so wet his ears stuck out and his mustache dripped water. I laughed and couldn’t stop until he snapped me out of it by singing a Mexican song he’d learned as a boy. He sang it in Spanish, looking right at me, like he were trying to caress me with each beautiful foreign word. Then he paused to sip from the bottle of Great Western and recited the last verse to me in English, his small brown eyes a little bloodshot.

  “Your love was lightning on the mountain—

  Your love was a river in the trees—

  Your love was sun upon the desert—

  Oh, but where is your smoke,

  Your stream, your salt?

  Why are the coyotes silent?

  When will they call your name?”

  Friday morning we woke up hungover. The curtains were closed and the room was dark. Les sat naked at the edge of the bed, called the front desk for coffee, then took his watch from the bedstand and held it up in the pale light. My mouth was dry, my head ached above the ears.

  “I should’ve been home two hours ago.” He fell back on the mattress and I scooted over and let his neck rest between my hip and ribs. He looked up at me. “I’m sure she called the department and I’m sure they asked her if I was feeling any better.” He laughed, but it sounded like air forced out of a box.

  “Do you really feel like laughing?” I let my fingers rest in his hair.

  “No, but things are finally in motion. Maybe I’m relieved in a way.”

  There was a knock at the door. Lester answered it with a towel wrapped around his waist and took our coffee from a blond teenage girl in baggy shorts. He handed her a five and told her to keep it. I put on my robe and used the bathroom before opening the drapes to a much too bright day, the sunshine reflecting off the cars in the parking lot, the white concrete beside the pool, and I sat at the table with the pint of chocolate ice cream from the mini-fridge that overnight had melted. Lester and I took turns eating it with the tiny plastic spoons that had come with our coffee. But he didn’t seem to be in the same room with me; he was looking at a spot on the table and he would take a bite and shake his head, then sip his coffee and shake his head again. My eyes hurt and I had to squint against all the light coming through the window. I got up and limped to the dresser and put on Nick’s Ray-Bans. Lester was looking outside now, the hair at the back of his head sticking out like dog’s ears. I was getting that off-the-ground feeling again, a little shaky about things between him and his wife coming to some sort of a head. I hadn’t planned on that; I hadn’t planned on anything. I suddenly wanted to be alone, alone in my father’s house on the hill of Bisgrove Street. But then Lester turned and said I looked like a movie star standing there in that robe with those sunglasses, my hair all loose around the shoulders. He came over and kissed me. He tasted cool and sweet from the chocolate, and I hugged his bare back, wanting to say something but I didn’t know what. Lester said: “Tell you the truth, I feel more scared than relieved.”

  �
�Me too.”

  “You?” He stepped back to get a look at me, his hands on my shoulders. “Why?”

  I shrugged and took a breath. “I don’t know, I feel lost; I just—feel lost.” I started to cry. He pulled me to him, turning slowly from side to side, kissing the top of my head.

  “You’ll feel better once you get back into your house. Why don’t you call your lawyer and ask her to tell you when you can rent the U-Haul?”

  I went to the bathroom and blew my nose. My mouth was dry and I ran cold water in the sink and drank out of my hand again and again. Lester was dressed when I came out. He sat at the foot of the bed pulling on his boots. Behind him, the sunlight through the window made him look like nothing but a shadow. Then the shadow sat up straight and looked at me. “I’m going to go get it over with, Kathy.”

  “It?”

  “Telling her the truth. Stopping this masquerade ball I’ve been at for years.” He stood. “It’s strange, isn’t it? You feel lost, but I feel found. I do; I’m scared, but I feel found.” On his way out the door he turned back to me: “And you will too, Kathy, I promise. I’ll move you back in myself.”

  THERE’S A HARDNESS that happens, this dulling of everything that leaves you feeling minus instead of plus, hollow instead of solid, cool instead of warm; men always hear everything so wrong. I told Lester I felt lost and he instantly thought it’s because I’m living out of a suitcase. I didn’t know this until he said that, but I guess I was expecting more from him, from his sad eyes and crooked mustache, his narrow shoulders and dark skin, the Mexican songs of his youth; maybe I expected some kind of wisdom. But what I got was a distracted cop on his way home to maybe leave his wife, which left me feeling like some witch waiting for her brew to take effect miles away and I wanted to get up and run as far as I could, but the inside of my head was too dry for my brain and every time I moved it hurt. I lay down on the mattress and placed a pillow over my eyes, but then the coffee and ice cream seemed to spread out level behind my ribs and I felt queasy and sat up. Why did we drink both bottles? But the question left me in a black cave. I picked up the phone and called Connie Walsh. I was going to ask her when I could start hauling my boxes and bags, and I guess a part of me wasn’t surprised when she got on the phone and gave me the news in her flat lawyer’s voice; I guess I was really expecting something like this, that the new owner was asking an impossible price and not only would I not be moving back into my house this weekend, but she wasn’t even sure it would happen anytime soon.