Summer in the Land of Skin

by Jody Gehrman

  When Bender gets there, he doesn’t see me at first. He gives a little yelp and spills his coffee when he catches me standing perfectly still in the corner, staring at him. “Jesus Christ, Medina! Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t expect you yet,” he says.

  “I got up early.”

  He dabs at the spilled coffee on his jeans with the sleeve of his jacket and squints at me. “What’s up with you? You look…”

  “I look what?”

  “Different,” he says. “Is something wrong?”

  “How come you never told me you were in love with my mother?”

  There’s a long, precarious pause. He sips from his coffee carefully. “It was a little more complicated than that.”

  “I’m listening,” I whisper.

  He chuckles nervously, looks away. “Your dad thought I was. But he had it all wrong.”

  “Did he?” I don’t like how he’s avoiding my eyes.

  “Of course,” he says. And then, when I don’t stop looking at him, “Medina! Think about it! Would I have given you those letters if your mom and I were sneaking around?”

  “I don’t know. You might.”

  “Why would I? That would be crazy.”

  I shrug. “Maybe you needed to confess.”

  “I’m not Catholic,” he grumbles. “And besides, that’s not my style.”

  “So he was completely off base? You must have liked each other, at least.”

  He stuffs his hands in his pockets. His hair is unusually tame today, slicked, almost successfully, with what must be copious amounts of gel. “We liked each other, sure. I mean we loved each other, but like friends, you know—family. Before Chet flipped out—” he looks at me sideways “—we were all very close. Chet, Helen, Sheila, Rosie—all of us. In those days, people weren’t so uptight—we did everything together.”

  “Everything?” I raise my eyebrows.

  “Come on! You know what I mean. We were close, that’s all.”

  “What did your wife think about all this?”

  “Sheila?” I nod. “She wasn’t the jealous type. Things were different back then. Besides, her mind was on other things….” I don’t know what he means by this, but he looks so nervous and out of place, suddenly, so short and fat and tired, that I’m hesitant to press him further. He sees his chance to change the subject, and seizes it.

  “You ready to put some hours in? We’ve still got a long ways to go on this thing.”

  I just shrug.

  He puts his coffee down and goes to the soundboard, starts examining it with a businesslike air. “We’ve got to make some decisions soon about the inlay,” he says. “These braces look pretty good, huh?” When I don’t say anything, he glances at me expectantly, and I can see how anxious I’m making him, so I mumble my agreement and go over to him. As he rattles off a list of instructions, I listen silently, keeping my expression as blank as possible.

  Ever since I read the letter from Death Valley, things have been strained between Bender and me. We don’t joke around as much, and he doesn’t offer any anecdotes from the past—funny luthier stories featuring my father or Rot Gut. We work mostly in silence, with just the whine of saws and sanders as our music. I miss our easy rapport, but I can feel my own discomfort and confusion wedging a thin layer of ice between us. I sense there’s so much more to know about what happened between him and my mom. As with all the other questions unleashed by my father’s letters, I want the answers almost as much as I dread them.

  Sunday night, I come back to Smoke Palace with fine rosewood sawdust coating my skin and clothes. The house is empty, and the phone is ringing, on and on, relentlessly; I can hear it all the way up the stairs. When I answer it, I’m surprised that the person on the other end knows my name.

  “Yeah, this is Anna.”

  “Oh, kitten,” Rosie says. “I had nothing to do with it, I swear.”

  “With what?”

  “You mean she’s not up there?” I can hear her clomping around in heavy shoes. “Damn! Sorry—stupid teakettle. Burned myself.”

  “Who’s not up here?”

  “Your mother.”

  “Why would she be?”

  “She’s insane.” There’s a sudden burst of static on the line, but then her voice comes back loud as ever, midsentence. “…determined to come find you.”

  I can feel my breath coming faster. I sit down on the couch and hug my knees to my chest. “Wait a minute. My mother? She’s coming here?”

  “She’s probably there already, the way she drives—she left yesterday morning. She grilled me for hours, trying to pry your address from me. I didn’t know what to do!”

  “Okay,” I say. I get up and pull the leftover Sapphire gin from the freezer, pour myself a little, down it fast. “You think she’s up here somewhere?”

  “I guess by now—”

  “Rosie!”

  “I know, but what could I do? She was on fire—I couldn’t stop her!”

  “Okay. Okay, stay calm,” I say, more to myself than to her. “She left yesterday?”

  “Muumuu, get down! Yeah, in the morning.”

  “Oh God. She’s probably here somewhere.”

  “You know how she gets, kitten. Go easy on her.”

  “Go easy? On her? Are you—”

  “I know, I know. But she’s been so worried. She only gets this way because she loves you so much!”

  “Did you give her this number?” Silence. “Rosie? You did, didn’t you!”

  “What could I do? She wouldn’t take no for an answer!”

  “But not the address?” I close my eyes.

  “No. Just the number. I figured you could take it from there.”

  “Okay. Fine. I’ll just deal with it.” I’m about to hang up, when something occurs to me. “Rosie, I want to ask you something. What was the deal with Bender and Mom? Did they have an affair, or something?”

  There’s a pause. “Is that what Bender said?”

  “No, he denies it. But did they?”

  “Look, kitten…maybe you should ask your mom. Your dad and Bender had a falling-out. I guess it had something to do with Helen. Other than that, I just don’t know….”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Or you just won’t tell.”

  “Your mom knows better than I do—that’s all I’m saying. Maybe when she gets there, you could ask her.”

  “Maybe.”

  We say our goodbyes, mine a little sulky, and hang up.

  My mother. Here.

  There’s unusually raw and violent music coming from the direction of the Goat Kid Hovel. I look out the window, gripping my drink, trying to pinpoint the exact day I learned to pour gin on a racing heart. In the Goat Kids’ yard, five or six of them are taking turns trying to smash open what appears to be a parking meter, severed from its pole. One wields an ax, but the others have less conventional weapons: a couple of feet of rebar, a cast-iron skillet, an old burlap sack of something heavy that attacks with dull thuds. Raggedy Ann stands a little distance away, mesmerized. I try to lose myself in the weirdly brutal little scene. I watch them until the gray metal of the parking meter is dented and pockmarked with their blows—but all I can see is my mother gulping espresso from a paper cup and racing along in her silver Fiat, hurling herself closer and closer to the Land of Skin.

  December 30th, 1982

  Einstein,

  Three years ago, when you left San Francisco, I promised myself I would erase you from my consciousness, like footprints in sand washed smooth by the rising tide. But I’m the worse kind of fool, Einstein. I can’t even successfully deceive myself. I should have known you would never disappear so easily—you were always a stubborn son of a bitch. I may have succeeded in obliterating your face from my days, but at night you amble right into my dreams with your hair all fucked-up and your eyes blank and friendly, just as if nothing’s the matter.

  Lately my insomnia has gotten so bad that I
might be granted a reprieve, but instead you haunt me even when I’m not sleeping. You show up at the foot of my bed with a stack of Mose Allison LPs, looking for the stereo, or you materialize while I’m making a sandwich, excitedly explaining how to bookmatch koa so it lines up seamlessly. I’m sick of it, man. I’m starting to feel like a goddamn drooling loony. I’m not saying that writing you will be my cure, but it beats doing nothing.

  Can you believe we’re thirty-three this year? Remember when we used to think everyone over thirty might as well just cash in their chips, seeing as you either had to bend over for the system or go completely mad? Obviously, I’ve chosen the latter. No regrets. But the face that appears over the bathroom sink every morning invariably shocks me. Who is this old fart with his long shanks of gray hair and vacant eyes?

  Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.

  It’s all the same fucking day.

  I didn’t know what I was doing when I sat down to write you this morning. Like so many things in my life, it seemed like one of many possible poisons, and at last writing you was less repugnant than not writing you. When did the landscape I live in become riddled with nothing but rocks and hard places? A hundred years ago I was a different man.

  Now that I’ve spent three hours eking out this paltry sum of words, I can safely say that I’m writing you to find out what I’m thinking. You were always my reluctant confessor. Remember senior year talking me down from that fucking ghastly orange sunshine trip? I told you every passing thought I’d ever entertained from the time I was five or six. It’s amazing you didn’t keel over with the stupefying boredom of it.

  But I’m almost done with this limp little letter and I still don’t know shit about what I’m thinking. All I can see is an ungodly whitewash of loneliness. Food tastes like ash. Colors no longer pulse or bring pleasure. I dwell in the past compulsively with a mix of nostalgia and nausea. It’s good you’ll never see me like this. I would make you sick.

  I heard from Rosie that you and Sheila tried for another baby but lost it. I’m sorry, man. I know that doesn’t do shit, but it’s what we say when these things happen, knowing it’s no better or worse than any other trite syllables we might offer. I also hear Scottie’s doing well. I hope he’s some comfort.

  Write if you want. If you don’t I can’t blame you.

  Chet

  The next day, Bender and I work hard all morning, but I’m too distracted to get much done. I spill a bottle of lacquer, nearly slice my finger off with the saw, and am generally useless. By noon, I’m a nervous wreck. Bender’s been trying for hours to instruct me on the proper way to sand the neck, but it’s delicate work, and if you mess up even a little the whole thing is ruined. The mahogany’s not as expensive as the koa or ebony, but it’s still not exactly expendable. I apologize profusely, but my hands just won’t cooperate.

  I can’t stop thinking it, over and over, like a compulsive mantra: My mother. Here. Twice, I almost tell Bender about it, but I can’t bring myself to form the actual sentence out loud. I’m afraid his face will light up, and I’ll see what my father saw that terrible August—the betrayal that sent him out into the desert, searching for options.

  Suddenly Bender looks at me and says, apropos of nothing, “Medina, let’s go to the mall.”

  “The mall? Are you kidding?”

  “No. Come on. You need a break. Don’t look at me like that! I need some things,” he laughs.

  I look around at the shop. We spent a good two weeks ensuring it was perfect—we cleaned all his saws, routers and planers, set up comfortable, well-lit work spaces, bought a stereo with a turntable and a stack of old Motown LPs at a yard sale. “What do you need?” I ask.

  “Just some stuff. Socks. A tie, maybe.”

  “A tie?” He’s wearing his usual uniform: a pair of grease-stained Levi’s and a threadbare, flesh-colored T-shirt. “What do you need a tie for?”

  “Who says I don’t need a tie?” He stands up straighter, looking indignant. There are stray flakes of sawdust in his tangled nest of hair.

  “Guess I can’t argue with that,” I say.

  “Let’s go. We can grab a bite on the way back.” He tosses the sandpaper aside and brushes the sawdust from his clothes. “I look okay?”

  “Get the sawdust out of your hair,” I say. “What’s going on, anyway? Hot date on the horizon?”

  He swats at his hair a couple of times, then fishes a toothpick from his pocket and grips it between his teeth. “Look,” he says, “I’m out of socks, okay? Big deal.”

  We go outside and get in the truck. Arlan finally fixed it for me; now it’s running even better than it did before the doomed excursion to Sequim. The morning is over-cast, but patches of blue are appearing here and there in the sky. As I drive, Bender stares out the window. Halfway there, he says quietly, “Haven’t been to a mall since Scottie died.”

  “Why not?”

  “No reason.” After a long pause, he adds, “Just overwhelms me, I guess. Smell of new clothes, waffle cones. Families getting all worked up. Depresses me.”

  “So why go today?”

  He shrugs, still staring out the window. “Need some socks.”

  As I park the truck, he gazes at Sears with a vague look of apprehension. “I guess after Sheila left, I forgot about shopping.” His stare becomes distant and melancholy. “They say hardly any marriages survive, after your kid dies.”

  “I’ve heard that,” I say softly.

  “Yeah. Well,” he says, taking off his seat belt and opening the door, “might as well get it over with.”

  Bender purchases four pairs of cotton socks, two pairs of wool ones, and a package of navy-blue T-shirts. We look at some ties but they’re all either too hokey or too boring. I get the giggles trying to imagine him in the one he likes best: a yellow one with dark zebra stripes. He opts to forget about the tie. On our way out, he dashes impulsively into a candy store and buys a pound of cotton-candy-flavored jelly beans. “I used to love these,” he says, stuffing a few in his mouth and holding the bag out to me.

  “Mmm,” I say, trying one. “These are good.”

  “If you can’t have cigarettes, these are the next best thing.”

  As we’re wandering through the parking lot, trying to remember where we left the truck, Bender says, “Your dad and I had a game we played, back in Palo Alto, when we were kids.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Well, not exactly a game, I guess—just a way to pass the time. We used to make up stories about the people we saw. Give them names, occupations, exotic diseases…” A man gets out of his shiny black Alfa Romeo near us. “Like this guy.” Bender drops his voice to barely above a whisper. “Mickey Daniels. Top chef at a chichi little place called Sarah’s in Seattle. Came up here because he’s got the hots for a little number selling lingerie.”

  “Only he’s also got two ex-wives,” I say. “And they’re both suing him because he won’t pay child support. They’ve become best friends and they’re starting an organization in Minneapolis called Ex-wives United.”

  Bender chuckles. “Otherwise known as EU. You’re a natural, Medina.”

  “It’s easy to figure people out,” I say. “As long as you never actually meet them.” For a moment I almost tell him about my Suicide Maps, but I decide not to. I don’t want to deflate the sweet airiness of this moment.

  “Your dad liked to play that for hours. He never got tired of it.”

  I think of my father’s eyes, eagerly watching the world. They could absorb every cell of color and light; I can see him reading people’s clothing, decoding the creases around their mouths. Nothing could get past him.

  Before we go back to the shop, we have lunch at a Thai place next to a sex shop. We order Drunk Noodles and Spicy Whole Fish. We laugh at the phrase printed at the top of the menu: We serve to bring you long happiness. “Looks like they’ve got some long happiness next door,” he says, referring to the window display of multicolored dildos we passed on the way in. I get a Thai
iced tea and when Bender takes a sip of it he likes it so much he orders his own, drinks it down in three long gulps.

  “You don’t drink beer when you work, do you?” I ask.

  “Nope. Guitars and booze don’t mix—making them, anyway. Playing’s another story. Good to stay sober when working with power tools. I like to keep all my limbs intact.”

  I’m surprised when a memory assails me: my father was missing part of one finger. I can’t believe I’d forgotten this. “I just remembered,” I say. “One of Dad’s fingers was messed up, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I was there when he did that.” He chuckles. “Poor guy. Your dad could handle a lot, but the sight of blood made him sick. He sliced it open on the table saw. I had to wrap the whole thing up and hide it from him all the way to the hospital, or he’d faint. I’m driving with one hand, holding his finger on with the other, and telling every joke I’d ever heard about a mile a minute, to keep him calm. He was the color of split-pea soup for hours!” He laughs.

  “You two were good together, weren’t you.”

  “Sure,” he says, still smiling. “I guess so.”

  “So what happened?”

  His smile dissipates. “This again?”

  I’m fully aware that I’m spoiling the light mood of the day. The mall, the jelly beans, making up stories in the parking lot, joking about dildos—I’m risking it all as I steer the conversation toward something that happened over twenty years ago, when The Mermaid Garden became Medina Designs. But the further I get into my father’s letters, the more I’m frustrated by how little I know. His own words are so ambiguous; they’re poetic, thoughtful, raw at times, but they only stir more questions in me, and I’m getting more impatient to find the answers.