by Paul Lederer
Downstairs, they racketed about. Aunt Trish’s voice could be heard, rising excitedly. Why she sounded so happy, Sarah could not guess; certainly not because Mother was going to buy her a present. Sarah listened more carefully and heard her aunt continue.
‘Finally,’ Trish said with a tremendous sigh, ‘we are going to get this all over with! What time does Dennison’s office open?’ she asked, meaning the attorney who was handling the sale of the property for them.
‘I’ve told you three times. Eight o’clock,’ Edward said with thinning patience. His fat aunt, wearing an outrageous dress of deep magenta with a matching hat and bag, paced the kitchen heavily, drinking numberless cups of sweetened tea.
His mother, frail and anxious and looking nearly as helpless as Sarah, sat in the corner of the kitchen, her terribly out-of-date blue straw hat pinned on at an angle, her eyes bright with uncertain anticipation. Edward knew why of course, who was responsible for that, but no one broached the subject.
God, Edward thought, this is my family. Poor, wrecked, troubled and each alone. They seemed to really believe that selling the house and property, and moving away would somehow retrieve their lives from this biological morass.
Well, no, he thought reconsidering – although Trish, flushed with excitement, might believe it, he did not know what Mother thought, frail and birdlike as she was, distant and too dependent on a straw-built reality. He had never really known, he realized. It was like trying to penetrate Sarah’s secret world. How had he ever managed to grow up in this environment? It was no wonder that his brother, Eric, had come to be a lunatic. Rambler, poet, twisted into instability….
‘He won’t be there, will he?’ Trish asked in a taut whisper. ‘When we sign the papers, I mean…?’
He knew who she meant. Sarah’s father. His father.
‘No. Dennison will meet separately with Father. It’s all been arranged so that no one has to encounter anyone else to do this.’
Trish smiled with weak relief. From the corner of his eye, Edward had seen Mother tense, her slender figure become erect. In that dress, she resembled an alerted blue egret ready to take wing at the slightest sound or movement. He walked to where she sat, took her empty coffee cup and saucer from her hands and put them on the counter. He put both hands on her narrow shoulders, looked down into her bright eyes and said, ‘That is all taken care of, Mother. All you have to do is sign the final papers and have a pleasant little shopping day in town. After all, you can afford a little spree now.’
He bent his head and kissed her gently, his lips coming away from her cheek with the taste of scented powder on them.
Sarah entered the room just then and they fell to furtive silence.
‘I suppose we’ll be taking the Buick?’ Trish asked.
‘It’s the only car with room enough for all of us to sit comfortably,’ Edward answered over his coffee mug.
‘I don’t like that car,’ Trish said, ‘it’s a dinosaur.’
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘It’s because it was Raymond’s car,’ Mother said unexpectedly, using the name she always avoided speaking. ‘That’s why.’
Sarah looked up eagerly, her eyes shining.
Raymond. Daddy. The big blue Buick convertible they used to go picnicking in. Laughing and singing songs along the crazily winding ocean bluff road. He had simply left the car there the night he had gone away to stay: Eric screaming from the porch for his Daddy, Sarah following him down the long dark road for as far as she could until her small legs finally wore out, Daddy never looking back to see her. Mother had collapsed and started crying. ‘I didn’t mean for him to go,’ she had said over and over, but he was gone.
‘I don’t like that terrible thing,’ Trish said again, and they all knew she didn’t mean the big old Buick Roadmaster convertible, but Daddy.
Trish feared that there was every chance, no matter how Edward and Dennison had arranged things, that she might encounter Raymond Tucker that morning.
‘It’s time we were going, isn’t it?’ Mother said. ‘We should be going.’ Her eyes were sharply bright. She wrung her narrow hands together as she stood looking out the kitchen window to where the hugely brilliant sun shone through the trees. How many mornings had she seen this view? The red sun lifting itself lazily over the crest of the knoll and cut at the cold night-shadows which pooled around the skirts of the big old house.
Edward and Aunt Trish, noting Ellen’s mounting anxiety, glanced at each other. Trish was tight-lipped, stirring her tea furiously.
‘It’s still too early, Mother,’ Edward said gently. ‘We don’t want to waste the morning sitting around Dennison’s office.’
‘Why not?’ Ellen turned from the window, backlit by the warm bluish-gold glow through the windowpane. ‘There’s no sense in waiting here either, is there?’ she laughed lightly, meaninglessly. ‘Sarah’s ready; I’m ready.’ She patted at her hair, smoothed her blue dress over her hips. ‘She and I can walk around and look in the shop windows. Trish wanted to buy some fresh crab, didn’t you Trish? Early morning’s the only time to buy crab. We can take a chest of ice for them … yes. Sarah, get your straw hat, the big floppy one with the pink ribbon. That will pick out the roses in your dress nicely.’
Ellen made hurrying motions toward Sarah and smiled at Edward who shrugged. It didn’t matter really, she would do it in the end anyway. He could see through her eyes into her troubled mind.
Aunt Trish rose without drinking her tea and ambled heavily toward the hall closet, where she kept her shawl. Passing Edward, she spoke:
‘No more! All of this has to end today. I can’t take it anymore.’
Edward nodded; he couldn’t take much more of it himself. With the money from the developers, Aunt Trish planned to move to Southern California and buy a quiet condominium. Edward was going to put his share into his fledgling new law business. They had found a little home for Mother. And Sarah…. Edward looked toward the stairs where his sister had ascended to get her hat as instructed. She always did as she was told, so maybe this would not be as wrenching as he anticipated. He had been up most of the night worrying about her. He knew that some people might consider him heartless, but what could be done with her? Mother could not take care of her, they all knew that; honestly, Ellen could barely take care of herself. Aunt Trish, no matter that she was occasionally abrasive and generally slovenly, had been holding the old house together for the three of them for a long time. But the time had come when someone finally had to make the decisions for all of them, and that someone was Edward. And did he not have a right to his own life as well? He hadn’t been to his office for four days. Though there was really very little requiring his attention there, he should be there. He had left the old house four years ago. He had no intention of being entangled in its decaying womb and strangled ghosts again.
He was doing what must be done. He had an inordinate fear of dealing with his own father at Dennison’s. He supposed that was some hangover of childhood. Edward did not wish to see the tall, distant man at all.
Nor his brother, Eric.
Edward’s mouth tightened as he thought of Eric. He supposed Eric’s self-image was that of a sort of wandering poet-troubadour. What he was was an inefficacious, whimsically irresponsible tramp. Edward paused; maybe the definitions were synonymous. Edward knew that both of them – his father and his own brother – thought he was an officious prig. Yet who had managed Mother’s affairs and finally sold the old property for them? Which of them cared in the least about Sarah or had offered to take care of her…?
The old dog, Poppsy, bumped its head gently against the door, pushing it open to enter. Edward patted its scarred head, noticing the new spread of mange along Poppsy’s back, its morning-stiff walk as it went to where its breakfast was served and waited patiently, as Edward found the sack of dried dog food and poured some into the plastic bowl on the floor.
‘Poor old Poppsy,’ Edward said with a fondness remembered from childhood. ‘
Poor old everyone,’ he added under his breath.
They drove toward town along the old coast highway, the ancient Buick rumbling confidently. Sarah watched the far-glittering sea and the white curls of surf butting heads with the high dark promontory. She held her big floppy straw hat on with one hand. The convertible’s top was up, but Mother, riding in front with Edward, had her window rolled down, and the fresh morning-cool salt air whipped past her head in an intoxicating rush. Next to Sarah sat Aunt Trish, tightly wrapped in her striped woven shawl, her teeth chattering.
‘Can’t we have that window up, Ellen? For God’s sake!’
Mother turned. Her eyes were very bright.
‘It’s a glorious morning, Trish. It’s going to be a glorious day. Let’s enjoy it, right, Edward?’
‘Sure,’ Edward muttered. He was fighting the windshield glare as the road snaked briefly eastward. His jaw was tight. It would be a glorious day, yes. Once it was over.
‘Sarah and I want to get off near the pier,’ Mother said, ‘don’t we, Sarah?’ She turned and smiled at her daughter. ‘We want to watch the fishermen for a while, watch the surf booming past the pilings. We like that, don’t we, Sarah?’
Mother always included Sarah’s wishes in these whims of hers as if weight was added to her notions, having consulted Sarah.
‘All right,’ Edward said without inflection.
‘Then we’ll be able to have the window up anyway,’ Trish said to herself, but loudly enough for everyone to hear. The sea air, she considered, might be invigorating, but it was damned cold at this time of the morning. She had had enough of sea air on cold November mornings to last her the rest of her life. Her joints were too old for it any longer. She wanted her condo in a dry, airless Southern California valley.
This was the last day she would suffer this, she reflected; the last day she would suffer Ellen’s whims. Trish leaned back on the leather-covered seat of the old Roadmaster and drew her shawl still more tightly around her.
The town was a sprawl of dark cubes and a few hazy smokestacks slowly withdrawing from the predawn shadows of the cove. The Buick with its passengers floated down the last winding grade, virtually the only car on the road. Now and then a big Peterbilt or White truck hauling fish or produce southward would blast past them on its way to the freeway, their drivers all wearing baseball caps or cowboy straws, cigarettes dangling from their lips; but that was all.
From their approach, they could see the long pier, the surf curling around the pilings; a dark, long finger pointing westward like a clock’s hand indicating the vanishing hours of night. A tired, creosote-smelling pier, the timbers rotting and encrusted with green slime. It was a local landmark, some sort of mournful symbol of forgotten community pride with its peeling white arch of a sign reading: ‘Sundown Pier.’
God, Edward thought, surveying it. Is everything in this country rotting away?
Edward glanced at his mother. She grew more eager as they swung into the buckled asphalt parking lot with its barely visible striping. She leaned forward to look intently through the windshield. She was anticipating something. A dread and powerful force. He believed he knew what it was. He glanced away. The salt-scent and heavy smell of kelp were almost intolerable to him.
‘Here we are, darling,’ Ellen said to Sarah in her birdsong way. ‘Oh, this will be a glorious day.’
‘Mother, you only have an hour or so,’ Edward said, glancing at his watch. ‘I’ll be back for you then, all right?’
‘Of course, Edward,’ Ellen said cheerfully, and she climbed out of the car, holding the heavy door open. She took Sarah by the hand and towed her out of the back seat. Edward watched them go in sullen mystification. They strode toward the foot of the pier, Sarah being hurried, holding her floppy straw hat down. He wondered what the pier represented to Mother. Her mind was so murky – impenetrable to him still after all these years. He sighed as Trish got into the front seat and rolled the window up.
Trish, too, was watching her sister in the faded blue-dress hurrying toward the pier where a few fishermen in anoraks passed, carrying poles and tackle boxes.
‘I know what she’s up to,’ Trish said in a bitter murmur, ‘she was never like this when she was young.’ Her voice drifted away; she seemed to be revisiting a far away time. ‘It started when that man…’ and she stopped, biting off her last word savagely, after realizing she was talking to Raymond Tucker’s son. ‘Ellen was a good girl, a happy girl,’ Trish could not help adding. Slowly they drove away then, heading toward the center of town.
Sarah liked walking along the pier. Morning was casting a strange and dreadful wash of color against the sea and sky alike. Bright orange devoured deep violet and faded away to morning crimson. Clouds were building to the north and west above the tessellated sea. The surf hissed past far beneath her feet, swirling around the pilings. She could see the moving white water between the dark yielding planks.
Mother darted here and there, talking to people she had never met, startling a whiskered man who slowly smiled and then showed her a twenty-four inch halibut he had on a stringer. The pier smelled of oil and rot, cut-squid bait and fish blood.
Within twenty minutes, Mother had found a big, dark, man in a checked shirt with a pint of whisky in his tackle box.
Sarah walked on toward the end of the pier, her hand clamped firmly on her pink-ribboned hat as the gusting sea breezes played pilfering games with it. The sea rolled in with metronomic constancy, heavy with the scent of the ocean’s saliva and sailors’ Chinese memories.
She became aware only in tiny increments of the young man walking beside her, stride for stride.
He was her age – maybe a little older – no more than 25. He was handsome, she supposed, but there was something quirky in the way his features had been arranged; everything in the proper place but not quite matching. He was bareheaded and had very fine, flyaway blond hair, perfectly straight. He had a well-formed skull with a high forehead and his eyes were very pale blue, nearly gray. But it was his mouth that seemed to carry the burden of his personality; small, pursed, one corner uptilted wryly as if it had been set by injury, but there was no scar marring it. His teeth were small and very white.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘it’s a crazy sky this morning, isn’t it? A crazy sea. A frenzied expression … is Neptune tossing in his bed?’
Sarah frowned with her eyes. Did he always talk like that, she wondered?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to begin conversations.’ His smile became boyish, diffident. ‘And I don’t walk up to strange women usually … do you know what a beautiful smile you have?’
Sarah continued walking. The man kept pace with her. A brown variegated seagull lifted itself lazily from the rail of the pier and circled toward the shore. The man spoke again:
‘I really am sorry, Miss. Let me try to start over. My name is Donald March. I’m a photographer. I like to think of myself as an artist,’ he paused, looking seaward, gathering his thoughts, ‘you must know you are an extraordinarily good-looking woman. Your presence is really remarkable. I would be deeply gratified…’ his voice began to stumble, ‘if you could ever possibly consider sitting for me … I have a studio in town….’
A seagull wheeled and cried raucously, diving for cast-off bait thrown to the sea, its shriek rose and intensified wildly, becoming a human scream. Sarah turned to see her mother rushing toward her, fury darkening her face.
‘You!’ she panted, waving her arms violently at the young man. ‘Get away from her! What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Pardon me?’ The photographer staggered in surprise. ‘I was just talking to this young lady.…’
‘She’s not a lady! She’s a girl, only a girl,’ Ellen screamed. She stood hunched forward, trying to catch her breath after her run along the pier. She held her abdomen and hurled her voice against the young man again. ‘She can’t even talk! Don’t you understand that? Leave her alone. Whatever you want, just leave my Sarah alon
e. Can’t you even tell when a person is retarded?’
And then Mother began to cry. The photographer, after a few attempts to form words with his expressive, interesting mouth, looked into Sarah’s eyes and, with a shrug, walked away down the pier with his hands deep in his pockets. Mother hugged Sarah tightly, continuing to cry; the smell of bourbon and of grief was strong on her.
Sarah knew that Mother was thinking of Baby; but Sarah did not cry. There are no ghosts, after all, but only times past and objects left alone in cold basements or flung into the cold and long-reaching sea.
She walked Mother landward.
Sylvia Torquenado was a young, dark-haired girl whose every movement was frenetic. Her manner was nearly slavish, as if she feared losing her position at Dennison & Dennison at any moment if she did not fawn over visitors and remain in continuous motion, even though she had been in the law firm’s employ for more than six years. A part of this was undoubtedly due to the fact that she had a fatherless child at home and a mother who needed spinal surgery.
Her work had been totally satisfactory to her employers, and in those six years she had never had more than a mild rebuke for switching two sets of contracts, mailing them to the wrong parties: a trifling matter. Neither Dennison brother had ever even considered replacing Sylvia. Nevertheless, her habitual manner was of one easily intimidated and constantly jittery.
The tall man who now strode into her receptionist’s area, which was decorated in various shades of orange, muted by dark mahogany trimming, intimidated her immediately, although his expression hovered between tolerance and humor. Sylvia could not have explained her sudden rush of anxiety, she simply felt some sort of power radiating from the man. He was craggy and self-assured – perhaps it was the way he strode across the tangerine-colored carpet. He did not saunter exactly, nor shuffle; his gait was one of oiled, careful precision as if he could damn well move a lot faster if he cared to, but chose measured steps as if approaching life and its intricacies with grave caution.
