by Marlene Lee
“Am I talking too much?” asked Rebecca. “Mother used to tell me I talk too much.”
The man didn’t answer, but twisted his stool toward her. “My name’s Jerry Lillienthal.”
“How do you do.” Rebecca twisted her stool, too, and extended her hand. “I’m Rebecca Quint.” He returned to his coffee. She stuck a straw deep into her drink.
“How are you bearing up under all this rain, Rebecca?”
“Fine. I don’t like the heat in orchard country. I like the rain and fog and cold weather by the ocean where my motor home is parked.”
“There’s not much insulation in a motor coach.”
“My brother bought an electric heater. It really works.”
They fell silent.
“I slept through the month of September,” she said.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I didn’t have any energy at the motor home resort. I slept the whole time I was there.”
“I have days where I’m very tired.”
“Still, I remember a lot about the ocean.” She bounced one large Birkenstock against the base of the counter. “I watched pelicans fly by. They have jointed throats and needle noses. Something white flashes under their wings.”
“Is that so?”
“And when you look at the ocean on a stormy day you can see a yellow-green strip on the horizon, like strange sunlight to remind you it’s not storming everywhere. Have you seen it?”
“I never noticed.” He held out his cup for a refill.
“I think light is interesting, don’t you, Jerry? Mother took me to a Dutch landscape exhibit once, and there was so much light pouring off the canvases you’d think it would never be dark in that room again, even at night when the museum was locked up.”
“You’re talking too much,” Jerry said. He stirred his coffee. “What’s so special about Modesto?”
Rebecca ducked her head and studied the map. “It’s the way east.”
“You’d be better off to go east through Reno.”
Rebecca ran her finger along the valley. “The trouble with Reno is that you have to go through Sacramento, and when you’re in Sacramento you’re getting close to Chico, and I don’t want to go home.”
“Keep your wheel cranked sharp right,” said Jerry, “and you’ll never see Chico. In fact”—he bent over the map—“you can take the Reno cutoff just before you’re in Sacramento.” He traced the route. Rebecca watched his oil-grained finger and thought about Tom’s clean hands, clean because he didn’t go out in the orchard but supervised operations from the office upstairs next to Mother and Daddy’s room—now Daddy and the fiancée’s room.
“Once you’re in Nevada you can drive as fast as you want,” Jerry said. “There’s no speed limit in Nevada, at least there didn’t used to be.”
If Tom fell in love with this Madame Bradley and took her back to the orchard, there would be no place for Rebecca after her trip across America. Daddy would have the fiancée, Tom would have Madame Bradley, and Rebecca would have no-one.
“After Nevada you’ll hit beautiful country,” continued Jerry. He lit a cigarette and contemplated her trip. “I envy you.”
Rebecca took a long draw of Coca-Cola. “You could come with me,” she said.
Jerry Lillienthal squinted at the burning end of his cigarette. “I don’t think so.”
“I could use some help. Sometimes I get lost. And I don’t like driving in the rain.”
“Get some maps. You’ll be fine.”
“I have maps. I have three file boxes full of maps. Mother and I spent years collecting information for this trip.”
“You’ll be glad you did,” said Jerry.
“Why?”
Jerry looked into the woman’s hazel pupils; they were highlighted prettily, the way a doll’s eyes are brought to life with glass specks.
“Traveling takes you out of yourself,” he said.
“That was Mother’s opinion, too.”
“Have you ever taken a trip?”
“No.” Rebecca looked down at her red hands. “Mother said we didn’t have enough information yet.”
They sat in silence. After a while Rebecca jiggled her right foot and took a deep breath. “I pretend Mother is riding in the front seat beside me.”
“See there? You don’t need me. You already have company.”
“But you’re alive,” said Rebecca. Jerry’s eyes narrowed with interest. She leaned toward him. “Do you believe in death, Jerry?”
“I believe people die, if that’s what you mean.”
Rebecca lifted herself a few impulsive inches off the counter stool, then reseated herself. “Madame Bradley at the Ocean Breeze Motor Resort says you can contact people on the other side.”
“The other side of what?”
“Death.”
The spoon that Jerry had been moving in slow circles through his coffee stopped. “I thought you said this Madame was phony.”
Rebecca looked down at her large knuckles. “I’m not sure,” she said.
“‘Madame Bradley’ doesn’t sound like a real name,” said Jerry. “The ‘Bradley’ part’s okay, but ‘Madame’—”
“My brother and I heard her talking to Mother.”
“But did you hear your mother answer back?”
“I thought I did, but—”
Jerry frowned, being more than casually interested in death himself: dark fantasies drained him of energy and were ruining his fifties. “What did your mother sound like?” he asked.
“Like herself. Her voice is the same as it always was.” Their eyes met in the mirror behind the counter. “She’s still giving orders.”
Jerry felt his old friend fatigue creeping up behind him. If he didn’t leave now he would be here all night, babysitting an endless, neon-lit silence in the restaurant that was open twenty-four hours.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Rebecca kept her hand around her glass of Coca-Cola. “I’m not finished yet.”
“It’s late,” said Jerry, “and you’re not lost anymore.” He paid for their drinks and led the way outside. They both blinked. It had stopped raining. The asphalt was bright under the lights, and held a sheen. A strip of wet grass was blue-green and fragrant, and the freeway lay humming and lyrical on the other side of the frontage road.
Rebecca unlocked her brother’s car and Jerry moved the M-through-S box from the front seat to the back. He got into the passenger seat and set his lunch pail on the floor beside him. When Rebecca inserted the key in the ignition he reached over and stopped her.
“There’s no point in taking me home,” he said.
“You’re going to stay here all night?”
“We could talk,” he said. He still held her wrist.
“If you’re planning on necking or something,” she said, remembering Mother’s warnings about men, “I’m not interested.”
Jerry Lillienthal hadn’t even thought of sex, and he was hurt. He ran his fingers through the fragile strands of hair at the front of his head. “I just wanted to talk,” he said almost sorrowfully. His grip moved up to her elbow and his voice took on a sharp, personal edge. “You women get things wrong.”
Rebecca’s foot slipped off the brake where she’d been pressing it to the floor. The pedal sprang back.
“If you want to talk,” she whispered, “we can go back in the restaurant.”
Jerry Lillienthal tightened his grip. “You shouldn’t approach strangers,” he said, staring out the window that was beginning to steam over, “and then insult them.”
Rebecca silently cried for help: “Mother!” But Mother didn’t respond. In the absence of any voice, she began to hear a rhythmic sound, like the surf moving in and out below the Ocean Breeze Motor Resort. It was her heartbeat, strong and regular. A small fire caught in her skinny body and began to blaze. She turned toward the passenger seat.
“Get out,” she said. But he didn’t. He gripped harder and, without warning, shook her
until her teeth clicked. Rebecca lifted the door handle, flung herself against the door, and hit the asphalt at a run. In three strides she reached the pay phone and dialed a number she’d memorized now that Mother’s private line had been discontinued: Madame Bradley’s Airstream trailer where she could reach Tom. At the telephone, beaded with rainwater, she bowed her head and implored the plump woman with the scarves and gold earrings to answer.
But after only two rings, Jerry Lillienthal came up to the telephone and laid his oil-stained finger on the little silver bar that breaks connections.
“You’re in no danger,” he said. “You don’t have to call anyone.”
Not call anyone? She had always called someone. As the man backed away, smiling a suspicious, reassuring smile, the fire burned higher. Brighter and warmer than she’d ever felt before, Rebecca strode back to the driver’s side. Remaining outside the car, she opened the door, locked the master lock, and slammed the door shut again. The simultaneous click at all four doors, ensuring the safety of her files, made her cocky. She passed Jerry Lillienthal who stood behind the drip line of the awning looking both excited and guilty, and re-entered the restaurant where she washed her face and used the bathroom before beginning her trip across America.
But when she stepped out again into a fresh downpour, she saw that she’d left a window open and Jerry had broken into the car. In the hard, slanting rain, the back doors stood wide open and the file boxes lay disintegrating in the small river that flowed along the gutter.
“Mother!” she cried out, all her fire extinguished. Moaning, with rainwater running down her face and off her dyed hair, she bent over the A-through-L’s and carried them from the gutter to the car. But just as she reached the back door, the box cracked apart and the maps fell in a ruined clump beside the rear tire.
“The files!” she cried, and waited for Mother’s answer: “Go home, Becky-Wecky-O! Find Tom and go home! You can’t travel across America! You don’t have enough information!” But the only sound was the rain bouncing off the pavement.
Abandoned by Mother, unable to reach Tom at Madame Bradley’s, Rebecca closed the back doors and climbed into the driver’s seat. As she inserted the key in the ignition, she noticed Jerry’s lunch pail still on the passenger-side floor. It felt like a small, vicious pet left behind in the dark. She leaned to the right, opened the door, picked up the pail, and hurled it outside against the curb. The lid popped open. Bits of sandwich fell into the gutter stream. Water-logged, they disappeared into a grate, small points of white entering the underground wash that sang and gurgled in front of Jerry’s empty truck.
Rebecca backed over what was left of the A-through-L’s and sped away. She found the freeway with no trouble, turned toward Reno, and drove right through a panic attack that left her feeling, instead of tired and remorseful, singing in the night.
5
Most Strange
How strange and dry the Nevada landscape. How odd the hotel and casino, plunked down on the desert floor at the end of the freeway exit ramp. How unlike the family orchard in the Sacramento Valley.
People can live without peach trees and rich soil! People can go on living after their mothers die!
Rebecca pulled off the freeway and followed the exit ramp into the hotel parking lot. Construction equipment huddled about the stop sign.
How temporary the hotel seemed. Music over loudspeakers, neon signs blinking ‘Jackpot! $1,000,000! Cable TV! Pool and Spa! Fun!’ were all meant, she supposed, to make the place look as if it would still be here tomorrow.
She had driven all night from California, swept on by an unfamiliar sense of elation. For a few hours of lyrical driving she had actually believed there was a future; a belief that now, in the hot sunlight, disappeared like a mirage.
She sat until the air conditioning wore off. There were many reasons for staying in the car, not the least of which were her expensive sandals that Mother had given her on her forty-eighth birthday and that could so easily be ruined by the asphalt that looked ready to liquefy in the noonday sun.
The hotel entrance led directly into the casino. She had not planned to come into the casino itself, but now that she was here, bells, whistles, shouts, clank of coins drove her in circles about the rooms and she didn’t know how to leave. In other-worldly darkness lit by the glow of gambling machines, a security guard watched her. Mother would have known what to say, but Rebecca avoided him and took a tall stool in one corner. At the next machine over, a man from China or Japan put coins in a slot and pulled a lever. Small pictures of fruit whirred past his little windows and then stopped abruptly. Rebecca opened her purse and took out some quarters, which she held tightly in one hand. She sat on the stool and watched.
***
Professor Wei collected his winnings and began methodically reinserting the coins into his machine. A tall American woman had just sat down on his left and seemed to be staring at him. In China the government tried to educate its citizens not to stare at foreigners. He looked down at the woman’s foot, very large, in a big sandal, swinging in a circle from one long, crossed leg.
“What do the pictures of fruit mean?” she asked. He could hardly hear. Americans in the casino screamed when they were happy. They drank much alcohol. Over all was music which one heard even in the very clean bathrooms.
“When fruit is same, one wins money,” he said. This woman had many wrinkles. Her hair was bright red in some places and gray in other. She placed a quarter into the machine. Professor Wei waited for her to pull the lever. When she didn’t, he reached over and pulled it for her. She squinted at the fruit.
He pointed to the peach. “What is its name?”
“Peach,” the woman replied. “P-E-A-C-H. I live on a peach orchard.”
He pulled out his little notebook and wrote the word.
The woman inserted another quarter, pulled the lever, and squinted at the fruit again. No coins fell.
She looked at him. Her eyes were green with glassy flecks. “Where are you from?” she asked.
“Shanghai.”
She stared at him.
“S-H-A-N-G-H-A-I,” he said. “You have been to China?”
She shook her head no. “I’ve hardly been anywhere. I live in Chico, California. Yesterday I began a trip across America. Are you staying long in our country?”
“Four months,” he said. He saw his daughter seated at a nearby Black Jack table. “Good-bye. I must now leave.” As he got down off his stool, the woman put out her hand. Nevertheless, he walked away.
***
The dapper Chinese gentleman was standing in line at the restaurant that was built right into the casino, “so people can eat quickly and immediately resume gambling,” Rebecca thought she heard Mother explain. Mother understood factual matters. All her life she had explained them.
Rebecca crossed the room. “Hello,” she said to the Chinese gentleman. He bowed slightly but remained silent. “Have you won any jackpots?”
“I have not won,” said the gentleman. “I have lost.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Rebecca. “Exactly how much money have you lost?”
The gentleman did not answer.
“That was an impolite question, Becky.” Mother was strong in matters of etiquette. But before Rebecca could repair the damage, the hostess with a tall hair-do came forward.
“Lunch for two?” She turned and walked back into the restaurant. The Chinese gentleman set out after her, and Rebecca followed. The hostess gave them each a menu. Rebecca decided on Chinese chicken salad as a way of showing respect for the gentleman’s homeland. Since she was tired of thinking of him as ‘the gentleman,’ she said, “Pardon me, but what is your name?”
“I am Professor Wei.”
“How do you do,” said Rebecca. “I am Rebecca Quint.” Professor Wei inclined his head and returned to his menu.
“Can you recommend me a soft food?” he said after a bit. “My health compels me to eat soft food.”
“Do you like eggs?” asked Rebecca.
“I have already eaten two eggs today,” he said.
“Well, mashed potatoes are soft,” said Rebecca. “Mashed potatoes are very good.”
“I will have mashed potatoes,” said Professor Wei, and closed his menu.
“Mashed potatoes aren’t enough,” said Rebecca. “How about some rice, too? You probably like rice.”
“My daughter cooks rice. I do not want rice in a restaurant.”
Rebecca scanned the menu. “I recommend spaghetti,” she said. “Spaghetti is soft.”
“Thank you, I will eat spaghetti and mashed potatoes.” Rebecca and Professor Wei smiled at each other.
***
Gui Wei watched his daughter, Yu Ling, scratch the green felt with a bright red fingernail; the lacquer gleamed under the lights. He was proud of Yu Ling’s beauty, though baffled by her love of clothing and photographs of herself, perhaps explained by her difficult girlhood. She was one of the lost generation sent to the far Northwest during the Cultural Revolution.
Yu Ling left the game and came to touch his shoulder and look into his eyes. Today, in the United States, she prospered. He, himself, an old man nearly fifty years removed from the Cultural Revolution, remembered his porcelain collection that wild youngsters had forced him to break with his own hammer. Remembered his fine home in Shanghai that had been turned over to the People where now forty-three people lived in cramped style, shoved into closets and entryways.
When we are together again in Shanghai is it your wish that I remarry, or shall you care for me in my house? he had written Yu Ling years ago from prison.
Dearest Father, I will care for you in your house, she had written back.
