After You've Gone (13 page)

Having spoken, Maria closes her eyes, as though the effort involved in keeping them open were more than she could manage in the breezeless heat, the flat air.

The two young people, the couple, are Danny Michaels, a
small, gray-blond young man, rather lined for someone his age, serious, bookish-looking; and thin, bright-red-haired Phoebe Knowles, Danny's very recent wife.

“That would be wonderful, a storm,” says Phoebe, who seems a little short of breath.

And Danny: “We sure could use the rain.”

“Actually, I'd be quite terrified,” Maria opens her eyes to tell them. “I always used to be, in Maine. We had the most terrific summer storms.” She recloses her eyes.

Danny has known Maria for so long (almost all the thirty-odd years of his life) that nearly all questions seem permitted; also they like and trust each other. However, so far his evident sympathetic interest in her recent experience has been balked. About Pleasanton, where the jail was, Maria has only said, not quite convincingly, “It wasn't too bad. It's minimum security, you know. I felt rather like a Watergate conspirator. The clothes they gave me were terribly uncomfortable, though. Just not fitting, and stiff.”

Only Maria's posture suggests discouragement, or even age. On the old rattan sofa she slumps down in a tired way among the cushions, her large hands clasped together on the knees of old corduroys.

And goes on about Maine. “The chipmunks there were much bigger than the ones out here,” she tells Phoebe and Dan. “Or maybe they only seemed bigger because I was very small. I haven't been back there since I was a child, you know.”

Phoebe and Dan are in the odd position of being both Maria's hosts and her guests: it is her house—in fact, very much her house, designed by Maria for her own use. But it was lent to Danny and Phoebe by Ralph Tresca, Maria's son and a great
friend of Danny's. This was to be their wedding present, two weeks alone in this extraordinary, very private house. For which they had both arranged, with some trouble, to take off from their jobs. Phoebe and her best friend, Anna, run a small restaurant on Potrero Hill; Danny works in a bookstore, also on Potrero, of which he is part owner.

Danny and Ralph have been friends since kindergarten, and thus Danny has known Maria for all that time. He and Phoebe have known each other for less than four months; theirs was a passionate, somewhat hasty marriage, indeed precipitated by Ralph's offer of the house. Danny called Ralph in Los Angeles, where Ralph is a sometime screenwriter, to say that he had met a girl about whom he was really serious. “I think we might get married.” To which Ralph responded, “Well, if you do it this summer you can have the house for two weeks at the end of July. It's rented for most of the rest.”

Not the reason, surely, but an impetus. Danny has always loved the beautiful, not entirely practical house, at which he has often been a guest. A wonderfully auspicious beginning to their marriage, Danny believed those weeks would be.

But after the first week of their time at the house had passed, there was suddenly the phone call from Ralph, asking if it would be all right for Maria to come up and stay with them; Maria was about to be released, after fourteen days in jail. Danny had known about Maria's sentencing; he and Phoebe had talked about it, early on—so severe for an antinuclear protest, and for a woman of Maria's age. But they had not been entirely clear as to when Maria started to serve, nor when she was to get out. And it had certainly not occurred to Danny that Maria might want to come from jail to her house on the Truckee River. However:
Of course
, he told Ralph.

Hanging up the phone, which is in the kitchen, and walking across the long living room toward their bedroom, where
he and Phoebe had been taking a semi-nap, Danny considered how he would put it to Phoebe, this quite unforeseen interruption to their time. Danny knows that he is crazy about Phoebe, but also acknowledges (to himself) some slight fear; he suspects that she is perceptibly stronger than he is. Also, it was he who insisted on marriage and finally talked her into it, mentioning their ages (“we're not exactly kids”) plus the bribe of the house. But the real truth was that Danny feared losing her—he had indecisively lost a couple of other really nice women; now he wanted to settle down. In any case, although he feels himself loved by Phoebe, feels glad of their marriage, he worries perhaps unduly about her reactions.

“You see, it was such a great favor that I couldn't not do it” was one of the things he decided to say to Phoebe, approaching their room. “All that time in jail, a much longer sentence than anyone thought she would get. I think her old protest history worked against her. I know it was supposed to be our house for these two weeks, Ralph kept saying that. He really felt bad, asking me to do this,” Danny meant to add.

What he did not mean to say to Phoebe, in part because he did not know quite how to phrase it, was his own sense that if Maria were to come up to them, Ralph should come too. Ralph's presence would make a better balance. Also, Ralph's frenetic nervous energy, his offbeat wit—both qualities that made Danny smile, just to think about—would have lightened the atmosphere, which so far has been more than a little heavy, what with the weather and Maria's silences, her clearly sagging spirits.

However, Dan had barely mentioned to Phoebe that Maria was getting out of jail on July 19 when Phoebe broke in, “Oh, then she must come right up. Do you think we should leave, or stay on and sort of take care of her? I could cook a lot, prison food has to be horrible. Tell Ralph not to worry, it'll be fine.”
All of which led Danny to think that he does not know Phoebe well at all.

Phoebe herself has had certain odd new problems on this trip: trouble eating, for one thing; she who generally eats more than her envious friends can believe, scrawny Phoebe of the miraculous metabolism now barely manages a scant first helping of the good cold rice salads, the various special dishes she planned and made for this first leisurely time alone with Dan. And she is sometimes short of breath. Also, despite long happy nights of love, she has trouble sleeping. All these problems clearly have to do with the altitude, six thousand feet, Phoebe knows that perfectly well; still, does it possibly have something to do with being married—married in haste, as the old phrase used to go?

By far her worst problem, though, is sheer discomfort from the heat, so much heavy sun all day. Like many redheads, Phoebe does not do well in very warm weather, the affliction being an inability to perspire. Instead, out in the sun her skin seems to wither and burn, both within and without. Very likely, she thinks, if it cooled off even a little, all her troubles would disappear; she could eat and sleep again, and enjoy being married to Dan.

However, she reminds herself, there would still be the house. Danny talked about it often; he tried to describe Maria's house, and Phoebe gathered that it was beautiful—impressive, even. Still, she was unprepared for what seems to her somewhat stark: such bare structural bones, exposed textures of pine and fir, such very high, vaulted ceilings. Phoebe has never been in a house with so definite a tone, a stamp. In fact, both the house's unfamiliarity and the strength of its character have been more than a little intimidating. (Phoebe is from a
small town in New Hampshire of entirely conventional, rather small-scale architecture.)

Even the bookcases have yielded up to Phoebe few clues of a personal nature, containing as they do a large, clearly much used collection of various field guides, to birds, wildflowers, trees, and rocks; some yellowed, thumbed-through Grade-B detective fiction; and a large, highly eclectic shelf of poetry—Rilke, Auden, Yeats, plus a great many small volumes of women poets. Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Bogan. Katha Pollitt, Amy Clampitt. Clues, but to Ralph or to Maria? Ralph's father, Maria's husband, died young, Dan has said; he has spoken admiringly of Maria's uncompromising professionalism, her courage—never a shopping center or a sleazy tract. The poetry, then, might belong to them both? There are no inscriptions.

Thus, occupying the house of two very strong, individualistic people, neither of whom she has met, fills Phoebe with some unease, even a sort of loneliness.

The site of the house, though, is so very beautiful—magical, even: that very private stretch of clear brown river, rushing over its smoothly rounded, wonderfully tinted rocks. And the surrounding woods of pine and fir and shimmering gray-green aspens, and the lovely sky, and clouds. The very air smells of summer, and earth, and trees. In such a place, Phoebe thinks, how can she not feel perfectly well, not be absolutely happy?

Indeed (she has admitted this to herself, though not to Dan), she welcomed Maria at least in part as a diversion.

Though since her arrival Maria has seemed neither especially diverting, as Phoebe had hoped, nor heroic—as they both had believed.

“It would be a lot better if Ralph were here too, I know that,” Dan tells Phoebe, later that morning, as, barefoot, they pick their way back across the meadow to the house; they have been swimming in the river—or, rather, wading and ducking down into the water, which is disappointingly shallow, slow-moving, not the icy rush that Danny remembers from previous visits.

Phoebe, though, seems to feel considerably better; she walks along surefootedly, a little ahead of Dan, and her tone is reassuring as she says, “It's all right. I think Maria's just really tired. I'm doing a vitello tonnato for lunch, though. Remember, from the restaurant? Maybe she'll like that. God, I just wish I could eat!”

Avoiding sharp pinecones and sticks and skirting jagged rocks requires attention, and so they are quiet for a while as they walk along. But then, although he is in fact looking where he is going, Dan's foot hits something terrible and sharp, and he cries out, “Damn!”

“What's wrong?”

“My foot, I think a stone.”

“Oh dear.” Phoebe has stopped and turned to ask, “Shall I look?”

“No, it's okay, nothing,” Dan mutters, striding on past her.

But he is thinking, Well, really, how like Ralph to saddle me with his mother on my honeymoon. And with Maria just out of jail, for God's sake. So politically correct that I couldn't possibly object. Damn Ralph, anyway.

Never having met Ralph, who has been in Los Angeles for all the time that Dan and Phoebe have known each other (the long, not long four months), Phoebe has no clear view of him, although Dan talks about him often. What has mostly come
across to Phoebe is the strength of the two men's affection for each other; so rare, in her experience, such open fondness between men. She has even briefly wondered if they could have been lovers, ever, and concluded that they were not. They are simply close, as she and her friend-partner, Anna, are close. Danny would do almost anything for Ralph, including taking in his mother at a not entirely convenient time.

In fact, his strong, evident affections are among the qualities Phoebe values in Dan—and perhaps Ralph is more or less like that? His closeness to his mother has had that effect? Although so far Maria herself has not come across as an especially warm or “giving” person.

Early common ground, discovered by Dan and Phoebe on first meeting, was a firm belief in political protest. They had both taken part in demonstrations against the Nicaraguan embargo, against South African racism; both felt that there was, generally, a mood of protest in their city, San Francisco, that spring. By which they were encouraged.

And they had had serious talks about going to jail. Taking part in demonstrations is not the same as being locked up, they are agreed.

“It's hard to figure out just how much good it does. Jail.”

“Especially if you're not famous. Just a person. Ellsberg going to jail is something else.”

“Do famous people get lighter sentences?”

“I'd imagine. In fact, I'd bet.”

“So hard to figure. Is it better to go to jail, or to stay out and do whatever your work is and send money to your cause?”

Impossible to decide, has been their conclusion.

However, someone probably has to go to jail; they think that too. So why not them?

…

Working in the kitchen, making lunch, Phoebe feels better than she has for several days. Good effects of the dip into the river seem to last, a lively sense of water lingers on her skin. Carefully, thinly slicing the firm moist white turkey (she is good at this, a good carver), Phoebe feels more in control of her life than she has in days just past, no longer entirely at the mercy of weather and altitude. She even feels more at peace with the house. Here in the kitchen, its bareness and extreme simplicity seem functional; the oversized butcher-block table with its long rack for knives is a great working space.

She is happily breaking an egg into the blender, reaching for oil, when she hears the sound of slow footsteps approaching the kitchen. It must be Maria, and the distress that Phoebe then experiences is both general and particular: she likes best to cook alone; in fact, she loves the solitary single-mindedness of cooking. Also, none of her conversations with Maria have been very successful, so far.

Hesitantly, distractedly, Maria comes to stand outside the kitchen doorway. Vaguely she says, “I'm sure I can't help you.” She is not quite looking at Phoebe but rather out the window, to the river. “But I did wonder—you're finding everything you need?”

“Oh yes, it's a wonderful kitchen.” Working there, it has become clear to Phoebe that Maria herself must be a very good cook; this is the working space of a dedicated person. “I feel bad displacing you this way,” she says to Maria.

This earns the most direct and also the most humorous look from Maria yet seen. “You're good to say that. But actually I could use a little displacement, probably.”

Phoebe ventures, “Do you have trouble letting people help you, the way I do?”

A wide, if fleeting, grin. “Oh, indeed I do. I seem to believe myself quite indispensable, in certain areas.”