Golden State: A Novel

by Richmond, Michelle

  We sat for a couple of minutes in silence. Finally, I ventured another question. “Really, who’s the father?”

  She didn’t look at me when she said, “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

  In the past, I’d discovered that if my sister preceded a statement with “You won’t believe me,” there was a pretty good chance she was right. But some nugget of truth was always buried in the fiction. The challenge was in figuring out where the lies ended and the truth began.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Dennis says, jerking me back into the present.

  “No.”

  “Just like old times. Didn’t it feel good to get it off your chest?”

  “Yes,” I lie. I open the bathroom door and go to Heather. She’s still sitting on the edge of the bed, her face pinched with pain.

  “You know what I miss?” Dennis says.

  “What?”

  “You used to need me. When we talked, it was like you could relax and really be yourself. You said it was the best therapy. I bet Tom didn’t know, did he?”

  “Know what?”

  “How close we were, Julie. How much you revealed in our little heart-to-hearts.”

  11

  7:04 a.m.

  The gripman releases the brake, and we begin to move. The businesses are closed, but the sidewalks are already bustling. There is a man selling bear-shaped balloons, a scantily clad woman on stilts dressed like a sexy Uncle Sam, waving a banner that says, DIVIDED WE FALL on one side and HAPPY HOUR ALL DAY AT EDINBURGH CASTLE on the other.

  The line on the sidewalk beneath the cable car sign has grown. The wind has picked up, a wet, stinging, San Francisco cold. The man with the baby stuffs his book into his messenger bag and retrieves a red fleece blanket, which he pulls over the backpack, concealing the baby’s head completely. The baby bobs around under there, laughing.

  As the cable car screeches to a stop in front of us, the conductor opens the latticework gate, shouts “All aboard!” and steps back to let the passengers file on. The inner compartment fills up fast. When I was a kid in Mississippi, I used to watch movies on TV—The Birds, I Love a Soldier—and dream of being Tippi Hedren in a tailored suit or Paulette Goddard in overalls, making my way up and down the steep hills of this city by cable car. In my childhood daydreams I held on to a strap, balancing elegantly on the sideboard, but in reality I edge my way into an open seat on the outer bench, relieved to take the pressure off my ankle. I lift my foot so that it is suspended a couple of inches above the floor. Passengers are still finding their seats when the conductor grabs the rope and jerks it back and forth with a whipping movement of his wrist.

  I frantically text Heather. You OK?

  12

  “I’m sitting in your chair, Doc,” Dennis says. “I’m looking at your calendar. You’re a really busy woman.”

  I cringe at the thought of him touching my things.

  Years ago, I underwent an intensive one-week training seminar in dealing with patients who became belligerent or threatening. The training had been mandated following an ugly scene at the Denver VA hospital that left three staffers and a patient dead. Two days of the seminar had been devoted to dealing with hostage situations. We used to have a one-day refresher course each year, but the course went the way of comprehensive psychiatric services and our full-time crisis counselor: it was lost to budget cuts.

  One thing I do remember is the importance of establishing rapport with the hostage taker. But in this case, our rapport is the root of the problem. If we hadn’t been friends all those years ago, if I hadn’t climbed into his bed when I was twenty-two and lonely, if I hadn’t spilled everything to him after we lost Ethan, then he wouldn’t be in my office right now, holding three people I cared about at gunpoint.

  “You let them get too close,” Betty warned me, years ago, when Dennis started getting weird. “This isn’t the first time.”

  Betty was right. I don’t always maintain the proper boundaries. Maybe it’s some lingering remnant of Mississippi; back home, everybody talks to everybody about everything. In Laurel, you can’t walk into the Piggly Wiggly without walking out with someone’s life story. Sometimes, I miss that. Despite San Francisco’s reputation as a free-for-all, it is, for the most part, a cordial city. Personal space ranks right up there with personal freedoms.

  When patients come in the door of the VA, we ask so much of them. Taking a personal history is a necessarily invasive process, designed to get the most information in the shortest amount of time. When I began working here, I discovered that if I shared a little bit of myself, patients were much more willing to open up to me. Even though every patient walks in with a basic desire to know what is wrong with him, it’s also natural for him to hold back on some of the details that might cast him in an unfavorable or an embarrassing light. A good physician gets past that reluctance quickly. The sooner everything is on the table, the sooner I can make a proper diagnosis. If that means mentioning a TV show I like or talking a bit about where I came from, so be it. But Betty was right: sometimes, I go too far.

  “Dennis,” I say, “is Eleanor okay?”

  “Not really. She’s not breathing too well.”

  “Listen, Dennis. I need you to put Rajiv on.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “How’s Rajiv doing?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. Very even-keeled, that one.”

  “And Betty?”

  “Pretty good. She’s not hurt, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Good,” I say. “Listen, why don’t you let Eleanor go?”

  “This isn’t about Eleanor.”

  “What is it about?”

  “It’s about me and you.”

  “You’re talking to me, Dennis. I’m here. If it isn’t about Eleanor, if it isn’t about Betty and Rajiv, why not just let them walk out of there?”

  Dennis laughs softly. “Why would I do that?”

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “Because as long as they’re here with me, you’re talking to me, and no one’s going to storm the room and shoot me.”

  “No one’s storming anything, Dennis. No one wants to hurt you. Greg didn’t hurt you.”

  “I bet Greg didn’t tell you he knocked on the door after I’d brought the others in here and volunteered to take someone’s place.”

  It doesn’t surprise me. “No, he didn’t.”

  “That’s how I knew he wouldn’t mind walking across the parking lot to give you the phone. He’s a stand-up guy. I’ve always liked him.”

  “You could have just called the room,” I say.

  “Yes, but then they could tap the line.”

  “They who?”

  “The people who are leading the coup.”

  “There’s no coup, Dennis.”

  “You really believe that? Can’t you see this goes all the way to the top?”

  “There’s no conspiracy theory. It’s just a vote.”

  “You think I’m paranoid.” His voice is growing agitated. “That’s what they want you to think, Julie. You are so naïve sometimes.”

  Something else we learned in the crisis management class: it’s easier to deal with someone who has demands. Bank robbers who want money, hijackers who want asylum, ex-convicts who want a friend released from prison. The worst kind of hostage taker is one who has no set demands, one who already feels his life is worth nothing, someone with nothing to lose.

  13

  7:16 a.m.

  I turn up the volume on the Bakelite, surprised to still hear Tom’s voice. The morning guy must be running late. “You know, when you think about it,” Tom says, “seceding is a lot like breaking up. You think you can’t live without each other. All of your interests are intertwined, your history’s all mixed up together. But then, all of a sudden, you’re separate entities, on your own. It’s downright scary. So here’s a classic breakup song, and I’m sending it out to the girl in the sky.”

  With that, Billy Idol’s voice breaks thro
ugh the static, singing “Sweet Sixteen.”

  The girl in the sky. That, of course, would be me: fifteen years ago, the Fillmore, the annual KMOO concert. Billy Idol was on the bill, another attempt at a comeback, along with the Goo Goo Dolls, Yah-Yah Littleman, and a few other acts. I’d just finished the third year of medical school. For months, I’d been in constant motion, with little sleep and no social life. As much time as I spent surrounded by colleagues, I’d begun to feel isolated from normal life. This was a rare celebratory night, and I planned to make the most of it. I’d had a lot to drink, and to top it off, when I stepped outside for air, someone offered me a joint. The pot had quickly gone to my head. What strikes me now is how young I’d been then but how old I’d felt, needing to escape already—all those hours playing doctor until, at some point, it became who I was.

  When “Dancing with Myself” began to play, someone dragged me into the mosh pit. I closed my eyes and lost myself in the music. It felt ridiculous and strange, wonderful, like going back to high school to relive a youth I’d never had. As the crowd pressed forward, I was pushed farther and farther toward the stage, the bodies packed around me so tightly that my feet actually lifted off the ground. I kept going higher, higher, until I was on top of the mass of bodies, cradled horizontally by hundreds of unfamiliar hands. Someone’s finger caught my hair, pulling my head back at a painful angle; someone’s sharp ring grazed my cheek, a hand grabbed at the crotch of my jeans. The ceiling seemed impossibly far away, the lights of the stage blinding, and I began to panic. The song stopped, and Billy Idol started singing “Sweet Sixteen,” a cappella and achingly slow. Suddenly, two powerful hands wrapped around my waist. I felt myself being lifted, floating through space. My feet landed on the other side of the barricade, inches from the stage. My knees buckled; someone held me up. Moments later I was backstage, sitting in a folding chair next to a large man, who was pressing a cold bottle of water to my lips. It was hard to believe he was real, that the dizzying flight above the rowdy crowd had actually happened to me.

  “You okay?”

  “You’re so. Big,” I managed.

  He laughed. “Thanks. I guess.”

  His eyes were dark, nearly black. His hair was shaggy and wild. For a moment I wondered if I’d inadvertently smoked something stronger than pot. I shook my head, trying to clear out the cobwebs.

  “Where did you come from?”

  “Backstage. It looked like you were in trouble, just floating through the sky out there.”

  I leaned against him, still woozy from the pot and the heat, and together we watched the rest of the Billy Idol set. It all seemed miles and miles from the normal context of my life.

  “I’ve never dated a bouncer before,” I mumbled.

  I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me.

  The crowd cheered as Billy Idol left the stage. He walked right toward us, bringing with him a scent of musk and sweat. His hair, up close, was even more blond than it was on TV, like some punk rock halo. We all seemed to be swimming in a weird, watery blue.

  “Be right back,” the giant said to me. He shook Billy Idol’s hand. “Great set, man.” Then he walked onstage. “I’m supposed to say a few words here, but how can I follow that?” he bellowed into the microphone. “We’ll be back in fifteen with Sister Hazel.”

  After a quick wave to the roaring crowd, he returned to sit beside me.

  “You’re not the bouncer,” I said.

  “Nope.”

  An awkward silence followed. I was relieved when the next band arrived. The giant whispered something to the lead singer just as they were going onstage. “We’d like to dedicate this one to the girl in the sky!” Ken Block shouted, and with that, the band launched into “All for You.”

  I elbowed the giant, unbelieving. “Did you do that?”

  He shrugged.

  “You did that,” I said, stunned.

  “I’m Tom,” he said.

  “Julie.”

  After the last band had played, Tom made some promotional announcements and, much to my relief, came back to me.

  “Do you need a ride home?” he asked.

  When we pulled up in front of my apartment building, he got out of the car to open the passenger-side door. “Thanks for rescuing me,” I blurted out.

  “Sure,” he replied, cuffing me on the shoulder a little too hard. A thought raced through my head, a thrilling notion of what it would be like to make love to him, like going a practice round in the ring with someone who didn’t know his own strength. I must have been smiling, because he demanded, “What’s funny?”

  “Do you want to come in?”

  Upstairs, in my apartment, he wandered around as if he belonged there, checking out my books and CDs, complimenting the view. He picked up a photo of me and Heather taken when I was ten years old and she was an infant; I held her in my arms, beaming. “It’s you,” he said. “You look just like yourself. Who’s the baby?”

  “My sister, Heather.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “Mississippi. She hasn’t had an easy time of it, really.”

  “Why’s that?”

  I sensed he wanted to hear the whole story, not just a stripped-down, small-talk version of it. So I grabbed a couple of beers from the fridge, and we sat down on the bed that doubled as a sofa. I told him about Heather’s missing father, and about my dead one. I told him about shopping for school clothes at the Salvation Army; about sitting in the muted light of my childhood church, feeling horribly out of place, while the preacher lectured furiously to a rapt congregation; about finding my mother alone in her room, sobbing, staring at photos of my father, years after he had died. I told him how desperately I’d wanted to get away, to start a new life where no one knew me.

  “I suppose I wanted to reinvent myself.”

  “And you did.” He pulled my feet into his lap and began rubbing them. “You live in the most beautiful city in the world. You’re putting yourself through school. You’re on your way to becoming a doctor.”

  “All true.” My mouth felt cottony; my whole body had gone limp and warm. “But the thing about reinvention is, no matter how much you change everything on the outside, you still know where you came from. You’ve still got all that stuff from middle school clanging around in your system. It’s almost like you’re living a double life, just waiting to be caught. Waiting for someone to walk up to you and say, ‘I know who you are. Enough with the charade.’ ”

  “It’s not a charade,” Tom said. “It’s your life. You made it.”

  “You make it sound so simple.” I glanced at the clock, yawning.

  “Too early for breakfast?” he asked hopefully.

  I reluctantly pulled my feet out of his grasp. “Come on, I’ll make you my special drop biscuits with cheese.”

  The following night, I tuned in to KMOO. Around midnight, Tom dedicated a song to me: Al Green’s “Here I Am (Come and Take Me).”

  I turned up the volume on my crappy radio, and I did something I hadn’t done in a very long time. I danced alone in my apartment.

  There’s so much about that time of my life that I’ve forgotten; the whole phase feels like a blur of sleepless nights soaked in coffee, a whirlwind of patients and procedures and emergencies, one seminar blending into the next, ambulatory care conferences and frantic days in the acute care clinic, endless presentations by the faculty in which I took notes furiously and felt my head would burst with information, depressing shifts at the community clinic. But I remember with tremendous clarity that night at the Fillmore—the throb of the music, the heat, the bodies pressed against me, the unwilling horizontal flight over the crowd. I remember the hands around my waist, the feeling of floating in space—and Tom. We had two weeks to get to know each other before I started my summer rotation with the National Health Service Corps in Oakland, two short but densely packed weeks during which I fell completely, unquestionably, in love with him.

  The best thing about my relationship with
Tom from there on out was that we had no messiness between us, no drama. After that night, I never dated anyone else. There were no ugly breakups and subsequent makeups, no questions of exclusivity. Our relationship felt like something I’d fallen into by some divine kind of luck.

  Years later, driving home from the VA hospital late on a summer night, I was startled to hear Tom telling the story of how we met on air. He played my pot-infused crowd-surfing for laughs, but when it came to his own role in the story, he didn’t whitewash a thing. “I thought I was getting a one-night stand,” he told his listeners. “Instead, I got a life.”

  14

  Tom and I were in bed when I told him about Heather’s return. He was leaning against the pillows, reading Q Magazine. I sat beside him, rubbing lotion into my hands. It was a cool night, but the window was open anyway, the sea air drifting in through the screen. The foghorns were bellowing. I could see the neighbors' yappy dog relieving itself in their purple hydrangeas. “Buster boy,” the neighbor called in his thick Cantonese accent, “come here, Buster boy.” It was part of the nighttime litany of our life, the sound of the neighbor calling in the dog, and I imagined that if I lived anywhere else I’d have a hard time falling to sleep without it.

  Our house sits on a hill thirteen blocks from the Pacific Ocean, sandwiched between two similar houses, attached on both sides, the long narrow properties separated by wooden fences. Our bedroom—my bedroom now—is on the second floor, with a view to the backyard, and the neighbors’ yards, and beyond the yards the streets and houses sloping down to the long sands of Ocean Beach. The room is dominated by a very tall, long sleigh bed that we’d picked up at an estate sale in Berkeley during the first year of our marriage. At nighttime, especially with the foghorns going and the moonlight shining on the yards down below, the bed feels something like a ship, adrift on the edge of the city. Back then, it was the only place I knew we could talk with no distractions, the only place quiet enough, and intimate enough, for me to share the startling news.