Our Story Begins: New and Selected Stories

by Tobias Wolff

  In fact, it seemed to him that for all the talk of family and faith and neighborliness—the heartland virtues held up in rebuke of competitive, materialistic Gomorrahs like San Francisco—there was something not quite wholesome in this placidity, something lazy and sensual. Burke felt it when he wandered the streets of his hometown, and he felt it now.

  He crossed against the light, quickening his pace; he would have to move smartly to make it back in time. All signs of commerce ended at the gas station. He passed several blocks of small houses squeezed together on puny lots—no doubt the homes of those who’d spent their lives in the factories. Most of them were in bad repair: roofs sagging, paint scaling, screens rusting out. No disposable income around here.

  Burke knew the story—he’d bet the farm on it. Unions broken or bought off. Salaries and benefits steadily cut under threat of layoffs that happened anyway as the jobs went to foreign wage slaves, the owners meanwhile conjuring up jolly visions of the corporate “family” and better days to come, before selling out just in time to duck the fines for a century of fouling the river; then the new owners, vultures with MBAs, gliding in to sack the pension fund before declaring bankruptcy. Burke knew the whole story, and it disgusted him—especially the workers who’d let the owners screw them like this while patting them on the head, congratulating them for being the backbone of the country, salt of the earth, the true Americans. Jesus! And still they ate it up, and voted like robbers instead of the robbed. Served them right.

  Burke’s pounding heart sent a rush of heat to his face and left him strangely light-headed, as if he were floating above the sidewalk. He took the hill in long, thrusting strides. A boy with blond dreadlocks was raking leaves into a garbage bag. As Burke went past, the boy leaned on the rake and gaped at him, a jarring, surflike percussion leaking from his earphones.

  The whole country was being hollowed out like this, devoured from the inside, with nobody fighting back. It was embarrassing, and vaguely shameful, to watch people get pushed around without a fight. That’s why he’d taken on his little pop-eyed pug of a client with the fucked-up hand—she was a battler. Stonewalled at every turn, bombarded with demands for documents, secretly videotaped, insulted with dinky settlement offers, even threatened with a countersuit, she just lowered her head and kept coming. She’d spent all her savings going after the surgeon who’d messed her up, to the point where she’d had to move to San Francisco to live with her son, a paralegal in Burke’s firm. Her lawyer back here in New Delft had suffered a stroke and bowed out. The case was a long shot but Burke had taken it on contingency because he knew she wouldn’t back off, that she’d keep pushing right to the end.

  And now it seemed she might have a chance after all. They’d gotten a break the past month, hearing about this nurse’s complaints to his now-embittered ex-girlfriend. The account Burke had of these conversations was hearsay, not enough in itself to take to court or even to compel a fair settlement, but it told him that the witness harbored feelings of guilt and anger. That he had some pride and resented being made party to a maiming. He was no doubt under great pressure to stand by the surgeon, but the witness hadn’t actually denied seeing what he’d seen or saying what he’d said. He simply claimed not to recall it clearly.

  What a man forgets he can remember. It was a question of will. And even in the witness’s evasions Burke could detect his reluctance to lie and, beyond that, his desire—not yet decisive but persistent and troubling—to tell the truth.

  Burke believed that he had a gift for sensing not only a person’s truthfulness on a given question, but also, and more important, his natural inclination toward the truth. It was like a homing instinct in those who had it. No matter what the risk, no matter how carefully they might defend themselves with equivocation and convenient lapses of memory, it was still there, fidgeting to be recognized. Over the years he had brought considerable skill to the work of helping people overcome their earlier shufflings and suppressions, even their self-interest, to say what they really wanted to say. The nurse needed to tell his story; Burke was sure of that, and sure of his own ability to coax the story forth. He would master this coy witness.

  And as he considered how he would do this he felt himself moving with ease for the first time that day. He had his rhythm and his wind, a pleasant sense of strength. But for his flimsy, very expensive Italian loafers, he might have broken into a run.

  The houses were growing larger as he climbed, the lawns deeper and darker. Great maples arched high above the street. Burke slowed to watch a sudden fall of leaves, how they rocked and dipped and stalled in their descent, eddying in gusts so light and warm he hardly felt them on the back of his neck, like teasing breaths. Then a bus roared past and pulled to the curb just ahead, and the doors hissed open, and the girl stepped out.

  Burke held back—though barely aware of holding back, or of the catch in his throat. She was tall, to his eyes magnificently tall. He caught just a glance of lips painted black before her long dark hair swung forward and veiled her face as she looked down to find her footing on the curb. She stopped on the sidewalk and watched the bus pull away in a belch of black smoke. Then she set her bag down and stretched luxuriously, going up on her toes, hands raised high above her head. Still on tiptoe, she joined her fingers together and moved her hips from side to side. She was no more than twenty feet away, but it was clear to Burke that she hadn’t noticed him, that she thought she was alone out here. He felt himself smile. He waited. She dropped her arms, did a few neck rolls, then hiked her bag back onto her shoulder and started up the street. He followed, matching his pace to hers.

  She walked slowly, with the deliberate, almost flat-footed tread of a dancer, toes turned slightly outward. She was humming a song. Her knee-length plaid skirt swayed a little as she walked, but she held her back straight and still. The white blouse she wore had two sweat-spots below her shoulder blades. Burke could picture her leaning back against the plastic seat on the bus, drowsing in the swampy air as men stole looks at her over their folded papers.

  The tone of her humming changed, grew more rhythmic, less tuneful. Her hips rolled under the skirt, her shoulders shifting in subtle counterpoint. On the back of her right calf there was a dark spot the size of a penny—maybe a mole, or a daub of mud.

  She fell silent and reached into her bag. It was a large canvas bag, full to bulging, but she found what she was after without looking down and brought it out and slipped it over her wrist, a furry red band. She reached both hands behind her neck and gathered her hair and lifted it and gave her head a shake and let her hair fall back. She was moving even more slowly now, languorously, dreamily. Again she reached back and lifted her hair and began twisting it into a single strand. In one motion she gave it a last twist and slid the red band off her wrist and up the thick rope of hair, pulled it forward over her shoulder, and commenced picking at the ends.

  Burke stared at the curve of her neck, so white, so bare. It looked damp and tender. She went on in her slow glide and he followed. He had been walking in time with her but such was his absorption that he lost the beat, and at the sound of his footsteps she wheeled around and looked into his face. Burke was right behind her—he had closed the distance without realizing it. Her eyes went wide. He was held by them, fixed. They were a deep, bruised blue, almost violet, and darkly rimmed with liner. He heard her suck in a long ragged breath.

  Burke tried to speak, to reassure her, but his throat was tight and dry and not a sound came. He swallowed. He couldn’t think what to say.

  He stood looking into her face. Blotchy white skin, the pathetic hipness of the black lips. But those eyes, the high and lovely brow—beautiful; more beautiful even than he had imagined. The girl took a step back, her eyes still holding his, then turned and began angling across a lawn toward a large white house. Halfway there she broke into a run.

  This somehow released Burke. He continued on his way, deliberately holding himself to a dignified pace, even stopping for a moment to
put on his suit jacket—shoot the cuffs, shrug into the shoulders, give a tug at the lapels. He did not allow himself to look back. As the tightness in his throat eased he found himself hungry for air, almost panting, and realized that he’d taken hardly a breath while walking behind the girl. How frightened she seemed! What was that all about, anyway? He put this question to himself with a wonderment he didn’t actually feel. He knew; he knew what had been in his face. He let it go.

  Burke walked on. He had just reached the top of the hill, some nine or ten long blocks from where he’d left the girl, and was about to turn right toward the law office, already in view at the end of the cross street, when a siren yelped behind him. Only one sharp, imperative cry, nothing more—but he recognized the sound, and stopped and closed his eyes for a moment before turning to watch the cruiser nosing toward the curb.

  He waited. A gray-haired woman glared at him from the rear window. The girl was beside her, leaning forward to look at him, nodding to the cop in front. He opened a notebook on the steering wheel, wrote something, then laid the notebook on the seat beside him, set his patrolman’s cap on his head, adjusted its angle, and got out of the cruiser. He walked around to the back door and held it open as the woman and the girl slid out. Each of these actions was executed with plodding deliberation, performed, Burke understood, as an unnerving show of method and assurance.

  He nodded as the cop came toward him. “Officer. What can I do for you?”

  “Identification, please.”

  Burke could have objected to this, but instead he shrugged, fetched his wallet from his jacket pocket, and handed over his driver’s license.

  The cop examined it, looked up at Burke, lowered his eyes to the license again. He was young, his face bland as a baby’s in spite of his wispy blond mustache. “You’re not from here,” he finally said.

  Burke had a business card ready. He held it out, and after eyeing it warily the cop took it. “I’m a lawyer,” Burke said. “Here to take a deposition, in, let’s see…” He held up his watch. “Three minutes ago. Four-thirty. Right down there on Clinton Street.” He gestured vaguely. “So what’s the problem?”

  The gray-haired woman had come up close to Burke and was staring fiercely into his face. The girl lingered by the cruiser, pallid, hands dangling awkwardly at her sides.

  “We have a complaint,” the officer said. “Stalking,” he added uncertainly.

  “Stalking? Stalking who?”

  “You know who,” the woman said in a gravelly voice, never taking her eyes off him. She was handsome in a square-jawed way and deeply tanned. Ropy brown arms sticking out of her polo shirt, grass stains on the knees of her khakis. Burke could see her on the deck of a boat, coolly reefing sails in a blow.

  “The young lady there?” Burke asked.

  “Don’t play cute with me,” the woman said. “I’ve never seen anyone so terrified. The poor thing could hardly speak when she came to my door.”

  “Something sure scared her,” the cop said.

  “And what was my part in this?” Burke looked directly at the girl. She was hugging herself, sucking on her lower lip. She was younger than he’d thought; she was just a kid. He said, gently, “Did I do something to you?”

  She glanced at him, then averted her face.

  In the same voice, he said, “Did I say anything to you?”

  She stared at the ground by her feet.

  “Well?” the cop said sharply. “What’d he do?”

  The girl didn’t answer.

  “Aren’t you the smooth one,” the woman said.

  “I do remember passing her a while back,” Burke said, addressing himself to the cop. “Maybe I surprised her—I guess I must have. I was in kind of a hurry.” Then, speaking with absolute calm, Burke explained his business in New Delft, and the forty-five-minute break, and the route he’d taken and the necessity of moving right along to get back on time, even if that meant overtaking other people on the sidewalk. All this could be confirmed at the law office—where they’d be already waiting for him—and Burke invited the cop to come along and settle the matter forthwith. “I’m sorry if I surprised you,” he said in the girl’s direction. “I certainly didn’t mean to.”

  The cop looked at him, then at the girl. “Well?” he repeated.

  She turned her back to them, rested her elbows on the roof of the cruiser, and buried her face in her hands.

  The cop watched her for a moment. “Ah, jeez,” he said. He gave the driver’s license another once-over, handed it back with the card, and walked over to the girl. He murmured something, then took her by the elbow and began to help her into the backseat.

  The woman didn’t move. Burke felt her eyes on him as he replaced the license and card in his wallet. Finally he looked up and met her stare, so green and cold. He held it and did not blink. Then came a flash of bursting pain and his head snapped sideways so hard he felt a crack at the base of his neck. The shock scorched his eyes with hot, blinding tears. His face burned. His tongue felt jammed back in his throat.

  “Liar,” she said.

  Until Burke heard her voice he didn’t understand that she’d struck him—he was that stunned. It gave him a kind of relief, as if without knowing it he’d been gripped by fear of something worse.

  He heard the doors of the cruiser slam shut, one-two! He bent down with his hands on his knees, steadying himself, then straightened up and rubbed at his eyes. The cruiser was gone. The left side of his face still burned, hot even to the touch. A bearded man in a black suit walked past him down the hill, shooting Burke a glance and then locking his gaze straight ahead. Burke checked his watch. He was seven minutes late.

  He took a step, and another, and went on, amazed at how surely he walked, and how lightly. Down the street a squirrel jabbered right into his ear, or so it seemed, but when he glanced up he found it chattering on a limb high above him. Still, its voice was startling—raw, close. The light in the crowns of the trees had the quality of mist.

  Burke stopped outside the law office and gave his shoes a quick buff on the back of his pant legs. He mounted the steps and paused at the door. The blow was still warm on his cheek. Did it show? Would they ask about it? No matter—he’d think of something. But he couldn’t help touching it again, tenderly, as if to cherish it, as he went inside to nail this witness down.

  Down to Bone

  He had an appointment at a funeral home and was itching to leave. His mother was dying, here in her own bed, as she had wished, with him in attendance. He’d been feeding her ice chips. It was the only thing he could do for her anymore. She seemed to be sleeping again, but he forced himself to wait a little longer before he left.

  He eased himself onto the couch he’d been camping on and resumed leafing through one of her photo albums. It had been his favorite when he was a boy, because it showed his mother when she was a girl, in a sepia world of flapper dresses and frilly-legged bathing suits and Franklin touring cars. Here she was at her first communion, the very image of his own young daughter. The resemblance made him homesick; it was that close. His mother stared heavenward in an unctuously reverent pose surely dictated by her father, for neither unction nor reverence formed any part of her nature. She’d always treated his own bouts of religious faith with plain puzzlement.

  And here, a little older on the fantail of a ship, flanked by her frail sweet-faced mother and her father, a short man in Navy uniform, arms crossed over his chest. A right prick, that one. A tireless pedant, a cheapskate, a bully. When her mother died he made her leave school and turned her into a house slave. She ran away at seventeen, after he fired his pistol at a boy hiding in their backyard, waiting for her to sneak out. She rarely spoke of him, and then with tight lips. At his funeral she had worn an expression of rare, adamant coldness, almost of triumph. Why had she gone at all? Just to make sure?

  Ah, and this one, the best one, his mother standing before a long surfboard stuck in the sands of Waikiki Beach, where she’d been taught to ride the w
aves by Duke Kahanamoku himself. She was lean and lovely and faced the camera with a bravado that made him stare. This was his mother, the great friend of his youth.

  He was going to be late for his appointment. It was Friday afternoon, and if he didn’t go now he’d have to wait till Monday. The thought of not getting out touched him with a kind of panic. He stood over his mother and looked down at her thin white hair, a mist above her scalp. Her shoulders rose and fell with the shallow rasp of her breathing. He whispered to her. Waited, whispered again. Nothing.

  On his way out he stopped in the staff room and asked Feliz, the young woman on duty, to look in now and then and feed his mother some ice chips if she woke up before he returned. She agreed, but he could feel her resentment. She was new on the staff and afraid of his mother’s wasted body, as he was; he’d seen her timidity that morning when the two of them sponged his mother down, and he supposed she’d seen his.

  “Please,” he said. “I won’t be gone long.”

  “Yes, okay,” she said, but she would not meet his eyes.

  Christ, it was good busting out of there—firing up the lollipop-red Miata he’d rented and gunning it out of the parking lot, the sun on his face. The travel agent who’d booked his flight to Miami had gotten him a bargain rate on a midsize Buick sedan, but once he stepped out of the terminal and into the warm twilight he was overcome by the idea of a convertible; and when he went back inside and the beautiful Latina at the counter mentioned she had a Miata available, he took it without hesitation, though it was ridiculously overpriced and, given the occasion, maybe a little festive.

  He’d never driven a sports car before. He liked being close to the road and open to the sky, feeling the velvety sea air wash over him. During his hours in the darkened, lavender-scented apartment he was aware of the car outside and the thought of it pleased him.