Acts of God (23 page)

*   *   *

When I got home, there were disturbing messages from Charlie on the phone. He wanted to know what was going on with Ted. Where he'd moved to. And with Jade. “What are these kids doing with their lives?”

I made myself a cup of tea and called him back, picking up where his messages left off.

“I don't know, Charlie. Ted has moved in with some woman I hardly know. Jade doesn't talk to me. It's too bad you don't live closer. Maybe they need their father more.”

“Well, it's too bad you moved away.”

“It was within the limits of our agreement.”

“It's a fucking two-hour drive.”

“I wanted to be down here.”

“Jesus, Tess, you just wanted to be away. That's all you've ever wanted. I should've taken out a court order to stop you.”

We've been in this one fight on and off for about a dozen years. Charlie decided he wanted joint custody after I bought this house. But it's his guilt that's got him. He doesn't come often to see them. When something goes wrong, he blames it on my living two hours south of the Bay Area.

When we were married, after Charlie and I made love, he used to cradle my face in his hands and say, right into my eyes, “I love you, Tess, I really do.” Then I'd go to sleep right there in his arms. And I loved him too, or I wanted him. But there was always something I could never quite get past. This thing that had stood in my way.

*   *   *

A few days later Jade sat in the breakfast nook, writing in her diary. She was bent over, intent. A small satchel, like the overnight bags I used to pack for her when she was going off to camp, lay at her feet. “Where're you going?” I asked as I walked in. She looked up, running a hand through her short, spiky hair.

She told me that that morning a seagull had landed on her windowsill and it had stayed there half the day. It just sat, looking in at her, its fat body pressed to the glass, as if it were beckoning to her, waiting for her to follow.

Jade puts her faith in miracles, omens. Everything is a sign. It's better than vampires, but still, as her father—a master of the understatement—would say, it's not perfect either. She believes that little signs, omens, will tell you which path to take. She leaves clippings on my desk about Ganesha, the Indian god, half elephant, half man, whose stone statues sip milk. About the anti-Christ coming to take the children of Bogotá away. When a tornado scattered Texas Christian University to the four winds, making atheists of several of the faculty, Jade said it should have made believers of them all.

Her friend Sigrid was in a car accident and when the first rescue worker on the scene fell in love with Sigrid, Jade said it was meant to be. She surrounds herself with crystals and amulets. Some of these she makes herself out of feathers she finds, and seed pods, dried flowers, and coffee beans.

Now she told me that all morning she watched the gull until she knew why it had come. When the gull flapped its wings and soared, Jade knew it meant that she was going away.

“Where are you going?” I asked her, thinking that suddenly I would have a house devoid of children, whereas just weeks ago it had been full. It was the oddest thing about being a mother, but I could still feel this child's mouth at my breast, smell the sweet smell of talc and her milky breath. I wanted to suckle them again, even Ted, though he had struggled against me. He had tried to get everything I had. When he didn't get enough, he had fought and turned away. But Jade had always been peaceful, lying there, content with what came her way. Suddenly I wanted to take her into my arms, tell her she could sleep there.

Now she looked at me as if she had never been close, as if she had never been content just falling asleep in my arms. She had that look like “I have no idea who you are.”

“Oh, I don't know,” she said coolly. “Maybe L.A. or Chicago.”

“Chicago? To visit Grandma?” No, she told me, to volunteer for the Night Ministry bus that drove around after hours, offering prayer to the pimps and drug dealers. “I want to join something,” she said to me, “I want to belong somewhere.”

But you belong here, I wanted to tell her. You belong with me. Instead I said, “Honey, isn't there volunteer work you can do right here? Surely in San Francisco—”

She said she needed a change and she was leaving that night.

“Tonight?”

“Tonight I'm going to stay with a friend. Look, I waited until you got home to tell you. I could have just left you a note on the kitchen counter.”

“Yes, that's true.”

“It's just a friend, Mom. Don't be so judgmental.”

I didn't think I was being judgmental. I thought I was just being a parent. “Honey, you're almost twenty-one. You can do whatever you want, but—”

“But what?”

“I don't want you to go.”

Her face relaxed. She put her pen down. “Thanks, Mom. I understand that and I appreciate your saying it.”

“And I can still be concerned about you, can't I? I mean, I am your mother.”

She nodded, then put her pencil down. “May I say something?”

“Of course you may.”

“You know, Mom, you should get in touch with your sadness.”

“My sadness?” My hands fiddled with a piece of paper on the table. “What do you mean, my sadness?”

“There's this big dark cloud hanging over your head. I can see it wherever you go. It really holds you back.” Gazing up, I pretended to look for my cloud. “I'm not kidding, Mom,” Jade said.

“Just let me know where you're going to be so I can reach you.”

“Okay, I'll try and do that.” She kissed me good-bye. I realized I had no idea where she was going or when I'd see her again, but it seemed as if this was how she needed it to be. Still, I wanted to reach out and grab her, hold her to me. She was still a child in her own way, a floundering child, and, though this was the hardest part to admit, I didn't want her to go.

When she left, I got into the shower, scrubbing my flesh, my hair, my nails, but I couldn't get rid of the smell of dead fish and the sea. It permeated my hair, my hands. It reminded me of the stench in the air when I drove through Winonah on the night of the reunion. After the shower, I made myself a cup of peppermint tea. Jade was gone and an unfamiliar quiet settled over the house.

I wasn't sure what to do with myself so I decided to fill out the forms that had just arrived from the National Registry of Historic Houses. It was a huge packet, requiring all kinds of documentation and description. I began sifting through what needed to be done. I filled in the description of the house, the date it was built (which stretched over some twenty years), its materials, current owner information, and reasons for wanting it on the historic registry.

I spent perhaps an hour or two going over the materials, to which I would have to attach the deed to the house and other notarized documentation. When I was finished, I read over what I'd done. Everything seemed in good order. But then I noticed the address of the house. I hadn't written Box 406, Pacific Coast Highway. I'd written 137 Myrtle Lane—the address of a house I hadn't lived in for a long time.

28

I knew when it was
February because the tapping began. The steady
tap, tap, tap.
Coming from the basement. It was always the same sound, like a woodpecker down there. My father lined up all the tools he needed—the hammers, the chisels, the screwdrivers. From my bedroom I could smell the shellac, the glue. The workbench had been dormant all winter, but now the house was alive with the sounds of hammers and saws.

He was building us a finished basement. Art had his Boy Scout troop now and I had the gang. It seemed kids were always tramping in and out. Though my father had stopped fixing things around the house, he got this idea in his head. Our father decided he needed to finish the basement so that we would have a place to play. A linoleum floor, bathroom, paneling, cabinets, even a bar.

As our father was downstairs, hammering away, Lily, hands pressed across her ears, walked around saying, “Oh, God, I can't stand this. I really can't stand this noise.” Lily thought the upstairs playroom was good enough, but my father had his project and this occupied him for the better part of the spring.

But my father didn't seem to notice Lily's annoyance with the sawdust and din. He was downstairs, renovating the basement. It was a decision he'd made during the winter as he'd watched the gang stomp through the house in their wet shoes to the upstairs playroom. One day he said, “I'm going to finish the basement. Then the kids can play there.” He drew up some preliminary plans, ordered some supplies. I have no idea how my father knew how to do this, but he did. Some afternoons he let me help him. He showed me how to hold a hammer, how to drive a nail. Straight on, keep your fingers away, hit the head, not your thumb. I held the paneling in place as he nailed it to the wall.

The new basement was to have a laundry room, a recreation room with a Ping-Pong table, a bar, and a TV room. There would be a bathroom off the laundry room. It was a fairly elaborate project, but my father hired no help. It seemed he could do this on his own. Some days he got Jeb and Art to pitch in. “Okay, now, Squirt, hold that board in place.”

Art would put his shoulder against the board while our father hammered it in place. Often Lily came downstairs with grilled cheese sandwiches, potato chips, Cokes. She'd comment on our progress. “Oh, that's going to be very nice.” Or “I like the way there'll be storage cabinets in the rec room.”

Then she'd go back upstairs. I'm not sure when I noticed, but my parents didn't seem to speak to each other during these brief visits she made into the construction area. My mother moved like a marionette when she came downstairs, as if someone else were pulling the strings.

*   *   *

One afternoon in the summer Margaret asked me over to play. She said Vicky and some of the gang would be over and did I want to come as well? I rode my bike, parked it on her lawn. I noticed that the porch looked painted and spruced up. Clarice Blair must be doing better in the world, I thought. When I walked in, something was different. “You've changed things around here,” I said.

Margaret and the gang sat in the living room, eating chips and plates full of M&Ms. The Little Rascals were on. “Oh, just a few touches,” Mrs. Blair said. She came around the corner with a plate of cookies that made my mouth water. The living room looked freshly painted and the small den off the living room seemed darker. It had nice wood paneling too.

“Our basement is paneled like this,” I said.

And Clarice Blair, putting down the plate, smiled at me. “Yes. I've heard it is.”

29

Traffic was heavy on 280
as I drove into the city through patchy fog. I didn't like this kind of weather or this kind of driving. It slowed me down, made me stop and start, think too much. And it was stop and start all the way to Chinatown. Nick had phoned and said he was coming West. He wanted to meet at Fisherman's Wharf again, but I balked. I told him to meet me at my favorite dim sum place.

He was sitting in a booth in the back, wearing a blue workshirt and jeans. He looked disheveled, his hair not quite combed, like someone who's had a bad night. He rose when he saw me, wrapped his arms around me, buried his face in my hair. “I'm so glad to see you,” he muttered against my neck.

He smelled of aftershave and a smoky smell that was all his own. “I'm glad to see you too.”

He had never had dim sum before so as the trays came by, I began to point at things I thought he might like. Soon our table was filled with shrimp dumplings, rice noodles, spring rolls, mushrooms with pork. Nick ate heaping portions. “This is so good. Can I have more?”

“Just point at what you want.”

He pointed at me. “That easy, huh?”

I gave him a scolding look. “Not quite.”

“You know how to show a guy a good time.”

“Well, I'm glad you think so.”

“I do.” I sat back, watching him enjoy the dumplings and noddles. “Things haven't been going very well,” he said softly.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry to hear that.”

“I've had a terrible time,” he said. “My father was right about her.”

“Your father?”

“He begged me not to marry her. He said she wasn't ‘our kind.' I hated it when he said that. And sometimes I think I hated him. He was so big, so powerful. Everybody knew him. He was famous. I wanted to stand up to him. I think I wanted to do something he didn't want me to do. He was a hard man to stand up to, you know.”

“I'm sure he was.”

“I made a big mistake when I married her. I was infatuated. I thought she was beautiful. She was a free spirit. And perhaps I knew that it would gall my father. That he wouldn't be able to stand the fact that I'd married a girl of unknown origins whose mother had been our tenant. I don't know what I was thinking…”

“We've all made our mistakes.” I put my hand across his. “God knows, I've made mine.”

“You know,” Nick said, “sometimes even now, and he's been dead awhile, I can hear my father say, ‘Oh, you missed that easy shot,' or ‘There was a hole in the center; you should've run for that.' Do you know what it was it was like all my life to hear my mistakes rattled back at me? It's as if he's still shouting from the sidelines and I'm never sure which way he wants me to go.”

“Which way do
you
want to go?” I asked him.

Nick put his hands under my chin, lifting my face toward him. “Ever since we were kids, I've wanted to kiss you.”

“You have? Well, maybe that's another mistake,” I quipped. Even though it seemed inevitable, I wasn't comfortable with this turn in the conversation. “Anyway, if you've waited this long, you may as well wait a little longer.” He gave me a hurt look. “I think we should wait … until things are resolved. Settled between the two of you.” I was trying to be logical, but the fact was I wanted to kiss him. I hadn't wanted to kiss anybody in a long time, but now I did.