The way I want to see myself is like that woman with the baby carriage, striding steadily along the road, singing to myself and to the child, beneath the arch of dappled green light. Anchored to the earth by that small body, heavy and radiant as a star. Certain of the right thing and doing it. Pushing my life steadily along before me, unseduced by speed, unruffled by events. That’s how I’d like to move through my days. I look at my life, and I see the bones of it, the structure of it, as solid and deep-rooted as the line of maples along our road. I tell myself it can’t be turned to nothing by one minute of desperation along the interstate, by one long sickening skid, the embrace of a tree, a knife. Where I live is along those double lines of trees, whose roots go down a hundred feet. A place is just a place, and the grass beside the ramp at an intersection is less of a place than most. There are a hundred reasons for me to ignore that patch of grass, reasons for me not to draw myself into a moment’s tense suspension each time I pass it.
It’s not, of course, one moment of desperation that would deliver you to that place. The approach to it is gradual, there are miles of acceleration before you reach it. By the time you arrived, speed would seem the most important thing there was, it would seem the only thing. Speed, like a kitchen knife, is something anyone can get. It’s like discovering that you have a secret weapon. You do, of course: yourself.
It’s people that hold you to the earth—no job, no principles, no ethics could clamp you to it if you’d a mind to spin off. There are times when that connection falls away. There are times when the weight inside you is heavier than the weight of the whole world outside. There are times when dread falls over you like a great silence, and you are entirely alone. At those times, waking is the worst moment of the day: your eyes open, you know what lies ahead. There’s no way out. Here you are again, conscious.
Her husband was questioned by the police: he’d had no idea. All those wrapped lunches, lined up on the counter, ready for day camp. Afterward he told a friend that if it hadn’t happened as it did—if she’d done it at home, if he’d been there—he’d have begun to believe that he’d done it himself. It was the shock, you see: he was no longer sure of anything. It was the realization that what he’d thought he’d known about her was not the truth. She’d had a secret life, running right next to his, fast, black, lethal.
Last night my husband stood in the kitchen, putting plates into the dishwasher. The metal rack clanged noisily with each dish. Outside it was dark, the kitchen windows were black. I could feel the night around us.
My husband spoke with his back to me.
“Is that all?” he asked.
Those words hung perfectly still in the air, like the sound of a slow bell, and at that moment things seemed to give way. I understood that the words meant something, but it seemed I was unable to answer. It seemed I was unable to speak. I had been barely holding on somewhere, and at that moment I’d lost my grip. I’d come loose.
My husband didn’t know any of this. All evening, while I watched the room darkening around me, we had talked. I had listened to his questions and answered them. I had listened to us talk while I listened to the gathering darkness. It was like hearing simultaneous translation, a double track running inside my head. I had been following both languages at once, trying to listen to each, holding them separate. I knew that only one language was legitimate, I knew the other was forbidden, and must be kept secret. But I had come to the end of something. I could no longer speak the public language. That track had stopped. What was inside me had taken over, I could not answer the question.
My husband turned to look at me. He stood for a moment, waiting, in front of the sink. The water was running. He held the dishwashing brush in his hand. His face was puzzled, his eyebrows lifted.
“Ellen?” he said.
I looked at him. It was as though I’d been filling up with darkness. Desperation had been running into me in a lightless stream, and just at that moment I was filled. It had taken me over and I was frozen, silenced. The water kept rushing into the sink behind my husband, busy, endless. It was the only sound. I could say nothing. My husband looked at me. He and I were in the same room, but there was no way for me to reach him.
I wonder what time she woke up that morning, I wonder how long she had been awake before she set out. I don’t wonder how she felt; I know how she felt. It would be escape, relief, a place you’d longed for all your life. Putting that blade in at last, sending it finally home, would be ecstasy, clear and exhilarating as sex. Leaving yourself finally behind, setting yourself free, would be a moment pure and blissful, like the silver hiss of cold air in your lungs at the top of a snowy mountain.
The pull of that place is like the current that draws you over the falls, and there are times when that route seems the only one left to take. There are times when you start out on that widening, quickening, emptying road, and you know that once you reach the intersection, all those reasons, those hundred-foot deep roots that are so solid where they stand, will be left behind.
The turn onto that road is smooth, and once you’re on it, you find yourself accelerating, no matter what scenery you’re passing. You’re hypnotized by the promise of relief, you’re desperate for it. And as the speed increases the landscape empties.
Once you’re out there on that road, whoever is at home, whoever sleeps trustingly there, relying on you for lunches, is behind you, gone, vanished altogether. And by the time you reach the intersection there is nothing left to hold you on here. Out there are only smooth ramps curving onto wide lanes, blank concrete strips, signs telling strangers about other places. The great silence, and the cold light.
Shame
They came in from the road, down the long rutted driveway. The ranch didn’t look like much: a couple of big scraggly flat fields with horses grazing in them, and at the far end a huddle of low flat-roofed buildings, scattered among the live oaks. The horses—Arabians, with slim legs and elegant sculpted heads— looked as though they were always turned out to pasture. There was caked mud on their flanks and mud in their long arched tails, which swept the ground like bedraggled boas trailed behind a dirty beauty.
The house faced the long field. It was an old adobe, with a wide porch running the length of it. A ragged piece of lawn stood before it. Guinea fowl scratched noisily in a corner, and a small band of yearling horses grazed loose near a clump of lilacs.
Caro and Eloise pulled their car up behind the old yellow Mercedes that had just stopped. Jeremy and Teresa climbed out of this, Teresa’s white hair and white jeans vivid in the sunlight. She turned stiffly to shut the door, then looked over at Caro and Eloise. She made a wry face about something—her own stiffness, perhaps. Her small features puckered briefly, then her expression relapsed into interested amusement. Teresa was in her late seventies, and had always liked what she’d found before her. She was rich, though that didn’t account for the pleasure she took in life. Even now, as forgetfulness took a firmer and firmer hold on her mind, she retained this pleasure; it was hers daily.
Jeremy came over and squatted by their car, setting his mournful face in the driver’s window. He was Australian and in his mid-forties, slight and narrow-shouldered. He had pale green eyes, a pointed chin, and a disappointed mouth. His mouse-colored hair was in a short ponytail, which lay limply against his back like a small exhausted animal.
Jeremy spoke across Eloise, to Caro, in the passenger seat. “I told you it was a long way.” He sounded triumphant.
“She believes you,” Eloise answered for Caro. “She’ll never doubt your word again.”
“Good,” Jeremy said. He smiled archly. “I like that.”
Caro had only been in Santa Fe a month; she was doing research for her dissertation. Her topic was the Spanish colonial period, the relationship between the Catholic Church and the indigenous population. Each day, in the dim and silent document room in the state archives, she handled stiff parchment pages the color of dried grass, reading close slanting script in seventeen
th-century Spanish. The hand of the Church had been brutal here and ruthless. The records were full of orders for imprisonment, torture, executions—hangings and public burnings. The Church had seen the New World as a wide wild landscape, rich but unclean, polluted with heresy. They’d used the tools of the Inquisition, trying to burn a whole continent clean.
What interested Caro, among other things, was the philosophical inversion—the process by which the Church had transformed itself from an inclusionary institution, one based on compassion and brotherly love, into an exclusionary one, one driven by hatred and discrimination. Zealotry interested Caro.
She’d gone back to being a student after her husband had left her. She’d applied to graduate school, driven not by love of scholarship but, really, by shame. It was that she couldn’t bear to face the people she knew. She wanted a new community, people who knew nothing about her. Then, when she’d gotten in, she’d been surprised by how much she liked it all—classes, texts, discussions, research. Especially research: she loved the deep industrious silence of the reading room. There, surrounded by other silent readers, she was entirely alone, entirely engaged, taking soundings in the mysterious currents of history.
Now that the children had gone—Eliza already a freshman at LSU, Dawson at Tulane—Caro could leave, too, the neat brick house outside Baton Rouge, the dense glossy leaves of their famous magnolia tree (second largest in the county), the rich green of the lawn, mowed weekly by men in earmuffs.
Santa Fe was a new world, with its clear bright skies and low endless hills, the flat-roofed adobe houses, its strange dust-colored landscape, and the pellucid light. It seemed deeply exotic, an eccentric mixture of bohemia and frontier. There was a sense of fiercely guarded privacy, ancient secrets. It was a rich, layered culture, full of color and mystery. It seemed like another country, where Caro was leading a new life.
Jeremy, leaning in the window, spoke earnestly to Caro. This was her first visit to the ranch.
“Now, remember,” he warned, “Edward is very difficult. He’s ordered people off his property for disagreeing with him. Once when I spent the night here he got mad at something I said and locked me into my bedroom. I couldn’t even get out to pee until he got up for breakfast. The correct attitude is abject.”
“You know us, Jeremy,” Eloise said, grinning. “Abject is our middle name.”
Caro leaned toward him, across Eloise. “Honey, y’all forget I’m a Southern belle?” she said, deepening her accent. “In Baton Rouge, we’re known for our charm.”
She and Eloise had become lovers the night before. For Caro, Eloise was now haloed with a brilliant light. Caro hardly dared to look at her; she could not bear to look away. Leaning across her now to speak to Jeremy, Caro felt breathless, giddy, at the nearness of the golden body. Everything, the whole day, was illuminated by the glow of secret delight.
In the doorway of the house the old man appeared, stiff, upright, angular. He was wearing an ancient Canadian Mounties hat and faded khaki pants. A black patch covered one eye.
“What are you all doing?” he shouted at them, already angry.
“Oh, hello, Edward,” Jeremy called out at once, his voice high and placatory. “We just got here. We’re bringing the food in. We’ll be right there.”
“You see? A great host,” said Eloise to Caro. “The way he makes you feel right at home.”
Teresa stood still in the driveway, hand on her hip. She looked calmly at Edward, without moving or speaking, as though she hadn’t yet decided to participate. The expedition had been her idea.
Teresa had moved out here in the fifties, when her husband was still alive. They had bought their own old adobe, outside Santa Fe, in Nambe, which was then an isolated village. The Anglo community had been small and eccentric, and Teresa had known everyone: Mabel Dodge Luhan and Tony Lujan, Frieda Lawrence, Dorothy Brett, O’Keeffe. Edward was part of the circle—he’d arrived in the thirties. Artists, writers, visionaries, cranks—they’d all had been drawn here by the light, the beauty, the mystery. It had always been a place apart, outside the borders of convention.
Now Teresa decided, and stepped carefully across the rutted mud toward the house. “Hello, Edward,” she called out, announcing herself.
“Look at the sneakers,” Caro said to Eloise, delighted.
Teresa’s black high-tops were striped with glittering lines of neon green.
“Teresa,” said Eloise meditatively, “is a top fave. That’s who I want to be, when I’m her age. Except I’d like my memory, too.”
As Eloise reached for the car keys, her sleeve slid back, and Caro could see the edge of that delicate inner skin that stretched the length of Eloise’s arm, the tender, secret part of her that she, Caro, now knew. At that moment, with the sun glittering on the hood of the car, the others calling out to each other, carrying picnic baskets, Caro felt a flicker of superstitious fear. She wanted to keep Eloise here, in their shared, sheltered space, their private air. What risk, letting the rest of the world see these beautiful round arms, the smooth planes of this face, the curving shock of short sleek hair? Caro wanted to preserve this moment of seclusion, the two of them cloistered, protected from the world. Who knew what it held?
“Hurry up,” Edward shouted irritably. “What’s taking you all so long?”
Caro swung open her door and stepped out into the clear mountain air. The ranch was a thousand feet up, maybe more. The landscape was brilliantly exposed, vividly present. Since she had come to New Mexico, it seemed some filter had been removed between her eye and the world. Everything was revealed to have finer textures, more intricate construction, richer colors. Everything was more real, more vital.
When Caro thought now of her marriage, it seemed like an old movie, jerky and confused. Those big twilight picnics at the lake, everyone drinking margaritas and eating pulled pork; Tom roaming from group to group with his roving, unfocused eye, disappearing as darkness fell. Caro had always assumed that Tom would go on like this, smiling his bleary smile at someone else’s wife but still being her—Caro’s—husband. As a child, she used to hear her father come in late at night, slipping quietly up the back stairs past her bedroom. He was in his stockinged feet, his shoes in his hands. She’d assumed it would be like that with Tom—that he’d have dirty secrets she didn’t want to know about, wouldn’t have to learn. Instead, Tom had walked out on her for his secretary. It was such an insult; other husbands didn’t do this, though lots of them had affairs. But Caro had been left. And the girl was so awful, that mean little mouth and those awful plucked eyebrows. Caro had always thought she and Tom were partners, if not lovers. She’d been flattened when he’d left, by the shame of it. For six months she’d worn dark glasses every time she left the house.
Now, all those awful tipsy picnics beneath the darkening trees seemed remote and inexplicable, black-and-white pictures from someone else’s life. Here, under this pure bright sky, Caro was living in color, living for real, next to this fluent, golden body.
The two women walked across the bumpy lawn. Edward stood, imperiously waiting, on the porch. His face was broad and wrinkled, sun-ravaged, the visible eye fierce and blue. The dull black patch turned the corner of his colorless glasses, concealing his damaged eye along the side as well.
“Edward, this is my friend Caro,” Eloise said.
“Hello,” he said crossly, not meeting Caro’s eye. “Always someone new.” He looked at Teresa, holding her accountable. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep track of everyone in the world.”
Teresa, unruffled, folded her arms across the broad black and white stripes of her sweater. “I didn’t think you were expected to keep track of everyone in the world, Edward,” she said calmly.
Edward ignored her and turned to go back inside. One of his shoes was built up higher than the other, and he walked unevenly.
“You have a fabulous ranch,” Caro said. She heard her accent and realized she’d set out to charm him. “I’d just like to move right in
.”
Edward snorted, not bothering to turn.
“Everyone says that,” he said scornfully. “No one knows how much work it is to run this place. It’s impossible to find people. The last boy I hired stayed two days.”
Behind Edward’s back, Eloise rolled her eyes, at the idea of working for him. He wheeled suddenly around to face them.
“Is it too cold to eat outside, do you think? Should we eat in the house?” he demanded.
“No,” everyone said loudly and at once, like a comic chorus.
This was how they dealt with Edward, Caro saw— energetically, and in unison. It gave her an odd feeling of protection and belonging. She was a member of their troupe.
Jeremy had warned Caro about this part. “We bring everything, when we go to Edward’s. If we were going to use his kitchen we’d have to send a team of people up a week beforehand to sterilize it. It hasn’t been cleaned since the last flash flood.”
“I think we should eat outside in the sun,” Teresa said. She was swaying gently, standing on tiptoe in her neon-striped sneakers. “It’s nice out here.” Teresa’s statements were mild but absolute. She’d grown up on the King Ranch, and was used to choosing what pleased her most. Sometimes she remembered everything, sometimes nearly nothing.
It was Jeremy who looked after her, living in her small adobe guesthouse. It was he who took charge of her days, reminding her of things and people, appointments, plans; it was he who kept track of her life. It was he who drove her around in the ancient Mercedes, and now, when Teresa was invited to lunch or dinner, Jeremy was included. He knew all her friends; his life was now entwined with hers, as though they were lovers. Their arrangement was a mystery: no one knew whether or not money changed hands, whether Teresa paid him for his efforts, or if she simply let him stay rent-free, sharing her place, her meals, her charming life. What everyone did know was that Jeremy had stopped painting. He had stopped even talking about painting, though when he met Caro he told her he was an artist. It was the way he saw himself still, or at least the way he wanted the world to see him.
A Perfect Stranger Page 15
