Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights

by Mary Ellen Courtney

  My brother may have a high-powered brain, but when he was in the delivery room while Anna was having their first child, the minute the full parade came into view and he saw firsthand the gush of water, the blotchy wax covered alien with the strangely blinking eyes, and the after-birth, coupled with the dirty looks she was giving him, he’d ricocheted out of the room, and keeled over in a planter. It took five stitches to close the gash in his forehead. He still had a scar.

  “I’m leaving in a week,” I said, “so I’ll be down in the next few days.”

  I was packing gifts in bags for each family when Steve walked in the next afternoon. Having him walk in unannounced was disconcerting in that place between then and an unclear now. His face was more composed than the last time I’d seen him. He kissed me like the last weeks had never happened.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I think we should start over.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I’m going to San Diego to drop gifts. Want to go? Meet the family? See Eric and Anna?”

  “Let me think about it,” he said. “I’m kind of in the middle of things.”

  We swam laps and went out to dinner. He got in bed to read while I worked. I was so engrossed I didn’t notice he’d dropped off to sleep. I got undressed and stood looking down at him. He slept. He didn’t lift the blankets to invite me in.

  I had a memory of my parents doing that when I was a little girl with a nightmare. No words. They just lifted the blanket to invite me into the safety of their nest. I’d had lots of nightmares after my father died. There was a mirror over my bed. When I woke up in the night I could see my father’s face in the mirror; it was a distorted and frightening mask. I used to scream and scream until my mother came into my room. Her only comfort was to say, “You’re just upset.” Like ‘just upset’ screaming isn’t somehow really, seriously, fucking upset. I slid in with my back next to Steve.

  We woke up and had lazy front to back sex. What Karin calls general maintenance.

  “What do you think?” I asked. “You want to go?”

  “Yeah, time to meet your family.”

  We packed his car with gifts and then dropped by his house for fresh clothes. I sat down at his desk to call my family. There was an envelope postmarked in New York on the desk with photos on top. They were pictures of him with the woman in New York. She was lovely and looked happy. They both did. His arm rested casually around her waist. It might have been a family affair; some kid was hamming it up by sticking his head in frame and making the peace sign. There was another of just her in Central Park; Steve must have taken it. The wind was blowing her dark, even hair. The card was signed with just a lipstick kiss and XXX. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach. I know chemistry doesn’t care about bank accounts, but I could hear his words. She was no truck driver. He was standing in the door watching me; we held each other’s eyes.

  “I’m going down alone,” I said.

  “Come on, Hannah, our families were around.”

  “Your arm is around her waist.”

  “That’s the only place it was. I don’t think we should start comparing notes and going backwards here.”

  He swept up the card and photos and dropped them in the trashcan, then took my hand and pulled me from the chair.

  “I can’t control what she does,” he said.

  We traveled in depressed quiet. I spent most of the drive looking out the window. Steve kept reaching over and holding my hand.

  We got to my mother’s at 12:00. She and Arthur were thrilled to see us. I put their gifts under the tree while Mom and Arthur made small talk with Steve. I felt like I was floating on the periphery; a place with only a wispy thread connected to their grounded society. Steve kept glancing at me while they chatted; so much was unsettled between us.

  We were on the road again at 2:00. Mom gave Steve a hug and told him how nice it was to finally meet him. Arthur was hail and hearty. He and Steve looked like they bought their clothes in the same places. I’m sure my mother approved of Steve. They wished us a happy holiday in Hawaii. I didn’t bother to tell her that I had no idea whether or not we were going together.

  We had a quick lunch in Del Mar then headed to Binky’s. Ted was home. His hospital hours seemed random; you never knew when he was going to be around. I’m sure they knew his schedule; but to me he seemed almost ethereal in his wandering. Binky offered us a glass of wine. Steve accepted before I could catch his eye. She’d obviously had plenty already. I went in the kitchen to give her a hand. She yelled across their great room to Steve.

  “So which one of Hannie’s men are you, Steve?”

  “Come on Binky,” said Ted. “Don’t start in with that.” He came into the kitchen to see what he could do to shut her down.

  “What? Hannah said she has four or five men.”

  “I was joking,” I said.

  The first approach was to play it straight, though I’d never known it to work with her.

  “What happened to the trucker guy,” she was using a stage whisper. “You two looked pretty hot and heavy. Ted, what was his name?”

  “Alan I think, Binky,” said Ted.

  “Yeah, Alan,” she said. “Mom said he had two names.”

  “Stroud,” I said.

  “We know, Binky,” said Ted.

  “Oh, Ted, shut up,” said Binky.

  “Mom saw him at Target with his wife,” she said.

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “Did you know he was married?” she asked.

  “I knew he was getting married,” I said.

  “I thought you were his girlfriend,” whispered Binky. She had spittle on her sweaty lips; lipstick was smeared on her teeth. Her breath was hot and sour. She used to be beautiful.

  “You two looked pretty hot and heavy at the memorial.” A drunk repeating herself, how I hate that.

  “He brought Grandma, Binky,” I said.

  “Oh Hannah,” she spewed, “Do you think I’m stupid?”

  Steve walked into the kitchen, set down his full glass, and said we better get on the road. It was artless, but we managed to escape in a matter of minutes.

  We were quiet in the car as he put Eric and Anna’s address in his GPS, as if I couldn’t tell him how to get there. He stopped at the next corner and looked at me.

  “Does the whole family know?” he asked.

  “No one knows anything. He just brought Grandma. He was there maybe ten minutes. She’s crazy.”

  We rode in silence.

  “What difference does it make anyway?” I asked. “If I ever meet your family they’ll all know about your woman, except that your family will hate me.”

  “My family will know about the lawyer daughter of a friend. They don’t know anything anyway.” Now he was looking out the window. “My family won’t hate you.”

  “Oh please,” I said.

  We drove a few more miles in silence.

  “Is there a lot to know?” I asked.

  “I already told you.”

  We got to Eric and Anna’s. The four of us walked along Prospect Street and ate dinner at a small place.

  We said goodnight and checked into The Colonial Inn. Then we walked down to the park and sat in one of the small cliff huts in the dark and listened to the waves below until it got too chilly. We stopped in the hotel bar for a nightcap. It felt like we were stalling.

  I got right in the shower and was just rinsing my hair when Steve got in. He soaped me all over and I did the same to him. He washed his hair and I buried my face in his chest hair to keep from getting soapy water in my eyes while he rinsed out shampoo. I dried my hair. I kept being surprised when I saw myself in the mirror. I had cut my hair after all. Karin was right about the shock treatment look; all the chopping away had released the natural curl. My smooth hair of the last few years was shooting off in wild directions. Lightning bolts of light pierced it like jittery brush strokes.

  We made love like normal people. Or like we used to when we were normal people. Be
fore all the drama, before I knew the difference between great sex and so-so sex. Before he knew the woman in New York with the dark blowing hair. At one point he was on top of me trying to smooth down my hair.

  “I’m not sure about this haircut,” he said.

  “He got a little carried away.”

  We were laying on our backs in the dark; I had my leg stuck up in the air trying to catch the streetlight on my pedicure polish.

  “What did you mean you can’t be responsible for both of us,” I asked.

  “When?”

  “In bed. You said you couldn’t be responsible for both of us. I wonder what I’m not doing for you that you have to take care of. I don’t want you to feel that way.”

  He was quiet.

  “My husband used to call me frigid. Do you think I’m frigid?”

  “What a thing to say.”

  “For him or for me?”

  “For you. Why would you even ask that? My comment was a long time ago.”

  “I guess because you implied that I wasn’t holding up my end of things. That you can’t be responsible for both of us.”

  “I didn’t mean you. I’m totally happy with you,” he said.

  “Then what did you mean?” I asked.

  “I think the real question is how happy are you?” he asked.

  “You weren’t happy with me the other night,” I said.

  “I apologized. I was pissed. I’m trying to get past what you did. I’m still not there. I need us to have some normal days when we’re not talking about this stuff.”

  We were quiet.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said.

  “I think we have some things to work on,” I said. “But I’m happy.”

  “It’s the things we need to work on that I was talking about.”

  “What would you do if I got pregnant?”

  “We’ll work it through. I’m not a big believer in abortion. I know that sounds Neanderthal.”

  “We’ll both decide.”

  “I know,” he said. “You asked.”

  We planned to head home the next morning but Aunt Judith called and invited us to lunch. I wanted to say no but Steve thought he had better meet all the players. They only lived a ten-minute walk from the hotel, at the other end of Prospect Street, in an old Spanish-style house that hung out over the cliff.

  It’s hard to tell now, but the street runs along the top of a cliff overlooking The Cove beach. Originally the waterside of the street had been lined with beach cottages. It was called the Green Dragon Colony and populated by artists and early beach bohemians. Over the years young people and couples moved in and then, one-by-one, the cottages were either torn down or dragged to new lots, and replaced by small commercial buildings. The funky and sagging green and red cottages, with their Asian rooflines, green lawns, and watercolor supplies piled on the porches, were replaced with shops full of metallic leather patchwork purses, and mid-range bronze reproductions of Remington-like cowboys and buffaloes, with a few eateries thrown in. I’d never seen a buffalo in La Jolla. I’d stopped looking in the shops years ago. They were a blur. They had nothing to do with my memory of La Jolla. The only memory that remained was the smell of eucalyptus resin underfoot mixed with salt air.

  When they were first married, my parents lived in one of the original cottages, down the street from Judith and her first husband. My parents moved to the foothills when children started coming, but we always spent our summers at either The Cove or The Children’s Pool. The Children’s Pool was closed now, reclaimed by seals. And The Cove cliffs had developed such an intense bird stink it almost made your eyes water on hot days.

  I remembered endless sunny days jumping off the cliffs behind the seawall. You had to time the waves just right. We were always on the look out for the dreaded eels that hid in the rocks. I’d only seen one friend with an eel locked on his foot. It’s not something you forget. We dodged seagulls trying to get our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while they crapped on our heads. We got sunburns so mind-boggling we couldn’t bend our knees. The end of the day meant dragging towels up the hill to Judith’s, sandy callused feet on heat-soaked sidewalks.

  About once a week we’d pound abalone that Judith’s second husband brought home from a dive off The Cove. You had to hit the tough muscle just so to make it something less than tire rubber. My mother had a great beer batter recipe for it. Everyone had abalone shells. They used them for ashtrays and soap dishes, and to line the tops of their adobe walls. Abalone is going extinct.

  Our teen years were spent at the Shores and then Wind ‘n Sea or Sea Lane. Beach gangs out of range of our parents. In my case, I was never completely out of range of someone who knew Binky or Eric. It was a small town. I still knew my friends.

  I’d had a boyfriend a few years before. He was from Los Angeles, but met me down at The Cove one summer afternoon. He said he looked down on me reading down on the beach in a straw hat and big white shirt and thought he could take the woman out of La Jolla, but he couldn’t take La Jolla out of the woman. For some reason, at the time, that sounded like there was something wrong with me. We didn’t last long. Despite distance and changed landscape, the air still felt like home. If only Judith would move.

  Judith had hung onto her house through two marriages and into her third. It was hidden behind a tangle of thorny Bougainvillea and mounds of Bird of Paradise. They kept the secret of its magic to themselves. You’d never know their funky front door, only a few feet from the street, opened onto a spectacular view up the coastline to Scripps Pier and beyond, disappearing into the sea spray haze. The house was small and impeccably kept up. Steve and I set out on foot to see them.

  “It’s strange to me that my grandmother was so courageous, buying a coal mine and all,” I said. “Her daughters seem so soft.”

  “You think your mother’s soft?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t call her soft. She may be an alcoholic, but it took some guts to go back to school and start a career after your father died.”

  “It was that or starve.”

  “She could have moved in with her sister or mother. One of my aunts did that. Moved home to her mother with all her kids.”

  “I can see living with my grandmother. Judith would have been a nightmare.”

  “My aunt never had a life again.”

  “It still might have been better for me.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “She was always drunk, Steve, I don’t know why you’re defending her.”

  “Being drunk must have made it harder for her. There are worse things.”

  “Like what? She could have beaten me too? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I just think it could have been worse. You always talk like your father was your only parent. My cousins were raised by a bitter childlike woman; your mother is still alive.”

  “You’re catching her sober. You have no idea. It was like I was her parent, not the other way around.”

  We walked in silence for a few minutes.

  “You’ve never talked about your family before,” I said.

  “There’s not much to talk about.”

  “What’d you think of Binky?”

  “Binky could be a problem.”

  “Binky is mentally ill. She was a wonderful sister when we were little. How do you think our families would do meeting each other?”

  “I don’t know, he said. “My mother can be prickly.”

  “Wait until you meet Aunt Asp.”

  Aunt Judith was a few years older than my mother, tall, dark and calculating. She always criticized my mother. She had a biting tongue and a knack for stomping on my mother when her blonde openness dared to get too breezy. She never missed a chance to put down Binky or me. Eric’s a man; he skates by untouched. Eric and I decided years ago that it’s jealousy, pure and simple. Judith couldn’t have the children her husband wanted. She always said her husband would have made a terr
ible father. We doubted she ever wanted children.

  I don’t know what having children had done to Bettina. It seemed she was always drunk now. She’d up the stakes from Mom who only drank after 5:00 p.m. Steve was right about that. Before 5:00 p.m. Mom was a successful and funny woman. After 5:00 p.m. she was a crying blackout drunk who blamed herself for my father’s death, every single solitary night. It got very old. It was infuriating and impossible to stop. And until hearing about the affair and its aftermath, it was a total mystery to me why she thought she had any part in it.

  I wondered which was worse: a mother you could count on being drunk all day, or my mother who disappeared in an alcohol blink every night. One is no hope you can count on; one is perpetually dashed hope you can count on. The latter is hard on an optimist. After the last few weeks with a sober mother, I thought a little sober time was better than nothing.

  Aunt Judith opened her front door. Her stick thin body was dressed impeccably in trim slacks and a silk boat neck sweater. She was barefoot. She rarely wore shoes in the house. She took in Steve with an appraising look that said he passed the first hurdle, good clothes. She took me in.

  “That haircut is unfortunate,” she said.

  “I didn’t realize how carried away he was getting.”

  I made the introductions. Judith’s husband came shuffling up behind her and got everyone past the front door and settled in the living room. He was the same age as Judith, but not aging well under her rule.

  He offered coffee and passed figs stuffed with a very subtle cheese. Everything offered at their house is subtle and perfect. They spend exhausting amounts of time shopping for individual items at separate stores. Anna said no one with children would be so special about everything unless they were completely insane or didn’t need sleep.

  “So the burial ended up working out,” said Judith. “I’m sorry we couldn’t be there. We didn’t expect everyone to go.”

  “It was very nice,” I said. “Eric and Anna did a great job.”

  “Eric always does a great job.”