Acts of God

by Mary Morris

  “Good tax write-off,” John put in, tapping a pencil on his teeth. But he was already shaking his head. “No can do. You need everything—all kinds of liability, earthquake, mud, brushfire. Who’s going to give you brushfire?” John leaned back in his chair, hands over his head. “The premium will cost as much as the house. Can’t get you into the Fair Plan now. I don’t think there’s any way you can get the inclusions you need.” He began explaining something about rate adequacy, if this was worth x and that was worth y. I started to feel a surge of something I hadn’t felt in a while. I didn’t want to be told what I could not do.

  “John, my father was in the insurance business.” I’d never raised the specter of my father with John before, but now seemed like as good a time as any. “He used to say there are only solutions, never problems.”

  “Well, times have changed.” John raised his arms, that grin on his face. His ponytail bobbed behind him. “He’s not in the business anymore, is he?”

  “No, John, he’s dead.” John paled, telling me he was sorry. “But if he were alive,” I said as I walked out the door, “he’d find a way to help me.”

  My father’s death seemed to be one more way he slid in and out of our lives, one more sleight of hand he’d perfected. His decline was barely noticeable and he was still a relatively young man, in his mid-sixties, when he died a decade ago. He had the usual complaints, especially about his legs. They refused to do what he wanted them to do, like put his foot on the gas or walk eighteen holes.

  He collapsed on the golf course one Saturday, but then got up and insisted on driving himself home. My mother had tried to get him to the hospital, but he said he was all right. When I asked him that night on the phone how he was, he said, “I’m fine. I played the best golf game of my life.” Hours later he died in his sleep.

  There was a storm at sea that night, the kind of bad weather I’d once associated with my father, and I hadn’t been sleeping all that well. Waves pounded the shore and I was lying there, listening, when the phone rang. My mother was calm, almost composed when she told me. “He died happy,” she said.

  They had met just after the war at a friend’s wedding at the Blackstone Hotel in downtown Chicago. The way he liked to tell it, my father said to his brother, “Who is that girl?” She was a Russian Jew, as was my father, but with freckles and a turned-up nose. Nothing about her reminded him of the oily smells and grim corridors he was trying to escape from. On their first date they took off their shoes and waded through Buckingham Fountain. My father thought this was a girl he could have a good time with, and for a few years he did.

  I flew in with the kids. Charlie, who had liked my father, joined us. Jeb and his family only stayed for the day, which enraged my brother Art. My father’s funeral was well attended. I was surprised at how many people he knew, how many people told me he had helped them along the way. They had enjoyed his magic tricks and his boisterous laugh.

  When I turned to look at who was there, I saw Clarice Blair, Margaret’s mother, standing in the back of the funeral chapel. She was dressed in a short black dress, the kind she often wore, and a hat with a veil. I thought to myself, What is she doing here? But my mother, to her credit, went over and shook Clarice Blair’s hand.

  10

  Prairie Vista Automotive was located across from Santini’s Liquor, where Margaret and her mother lived. Every few weeks I went with my father to take the car into the shop. The Schoenfields had a part-interest in the repair shop, as they did in Santini’s Liquor and in the other shabby buildings along the strip—the electronics store and the deli. In fact Cy Schoenfield had an interest in half of Prairie Vista. He’d had made a lot of money during his football years and as my father said, he put his money where it counted. In bricks and mortar.

  The car often didn’t need repairs when we went there, but still my father liked to go. He liked to schmooze with the boys at the garage. And the car was his livelihood after all, so he had to have it just so. Once in a while he had a fender bender or a scratch where the metal was revealed. Sometimes you couldn’t even see the scratch, but it seemed as if he always had to go to that garage and have something done to that car. He told me a body can rust and you don’t even know it.

  It was our outing, those Saturdays. “Come on, Squirrel,” he’d say, “let’s get the car checked.” I liked to go with him not only because it was something we did together, but also because once in a while I’d get a glimpse of Nick. I went out of my way to look nice, putting on a matching short set. Afterward my father and I stopped at Lindsey’s Delicatessen for a corned beef sandwich and a black cow.

  At about ten on Saturdays we drove down to the northside of town, then crossed the tracks to Prairie Vista. I waited outside because the smell of fumes—paint, oil, and grease—was so strong. Inside the repair shop was a dark world of mechanical parts, hubcaps, fenders, tires, rusted exhaust pipes, mufflers. I’d only go inside if Nick was there, learning the business from the ground up. If he saw me, he’d give me a wave. “Hey, Tessie,” he’d call, smiling from beneath the hood of a car.

  I went and stood beside him, peering with one of the mechanics at the twisted guts of the car. He leaned over me, pointing. “That’s a spark plug and that’s a distributor…” His greasy hands tugged at wires. There was a bang on the hood of the car and Cy Schoenfield, who liked to make the rounds on Saturdays and survey his domain, stood there, laughing. “Always flirting, aren’t you, son? No wonder you don’t get anything done.” He pretended to close the hood of the car on his son’s head. “Tessie, where’s your old man?”

  “He’s in the front, Mr. Schoenfield,” I said and watched Mr. S. wobble on his bad knees. My father and Mr. S. slapped hands. They talked sports, wondering if Winonah would take State and how the Cubs would do, and business until the work on my father’s car was done.

  * * *

  The entrance to the repair shop was a narrow passage where your car got lifted up and carried in or where you just drove carefully through the thin opening into that dark circle surrounded by broken parts. It was a grease-stained world of men with blackened hands and faces who stank of fumes and could never light a match for fear of going up in smoke. When the fumes got bad, my father came outside and stood with me.

  One day, when Nick was not there working on an engine, I went and stood outside with my father, waiting for a dent to be battered out of the car. My father was smoking a cigarette when Margaret Blair and her mother suddenly appeared across the street. Mrs. Blair wore tight skirts and had a cackle laugh not unlike Margaret’s. But there was something buoyant and puffy about her that made me think of pointless things like cotton candy or yo-yos.

  They were dressed up as if they were coming from somewhere. They both wore navy cloth coats, though Mrs. Blair’s looked a little frayed, and gloves. Mrs. Blair had a red scarf around her neck which looked pretty with her dark hair and red lips. Margaret saw me first. “Tessie,” she called, waving frantically, “Tessie,” which only my best friends called me at the time.

  I watched them coming toward us and my father tossed his cigarette into the gutter. Mrs. Blair’s heels clicked on the sidewalk and I thought her navy skirt was too short and tight for a woman her age, just like our laundress, Elena, said. She had long sleek legs and a big friendly smile. She had clips in the side of her hair and shiny beige stockings with a seam up the back. They stopped and said hello. “So you’re Tess,” Mrs. Blair said. “I’ve heard so much about you.” As she held out her hand to me, I could smell her perfume and her lipstick looked thick and red.

  My father smiled, patting me on the head. “Who’s this, Tessie?”

  “It’s Margaret Blair and her mother.” I mumbled an introduction.

  “How do you do, Mr. Winterstone,” Margaret said in a sweet, syrupy voice I’d never heard her use before. She gave my father a big grin and he reached across and patted her on the head too.

  Then Mrs. Blair extended her hand to my father and said, “Clarice Blair.”
I’d never seen him shake a woman’s hand before, but she extended hers and he took it. When she smiled, you could see her teeth.

  “Well, it’s very nice to meet you,” my father said.

  “It’s nice to meet you too,” Clarice Blair replied, “and I’m so happy to finally meet Tess.” Mrs. Blair paused, then gazed up at the sky. “You know, it’s so beautiful this fall. Don’t you agree, Mr. Winterstone? I think this is the most beautiful fall I’ve ever seen.”

  “Please call me Victor. This is your first fall here, isn’t it?” Mrs. Blair nodded. “Well, every fall is beautiful in Winonah.”

  “You’re right,” she said, “I’m sure you’re right about that.” Then she laughed a big hearty laugh, and my father stared at her as if he’d never seen a woman laugh before. There was an awkward moment after that and no one knew what to say so it was good-bye and see you in school. Mrs. Blair called, “You should come over and play some time, Tess,” and then she caught Margaret by the hand and walked away.

  My father followed them with his eyes as they walked toward Santini’s Liquor, where Mrs. Blair discretly slipped her key into the side door. The glass in the pane was broken and the stairs were dirty gray. Mrs. Blair glanced back at us once, smiled an embarrassed smile, then the two of them disappeared up the stairs. “Now, who did you say that was again?” my father asked after they were gone.

  “Oh, Margaret. She’s just the new girl. She lives with her mother above that store.”

  My father nodded, looking up, clicking his tongue. “Tough place to live,” he said. With my eyes I followed his gaze to the window above the store. It was a grimy building with paint chipping from the front. The fumes from the repair shop reached over there.

  “Nobody likes her,” I added, as if this would somehow matter to my father.

  “Why is that?”

  I couldn’t exactly think of a reason. “We just don’t. She’s stuck up and nosy.”

  “Oh, really?” My father nodded again. “Well, you should be generous to people, especially if they don’t have all the advantages you’ve had. You don’t know what her circumstances are.”

  Mr. S. came out just then and he stood with my father, shaking his head. He seemed to loom over us. He was so big and square and wobbly at the same time. He gazed in the direction of Santini’s Liquor, as if he’d known what we were talking about. “They’re tenants of mine,” Mr. S. said. “My boys can’t get much work done when she’s around.”

  “I can imagine,” my father replied, making a clucking sound with his tongue.

  Afterward on our Saturdays my father went outside while the car was being looked at. He stood with me—the two of us gazing up at the windows with their drawn shades. Sometimes we heard the music from a violin. Once in a while we’d catch a glimpse of someone—even now I can’t say who—drawing the curtain back, looking down at us.

  11

  I stopped at Starbucks for a tall iced skim “even keel” (half decaf, half regular) latte, then the post office. I’d received a notice that there was a package for me. There’s always a long line at the post office. A woman ahead of me wanted the new rock-and-roll stamps, which the postmaster didn’t have. A man had to report a lost registered package. At last the postmaster took my yellow slip and handed me a small, brown package. It was from Winonah and I had no idea what it was. Opening it on a side counter, I found a blue and white blanket with all the historic sites of Winonah woven into the fabric—the Winonah Wildcats, the train station, one of our Frank Lloyd Wright houses, the old Everett cabin. It was quaint, I thought, wondering what I’d do with it.

  The blanket reminded me that I hadn’t dropped off the film I’d taken at the reunion. I drove over to Photofax One-Hour Developing, where I left the film, said I’d be back, then sped over to the real estate office, where Shana had several calls for me to handle. “So how was the reunion?”

  “You know, thirty years later…”

  She ran her hand through her hair, which she’d let go gray (I dye mine the same color it was—auburn—when I was a girl, though Jade is always on my case to go natural).

  “Time marches on,” Shana said, staring into her computer screen. In her sleeveless dress I could see the scar that coursed up her crooked right arm. Shana and I have been friends since we both moved here and basically raised our kids together.

  She was a grade-school teacher when I met her. She loved being in the classroom, but one morning during homeroom a little girl got up to ask her a question and Shana rose to answer it. Just then there was a loud, cracking sound, and Shana fell against the blackboard. Shana looked down at her arm and saw blood flowing from her elbow, fragments of white bone shining through.

  A half mile away some hunters, having target practice in the hills, had shot a bullet against a rock. It ricocheted down the hills, through the classroom window, through the desk of the little girl who had risen to ask Shana a question, and entered Shana’s elbow, finishing its trajectory into the blackboard, which splintered in two. The mother of the little girl, weeping, had called it a miracle, but Shana would never straighten her arm again. She’d never been able to go back into the classroom, either, though she’d tried for years, and finally she’d gotten her real estate broker’s license.

  Once while she was trying to win her lawsuit against the hunters, I sat with her in the courthouse waiting room and she said to me, “I used to believe that everyone made his or her own destiny. Now I just believe in fate.”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked her.

  “Big one,” she said. “I know this man. He was walking down a street in Seattle. He had his whole life planned out. He was on his way to law school, engaged to a girl he’d known since college. They even had a house picked out on some island in Puget Sound. Then, suddenly, as he’s walking down the street, a steel beam from a construction crew falls off a roof and lands right at his feet, just at the tip of his toes. Another half an inch and he would have been a dead man.”

  “So,” I said.

  “So he broke up with the girl, forgot about the house and law school. He’s a rancher in Wyoming, married an Indian he met out there. He forgot about his so-called destiny and decided to just do whatever the hell he wanted.”

  That’s what Shana told me she did. Never went back into the classroom; changed her life. She told me that now she preferred this line of work. She liked showing people in and out of houses where they might live, homes they might buy. She liked having the keys to so many homes, this entry into strangers’ lives. She even hinted that she sometimes prowled in rooms, dug into drawers.

  I must admit that I had come to enjoy it as well, since a year earlier her business was doing so well that she asked me to take over seasonal rentals and time-shares. I enjoyed the jingle of keys in my pocket, the access it provided. Though I can’t say I did any prowling, I peered farther into a closet than I needed to, opened drawers I might just as well have left shut. But the fact is, such searches always disappointed. I never found the secrets, the hints of hidden lives I wanted to believe were there, and in recent months I’d stopped looking. Mostly things are what they are; that’s the lesson having keys in my pocket taught me.

  Now Shana gave me a few rentals to check out, make sure they were in good order before we took clients there.

  “Okay, I’ll do that, then I have some film to pick up and errands to do. Let’s say I get back here at around three?”

  Shana said that was all right with her and she handed me the lists of apartments to check on.

  “Shana, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know, your house, it sits out over the ocean, right?”

  “Yep, median tide is right under our living room.”

  “Well, is it insured?”

  “Sort of. Under the Fair Plan. But the truth is, if it got washed out to sea, I’d never recover its value.”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said, giving Shana a little nod as I headed out the door a
nd she waved back with her crooked arm.

  My first stop was the seashell house, which was done entirely in seashell decor. Seashell pillows, cowrie shell artwork, abalone lamps, scallop curtains. It rented well to retirees who may or may not have discovered the porno the wife (the only interesting thing I’d ever uncovered in one of those houses) kept under her clam-shaped dressing table. It was spotless, as always, when I arrived, and I made a quick walk-through, rubbing my fingers along the mantel to see if we needed to send in the Polish cleaning crew.

  I stopped at the tchotchke apartment which had knickknacks everywhere that could not be touched. It was the kind of place I loved; if I’d let my nature for collecting things run wild, I’d have lived in a house like that, with a million ceramic dogs and glass goats. Cruise-ship memorabilia was everywhere. An alleged life preserver from the Titanic, a crystal goblet from the QE2. On one shelf was a collection of cereal-box prizes. The people who lived here were control freaks and I had to be sure that every bear and cat was in its exact place. The husband had handed me a grid when I got this account, showing me where everything should go. Once, just to see if they noticed, I messed things up a bit—put some ceramic poodles where the QE2 goblet was. They noticed right away.

  My last stop was the Mitchell place. The Mitchells put away all their cotton sheets and terry-cloth towels and had polyester for the renters and slipcovers on everything. I didn’t know why anyone rented that one, and almost everyone who did went out and bought their own linen. Invariably the renters complained.

  Everything was in tiptop shape, ready for the new season. I called Shana to report in and told her I’d be back the next day to take care of some paperwork. On my way home I stopped for groceries at the food co-op, where Ted and I each put in three hours a month and got great prices on organic produce, and finally at Photofax for the film from the reunion I’d dropped off a few hours before. When I got into the photo place, I fumbled through my wallet but couldn’t find my ticket.