“We’re not dating, Mom. We’re friends. It’s just that—”
“You’re also sleeping together? Yes. I know how that goes.”
Joanna shook her head. “No, I don’t think you do—”
“You remember Danny don’t you?” Joanna remembered him. He had a dark, thick head of hair, glossy from some sort of gel or wax. He chewed gum, went around smelling like wintergreen. “Well, that’s how it was with him,” Tess said.
“I doubt that very much,” Joanna responded.
“No, listen! We worked together.”
“I know this story.”
“Not the whole thing. We worked together—so this must have been right after the divorce. We just talked. Took breaks together sometimes, sat at the counter eating our lunches. This went on for a couple years. Eventually we did things together, too, after work. He never once made a move on me.”
Tess had quite the knack for retelling history, for inventing the supporting details of Joanna’s childhood.
“Mom, trust me, this thing with Danny was nothing like my friendship with Malcolm—”
Tess cut her off. “So when it finally happened, it took me by complete surprise. Years of innocent chatter and then—I couldn’t believe it. It was so intense, so amazing to be with someone you just knew, inside and out….”
“Ugh, Mom, I can’t believe I’m hearing this! Do you not remember how it ended with him? He wouldn’t even speak to you.”
Tess lowered her eyes. “Well, he didn’t have much of a choice about that.”
“Right, Mom. Because he was married.” She should have felt sorry for her mother. Instead, she was angry. “How can you even compare that—that affair—to me and Malcolm?” She excused herself to go to the rest room and worked at calming herself down. She would not fight with her mother on Christmas Eve.
Joanna sat back down at the table, ready to smooth things over.
Her mom smiled secretively at her. “You know,” she said. “I’ve been seeing someone, too.”
“Oh, Mom.”
“His name is Clive. He lives in Fallon.”
“Fallon?” Joanna imagined someone tall, thin, in Wranglers and a black cowboy hat.
“He’s great. Really a nice guy.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Why can’t you be happy for me?” Tess frowned and poured herself some more wine. She filled Joanna’s glass, too. “This is really going somewhere. We’ve been spending almost every weekend together since September.”
Joanna sighed. “Why do you need him anyway? I thought you said you were done with men!”
“I never said that!”
Joanna knew her mom hadn’t said that; Joanna had said it. She had wanted it to sink in. “What do you need a man for, anyway? Look at you—college educated now, with an office job. A nice townhouse you bought yourself. Can’t you see how much happier you are now? How much saner?”
Her mother waved her hands, shooing away Joanna’s concerns. “Oh, Jo-Jo, what’s the point of sanity if you have no one to share it with?” Tess laughed and took a big sip of her wine, pleased with this retort. “Isn’t that what it’s all about? Losing yourself for a bit? Isn’t that the best part—what makes falling in love so fun?”
Joanna stared at her mother.
At that moment, two tuxedoed waiters stopped by with a rolling dessert cart. Joanna tried to take a few deep breaths, concentrating on the elaborate production made over their orders. A waiter took a huge white plate, zigzagged berry coulis over it with a pastry bag. He placed a piece of cake on top of that, garnished it with whipped cream and a live flower, and presented it to Tess with a flourish. Then he went to work on Joanna’s order—some sort of meringue-covered torte that required a miniature blowtorch to brown the top.
Tess dug into her flourless chocolate cake, waxing rhapsodic on the virtues of Clive: his beautiful green eyes, his charming way of calling her “darling.” The more good things Tess had to say about him, the more upset Joanna got. She could barely sit there, listening. She twisted her cloth napkin in her lap, picked at the meringue on the top of her torte.
“Mom, I don’t want to listen to this.”
Tess pouted. “You want me to be alone. And miserable.”
“I don’t want you to be miserable! That is the whole point! These guys make you miserable. Don’t you know how many nights—years—I spent not doing homework or hanging out with my friends? Because I was home, taking care of you!”
“I never asked you to do that,” Tess said, so quietly Joanna could barely hear her.
“No one asked me. Who would ask me? No one else knew. No one saw how you unraveled whenever someone broke up with you.”
“It’s normal to cry when you lose someone, Joanna. Normal to get attached, and then to feel sad—”
“But it’s not normal to stop buying food, Mom. Or call in sick for weeks at a time, or stop changing your clothes. Remember Brian?”
“That was a long time ago,” Tess whispered.
“I was fifteen.” One morning Joanna woke up to find her mother perched on the couch in the living room, wearing the same clothes she had had on the night before. A shiver ran through Joanna’s entire body. She had the eerie feeling that Tess had been sitting in that very spot, in that very same position, with the very same lifeless look in her eyes, for the last eight hours.
She shook her mom’s shoulders and snapped her fingers in her face. She didn’t know what to do. She had to go to school—she had tests in calculus and American literature.
Her mother shook her head with a few jerky movements. Then she smiled weakly. I don’t feel so good, Jo-Jo, she said. And then her eyes rolled back into her head, her back arched, and her whole body seized three times, then went limp. Her mother lay passed out on the couch, her chest heaving up and down. Joanna couldn’t move. Her mind—strangely, inappropriately—fixated on the tests she would miss. Perhaps someone could explain, she thought. Someone could write her a note, allow her to retake the exams.
In the next moment, she uprooted herself from the floor and ran to the phone. She didn’t know whom to call—not Brian, certainly. Her father? She tried reaching him at work, but no one was able to track him down. She dialed an ambulance next.
Laura flew in from Portland that very night, already sobbing as she stepped off the plane. How did this happen? she kept asking. A week later, Laura went back to Portland to finish up her semester. Joanna and Tess would be fine—hadn’t they always been, up until now? And wasn’t what had happened just a fluke, an allergic reaction to some commonly prescribed drugs? As much as she wanted—needed—her older sister’s help with their mother, she couldn’t help thinking of the future. One day it would be her turn to venture off to some distant city and start college. Something made her think that if Laura could do it, so could she. But if Laura came back, they’d all three be stuck there, in this miserable apartment, for the rest of their lives.
“Joanna.” Tess reached across the table and held on to Joanna’s hand. “Is this what you’ve been worrying about all these years?”
Joanna nodded.
“That was a fluke, you know. The doctors said I had a bad reaction to the anti-depressants they had me on.”
“I know.”
Tess gave Joanna a sad little smile. “I thought you didn’t want me to be happy.”
Joanna couldn’t smile back. “I just didn’t want you to fall apart.”
They got home late and went straight to bed. Joanna sat on the daybed, surrounded by about fifty decorative pillows, upstairs in Tess’s spare bedroom. During the day the room afforded a breathtaking view of the Sierras. But in the night it was so black outside she could see nothing but flickering lights scattered over the foothills.
Alone on Christmas Eve. Outside, the air blew dry and cold over hard brown dirt and sagebrush. Laura wasn’t talking to her. Her dad was in Texas with Linda’s family. Her mom was going crazy over a guy—again. And Malcolm was in California. Joanna searched
her room for a piece of paper and a pen—she’d write him a letter, get it all out. She wouldn’t even have to send it; it was essential to talk to someone.
Or she could call him. If she really wanted to, she could talk to him right now. It became urgent, suddenly. She needed to hear his voice.
She almost hung up after his phone rang and rang without going to voicemail.
“Joanna?”
“Merry Christmas.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to talk to you—that’s all.”
“Good. Because I wasn’t sure how serious you were about this phone ban. I was just going to call you, as a matter of fact.”
Joanna smiled. “You were?”
“So nothing’s wrong? You sound … sad.”
She sighed. “It was nothing. Arguing with my mom, as usual.”
“But it’s Christmas!”
“Yes, I know it is, Tiny Tim.”
“I mean, I would have thought you’d both be on your best behavior.”
“We were.” They were both silent on the line for a moment. “I want to see you,” she said. This came out more desperate-sounding than she had intended. She realized then that she missed him, wanted to see him. And not just anyone—him in particular.
“That’s actually what I was going to call you about,” Malcolm was saying. “What are you doing over New Year’s?”
“I’ll still be here,” Joanna said, working hard to make her voice sound steady, neutral. “Unfortunately. I don’t know what I was thinking. Now my mom’s saying she wants me to meet this new guy. He lives in Fallon, so I guess she wants him to come over for a few days while I’m here—”
“Okay, she won’t miss you then. Come spend New Year’s with me.”
“In San Diego? With your mom and dad?”
“No. In Tahoe. My parents were trying to decide between Palm Springs and Tahoe. I talked them into Tahoe. Can you get a ride? I could come into Reno and pick you up.”
“So I’d meet your parents, huh?”
“Yeah. They want to meet you.”
“Hmm,” Joanna said, stalling. She was already devising a way to spin this to her mother. They could use a little break from each other—and didn’t Tess want some “alone time” with Clive? She swept away the thought that just a few minutes before, she’d been opposed to her mom even dating this guy. And that she and Malcolm were supposed to be reflecting … But could she help it if telephone lines, cell phone towers, and satellites seemed to be conspiring together, hurling their words at each other over the distance?
18
her weightless body
Joanna drove her mother’s car up into the mountains. Tess wouldn’t need it—Clive was driving into Reno from Fallon so they could spend New Year’s Eve together. She pouted about Joanna leaving but then brightened at the idea of both of them having “someone to kiss” at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
Like everyone else who grew up in Northern Nevada, Joanna had spent half of her summers up at the Lake, getting sunburnt at over 6,000 feet, swimming in melted snow, sitting on golden sand under Ponderosa pines. But as she headed up into the Sierras, she began to doubt the wisdom of joining Malcolm and his parents. First of all, she didn’t ski. And more importantly, she and Malcolm were supposed to be easing into a new, monkish phase of their friendship. The whole point of sleeping with him in the first place had been to get him out of her system.
But what if it they weren’t out of each other’s systems? In that case, they would be obligated to keep working at it, eventually burning each other out, leaving nothing but smoldering ashes. From these ashes, their new, improved friendship would rise up, ready to take flight.
But … this was a vacation. Things work differently on vacation, the rules become more relaxed. You might eat dinner every night at 6:00 p.m. at home, but go out at eight o’clock on a trip, for example. Perhaps it would make more sense to give up Malcolm as a New Year’s resolution, along with starting the garden earlier and doing better about grading papers in a timely manner.
With the last shred of light still clinging to the sky, she pulled in to a snowy driveway. The house was built up the side of the mountain, with the entrance at the back. Her feet crunched over day-old snow, up a redwood plank leading to the entryway. She knocked and the door seemed to swing open almost immediately. Joanna had never seen a photograph of Malcolm’s mother, but she recognized her at once: long-limbed and dark-haired. Her hair was twisted up and piled on top of her head, with a perfect streak of gray shooting out from her widow’s peak.
“Joanna!” Maxine Martin smiled hugely and enveloped Joanna in a long embrace. Joanna could feel the ridges of her ribs through the luxurious softness of the cream-colored sweater Maxine was wearing. “We are so thrilled you could join us. Come in, come in. Where’s your coat? Malcolm … has his hands full at the moment.” She chuckled to herself then, as if on the verge of divulging a secret.
Joanna followed Maxine up a half-flight of stairs, leading into a huge, open room with vaulted ceilings and a postcard-perfect view of the lake framed by trees and a darkening sky.
“Malcolm! Stephen!” Maxine cried out. “Joanna’s here!”
Joanna sat down at a stool on a granite-covered island to observe Malcolm and his dad in the kitchen. Somehow, in the hour and a half since Malcolm and his parents had checked in, they had managed to litter the countertops with cardboard boxes, canvas shopping bags, pots and pans, egg cartons and shells. Malcolm was holding two eggs in each hand, his fingers curling around them like talons. “Check this out, Joanna,” he said, holding the eggs up for her to see.
“Uh—nice,” she said.
“We’ve been listening to NPR,” his mom explained.
“We do that on road trips,” his father elaborated. The three of them—Malcolm, Maxine, and Stephen—stood in a line on the opposite side of the island. They were so clearly a family, all so lanky with the same dark eyes. Variations of each other. And apparently Malcolm’s love for layering had been handed down to him from his father, Stephen, who had on a button-down shirt under a forest green sweater under a corduroy jacket with patches at the elbows.
Malcolm waited until he had Joanna’s full attention. She rested her eyes on him, her tall and lean friend, wearing a narrow red sweater she had never seen before, his hair slightly shorter than the last time they had been face to face. In a swift movement, Malcolm cracked all four eggs down on the side of a glass bowl, which Joanna now saw was filled more than halfway with yellow orbs floating in clear gel. The whites and yolks slipped free and joined the others in the bowl. In a final flourish, Malcolm shucked the shells to the side, then raised his hands up like a magician’s. His parents hooted and applauded.
Joanna, impressed, clapped as well. “What is going on here?”
They explained, all talking over each other, that they had been listening to a fascinating radio program on their drive and learned (among other things) that breakfast cooks in Las Vegas needed to crack four at once to stay on the top of their game, which had inspired the Martins to stop at the store on their way up. They had spent the last hour cracking their way through over four dozen eggs.
Maxine poured Joanna a glass of wine and pushed it across the counter. Joanna smiled her thanks. Malcolm raised his eyebrows and nodded at her, and she returned the gesture. During the discussion about the radio show, he had transitioned from egg-cracking to vegetable-chopping. He peeled the skin from an onion, attacked it with a gigantic knife, and slid the contents of the cutting board into a skillet his father was shaking and tossing over the blue flame of the stove. His mother cleared a space on the island, began to cut butter into flour, working without measuring or even looking at her own hands, chatting away.
They had all refused Joanna’s offers to help make dinner, and she was relieved. She couldn’t keep up with them. On her way over the mountain pass, Joanna had practiced a few short but polite answers to the ques
tions she was sure his parents would want to ask her—all the boring small talk she detested so much—what do you do, oh do you like doing that, where did you go to school, what do your parents do, and so on. Instead she could just ease into the chatter, speaking up only when she had something useful to contribute, letting the flurry of activity settle around her.
And then—dinner was served: omelets, a green salad, and biscuits, straight from the oven. They would serve flan for dessert, for which Maxine apologized in advance. Already Joanna saw they’d be dipping into the clear glass bowl of eggs right into the new year.
Cleaning up after dinner brought on another production. This is how Malcolm’s family operated. They clanged pots and pans, ran water, threw dishes in the dishwasher, yelled over each other, tossed sponges through the air, laughed and sang along to the radio as they worked. It was like a movie; she half expected birds to swoop in the windows with dishcloths in their beaks.
Once the dishwasher was humming and the flan was steaming in its bain marie, Maxine suggested that Malcolm fetch Joanna’s bag and show her where to put her things. Malcolm went out to the car and returned with Joanna’s bag. He gestured for her to follow him downstairs to the bedrooms.
She followed him down to the cool, dry depths of the lower floor. She had arrived at this house over three hours ago. In that time, she and Malcolm had not exchanged more than a few words. They hadn’t hugged or even so much as brushed their fingers together as they reached for the salt shaker during dinner.
He switched on a light in a bedroom. “This room has a complete lake view in the daytime,” he said. He set her bag down on the floor and walked to the front of the room, by a large picture window. Underneath the window was a double bed with a thin, navy blue bedspread. Shelves along the walls held books, games, and framed pictures of sailboats.
Malcolm’s suitcase lay propped open on a chair next to the bed. She looked at the bag, his clothes arranged in neat stacks, then up at him. He was standing just a few feet from her. He held his hand out, and she took it. He pulled her toward him, slowly. “Hmm,” he said, when their bodies finally made their way to each other. She put her arms around his neck and looked up at him.
Broken Homes & Gardens Page 18
