‘Sounds like a plan. I’ll get it warm and bubbly for us both,’ I said and went to it.
It was deep enough and wide enough for the two of us. I remembered the last time Ronnie and I had done this. It was at a resort in Cabo, Mexico, at least ten years ago. Back then, we could have a second, even a third honeymoon, but that idea seemed to drift away with so many others.
‘You should be this content all the time or most of it, Clea,’ Lancaster said. ‘You wear it well.’
‘You were right,’ I decided instantly. ‘I’m not returning full-time to work, not even part-time. That’s just filling hours with sand when I should be filling them with wine.’
‘Your husband wanted you to work?’
‘Yes, actually, he did.’
‘He was afraid of your having idle time. He was casting another chain over you.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s what husbands and children do, cast chains over you. A woman like you can’t survive like that.’
‘No.’
‘Maybe you should go with me,’ he said.
‘Maybe I should.’
He lay back in the warm water and then I started the pumps and both our bodies shook with pleasure. I wondered who had the bigger smile on their face.
ELEVEN
The ride down from Idyllwild felt just like that – a ride down, a descent from the clouds, from something heavenly to something mundane. With every turn, I felt my body harden and my nerves grow tense. It didn’t surprise me that he sensed how I was feeling. By now he had developed a remarkable insight, a sharp awareness of all my feelings and moods. It had taken Ronnie years to do that, and I didn’t think he had ever achieved it to the extent Lancaster had in a matter of days.
‘You’re worrying about returning or not returning to work, aren’t you?’ he suddenly asked, perhaps because I had been so quiet after we left the cabin.
‘I don’t want to return to work at the law firm. You were right about how unsatisfying it would be, but I’m stubborn about admitting defeat or failure. If something like the coffee pot, juicer or vacuum cleaner breaks, and I’m frustrated with fixing it, I still won’t let Ronnie do it, even if he’s home at the time. He’ll hear me cursing and complaining and come running to my aid, but I’ll keep trying until I discover the problem. He hates that.’
‘He wants to be the man in the family. Is that wrong?’
‘You just can’t stop defending him, can you? You males are incapable of any sort of independent review of your actions, just like cops and doctors – and lawyers.’
‘I’d add politicians.’
‘They’re mostly lawyers.’
He laughed. ‘You’re a challenge, all right. You’re lucky your parents never became suicidal.’
‘After they saw it was too late, they saved themselves with indifference.’
‘Aren’t you doing the same thing now when it comes to your relationships with your husband and your daughter – even your friends?’
‘Stop analyzing me. I thought we weren’t going to do that to each other. It was practically a promise.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s in our nature to make promises we know we can’t keep.’
‘Rationalizing,’ I accused.
‘Also in our nature,’ he replied.
We drove on in silence nearly the remainder of the journey. I was working on how I would do just what he had said: rationalize why I had decided not to return to work for Carlton Saunders, especially after starting successfully and anticipating his call to return. I supposed I could fall back on a typically safe excuse. I thought I would tell both Carlton and Ronnie that I had decided that my daughter needed me now after all. She was at a vulnerable age. I wasn’t going to be one of those mothers who were oblivious and then suddenly shocked at what or who her children had become right under her eyes, not that there’s a guarantee you’d have any real influence on what your children did or didn’t do. Competing with the power of peer pressure was like attempting to block Niagara Falls with cardboard boxes.
As if he was party to my thoughts, Lancaster suddenly said, ‘You’re not someone who is comfortable lying to herself. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be with me.’
‘But I’m comfortable lying to others? Is that it?’
‘Indifference, rationalization. Without both, Adam and Eve couldn’t have survived leaving Paradise.’
‘You are so …’
‘What?’
‘Fucking self-confident,’ I said.
His laughter carried us both more relaxed the rest of the way.
At his request, I dropped him off where I had picked him up. If I ever told any of my girlfriends that, she would be sure to say he probably didn’t want me to know where he was staying or with whom. Maybe he was married. Maybe he had a girlfriend and I was simply another amusement. Maybe that’s true, I thought, but right now that wasn’t something about which I had any concern.
After he got out, he leaned to look back in at me.
‘Work things out. I’ll be here for you whenever you want me to be.’
‘No matter what?’
‘No matter what,’ he said. He closed the door and I drove off. When I looked back through my rearview mirror, he was already gone. For a moment I felt as if the umbilical cord for my spacewalk had snapped and I was about to float into oblivion.
However, as I drove on, despite all the tension and conflict in my mind, I realized that the ride back hadn’t drained me of my optimism. My excuse for leaving turned out to be true. I did feel renewed. Nature had done its job. My brain felt less cluttered. I could feel the restored energy pulsing through my body. I was actually looking forward to seeing both Ronnie and Kelly. I started planning on what I would make for dinner and imagined us being light and playful with each other, just as we were during the earlier years. I would be very interested in how they had gotten along in my absence. I even felt a little jealous about it, which I considered a good thing to feel at this point. I wasn’t as indifferent as Lancaster had made me out to be.
Perhaps absence does make the heart fonder. It wasn’t a cure. It was simply a way to address symptoms, like taking an aspirin to reduce your fever but not to destroy what causes your fever. Maybe that was all we could expect, some temporary moments of happiness and contentment along the convoluted path of struggle we called life.
I thought about some of those happier moments in my marriage. I certainly had them. How could I deny the day Kelly was born and the way that had strengthened my relationship with Ronnie, for example? Of course, it did feel as if we were different people then. Time, experiences, events, even other people change us, and if we don’t change together, we grow into strangers. Maybe that was all it was; it was no one’s fault. Guilt has no place in evolution. It’s beside the point.
There were birthdays, vacations and major events like our buying our house – all moments that stood out. I could trace our lives with them the way someone might connect the dots to form a picture. One might even use the connecting dots to claim there was a pattern to his or her life, a logic, some cause and effect. I think what had happened was I’d become afraid of connecting the dots, afraid of the new picture that would be created.
I turned into our driveway and opened the garage door with that magic button above the visor. Ronnie’s car was there. I had half expected him to be golfing, having lunch with his friends, and I expected Kelly probably would be at the home of one of her girlfriends. Now I was hoping to see them happily waiting for me, both of them racing to catch me up on what had occurred during my absence, but the moment I got out of my car, I had a heavy sense of dread fall over me. I think it was the silence that I hadn’t anticipated. It was Sunday. If Ronnie was home, he’d have the television on to watch some sporting event. And if Kelly was there, she would have music streaming too loudly out of her room.
I closed the door softly behind me, put my purse on the counter in the kitchen and walked slowly into the living room, my overnight bag in hand. T
hey were both sitting there on the sofa, Ronnie on one end, Kelly on the other. They had identical dour expressions. The duplication was almost comical. Were they this far apart because they’d been fighting, arguing? Was I walking into another annoying and silly father–daughter confrontation? Couldn’t they get along with each other for at least two days without my being a constant referee?
‘What’s happening?’ I asked, deliberately evincing little interest.
‘Do you have your mobile phone on you?’ Ronnie asked.
‘My mobile phone? Yes,’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘Look at it,’ he ordered. In my mind’s eye, I could see rage seeping out of the corners of his tight-lipped mouth.
I opened my purse and took out my phone.
‘So?’
‘Is it on?’
‘On?’ I looked at it again and realized it wasn’t. I pressed to turn it on, but nothing happened. ‘The battery must have died,’ I said. ‘What about it?’
‘Late yesterday afternoon, your mother was rushed to the hospital in Rancho Mirage. She had a serious heart attack. I’ve been calling you every hour on the hour ever since. I haven’t slept.’
Kelly’s lips began to tremble. Her eyes were so fixed on me that I felt she was burning a hole in my chest with her laser-like intensity.
‘Is she dead?’ I asked.
‘No, but it’s not looking very good,’ Ronnie said. ‘We didn’t go to the desert because we wanted to get in touch with you and all of us go there together,’ he added.
‘Where were you, Mom?’ Kelly demanded. ‘Why didn’t you call to see how we were?’
‘I’ll go up and put some things together in case I have to stay with my father,’ I said instead of responding.
‘Jack seems pretty much in control and handling it well. Your father always struck me as someone who could command a nuclear submarine,’ Ronnie offered.
I supposed in some way that was meant to make me feel better, but pointing out that my father could hold a steady course even in the midst of losing the woman he had been married to for more than forty years gave me little comfort.
‘Where were you?’ Kelly asked. ‘You told us you were going to Palm Springs and would be with them.’
It was amusing to me that Kelly was the one asking. Did they decide before I arrived how they would conduct their interrogation? Perhaps Ronnie believed I would be honest if Kelly was the one demanding answers.
‘I changed my mind,’ I said.
‘So where did you go?’ Ronnie followed.
I think it was my father who, when balling me out for lying to my parents blatantly, advised me I’d be more successful deceiving someone if I worked in some truth and simply excluded the untrue parts instead of trying to get by with a complete bald-faced lie. I had the impression it was a technique he used when he wanted to sell a client a particular stock or mutual fund that would garner him a bigger commission. Not very Eisenhower of him, I thought later on, when I was able to understand more about all adults, not just my parents.
‘I went to Idyllwild,’ I said.
‘Idyllwild? Why did you go there instead of to Palm Springs?’
‘I said I wanted to be out in nature. I thought the desert would be busier this time of the year, and, to be honest, I didn’t want my parents cross-examining me. I’ll be right down,’ I added and hurried up the stairs.
It occurred to me that I should have told them I was going up to Idyllwild from the start, but it really was impossible to anticipate every possible complication, especially something like my mother having a heart attack. I had spoken to her before I left and heard nothing in her voice to even suggest she wasn’t feeling well. She cracked her syllables, vowels and consonants with that Vassar College elegance of which she was always proud. She had met my father at a sorority mixer. She told me she never had her mind set on any specific career. She dabbled with the idea of getting into publishing because she was such a good reader, but my father, who is two years older, was already being courted by Wells Fargo for an opening on the West Coast. The publishing world is really centered on the East Coast, and it didn’t break her heart to sacrifice the goal in order to marry Dad and move to California.
I think, in most families, we’re brought up to believe that our fathers will die before our mothers. Of course, that generality is losing validity in a world in which women take on more stressful lives, employment and responsibilities, not to mention smoking and drinking more. Despite the high intensity of his work, my father was exactly how Ronnie depicted him, always calm and centered, no matter what he was doing or what came up unexpectedly. He was Obama cool, barely blinking faster or breathing harder when confronted by something unpleasant or challenging. I believe I inherited some of that. Look how well I had handled my husband and daughter just now, I thought.
I emptied my overnight bag on the bed and quickly replaced everything with clean clothes and different shoes. Knowing my father, he wouldn’t ask me to stay with him for his sake. He would assure me he was fine, but he would accept that I had to remain to be with my mother.
I glanced at myself in the mirror to check my hair and lipstick with the concern a single-engine pilot would have inspecting his airplane before flying, and then I scooped up my bag and hurried down the stairs. They were both in the kitchen, dressed to leave, waiting, Kelly looking more impatient than Ronnie.
‘My parents are with your dad,’ Ronnie said. ‘They’ve been with him right from the get-go.’
I nodded.
Kelly had her book bag. Probably more out of nervousness than anything now, she wanted to address the homework she had left for the last minute. She knew she would need distraction. Teenagers, despite how tough they want you to think they are, have far more difficulty confronting tragedy, especially when it’s imminent.
We all got into Ronnie’s car and headed off, no one speaking until we reached the freeway. I had not asked for any details, but whenever we are facing or hearing about death, we cling to the details for some support, a way to distract ourselves. How did it happen? Why did it happen? Who was there? When did you hear? None of it really mattered at this point, but what else would you discuss if you didn’t ask these questions? Arrangements for funerals?
‘Grandma Lydia isn’t that old,’ Kelly said, opening the door to take us out of dark thoughts.
‘No, she’s not,’ Ronnie said. ‘Statistically, women live longer than men, even now.’
‘She hasn’t been sick,’ Kelly pointed out.
I knew she wanted to add, ‘This is unfair. This is unusual. This is a violation of some rules.’ When you’re young, no matter what you learn in school or reading, you somehow cling to the idea that the abnormal and the unordinary happen to someone else. You get a cold. You’ll get better. You break a leg. You’ll have it mended. You get good grades. You’ll get a good job. And then you go out in the world and find just how capricious life really is. Colds turn into pneumonia, broken limbs can cripple you for life, and people get jobs not always because of what they know, but whom they know.
When you’re a parent, you want to smother your child or children in fantasy. You want to keep them from seeing the cold, hard things in life for as long as possible. Of course, some parents don’t believe in that. They raise little realists and as soon as possible point out that Santa Claus and tooth fairies are silly fictions. I suppose I’ve been a little of both kinds of mother. Ronnie’s never been anything but typical. He likes make-believe, even now.
‘She never smoked, did she?’ Kelly asked me.
‘She smoked Virginia Slims when she was younger, yes, but not for the last twenty odd years. What did my father tell you?’ I asked Ronnie.
‘He said something about throwing an embolism, whatever that means. I didn’t want to ask lots of questions and keep him on the phone.’
‘He asked for you,’ Kelly inserted, ‘every time we called.’
‘What did you tell him?’ I asked Ronnie, flicking off her comment like I
would a fly.
‘I was—’
‘Dad didn’t know what to say because you lied about where you were going,’ Kelly said, her voice bitter now.
‘Why didn’t you call to tell us you had changed your plans at least?’ Ronnie followed quickly.
They hadn’t really rehearsed everything, but they had been asking each other the questions they would ask me.
‘I wasn’t thinking about any of that,’ I said. ‘I wasn’t thinking about anything I ordinarily would. That was why I went away.’
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Kelly demanded. ‘Why did you have to go away to do that?’
‘I don’t think this is the time to talk about me,’ I snapped back at her. ‘My mother is dying or is already dead.’
She wilted quickly, snuggling tighter in the corner of the seat. Ronnie sped up as soon as the traffic opened up. He shot into a car pool lane and we were lost in the whir of wheels and the liquefaction of the scenery as we rushed head-on into our own thoughts and anticipation about the scene that lay ahead, a scene that always lay ahead, but one we ignored for as long as we could.
When we arrived at the hospital, we found my father and Ronnie’s parents in the hallway outside of ICU. My father looked about as rumpled as it was possible for him to look. His ash-gray hair wasn’t neatly brushed; his ice-blue eyes were a little bloodshot and the circles under them were darker than usual. There was a slight slump in his shoulders. He always prided himself on his good posture. My father was a handsome man, just under six feet tall, meticulous about his clothes and his coiffure, his fingernails manicured, his face closely shaven, and he was always intolerant of lint.
Ronnie’s mother looked as if she had been crying steadily for at least twenty-four hours. Her face seemed as crumpled as a cellophane bag. She was the shortest of the foursome at just a little over five feet two. More than my father, Ronnie’s father resembled a man whose wife was clinging by a thread to life: his clothing more disheveled, his face unshaven, the gray stubble making his suntan complexion look as if it was bubbling in places. Ronnie looked more like him than he did his mother, which was something I always thought lucky for him. Her features weren’t as feminine as my mother’s. Her nose looked a little too big for her small mouth and thin lips. Her hair was teased into a gray-blue helmet.
Lost in His Eyes Page 17
