“Anyway, the asshole professor had died by then, but she started this group, with a couple friends, to go after men who were abusing their power on campus. We send an anonymous letter, then, if they don’t resign, the graffiti. To put them on notice.”
“Why not just go to the media?” I asked.
“Useless, it’s been tried. Sorry, Becc. They wouldn’t cover the OB in the health center who ‘forgets’ his gloves, either, because the girls’ parents had second thoughts and decided to keep it quiet. Plenty of other delightful stories like that. Our method is...surprisingly effective. Two profs have resigned so far. We’re going after this repulsive lecturer in the econ department now, a real piece of work, this tech gajillionaire who plays at teaching.”
I knew it before I asked. Those wanton, lashless eyes on my blouse. “Derrek Schwinn?”
“Yeah, how’d—?”
“I’ll tell you later. What’s he done?”
“He offers letters of rec and jobs if students blow him. But pretends it’s a joke.
“He’s tricky because he sits on the museum board with Yvonne and he’s loaded,” Serra said. “We have to be careful.”
“Does everyone have the tattoo?” Maggie asked.
“Whiskers optional.”
“Where do you meet?” I asked.
“The museum basement. It’s a perfect cover. And...”
“What?” Maggie and I said in unison.
“Okay. You won’t like this part. Yvonne dips into the museum fund to help women who’ve been screwed over. Calls them grants or fellowships. You should see some of the wack projects she funds.”
I said, “You could just warn other—”
“We’re on it, someone’s working on a private chat board. Like...virtual graffiti warnings.”
“Like the hobo marking for Dangerous Man,” Maggie said.
The three of us sat in silence for a minute.
“Why didn’t you tell us before?” I asked.
“I wanted to. I almost did. But Mags is on academic probation—”
“I don’t care,” Maggie said.
“I know you don’t, but Disciplinary Comm might feel differently. Vandalism? Yvonne dipping into donor money for her pet cause? Also...” Serra crossed the room to our bookshelf, crammed with paperbacks and textbooks, candles and CDs. “Guess who’s one of the museum’s biggest donors, who sits on the board with Yvonne and is tight with the gentlemanly Derrek Schwinn, and who would definitely close her checkbook if she knew?”
Serra grabbed something from my top bookshelf. She spun around holding it, smiling like Vanna White.
My Haggermaker Scholarship plaque.
* * *
How badly I wanted to tell my editor, right to his ironic bow tie, that the story he thought was small had legs. Big, muscular legs.
Late that night I wrote the article I’d always dreamed of writing. But not for the paper.
It was Serra’s idea. “I know you, you have to get it out of your system,” she said. “Write it and then erase it.”
So, sipping a Chocolate Marg, I wrote a juicy, detailed, thousand-word story about the Feline Collective and scummy Derrek Schwinn, with real quotes from Serra and imaginary quotes from Yvonne Copeland and everything.
By the time we got to headlines we were feeling no pain. Maggie was big on litter box.
“CLEAN SCHWINN’S LITTER BOX!” she yelled from her bed.
“No, write something with Yvonne’s name,” Serra suggested from the floor, where she was lying on her back, a transparency portrait over her face. “Cope. Land. A NEW LAND! LAND OF OPPORTUNITY!”
“I love you guys, but these are not good headlines.” Finally, spent, I typed in The Cat is Known! Recognizing even in my Chocolate Marg euphoria that my imaginary newspaper wasn’t the Enquirer, I took out the !
“There. Okay, come verify this tragic moment.” I changed the file name on my computer from Hiss to Memory, my little nod to Cats. Dragged the file into the gray trash can icon on my screen.
“It’s not really gone,” Maggie said. “Hit Empty, Trash.”
“I know.” I emptied the trash. “Buh-bye, front-page scoop.”
30
Viking
June 20, 1997
That week I threw myself into my new job, dull as it was. Anything to get my mind off what I planned to do Friday.
Because I was certain now. It was over. The Derrek Schwinn thing only confirmed it; I didn’t feel good about Cal anymore.
At Elliot & Healey, Industrial Realty, I helped with the “real estate trend” newsletter, a thrilling document called the Pulse & ForeCastr. I worked hard while the brokers paced around like tigers behind glass walls, hunting commissions over their speakerphones.
I worked too hard, because the week passed quickly.
But when Friday came, and I finally stepped onto the boat to tell Cal it was over, I felt brave.
My backpack held an empty duffel bag for my Sausalito things. I wore my work outfit: black pants and a soft white blouse, the necklace he’d given me tucked against my chest like armor.
It was a cold, foggy day and I stood near the bow, a Viking in a purple North Face parka. Ready for battle.
I would say, It’s over.
Simple, clear, irrevocable.
He wouldn’t arrive in Sausalito for three hours, until after meetings in the city, but when he came I’d be in the living room waiting, my Sausalito things gathered and packed in front of me. He’d see the bag, and he’d know.
But when I opened the door he was already there, his back to me, looking out the window. And the room was gold.
Gold helium balloons clung to the ceiling, ribbons spiraling down. The gas fire glowed on low, cake and champagne on the dining table. Something smelling of brine warming on the stove.
He turned, proud. Shoulders decked in gold ribbons. Holding a white box with a gold ribbon. “Surprise. I blew off my meetings.”
“It’s too much,” I said. “My birthday’s not for eight days.”
“Twenty-one’s a big deal, human. This way I get to be first to toast you.”
In the box was a wide, wavy gold cuff bracelet from the vintage shop.
“You wear it above the elbow, the girl said. Flapper-style.” He rolled up the left sleeve of my blouse, guided my hand into the cold circlet and gently worked it up my arm to near my shoulder, shaping the metal so it stayed.
I looked down at the armband, touching the small zigzag window of my flesh framed in gold. “You didn’t need to do this.”
“Of course I didn’t need to. I wanted to. You’ll get your big present in the morning. I just have a little bit of prep before it’s ready.”
After dinner, he kissed me. He tasted of chocolate frosting, sweet as he had been all night.
It would be brutal to do it now.
“Don’t you want to?” he asked in bed when I caught the hand caressing my thigh, squeezed it gently, and pulled it from my skin.
“Too much champagne.” I kissed him on the cheek and turned my back to him.
* * *
I didn’t drift off until three, but then I slept heavily. I woke at nine, groggy from champagne, and found him grinning at me across the bed, excited to show me my “big” present. A brand-new, fancy laptop, festooned with more curly gold ribbon.
“All the latest software’s on there, a TX9 Graphics Booster and 32 megabytes of memory, and I mirrored you over, you only need to start it up, it’s got SmartBackup and—”
“It’s too much,” I whispered, trying to make sense of the jargon.
“Stop. It’s for me, really. I can’t stand watching while you wait for that clunker to boot up, and you’ll get used to it, I swear, once... Hey. Hey, birthday girl, what’s this?” He touched my wet cheek.
I shook my head. �
��It’s all too much.”
The only sound was the whisper of the ribbon from my present as I raked it through my fingers, pulling the curls, wrapping them around my hand. “It’s gotten too complicated.”
“You mean us?”
I nodded.
“I told you we don’t have to hide like criminals. That’s your thing.”
“It’s not that.”
“Is there someone else? Is that why you’re staying in Berkeley this summer?”
I shook my head.
Then why?
I had prepared for him to ask why, and had decided on this answer: “I care about you, but it doesn’t feel right anymore.”
But he didn’t ask me why. He looked so surprised that I weakened again.
I hedged. “I need some time to think. A break, to figure things out.” I slid the fancy new laptop across the sheet to him.
“Keep the damn computer, Rebecca.” He ventured a smile, half of a beach-volleyball smile. “You can use it for emailing me when you change your mind.”
I shook my head, only half of a Viking. Not accepting the computer, but not admitting the truth, either. “Let’s just see how the summer goes.”
On the ferry ride home, I clutched my key to the Sausalito house, willing myself to drop it into the water. But I couldn’t get my hand to open.
31
Hold On
June 26, 1997
The week after Cal’s surprise birthday party was rough. I had trouble falling asleep, and made zero progress on the Pulse & ForeCastr.
But each day I was more sure I’d done the right thing, trusting my instincts. Like with the graffiti—my gut would always tell me when to hold on and when to let go.
I wouldn’t go back to Sausalito.
And life would get simpler, more honest.
I felt it.
* * *
I slept until 9:50 Thursday morning, almost missing my rhetoric lecture. But if I sprinted, I’d only be a minute or two late.
I speed-walked across the squeaking front porch, digging in my backpack for quarters. I’d treat myself to a chocolate-chip scone and a coffee after class. Something massive, topped with whipped cream.
“Watch out, lady,” someone said, holding me by the shoulders so we wouldn’t crash.
Gentle hands on my bare shoulders. Warm ones.
Hands that had met mine in high fives over the pinball table in the garage, hands I’d dueled with at the bottom of a popcorn tub, hands I’d watched flying over piano keys, rooting in cassette crates.
He hadn’t emailed for more than a year. The last proof of life he’d sent was a pair of eyeglasses doodled onto a film festival postcard.
And now he stood ten inches away, his J. Press coat thrown over one shoulder, his duffel bag hanging from the other. So close I could see the way the inner edge of his left eyebrow fanned the wrong direction, like a silky brown paintbrush tip.
Eric.
32
Bridge
2008
Friday, 4:30 p.m.
Eric and I are suspended over the water, halfway between Oakland and San Francisco.
A romantic way of saying we’re stuck in traffic on the Bay Bridge.
I have nothing to do but stare out my window at the scenery.
Lush, graceful Angel Island.
Barren, lumpen Alcatraz.
The hills of Sausalito in the distance, beyond the fog.
Ferries whisking tourists and commuters across the water.
Does the Bay Freedom still run, carrying lovers back and forth?
I can’t look away.
On the front bench of the top deck I see a Becc who’s becoming restless. She’s always been so clever with words, but she can’t seem to say, It’s over.
And she doesn’t know why.
I want to tell her that sometimes the words just won’t come. Especially when you’re twenty, and you’ve never been with anyone else. And you’re clinging to the sweet start, holding on a little longer than you should.
Another Becc is standing at the bow of the rocking ferry, holding her key. Trying so hard to release it into the cold waves.
I see Cal across the bed. Looking confused, surprised that even his charm has limits.
I picture the bottom of San Francisco Bay littered with the discards of other affairs. Other keys. Some are still floating down. Some are settling into the silty ocean floor, and some are rusty and buried, crumbling into nothing.
I thought I’d forgiven myself for the choices I made ten years ago. The decisions that I knew were wrong at the time, and the ones I thought were right.
33
Alcatraz
June 26, 1997
Morning
WHERE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE | Rhetoric 103
WHERE I WAS | Giving a tour
We stood on the porch. Eric smiled and released my shoulders, as if it was no big deal that he’d dropped back into my life.
It had drizzled overnight. Summer came late to Berkeley. But now the puddles on the porch steps reflected blue sky, and we listened to the last of the rainwater dripping down the gutter. The drops were slowing, but just when I thought we’d heard the last one, another plink would ring out from the metal chute.
We listened to nine plinks before he spoke again.
“Hey,” he said finally. “Long time no see.”
I didn’t say a word.
“How was junior year?”
I shrugged.
He dropped his duffel and tossed his coat on top of it carelessly, so a sleeve landed on the dirty porch boards. He strolled around, stretching his arms high above his head.
He knocked the barbecue lid with his fist. “Nice barbecue.”
It was a terrible barbecue. The lid was covered in more rust than red paint. It was a brand nobody had ever heard of called Viper, with the font designed to trick people into thinking it was a Weber.
Eric walked back to me, so close I thought he was going for a hug. Instead he held my hands and raised my arms, like London Bridges. “You look good. Except for the toothpaste on your lip.” He released my hands and tried to brush my lips with his thumb.
I dodged his hand, wiping my mouth. “What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood. I thought I might as well make sure you and Serra hadn’t joined the Moonies.”
I wanted to grab the barbecue lid and crash it on the base like a cymbal. Throw his too-formal coat in the mud.
Anything so he’d stop pretending everything was the same.
“Actually, I’m here for the summer,” he said. “I got an internship in San Francisco, with this TV show. It’s pretty lame, but it’s a good opportunity.”
“Congrats.”
He nodded, looking down at his shoes.
I concentrated on breathing. Three breaths in, five breaths out, like it said on the relaxation tape Maggie bought at the gas station.
“I deserved that,” he said. “You have every right to be mad.”
“I’m not mad. Just surprised to see you.”
“Becc.” He dared a glance at me. “You’re mad. Shaking mad. Sweating mad.”
“I’m sweating because I was running to class.”
“You’re madder than that day in ninth grade when Beth Tiernan giggled during your Marie Curie speech. Madder than when I was playing keep-away with your Knott’s Berry Farm sweatshirt on the pier in Santa Monica and your wallet flew into the ocean. Tell me why.”
I made myself meet his eyes.
“Say it,” he said. “I can handle it.”
“Why would I be mad? After your many letters, your long emails.”
“Keep going.”
“The way you were so sweet when I offered to fly out, or meet you somewhere. What...five t
imes? Six?” The bitterness in my voice was so strong I could feel it, a sludgy thickness in the back of my throat.
I was trying to maintain control, to speak like the sophisticated Becc I thought I’d become, but the anger and hurt and confusion I’d tamped down for three years had broken free: “The way you told me in advance that you were coming home to Orange Park for a whole day last summer. A whole, entire day!”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“So after all that, why the hell would I be even the slightest bit mad, Eric?”
We stared at each other. I was breathing hard. My sarcasm hung in the air between us.
Slowly, he nodded. Smiled a sad, resigned little smile.
“You should be mad. I would’ve been.” He picked up his bag and coat, walked toward the porch steps. “I’ll get a room at the Fairmont.”
“It’s across the Bay.”
“I’ll swim. If I need a break I’ll stop on Alcatraz.”
“Good idea.”
He looked over his shoulder. “I’ll lock myself in the coldest cell. For the crime of? What? Insufficient emails?”
“Desertion.”
“Excellent. I’ll go, then.” Attempting to make a rakish exit, he jumped off the porch, clearing all five steps like Evel Knievel but landing with a skid on the soggy grass. He tried to use his duffel as a counterweight but he slid and fell on his ass, his fancy coat flying into the dirt.
I couldn’t help it. A corner of my mouth crept up.
Because I wasn’t sure, anymore, who had deserted who first. I wasn’t sure that it mattered. I had chosen Cal over him three years ago, and even if Eric didn’t know that, maybe it made us even.
“Come back,” I said, my voice an exaggerated sigh.
He gathered his things, brushed off his butt, and walked up the steps. “You wanted me to fall, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” I smiled. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll survive.”
“So where are you staying this summer? The city?”
He pointed at the door behind me. “I got a great deal on this guy Glenn’s room. He said it’s pretty small, but the price is right. You going to poison me in my sleep?”
Summer Hours Page 19
