Acts of God

by Mary Morris

  I smiled. “That’s funny,” I said. “It really is.”

  “Maybe I could do stand-up,” she said in a way that made me think she was seriously pondering this option.

  “Honey.” I reached across for her hand. “Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

  Her face darkened. “Well, I’m just confused about some things right now.…”

  “What are you confused about, dear?”

  “Well, there’s this person I like—”

  “Person,” I said.

  She looked up at me, glaring. “Woman,” she said.

  “Okay, woman.” The word slipped out of my mouth. I wasn’t sure what to say. “Person. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry,” I blurted, “I didn’t know.”

  “Well, now you know. But it’s not what you think. Not really. Not quite. I still like men. Or I think I like them, but I’m also just not sure. I’m experimenting.”

  “Dear, you have to do whatever makes you happy.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “I do. I think that’s what you have to do.”

  Jade looked at me, tears coming to her eyes. “Is that what you did? Have you done what makes you happy?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I’ve tried. I haven’t always succeeded.”

  I reached up to touch Jade, who moved away from me now, her face shattered. “Don’t touch me,” she said, sobs rising in her throat. “I’m confused; I don’t know what I want.” Her fork clanged against her plate.

  “Sweetheart, we don’t always know—” but she shook my hand away. Jade, I thought, that soft green stone that is so easy and yet so difficult to carve. All those precious things sculpted there. But now I saw her hard, heavy gaze—stubborn and impenetrable. Why did you walk around carrying a rock? I wanted to ask her.

  “Mom, I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta go. I have to figure this out for myself.” She got up from the table and walked out, letting the door slam behind her. I listened to it slam and knew that I wanted someone I could talk to. I wanted Nick to be there. I wished I could call and tell him to come and be with me, but I couldn’t. Still, I wanted him with me. It hadn’t seemed that clear before.

  I finished eating the casserole on my plate. Then I picked up the dishes, scraped the remains back into the casserole dish. I cleaned up the kitchen and put everything away.

  26

  “You must be this tall to ride the Bobs,” the painted face of the clown with the outstretched hand read. For a long time we weren’t. We’d stand in line and the ticket taker would shake his head, nudging us away, but then suddenly we were. If we stood on tippy toes and stretched our legs, we were just above the thumb of the clown. That was the go-ahead.

  In the summers on Friday nights or whenever we could coax one of our parents—some parent who wasn’t drinking or too tired from commuting all week or working late or cavorting or had the lawn to mow or the taxes to figure out or the bills to pay or just wasn’t too sick and tired of the kids—to drive us to Riverview, we’d go.

  Often my father would be the one. He’d be back from his week of traveling, but right away he’d want to leave again. He’d drive us to Riverview, then wait in the car. He never went to movies or to the swim club or into Riverview. He just sat in the car. As I swam with my friends or watched monsters arrive from outerspace or kissed my first boy, I knew that my father was outside, waiting for me.

  On the weekends before I turned sixteen and was old enough to drive, my father drove me everywhere. He drove me ice skating, to piano lessons. He drove me to the movies to see a show, to the circus when it was in town. But he never came inside. He never watched me skate or ride a horse. He never came and watched a show or ate popcorn at my side. Instead my father sat in the car, as if he were casing the joint. He could easily have been taken for an undercover cop, sipping his coffee, glancing at a newspaper but not really reading it.

  Of course I pleaded with him. We all did, though Art least of all because he knew. He’d learned from all of us. I pleaded, “Daddy, please come and watch me skate.” Or “Come see the show.” But he never wanted to. He wanted quick departures, easy escapes.

  I never saw a lion act or galloped through a field or kissed a boy without the thought that my father was sitting in the car, waiting for me. Even to this day I still have the sense that someone is out there, in a hurry for me to be done.

  * * *

  My father seemed to enjoy driving the gang to Riverview. It was as if he had to keep moving. Even though he’d just gotten home, he wanted to go out again. He seemed to like driving us to a big parking lot, then smoking cigarettes until we were done.

  The girls were always grateful. “Thanks, Mr. Winterstone,” Maureen would say, then Wendy Young, then Ginger, and then Margaret because somehow she always came along. She seemed to know when we were going and called just as we were leaving. If she didn’t call, my father would ask, “Aren’t you going to ask Margaret?” Even if we had a full car, we could always squeeze one more in.

  So we all scrambled into the back of my mother’s car, the station wagon that smelled of wet shoes and groceries and cigarettes. On the Bobs, Margaret and I shared a little car. We stared down the mountainous drops. We squeezed each other’s hands. Afterward I was sick, thinking I’d retch, but Margaret looked stoically my way, that reckless look in her eyes. “Let’s do the Roter,” she said.

  But I didn’t do the Roter. I’d stood above it and watched as the floor dropped away. I’d seen faces arched in terror, arms and legs trying to crawl to a safe place. Others with their faces stretched back like a mask, arms out, crucified to the wall. I didn’t do the Roter; I never had, but I pretended I did. “Oh, that Roter. It’s nothing to me,” I’d say, knowing that if you’re chicken, they’d make fun of you. “That’s a boring ride.”

  “I want to do it,” Margaret said. “Do it with me.”

  “Let’s do the Jet.”

  She started walking away. Although the Roter was not so far from the Bobs, Margaret took a weaving, circuitous route, through the arcades, the first of many circuitous routes she would take me on. She didn’t turn around, but I was following. For a moment we lost the others, but Margaret, even as she weaved through the arcades—the Johnny Jump Up and the bean toss and the pie in the face—Margaret knew I was right behind her.

  The Roter was a big round tub like a mixing bowl with a column up the middle. We went in through a little door. I was at the base of the bowl. We stood along the sides. Mostly boys rode this ride. One or two girls were wearing skirts, and we knew what was going to happen to them.

  Even before it started to turn I felt sick. But I couldn’t be sick because if I was, I was chicken. Margaret was across from me and I saw her face as they shut the door. It was a funny, laughing face at first, but then it wasn’t. It was a different kind of face, a face like “I have to get out of here.” But already the Roter was turning. It turned slowly at first, but I could tell it was picking up speed.

  My face was pulled back as if someone had stuck tape on my mouth. My hands were pressed along the sides and now we were spinning. The skirts of the two girls near Margaret went up over their heads and their panties were revealed. They kept trying to push them down. One boy laughed, but then I saw him throw up. Vomit sprayed in the air. Everyone moaned and looked away.

  Faster now. The bottom was starting to recede. Drop back. Down, down the floor fell away. It was a law of physics happening here, but which law? Centrifugal force, that was it. We were flung against the sides, pinned to the wall, glued, butterflies impaled. I looked across at Margaret. Her eyes were pressed back into her head, her face was plastered into a smile. Her hair slung around her as if she were Medusa, her arms were spread at her sides. And now the Roter spun faster and across from me Margaret was screaming, a loud cry coming out of her, and I saw her start to curl.

  She folded first her arms, then her legs into her body, then turned on her side. All curled up, she started to crawl. Like
a baby she moved her arms and legs, crawling as if she were trying to escape. “Don’t do it, Margaret,” I shouted, “stay still,” but she was crawling away, heading toward the top of the ride and then, when she realized she couldn’t, she just curled back up again, quivering like a baby, stuck to the wall.

  She looked so frightened and small and I almost felt sorry for her. Then the ride slowed down. Skirts dropped, hands were released, Margaret straightened up. Her feet came down, her hands uncurled. The bottom came back and we planted our feet. The ride came to a halt and it was done. We staggered through the little door, down the wooden steps, and out to the arcade.

  When we were outside, I put my hand on her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  She swatted my hand away. “Of course I am. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Then we headed back to the car where my father waited, sitting as we’d left him. “Did you have a good time?” he said.

  “We had a blast,” we replied; no matter how sick we felt, our stomachs quivering, or how our hearts had stopped a hundred times, we’d say we had a blast, we’d had a wonderful time. Then my father put a hand on my back and another on Margaret’s.

  Shoving us gently into the car, he took us home. Margaret sat in front between my father and me. Everyone else rode in back. We had just gotten onto the highway when Margaret clutched my father’s hand. “I’m going to be sick,” she shouted. Quickly my father pulled over to the shoulder, hopped out, and yanked Margaret from the car. He kept his hand on her back as she vomited on the side of the road. Then gave her his handkerchief to wipe her mouth.

  The rest of us made faces, grimaces. “Ugh,” we said. When they got back in, my father was gentle with her. He made her sit by the window with the air blowing on her face. We dropped the gang off one by one until we came to Margaret’s house. Then my father got out and helped Margaret to her front porch.

  In the amber light above the doorway, I saw Clarice, dressed in only a housecoat, holding it at the waist. It was a peach-colored housecoat and the light of the porch seemed to shine through it, giving her an otherworldly glow. I assumed that my father was explaining to Clarice what had happened because I saw her put her hand over the little “O” her mouth shaped, the way it had when she’d first sat in our living room as my father related to her stories of disaster. Then Clarice ruffled Margaret’s hair and with a pat pointed her into the house.

  I thought my father would leave then, but instead he lingered. He said something and they both laughed. Clarice had that deep, gut cackle, the kind that betrayed her class. Or the lack of it. Then she reached out, touching my father’s sleeve as if she were picking a thread off. And he paused the way he did when he was about to say something, then forgot what it was.

  27

  The Department of Coastal Studies is located in a shack just off Otter Point, a few miles below where we live. I’m on the list for wildlife rescue. The next morning after my dinner with Jade, Joe Pescari, who headed Coastal Studies, phoned to say that four young pilot whales had beached themselves five miles down the coast from my house near Gray Shark Cove, and could I help keep them wet until the tide came in. I put on a bathing suit and tossed my wetsuit into the car and drove down to the Gray Shark Cove.

  From the ridge above the beach I could see four black whales, their thick bellies heaving on the sand. They breathed in heavy, asthmatic breaths and a crowd of volunteers had gathered around them, tossing water on their backs. I ran down to the beach, put on my wetsuit, and met Joe, who told me to splash as much water as I could on their backs. In two hours the tide would come in and we could ease them back into the water.

  The whales lay passive, breathing. They were young and fairly small, but immobile and helpless where they lay. Their eyes were cloudy gray and their breathing sounded like sighs. With a bucket I heaved water on their backs. Slowly the water began to rise around them and by late afternoon we could begin to ease them off the beach. We pushed them. I got under the blubbery belly of one to get it off the sand.

  As the tide flowed in, we guided the whales gently through the shallow waters, careful not to let them turn around and beach themselves again. They flopped, rolling from side to side, as if they could not navigate. We swam with the whales until they got their bearings. Often young mother whales, when they are giving birth, are followed up and down these coasts by older females, no longer of calf-bearing age. The old females swim with the young ones. When it is time for the young females to birth, the old ones shove against their the bellies, midwifing the birth. When the calf is born, the older whale will carry it to the surface until it begins to breathe.

  Now we were like midwives to these whales. Coaxing them along. Keeping them on the surface, on a straight course. At last they began to breathe. Water spouted from their blowholes. The whales oriented themselves and when we were a few hundred yards from shore, they headed for open seas. We watched as they swam out past the point, and when we were sure they had gone in the right direction, we swam back to shore. From the shore we watched the whales turn north, heading up the coast, where they would beach themselves again—and die—the next morning.

  * * *

  When I got home, there were disturbing messages from Charlie on the phone. He wanted to know what was going on with Ted. Where he’d moved to. And with Jade. “What are these kids doing with their lives?”

  I made myself a cup of tea and called him back, picking up where his messages left off.

  “I don’t know, Charlie. Ted has moved in with some woman I hardly know. Jade doesn’t talk to me. It’s too bad you don’t live closer. Maybe they need their father more.”

  “Well, it’s too bad you moved away.”

  “It was within the limits of our agreement.”

  “It’s a fucking two-hour drive.”

  “I wanted to be down here.”

  “Jesus, Tess, you just wanted to be away. That’s all you’ve ever wanted. I should’ve taken out a court order to stop you.”

  We’ve been in this one fight on and off for about a dozen years. Charlie decided he wanted joint custody after I bought this house. But it’s his guilt that’s got him. He doesn’t come often to see them. When something goes wrong, he blames it on my living two hours south of the Bay Area.

  When we were married, after Charlie and I made love, he used to cradle my face in his hands and say, right into my eyes, “I love you, Tess, I really do.” Then I’d go to sleep right there in his arms. And I loved him too, or I wanted him. But there was always something I could never quite get past. This thing that had stood in my way.

  * * *

  A few days later Jade sat in the breakfast nook, writing in her diary. She was bent over, intent. A small satchel, like the overnight bags I used to pack for her when she was going off to camp, lay at her feet. “Where’re you going?” I asked as I walked in. She looked up, running a hand through her short, spiky hair.

  She told me that that morning a seagull had landed on her windowsill and it had stayed there half the day. It just sat, looking in at her, its fat body pressed to the glass, as if it were beckoning to her, waiting for her to follow.

  Jade puts her faith in miracles, omens. Everything is a sign. It’s better than vampires, but still, as her father—a master of the understatement—would say, it’s not perfect either. She believes that little signs, omens, will tell you which path to take. She leaves clippings on my desk about Ganesha, the Indian god, half elephant, half man, whose stone statues sip milk. About the anti-Christ coming to take the children of Bogotá away. When a tornado scattered Texas Christian University to the four winds, making atheists of several of the faculty, Jade said it should have made believers of them all.

  Her friend Sigrid was in a car accident and when the first rescue worker on the scene fell in love with Sigrid, Jade said it was meant to be. She surrounds herself with crystals and amulets. Some of these she makes herself out of feathers she finds, and seed pods, dried flowers, and coffee beans.

  Now she told
me that all morning she watched the gull until she knew why it had come. When the gull flapped its wings and soared, Jade knew it meant that she was going away.

  “Where are you going?” I asked her, thinking that suddenly I would have a house devoid of children, whereas just weeks ago it had been full. It was the oddest thing about being a mother, but I could still feel this child’s mouth at my breast, smell the sweet smell of talc and her milky breath. I wanted to suckle them again, even Ted, though he had struggled against me. He had tried to get everything I had. When he didn’t get enough, he had fought and turned away. But Jade had always been peaceful, lying there, content with what came her way. Suddenly I wanted to take her into my arms, tell her she could sleep there.

  Now she looked at me as if she had never been close, as if she had never been content just falling asleep in my arms. She had that look like “I have no idea who you are.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said coolly. “Maybe L.A. or Chicago.”

  “Chicago? To visit Grandma?” No, she told me, to volunteer for the Night Ministry bus that drove around after hours, offering prayer to the pimps and drug dealers. “I want to join something,” she said to me, “I want to belong somewhere.”

  But you belong here, I wanted to tell her. You belong with me. Instead I said, “Honey, isn’t there volunteer work you can do right here? Surely in San Francisco—”

  She said she needed a change and she was leaving that night.

  “Tonight?”

  “Tonight I’m going to stay with a friend. Look, I waited until you got home to tell you. I could have just left you a note on the kitchen counter.”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “It’s just a friend, Mom. Don’t be so judgmental.”

  I didn’t think I was being judgmental. I thought I was just being a parent. “Honey, you’re almost twenty-one. You can do whatever you want, but—”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t want you to go.”

  Her face relaxed. She put her pen down. “Thanks, Mom. I understand that and I appreciate your saying it.”