As Mena unloads the groceries, she watches Sam through the window, the smooth muscles of his arms as he hacks through the jungle of goldenrod and ragweed. His last haircut has grown out, and his hair is falling in his eyes. He is so thin. He looks up, sees her in the window, but turns back to his work just as she raises her hand to wave.
She knew she loved him before she even met him.
Her teacher at CalArts (what was it, twenty years ago now?), Jim, at a party when he was drunk and she was not, handed her the galley of Sam’s first novel. “You have to read this,” he had said, his speech blurry, his breath licorice sweet with scotch in her ear. She was standing outside the bathroom door, waiting. He pushed the book into her hands. “Tara. The girl. We’re making a film, and you’d be perfect. It’s going to be huge.”
She’d taken the galley home with her that night, home to that awful apartment in Venice she was sharing with three other people (the one with the roaches and the broken dead bolt), and thumbed through the ratty paperback as she tried to fall asleep. She’d never heard of Samuel Mason before. Some kid from Vermont, Jim said. The next Styron. The next Kesey.
She didn’t put the book down until she’d read through to the very last page.
She remembers feeling light-headed, almost like she’d had too much wine. Or not enough food. He’d written her life. It was as if she were some sort of butterfly he’d captured and pinned between the pages of the book. It made her feel scared, and it made her feel safe all at once.
When she finally met him, it barely mattered that he was so sweet and kind. So beautiful and unassuming. He understood her, and he hadn’t even spoken to her yet.
After shooting that day, they’d driven to the beach together, gotten fish tacos and Coronas with pulpy slices of lime at the place near her apartment. They spent the whole afternoon talking, walking. When he ran his hand down her back and kissed her, it was as if he’d already memorized each vertebrae.
She was nineteen, but she already knew that she would marry him, have children with him, grow into an old woman with him. In the words he’d written, she already had.
How did you know? she’d asked him.
It kills her that he doesn’t want her anymore. All the desire has drained from him. He can barely touch her. In the last six months, they’ve made love only a handful of times, and each time was excruciating.
She tries to be angry with him. It’s easier than feeling sorry for him, for herself.
She fills the refrigerator, fills the cupboards, fills the stockpot. By the time Finn emerges from his room and Sam comes inside, she has filled the house with the smell of lemon, garlic, and fish. She hands Sam a glass of iced tea. She kisses the top of Finn’s head as he sits down at the table. She kisses him all the time now. She can’t stop.
“I’m going to pick up a basketball net this afternoon,” Sam says. “The barn is big enough for a half-court.”
Finn’s eyes brighten, despite the scowl on his face.
“Wanna come into town with me?”
“Whatever,” Finn says.
While they are gone, Mena climbs the ladder to Sam’s office. She knows she shouldn’t do this, but there are secrets between them now. All of a sudden, they don’t know each other at all anymore. His laptop is turned on, the screen saver floating across the page. She lets her hand bump the mouse, turning the screen from black to white, the Word document open in front of her. The blank page blurs as her eyes fill with tears.
The closest town is Quimby. It’s hardly a metropolis, but at least there’s a main street there. Sidewalks for Christ’s sake. When they used to come to the lake, they would drive into town once a week to go to the Athenaeum, the library, to get books. That building, at least, looks the same.
Finn remembers the kids’ room with its battered piano and puppet theater, its tinfoil rocket ship big enough to crawl inside. He used to really dig that rocket ship. He’d never tell anybody, but for a while he really believed he could make it to outer space if he just wished hard enough.
Franny never bothered with the kids’ room. While Finn got out books about bugs and reptiles and sports, Franny wandered around upstairs with their father. She read everything she could get her hands on: Faulkner,Wolfe, Woolf. At ten, she had already read all three of their father’s novels. Finn had tried to read the first one, but he’d gotten bored.
“I’ll just be a minute,” his father says today.They are parked in front of the library. “You wanna come in? Check your e-mail?”
“Nah,” Finn says. Misty’s parents had cut off the Internet to the computer in her room, and he’d told her he wouldn’t be able to get his e-mail here anyway. Now he’s kicking himself. She could have sent him a text message from her phone. There are always ways to communicate. His father leaves him in the car and then comes back, grabs his keys from the ignition and stuffs them in his pocket.
Finn’s cell phone’s dead. The battery must have gotten drained looking for a signal up at the lake. There’s a pay phone next to the library. How long has it been since he’s used one of these? He digs around in the center console and finds a roll of quarters they’d gotten for the tolls. He pops half of the quarters into his hand and goes to the phone booth.
He drops the quarters in and dials Misty’s cell number. He doesn’t want to get stuck talking to one of her parents. The phone rings and rings, and then Misty’s husky voice says,“Hey, I’m not here, but I will be soon. Leave a message.” She’s changed the message. And something about this makes him feel more like he’s lost her than anything else so far. He slams the phone down and goes back to the car. He gets in the passenger’s seat and is sulking when his father comes back with an armload of books.
They find a backboard, a basketball rim and net at the hardware store.While his father pays the cashier, he wanders around the dusty shelves looking at all the crap and thinks about Sundays at home.
His father knows how to build things. Most of the kids at school, especially at Country Day, had dads who made lots of money (developers and software engineers and plastic surgeons) but they didn’t know how to use a hammer or a wrench. His dad could make things, and it made Finn feel sort of cool.They made trips to OB Hardware together almost every Sunday; there was always some sort of project underway at their house. They’d wander around that hardware store, his father picking out the things he would need to build his mother a gardening table or a new bookcase for his office. Afterward they’d go to the Village Kitchen next-door for breakfast and eat biscuits and sausage gravy. These were the mornings when Finn had their dad all to himself. He can still remember what it felt like to want to be alone with his dad on a Sunday; where did that go?
“You ready?” Sam asks.
Finn is standing, looking at spools of chains, links thick and shiny.
“Whatever,” he says, and follows him back to the car.
His dad spends the next hour installing the backboard in the rafters of the barn. Finn watches him struggling but doesn’t offer to help. And his father doesn’t ask. Finn bounces the basketball on the dusty floor of the barn, dribbling and pantomiming layups. The sun is bright now, but it is dark in here. The sun comes to them in slivers through the cracks in the wide wooden door. It smells like dirt in here, like earth and hay.
“There,” his father says, looking proudly up at the net. “Wanna play some one-on-one?”
Finn shrugs.
They don’t speak as they play.
His dad played ball in high school, and even though he’s only six feet, he’s quick. Quicker than Finn. But today Finn is making every shot. Jesus, what’s he doing? Finn grabs the ball and dribbles down the makeshift court, easily faking his father out and then going to the hoop. He’s letting me win.
“What are you doing?” Finn asks.
“Huh?” his father asks. He hasn’t even broken a sweat; he worked up more of a sweat mowing the yard.
Finn rushes toward him again, clumsily, exaggerated, practically handing him the ball
.
“Goddamnit,” Finn says, stopping. Holding the ball under his arm.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” Finn says, chucking the ball at the backboard. It smashes back down to the court and rolls toward a pile of hay in the corner.
As he opens up the door, letting the sunlight spill into the barn, he remembers playing with Franny. She’d never pull this shit. When they played (cards, Scrabble, Xbox), she was hardcore. She’d kick his ass and then kick it again. Does he think he’s a fucking baby? Like letting him win some stupid one-on-one game is going to make him feel better?
He walks down the path to the water and stares out at the still gray expanse before him. He can hear the ball echoing inside the cavernous barn, his father’s feet shuffling across the floor. Finn is suddenly so hot inside his clothes he can barely stand it. He looks back to the house, knows that his mother is watching from some window, though he doesn’t know which one. He pulls off his shirt, drops his shorts, and because he’s still so hot, he drops his boxers too and leaps quickly off the dock into the water.
There are no waves here. No ebb and flow. It’s as if this water is dead. He is buoyed by nothing but his own sheer will.
“Where you going?” Dale’s mother asks. She’s sitting on the couch with a full ashtray on the coffee table in front of her, their Siamese, Pookie, curled up on her lap.
“Just over to work. I need to pick up my paycheck.”
“Grab some cigarettes on your way back?” her mother asks, pulling the last one from her pack. “There’s some money in my purse.”
“I may stop at Sarah’s for a minute too,” Dale lies. She needs to buy time. She hasn’t spoken to Sarah in over a year.
“What for?”
Dale shrugs.
Sarah lives down the street from Dale. They grew up together, and she heard she’s home from college for the summer. Dale and she don’t have anything in common anymore. Sarah is premed at the U of A. She’s engaged to some guy she met at school and volunteers at St. Joe’s three days a week.The last time she and Dale hung out they ran out of things to talk about pretty quickly. Sarah is nice, but she’s not the same girl that Dale grew up with. Looking at her fiddling with her gigantic diamond ring, Dale could barely believe this was the same girl who used to eat her own scabs and gave her instructions, in graphic detail, about how to give a blow job. Sarah knew things that nobody else knew when they were kids: about periods and Schnapps and S and M. Now she seems so sorority. So prim and good.
Dale’s mother thinks that Sarah’s stuck-up. She’s always thought so. Dale knows it’s actually just that she hates Sarah’s mother. Her perfect house and her perfect husband and her perfect vacations to their time-share in Puerto Vallarta. Dale misses Sarah, misses the long afternoons they spent sitting by Sarah’s pool, drinking her mother’s wine coolers and talking about boys. She felt almost normal those days, almost real.
“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” Dale says, grabbing a five from her mother’s wallet.
She found the car on craigslist. Some guy over near school was selling it for $750 OBO. She offered $500, and he bit. She walks the three blocks from her house to the Blockbuster to pick up her check. It’s her second to last one; she gave her two-weeks notice during her last shift. It’s already over a hundred degrees, and her thighs stick together as she walks. She goes to the bank next-door, cashes her check and takes out another $300 from her savings account. She gets the bus to Tempe, and fingers the crisp bills. She can’t sit still in the seat, and she keeps craning her neck to see if it’s her stop next.
The house looks just like her house, small and flat and stucco. The yard is the same too, except most of the grass is brown, and there’s a FOR RENT sign planted by the sidewalk. The guy, his name is Eric, is out in his driveway, leaning over the engine of the Bug. Her gut tells her this is not a good sign, but when he stands up, she can see he’s just been polishing it.The innards shine and shimmer in the heat.
“Hey,” he says. His smile is warm, and his face is smudged with grease. Dale likes him right away. “You Dale?”
She nods, feeling shy.
The guy looks like a college student, sort of a hippie. Long hair in a ponytail. No shirt. A tattoo on his chest. He catches her staring, trying to decipher what looks like script.
“Thoreau,” he says.
“In wildness is the preservation of the world,” she reads aloud. “Cool.” She has the impulse to trace the words with her finger. Instead, she pulls the bills from her wallet and hands them to him.
“Thanks. Like the ad says, she’s a sixty-four. Last year I replaced the whole brake system, lines, rotors, shoes, pads. Everything. The engine’s about five years old, but she runs great.”
He opens the door for her and motions for her to sit in the driver’s seat, like a guy on a date, pulling a chair out for her. She blushes and sits down inside the car, examining the unfamiliar dash. It is so simple. No frills. Speedometer. Gas gauge. Radio.
“Sorry, the wipers totally don’t work. Haven’t really needed them here.” He laughs. “But you might, so I installed this little device ... cutting edge of technology ...” He motions to the shoestrings, attached to the wipers and then threaded through the smaller triangular driver and passenger side windows. “Tug on these and they’ll do the trick.”
She takes the key from him and looks for the ignition.
“Oh, sorry, it’s right here,” he says, motioning to a place below the steering wheel, a small chrome receptacle. His hand brushes hers, and it feels like she’s been shocked. She puts in the key, depresses the clutch, and starts the car.A billow of smoke blows out behind her. She glances in the rearview mirror anxiously.
“No worries ... that happens every time you start her up. It’s just oil on the engine burning off. I call her Puff.” He laughs again and whistles the first bar of “Puff, the Magic Dragon.”
He hands her the title and she fills out her information. He tears his part off and then kisses the other half and hands it back to her.This makes her blush again. He closes her door and pats the hood. “Bye, old friend,” he says. She grips the wheel and feels her heart beating in her throat.
“Where you headed anyway?” he asks.
She looks at him, at his pale chest and the black ink that crawls across it.
“Vermont,” she says.
It was by accident that she found Sam Mason’s son’s MySpace page. She’d actually been looking for the soundtrack to The Hour of Lead. She’d bought the DVD with her employee discount at work. When she hadn’t had any luck finding the soundtrack on Amazon, she returned to Google. Out of habit, she tried Franny Mason, Finn Mason, Mena Mason, just to see what appeared. First a Web search and then an image search. That’s how she’d found the pictures of Franny a month ago, which led her to her MySpace page.That’s also how she’d found the name of Mena’s catering company. That’s the great thing about the Internet. It’s always changing, expanding.There is new information available about everything, everyone, every day. She knew it was just a matter of time before she found what she was looking for.
Of course, she knew they lived in San Diego. It said so at the end of every author bio since his second novel. But it’s not like they were about to print an address. San Diego’s a big city; he could be anywhere. The letter she’d written had gotten to him via his publisher in New York. (She read once in an interview that he didn’t use e-mail. He called himself a Luddite, a word that tasted like dense bread on her lips as she tried it.) And the letters that came back had no return address. But then, a new Web page appeared ... black background, purple font, loud surf music playing in the background. Male, Sixteen, Last Log-in: June 8, Mood: Pissed Off, Latest Blog Entry: Headed to Butt Fuck Nowhere (AKA Lake Gormlaith, VT) in two days. Hasta. Next to the entry was a photo of Finn and some girl, arms around each other, leaning against a Buick woody station wagon with a surfboard on top. It was the only entry, the only photo. It was as if it was there just
for her.
No wonder Sam hadn’t answered the most recent letters she sent to his publisher. He probably hadn’t even gotten them. According to Finn’s entry, they had left for Vermont nearly two weeks ago. The letters were probably sitting in some pile on an editorial assistant’s cluttered desk. She felt such tremendous relief she couldn’t believe it. But now it didn’t matter. She had found him. She used the Google hybrid map to locate and look at Lake Gormlaith. From what she could tell, it was a pretty small lake. Maybe only twenty or thirty cottages or so littered around it. She zoomed in as close as she could on each of them, wondering which one he was inside.
She gave notice at work that day, found the Bug on craigslist, and started to pack her clothes.
Hasta, she thinks as she pulls out of Thoreau’s driveway, rolling down the windows and feeling the hot air on her skin like a kiss.
They have already started getting mail. The flag is up on the mailbox when Sam gets home from dropping off the mower at Magoo’s again. He can barely keep up with the yard. In San Diego it was all he could do to coax some crabgrass out of their lawn. This is the second time since they got here that he’s had to borrow the mower. He reaches into the mailbox and feels a slight wave of anxiety. He quickly thumbs through the stack: AT & T, a Shop’n Save flier, Have You Seen Me? postcard. Nothing important.
Sam hasn’t told Mena about the letters. He usually doesn’t keep things from her, but the last thing she needed after everything with Franny was to worry about this too. The first one had gone to his publisher, and so it (like all the other fan mail) arrived in his mailbox about three months after its postmark date. It arrived unopened but slightly battered. He’d expected the usual: some oddball writing to find out if he had based the characters on real people, because the narrator was so very much like him or her that it was eerie. Or, if the author of the missive was a woman, it might be a solicitation for something varying from the romantic to the lurid. (The author photos on the back of books were generous in their renderings of him. The photographers, all of them, had instructed him not to smile, to look contemplative, intellectual, and the airbrushed results had been of a man who was both serious and playful. The dimple in his right cheek never disappeared, not even when he was trying to look serious. And they’d done a terrific job hiding the small bump on his nose and the remaining half dozen pockmarks on his cheeks that served as a reminder of a ridicule-filled adolescence.) But now, the most recent book (and author photo) was over three years old and he suspected that if he ever published another book, they’d have to bring in a team of experts to photograph him. Of course, he was flattered.There had even been a few times when he’d realized that, had he been so inclined, he could have slept with some very attractive readers. (Sometimes they attached photos of themselves—one brunette included a photo of herself wearing nothing but his second novel spread open across her quite lovely torso.) But it had been a long time since he’d gotten one of those sorts of letters, and so when this letter arrived, he opened it with more anticipation than normal.
The Hungry Season Page 5
