The Road at My Door

by Lori Windsor Mohr

  Kit’s reply didn’t reach me for over two weeks, the turnaround time reminding me once again of the distance between us.

  April 12, 1964

  Dear Reese,

  Mom’s pregnant! Wow! Even I would never have guessed that. Rape? Is she kidding? You know as well as I do who the father is. That bitch is lying through her teeth. Dad may be willing to buy it, but we know the truth. No wonder she wants to go ahead and have the baby…it’s his. She finally got to have her cake and eat it too.

  When Mom comes home, she’ll be back to her old self. Believe me Reese, don’t have any illusions about who Daddy will stick up for if push comes to shove. Whatever you and Dad have been through, it’s no contest compared to his having the bitch home.

  I think I can help you. Why don’t you come down here and live with us? Carlos loves the idea and said he’d arrange for your flight and everything. Aida loves the idea too. The house is so big and Carlos is hardly here. You could finish high school here. Aida would pay for private school (all girls, unfortunately) but at least I would have some company…English speaking at that!

  The baby will be here any day now. I’m excited and scared. At least I’ll have something to do. I’m going crazy waiting, waiting, waiting, doing nothing but eating and living in total boredom. In the meantime, I have a huge favor. I have a bunch of books in the closet, up on the highest shelf. Herzog and Roth, and be sure to send Atlas Shrugged. I know it’s asking a lot, but would you send them? Think about what I said and write soon.

  Kit

  I read the letter again. FD the father of the baby? I shoved away the image of him and Mom on the couch. Of course, it all made sense. I felt stupid not having figured it out myself. It must’ve been easy for her to leave us, knowing they could be together with no pesky kid to interrupt them, no husband.

  As for moving to Colombia, that was impossible. Fool that I was, I could never leave Dad, or Brother McPherson. His class was my only salvation every day.

  April 26, 1964

  Dear Kit,

  You must be right about it being FD’s baby. I just didn’t want to believe it. Dad sure is clueless though, because he and FD talk on the phone. I can’t imagine how he envisions things working out when Mom comes home. You’re wrong about him not sticking up for me. Not after what we’ve been through. He’ll find out once Mom’s home that it’s no good. Maybe he and I will move to an apartment in Santa Monica like you were going to during the separation. Mom could have the house to herself, which is what she’s wanted all along.

  I thought about your offer to come live with you in Colombia. There’s no way I can. Dad needs me now more than ever. Who will he turn to when Mom comes home and he sees the marriage is dead? She might even leave again. Daddy is not the strongest person in the world. I found that out the hard way. Maybe I can visit this summer.

  Anyway, I’ll keep you posted. Good luck with the baby! Write as soon as it’s born.

  Love, Reese

  Mom Visit Day finally arrived. On Saturday morning Dad was up before seven drinking his coffee. By eight we were on the road, driving on Pacific Coast Highway, the road connecting the one miserable experience we’d had in the north of the state to what promised to be another in the south. Dad’s spirits were high as he sang from The Music Man.

  At first I felt relief at his high spirits, Dad’s return to his old self. One of my parents was present and accounted for. Relief turned to resentment. It wasn’t hard to figure out the reason for his sudden cheer after three months of misery. Whether or not she was in the house, Mom had been controlling his life, our lives. The rest was geography.

  Two hours of Dad’s singing on Pacific Coast Highway brought us to Laguna Beach. My body tightened. We followed Dad’s directions to a narrow lane of big trees and small bungalows perched on a cliff. Mom’s was at the end of the lane on a corner.

  Our tires crunched over the long driveway. Dad switched off the ignition and looked around for a moment before getting out. It was a beautiful setting. The white cottage with blue trim had a front porch the width of the house, its deck an oasis of potted flowers and weathered Adirondack chairs. Bright cushions added a finishing touch to the picturesque scene.

  I could imagine an artist living in such a storybook cottage, setting up an easel in the cool breeze to capture the exquisite light, not my mother clacking away on client notes in a haze of cigarette smoke.

  “Peanut, I wish you’d come inside. You’ll be awful lonesome out here by yourself.”

  I crossed my arms and turned my head the opposite direction. My father obviously had no clue most of my life outside school was spent feeling lonesome—the physical loneliness of confinement in my bedroom or staying outside until dinner; the emotional loneliness of carrying Mom’s secret. Either way, Dad wouldn’t understand lonesome had become my natural state.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  He stood on the front porch opening and closing his fists before he raised his hand to knock. I strained for a glimpse of Mom. The door closed before I got a chance.

  I walked around the detached garage to the backyard. What a sight! The entire Pacific Ocean spread out before me. It was clear enough I could make out dirt roads crisscrossing Catalina. The island seemed only a few strokes away rather than twenty-four miles. A wooden staircase zigzagged down the cliff to the beach where glassy water swooshed over pebbles before retreating back to sea. The place was deserted.

  I checked to make sure Mom and Dad couldn’t see me from the window where they sat on the couch in silhouette. The beach called me. So did my bladder. I doubled back to the car and retraced our route to the Texaco station in town. I felt liberated by anonymity. This was one place I wouldn’t have to fake acting normal. I could be me, whatever was left of me anyway, at least for the walk to Texaco and back.

  By the time Dad came out of the house three hours later, I had finished my weekend homework and written a poem.

  Thus began this new phase of hell. Every Saturday Dad and I were on Pacific Coast Highway by eight o’clock driving to Laguna Beach. And every Saturday I waited outside. My routine was always the same—I would trek into town and use the Texaco station restroom before taking the wooden stairs to the beach and collecting tiny shells for an hour. Had I not been worried about Dad finding me gone, I could’ve stayed longer. Once I got a better sense of his timing that would be my plan. For now I was conservative and returned to the car after an hour to finish my homework or read.

  In the beginning I would ask if Mom had mentioned me. Dad’s response was always the same. Mom was preoccupied with the baby. He was sure she would want to see me. She did eventually include me for lunch, emerging from the cottage with a sandwich, usually cheese, half an orange or apple, and a glass of milk. It had been my choice to stay outside. I couldn’t help feel like the dog she would’ve fed if she hadn’t protested it was enough taking care of a house and two kids.

  My mother never once glanced in the direction of the car. I saw her though. She looked younger, her auburn hair tucked behind one ear like Veronica Lake, an un-Veronica Lake-like maternity blouse draped over her bulging belly.

  Dad never said what they talked about, and I didn’t ask. I already knew Mom hadn’t been sorry leaving us for a new life in her storybook cottage while we floundered in misery in the dark on our own. I already knew she’d expressed her anger letting Dad believe her disappearance had been his fault, a neglectful husband absorbed in work finally getting his due.

  The resentment lumped in my gut, a dense dumpling refusing to digest and pass. The more I envisioned the three of us living together, the more I became convinced we could not. Dad’s optimism was a gossamer dream to keep his family together.

  *

  May 30, 1964

  Dear Reese,

  Say hello to your new nephew, Carlitos (photo enclosed). He was born April 17th. That’s why I haven’t written. It’s been pretty busy around here, even with a maid. Don�
��t ever have one, little sister. (A baby, not a maid). I’m kidding. Carlitos is so cute and good natured, like his father thank God! But all he does is eat, sleep and poop. I’m trying to breast feed but it’s harder than you’d think. When I’m not feeding him every few hours, I’m eating or sleeping. So far it doesn’t feel much different from being pregnant.

  You wouldn’t believe the fuss Aida and all of them make over the baby. They totally ignore me now that he’s here. So much for being treated like a celebrity.

  I was so looking forward to horseback riding after a month or so, but that doesn’t look like it will happen. Cattle ranching is hard work. The last thing Carlos wants on the weekend is to get back on a horse.

  This is worse than being grounded. I’m surrounded with books I can’t read, music I don’t like, movies I can’t understand, no one to talk to about anything but the baby, and a culture that forbids me to go anywhere on my own. It’s hell.

  Anyway, you’ve got problems of your own. I’m enclosing a photo of the baby so you can see for yourself how adorable he is! I don’t mind if you show Daddy.

  Write soon.

  Kit

  Saturdays in Laguna Beach got a lot easier the deeper we got into summer. Now I brought my bathing suit and retreated to the little cove beneath Mom’s cottage. Lying on the sand reading was a better way to pass the time than being holed up in the car. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine I was on our beach at home.

  My pleasurable interlude was short-lived. Dad seemed distracted during the ride home one Saturday. There was no singing, or even humming. We didn’t play the hand-slap game on the seat between us. Instead he was quiet, a sure sign of tension.

  “Peanut, you know now that it’s early August the baby is due any time.”

  I didn’t answer. The sense of dread that I thought had dissipated the day I came home from the beach and Mom was gone returned with a punch.

  “Your mother will be coming home afterward. She came up with this idea for what to tell people about her…her reappearance. It’s really pretty clever. We’re going to say she’s been in France all this time taking care of an elderly aunt.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh, sure, they’ll buy that. Maybe I’ll call her ‘Aunt Bordeaux’? Dad! Who’s going to believe Mom suddenly had to move to France for seven months to take care of some never-as-yet-mentioned aunt?”

  “Don’t be smart, Reese.”

  “Dad, since we’re on the subject…how do you see this working, the three of us together in the same house?”

  “For one thing you can start by knocking that chip off your shoulder. I know we had a rough go of it, but that’s behind us now. We can start with a clean slate. It’ll take time, but we’ll adjust. With Kit gone Mom won’t be so stressed. She’ll be able to focus on her work, which is what she really wants. That’s what the need for a separation was about. This…other situation has actually been an opportunity for her to have a breather and sort a few things out for herself.”

  “Like how to ditch her husband and kids?”

  “That kind of sarcasm doesn’t accomplish anything, and in Mom’s defense, she did wait until you kids were grown before going back to school and starting her career.”

  “I’m fifteen. That’s hardly grown.”

  “Hey, you didn’t eat that sandwich Mom left on the porch. What do you say we swing by Tops and get a couple of pastramis, forget cooking tonight?”

  He reached over and slapped my hand. I didn’t slap his back. That was the extent of anger I could bear to levy on my father.

  The following Saturday we were on the road as usual by eight. These early morning drives were beautiful, quiet, the world still in pajamas drinking coffee instead of going somewhere on Pacific Coast Highway.

  Two hours later the ocean was still glassy, the beach below Mom’s cottage pristine. Not a soul was in sight. The whole world opened up as I stood on the cliff. I wondered if this was how Jose Carrillo had felt taking it in from his sailing vessel at the turn of the eighteenth century, the entire California coast one flawless beach from San Diego to Crescent City.

  I checked to make sure Mom and Dad hadn’t seen me, then wound my way down to the beach. Crisp sand cracked under my feet. I dropped my towel and kept going, right into the water. My body went rigid at the first feel of cold, an exhilarating shot of adrenaline propelling me forward. I plowed against the current until it was waist high, then dove. The Pacific Ocean swallowed me.

  All became silence. In a salt water baptism of renewal I passed through the portal to another world, a magical place separate and apart from the oxygenated one above. Here only the physical dimension existed, sensory receptors recalibrated to screen out concerns of life above water.

  I popped up for air, Catalina the only thing other than ocean in sight. Rolling swells lifted and carried me. I flipped over on my back, weightless and free, and drifted with the current.

  A nearly imperceptible noise compelled me to lift my head and look. I had passed a buoy, the bobbing ball marking the distance from shore. That was okay. At home I’d swum past the buoy countless times and was proud of my strength as a swimmer. I hadn’t been far behind Greg most times the two of us raced side by side to our buoy at home.

  I dropped my head back on the water and closed my eyes again. A sense of total peace came over me as I half swam, half drifted. I heard nothing but my heart beat decreasing in proportion to muscles freeing from tension.

  A second buoy bobbed in greeting. I lifted my head and squinted toward shore, cottages on the cliff tiny in the distance. What a surreal feeling, my parents visiting in that strange house, Mom about to give birth to Traitor FD’s baby, and Dad deluded in some fantasy that could only end tragically.

  It didn’t seem possible I was connected to such a life. Maybe it had all been a dream. Maybe I would wake up and everything would be the way it was before we moved to the Palisades, before FD had come into our lives. Simple anxiety over the prospect of divorced parents would be a welcome price to pay given the present reality.

  I shoved that wish out of my mind and focused on the effortless pleasure of drifting with the current, vaguely aware I was now far beyond the second buoy. The water lulled me, rocking me and whispering there was no need to worry about anything. Not Mom, or her baby, or Dad, or FD, or school. My only sensation should be the feeling of floating in this moment, the experience of unencumbered serenity. It wouldn’t matter if I vanished into oblivion. For the first time in months I was at peace.

  “HEY, YOU!”

  A distant voice carried through the air. My half-submerged ears couldn’t have heard right. No one else could possibly be out this far past the second buoy.

  “HEY, YOU…STOP!”

  The voice sounded louder this time, breaking the bliss of my watery nirvana. I opened my eyes to a cloudless blue sky and kept drifting.

  The voice yelled loud and clear. I looked up to see a man racing toward me on a paddleboard. I rolled onto my stomach and swam hard to keep my distance from him. He kept gliding straight toward me.

  “I’M A LIFEGUARD! STOP SWIMMING!” His muscular shoulders powered the board as he paddled furiously, closing the gap between us with frightening speed.

  I quickened my strokes. He pulled beside me. I slowed and turned around, dogpaddling in place. I told him I was fine.

  In a flash he was in the water, his massive hands clutching me around the waist. “Get on.” I shook my head in protest. His size and strength negated any protest. He hoisted me onto the board, then jumped behind and paddled toward shore in fierce sweeping strokes.

  My head rested on the board. I watched the world slide by sideways, just like Gidget after Moondoggie rescued her from strangling kelp in Malibu. But I wasn’t Gidget and this was no Moondoggie saving his future girlfriend.

  Mom’s cottage grew bigger. I prayed the lifeguard wouldn’t stop right in front of it. Too soon we reached shallow water. He jumped off the board, grabbed my arm with one hand and dragged the bo
ard behind him with the other. We sloshed through foam past the wet sand and kept going. He didn’t say a word, just traipsed to the lifeguard station with me stumbling in tow. Sunbathers turned to the sound of his heavy paddleboard hitting the sand. The balled up towel coming at me nearly hit my face.

  “Anybody ever tell you not to swim alone and not to swim out, but across, parallel with the beach? There’s a strong rip current out there today. You were well beyond the buoy. Another hundred feet and I might not have seen you at all! You’re lucky I noticed a fresh towel on the beach with no one on it or you’d be half way to Catalina…or gotten exhausted and pulled under by the rip tide.”

  I busied myself wrapping up in the towel and didn’t look up or answer.

  “How old are you? Twelve?”

  That I couldn’t ignore. “Fifteen. And I’m a good swimmer.”

  “Is that so? Then you should’ve known good swimmers don’t swim out, they swim across. Didn’t you realize how far out you were? Why didn’t you stop when I called?”

  I cleared sand with my foot.

  “You live around here? I know most of the locals.”

  “No, I’m…visiting an aunt. She lives a few blocks up.”

  After rubbing a towel over his hair he flicked it over his head and grabbed the ends. “I won’t call your aunt this time, but I will have to fill out a Rescue Card in case you pull this stunt again. Don’t move.”

  In three strides he bounded up the ladder to the lifeguard station and disappeared inside. Thirty seconds later he was back with a clipboard. It was easy enough coming up with a fake name for the aunt—unfortunately the only one I could think of was ‘Bordeaux’— along with the only address besides Mom’s I had noticed. I figured he wouldn’t find out Aunt Bordeaux lived at the Texaco station in town. No, I couldn’t remember her phone number. He finished the paperwork and tossed the clipboard on the sand.

  “Alright, kid. You can go. But next time, swim across, not out. Got it?”

  “Got it.” I turned and started toward the stairs.

  “You’re welcome for the rescue and holding off on the phone call.”