Taking It Page 4
“I called you,” he said. “I left four or five messages.”
I said, “I think Mother left some messages, too.”
This stopped him for a second. “Saying what?”
“I didn’t listen to them. I just heard her voice saying something over the machine. I didn’t play the messages back. She was tense, the way she gets.”
I wanted my father to say I know the way she gets, a continuing minor conspiracy against her, but he said nothing.
I said, in my talking-fossil voice, “She wanted to know where I was.”
He was looking at me so intently I had to look away from him. “There’s something else happening here,” he said. “Something you’re not telling me.”
I kept quiet. The aquarium gurgled. Sometimes it sounds pretty, calming. Right now I wanted to dump all the water out all over the floor.
“Is everything okay between you and Stu?”
“I haven’t seen him in a couple of weeks.”
“Is that what’s bothering you?”
You don’t have to answer every question. If you don’t feel like talking, you can shut up.
“I’m going to tell your mother,” he said. “I can’t handle this. It’s humiliating, but it’s the truth.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “I’m calling her now. I’m going to ask her to come over.” She lived near Lake Merritt, although she was getting ready to move. She could be here in twenty minutes.
What a mess it would make, water everywhere, fish flopping on the carpet. “Not tonight,” I said, my voice sounding awful.
“It’s something we have to take care of,” he said.
I got up and took his hand. My hand was pale and slender, and his hand was weathered, broad, flat. I wanted to tell him not to call Mother, not now.
He withdrew his hand. He picked up the phone on the piano. One of his shoes knocked lightly against the piano leg, and there was a faint reverberation, a piano string coming briefly to life.
I went into the hall bathroom. Every time the light is switched on a fan starts up. You can’t hear anything but an airy whine from the ceiling. The light there wasn’t any good, one of the bulbs stuttering. It made shadows jump up and down on my face as I washed myself and shook my head so my hair fell back into place. I wondered where Ted got electricity, all the way out on the desert.
Ted had said I could come and see him, marvel at the sun and the sand, or some other half-bookish, half-joking Ted phrase like that, the complicated directions written on a postcard.
I joined my father again. He was off the phone. Whatever he had said, it had taken very little time.
“But how would you do that?” I said, standing next to my father, both of us looking into the aquarium.
“Do what?” asked my dad, half-lost in his own thoughts.
“Disappear,” I said.
“Don’t use credit cards,” he said, not paying much attention. “Use only cash. And don’t get any speeding tickets.” Then he stopped himself, looking at me, thinking about what he had just said.
10
I was surprised, and slumped against the fridge.
I had expected my mother, but not Adler, too. When I heard his voice, I wanted to slip out the back door and never come back.
It was late, after ten, and I was starving, except I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat. I tore the endpaper off a new roll of Turns. I leaned against the refrigerator, trying to hear what they were saying.
She didn’t want to see me, either. You could hear it in the house, the way the two men had audible voices but my mother’s voice was quiet. You couldn’t hear her when she spoke, but you knew she was talking by the silence of the other voices.
They talked for a long time. I boiled some water and added some spaghetti, and when the spaghetti was done I poured it out into the colander in the sink. I like the way the steam feels in my face and the way the kitchen windows get fogged for a minute or two, although the steam makes my hair stick out funny.
I opened the back door to let some of the steam out and I thought: Escape.
Go ahead and run.
At the cooking class at Redwood School I always thought it was fun to make cocoa from scratch, a little brown powder with that wonderful smell, a little NutraSweet, stirring all the time while you add the hot milk. Maybe that would be a good plan later on, I thought, cocoa for everybody.
But then she was there in the kitchen doorway.
She stood with her arms crossed. She was wearing black pumps that made her look too tall, her hair frosted with gold highlights, and some kind of new color around her eyes, professionally done.
She didn’t smile, she didn’t not-smile, she just looked. “I spent a long afternoon at Nordstrom’s.” Then she added, “Your father explained what happened.”
God knows, I thought, what mangled version of events he managed to tell. I suppose I made some kind of sign that I heard her.
“I’m not the confused person I used to be,” she said. “I know how to share my life, Anna. If you let me.”
“I’m sorry about today,” I said.
My voice was quiet, and Mother had to turn her head to hear me.
“We’ve been doing better recently, you and I,” she said.
“I was looking forward to shopping with you,” I said. I had more to say, a little, truthful speech, but I couldn’t go on.
She and I had fought terribly when I was fourteen, and my father had suggested keeping me here, close to my school. She didn’t know my daily habits anymore, what I liked to wear, what kind of cereal I liked in the morning, but little by little we had been spending more time together.
She left the kitchen doorway. I thought for a moment she was going to walk in, give me a hug, give the steaming pasta a toss, but instead she turned and left me alone in the brightly lit room.
Staging is everything with her. She was letting me make my entrance. She had started out as an assistant director, making sure guests in the control room stayed quiet when the director was working, changing from camera one to the floor shot on camera four.
She had machine-gunned her way to the top, and now she fired sportscasters and had the parking-lot fence topped with coiled barbed wire. Channel Two News had gotten three awards in the last year.
I didn’t want to look his way, but I did. Adler was on the blue leather sofa, his gray eyes making him look like someone who would understand anything I would ever do. He wore a dark wool sports jacket, Italian cut, with a navy blue tie, and sometimes when other people were talking he would put his hand on the knot of his tie. Adler moves slowly and likes to touch things, make sure they are still there.
Dad sat there with his hands cupped like someone praying, except he wasn’t praying. He was looking at his ex-wife’s back, or maybe even her butt, but it wasn’t a sexy look.
“There have to be some changes,” said Mother. She had been in therapy for three years with a woman and had gone to self-help seminars, where she had met Adler.
“I made some pasta,” I said.
“We are going to help you,” she said, with her smile, arms crossed, fingers clenching the sleeves of her red suit jacket. Sometimes Mom wears too much makeup. When you do that, your face looks good, but your hands look old.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. When in doubt ask for a continuance. “I made plenty of spaghetti, the imported kind.”
Then she really surprised me. She cried. Not much, but there was a definite wetness in her eyes. Mother didn’t cry very often. I saw at that moment how much Adler had helped her. I saw how lucky she was.
“You want my attention,” she said, walking away. She didn’t look in my direction when she added, “You need me.”
Mother was doing this partly because she had an audience, but partly because she meant it. Adler looked at me and gave me one of his smiles, a wise man who never failed to marvel at people like my mother. He was a psychologist, and he had been in Vietnam, Mother told me once, and had seen terrible things.
“We’ll be back in a week,” she said. “When we come back, we want you to move in with us in our new house in San Francisco.”
Dad looked at me, looked at Adler, looked at the floor, his eyes always moving. His silence made it clear: We included him.
My brain made me not understand for a moment.
“For the rest of the summer,” said Adler, the first time he had spoken, the sound of his voice causing my mother to turn and look at him. “It’s a nice, big house. You can see the sailboats.”
Dad saw the look in my eyes. He said, “I really can’t help you anymore.” My father looked at the wall, looked at his hands.
We had been in family counseling at Kaiser for a few months when Mother moved out. Dad had said at the time that Mother was afraid of her own adulthood.
Mother turned her head, thinking I had said something. A cherry bomb had blown up near her left ear when she was eight years old. I realized for the millionth time that she was too proud to wear a hearing aid in her dead ear. I wanted to protect her from danger, from me.
Sometimes when I was little, we took naps together. I would wake up first and lie next to her listening to her breathing. Sometimes her feet would twitch, and I thought: She’s having a dream. She’s running in the dream.
Adler gave me one of his looks, his peaceful eyes, which had seen men die.
Everyone said they had already eaten. My dad and I would have enough spaghetti to feed Eastern Europe.
I stood in the darkness while my mother got into her Saab. Adler opened the passenger door, the inside of the car instantly full of light. “Don’t be so anxious, Anna.” I couldn’t see his face, only his hand holding out some offering he could not make in words. “We all want to help you.”
I thought for a moment he wanted me to take his hand. And I almost did. I took a step toward him across the dark grass.
But I stopped myself and said something ordinary, wishing them a good trip. It was like hearing someone else talk, a voice on a radio.
They left, and I turned to see my father holding open the front door, a black cutout figure.
11
Swimming underwater there is nothing left of the world, and every human voice is filtered. There is only the body, breasts and knees brushing the bottom of the pool, and the feeling that life is burning away in the lungs. I love it, but Stu is right—I should run more.
I woke up very early the next morning. My dreams had been terrible, each one frantic—late for classes, late for a play I was starring in, late for airplanes that were already on the runway. I dreamed I was in a pool, unable to reach the surface.
I made the bed the way they make them in motels, tucked in all around, tight. I put on my fuchsia sweatpants. They have deep front pockets and are baggy, loose in a way that makes you feel naked inside the fabric. I bound my hair back with a rubber band, the band pulling at my hair and hurting a little.
I laced up the running shoes while I sat on the front porch. It was so early the newspapers were being delivered, a green van rolling slowly up the street, rolled-up newspapers firing out of the van as it made its way, a paper hitting a front door with a thwack. An Asian man on the passenger’s side saw me or I probably would have had to duck. The paper slapped the steps at my feet, and I let it lie.
There were sow bugs. They rolled up when I touched them, and tickled my fingers with their tiny legs. My mother had chosen the welcome mat at Payless Hardware years ago, black rubber spikes for taking mud off the shoes, the word welcome in red.
Running makes me cough.
It also makes me sweat, and I hate that. After a short time I was walking, the morning sunlight on the dewy grass. Sometimes another jogger would huff by on the other side of the street, and sometimes there would be someone doing exer-walking, an out-of-shape person striding along with weights in his hands.
Some people don’t seem to realize the battle is hopeless, they are just out of shape and they might as well quit. Ted says we can be whatever we want to be, but I can’t see it. I don’t believe in plastic surgery, either, and I think that when you get old, keeping yourself pretty by going to the surgeon is like athletes taking drugs so they can jump hurdles.
But it was nice to be away from the house, and away from my father, who was probably up by now, watching the news and making his breakfast Power Shake: milk and banana and vitamin powder.
A few early risers leaned on walls and telephone poles on Solano Avenue, caffeine addicts outside the coffee places there, and they looked bad. They were baggy-eyed and their hair was messed up, the women looking worse than the men, puffy and tired-looking.
The redwood tree in the parking lot of Andronico’s grocery store was full of birds, as usual, but as usual I couldn’t see any. I could only hear them, and maybe once in a while there would be a flutter, a bird looking for a new perch.
The morning was cool and cloudy, the way it often is in the summer. A couple of the men gave me one of their looks, but I gave them each a look right back that pretty much took the light out of their eyes. I did manage to run a little bit when I looped back to Colusa and made it back to Capistrano.
I stopped there, wanting to cry out. A deer was bounding down the middle of the street.
Deer are supposed to be quiet creatures, but this one made a sound, each hoof crisp on the asphalt. The deer curved its front legs, arching them prettily, and for a moment the animal didn’t seem in a hurry, jogging beautifully down the middle of Capistrano Street, heading in the wrong direction, down into the neighborhood, away from the hills.
The deer was running gingerly because it was uncertain. There were houses and parked cars everywhere, and a dog was gaining on it.
It was a dark dog, trailing a leash, its tongue out. I could hardly recognize the animal in its intensity.
It was Lincoln. I called out his name but he didn’t glance at me as he passed. He did make a long, exhaled sniff without slowing, a minimal hello, a friend too rapt to stop.
I had never seen a dog chase a deer, but I had a clear sense of what would happen next.
The dog would corner the deer. Lincoln would trap the deer against a wall and tear it up. I don’t know where the thought came from but it was there, as though my genes knew more about this than my own memory—the big dog would tear the deer to pieces.
I screamed. This was not a Hollywood, fright-night scream. This was a huntress’s command. The sound of my voice did seem to slow Lincoln for an instant. I could see him stiffen, hearing me. A flash of apology passed through him. Then he rounded the corner and vanished.
Maybe the deer would fight back. Maybe he would hook Lincoln with one of the antlers. That was a painful thought, too, and I was sprinting hard, around the corner and up, following the two animals.
I lost them. Somewhere in the maze of gardens and garages the dog and the deer were running, and I was frantic, calling out the dog’s name.
Until there was nothing to do but give up and walk back, feeling beaten. A woman crept down her front steps in a pink bathrobe, her hand holding on to the rail beside the steps. She wore hair rollers, her hair up under a kerchief. A man watered his lawn, careful so only a little water darkened the redwood chips bordering the grass.
People really don’t see much, don’t care much about the things that happen. Maybe it’s hard enough for them to get up out of bed every morning, another day.
There was Lincoln, coming back down Capistrano, just like the first time, but wet with his own saliva, now, panting. I hurried after the dog, but this time when I called breathlessly Lincoln slowe
d, and turned to look as I snatched at the leash and caught it.
Lincoln jumped up and down, breathing hard. My hand slipped and I had to hang on tight. I got a better grip, Lincoln testing my strength, experimenting with the power of the leash.
I gave the leather strap a few good turns around my wrist. Lincoln gave a half-spoken yowl, telling me to let him go. The leash was taut, the dog begging me, good-humored, but feinting, lunging.
12
Maureen’s father was getting on his bicycle when I panted up the front lawn with Lincoln.
It’s an old bike, but Mr. Dean rides it every morning to the campus in Berkeley, a black-and-white three speed that creaks. He stood there with one leg up on the bike and closed his eyes and opened them. “Thank God,” he said.
Lincoln had his tail between his legs.
“Anna, I was in a panic. I can’t run, not like you. I was going off on my bike to look.” He gave a little laugh. “Maureen’s off looking for Lincoln at Indian Rock. Once he went up there and ran around making a nuisance. Lincoln, where were you?”
Lincoln hung his head, wagging his tail experimentally. I told Mr. Dean about the deer.
“Oh, that’s not good at all, not at all,” said Mr. Dean. He gave a little laugh. “It’s my fault. It’s my fault, Lincoln,” he said to the dog. “One day I was going to go to Petland and get one of those big chains, the stainless steel ones. I took a look at one of those, and I said, ‘Lincoln doesn’t need a chain like that, not a dignified dog like Lincoln.’”
Maureen sprinted down the street, and when she reached us, bent over, her hands on her knees. “I can’t breathe,” she said finally. “I’m going to die.”
“Lincoln almost did a terrible thing,” said Mr. Dean. He made his laugh, a small karate chop of a chuckle. “He almost caught a deer. Isn’t that right, Lincoln? A deer for breakfast.” He spoke to the dog in a normal speaking voice, not in a little cute voice, the way some people talk to animals.