Ark (23 page)

“Well,” said her mother, “I knew any daughter of mine had secrets.”

“I saw a rental shop across PCH. Maybe we could go for a ride.”

“No. I don't think so. No, I'm no good at sports.”

“You would like it.”

“Please, Rebecca, I don't want to.”

“I know you can ride a bike. And you'll find it therapeutic. It's good exercise. There's really no argument against it.”

Helen unfolded her sunglasses and slid them back onto her face. “There's always a good argument against anything, dear.”

That night, Helen and Rebecca shared the queen bed in the hotel room. But with all her mother's issues regarding space, was it okay to be so close to her? Did it bother her that their stomachs were side by side, touching? That their thighs, their knees and feet were in contact? Or that Rebecca's arm lay over her mother's chest? Helen did not tell her to move it.

Come morning, their bodies had hardly shifted. After a brief argument about the importance of trying new things, Rebecca and Helen rented bicycles and went up the coast. Helen couldn't ride very well, yet she managed. They stopped at a diner up the road and had poached eggs and tomato slices. The middle-aged waiter clearing their plates at the end of their meal asked if they were sisters. Outside, getting back on their bikes, Helen pointed out that a compliment from a waiter in a tipping economy was still better than no compliment at all. And Rebecca, strapping on her black helmet, said that of course the more time they spent with one another, the more compliments of that nature her mother stood to receive.

“I've got nowhere I've got to be.”

“Mom, I'm happy to hear that.”

“Let's keep going.”

They went as far as the state park before turning back. Helen rode ahead of Rebecca, talking over her shoulder. She couldn't believe it had been fifty years since she'd last ridden a bicycle. To have suffered through a hundred other forms of exercise and to have neglected all this pleasure and tranquility—what was wrong with her? Why had it taken her daughter yelling at her to see? And if Rebecca hadn't come to town, what then? She would have never known the wonders of the bicycle.

However, a quarter mile from the Surf and Sands, Helen lost control of her steering and crashed into a parked car, falling from the bicycle and hitting the road. Rebecca hopped off her seat, kneeling beside Helen, who couldn't speak except to say, “Oh my God, I'm in shock. Oh my God. Oh my God, I'm in shock.”

“Mom, are you okay?”

“Oh my God, I'm in shock. Shock!”

Helen was crying. Her knees and elbows were cut up. Rebecca didn't think her fall had been all that bad, but they walked the bikes the rest of the way. Close to the hotel, they went into a market where Helen, in great distress, bought cheese and bread, red wine, cigarettes, and M&M's. Rebecca returned the bicycles to the rental shop, while Helen went back to the hotel to clean herself up. Afterward, they drank wine and stared out at the beach, eating cheese and smoking. When night fell, they lay in the queen bed and watched the television until after one in the morning, then they fell asleep.

Helen woke the next morning sore and gimpy. The sun was glancing off the wall opposite the bed, turning the brown wooden panels red. Chatter from the porch above could be heard in their room. Rebecca apologized to her mother about the accident.

“It's all right,” she said.

“But you didn't want to rent the bikes.”

“It's okay.”

“Let me do something special for you.”

“Stop it. I don't want it.”

Rebecca went down to the hotel lobby. A continental breakfast was being served. She toasted English muffins and brought coffee and oranges back to the room as well.

Handing her mother a cup of coffee, Rebecca said, “How are you, Mom?”

“The whole thing's in pain,” said Helen, drawing a line in the air above her body.

“I'll go to a pharmacy and get you something for it.”

“No, darling. It's okay. I don't like to take anything. As much as possible, you have to train the body to deal with problems on its own. Let it learn to overcome its aches and situations, right? Not that I'm happy,” her mother said.

Rebecca sat down in a chair next to the bed. “We could go to a spa today.”

“No, I have to lie right here.”

“Can I do anything for you?”

“Nothing, darling. Nothing at all.”

“There's an outdoor shower. I'm going to go use it.”

Rebecca left the room. At the end of the building, before the turn for the beach, she passed a shed where chairs and umbrellas were stowed. The outdoor showers were there. Rebecca stood under the water, a metal chain with a ring at the end of it wrapped around the fingers of her right hand. It wasn't enough to keep her eyes tightly shut—she wept hard now.

After the shower, back in the room, she found her mother on the porch, leaning on the railing in a contemplative pose, cigarette smoke twisting over the lip of the wineglass in her hand. When her daughter got close, she pulled her against her side. She said, “To think of everything you're going through, Rebecca. I have to assume you're angry at me, too. It's okay. Don't spare me or anything.”

“No, Mom.” Rebecca shook her head. “That's not necessary.”

“I couldn't take those Arkins. I had to get away from them. Now you understand it yourself,” her mother said.

“I do, yes.”

“But something happened toward the end of my marriage with your father…something I've never told you about. Ben called one day and asked me to come down to the loft. He said that he and Eliza wanted to talk. It's funny, I can recall how I felt speaking to him on the phone, with Ben saying that we had something to discuss. It made me physically ill. And I lived under that threat for ten years, Rebecca. But, that day, I obliged Ben. The whole way downtown the anxiety was eating at me. I got there, and Ben, like any good dictator, makes you wait an hour until he comes out to deal with you. And all that time I'm breaking down inside, wondering what it's all about and why I've been summoned. When Ben was ready, he stepped out of the studio and he pointed for me to sit in a chair. I asked about Eliza. But he had never meant for her to join us. He didn't need her for this.

“I had seen him get nasty with people. Never me. But I could sense it was about to happen. He got that icy look on his face and suddenly he said, ‘What are you doing with your life? I mean, what are you fucking doing with it?' I can't say I was completely caught off guard by this. Because where your grandfather had been supportive of my work as an actress, he had also told me countless times that I was being irresponsible with my family. He said, ‘You've got to give up this whole acting thing. You should start working for
Shout!
You could have a very good job there and make money. You're a mother and a wife and you can't be running around the country, doing a role here, in Timbuktu, and a role there, in Cocksuck, Alabama. You have to get serious about your life.' I said to Ben, ‘You want me to just quit? It's the one thing I've ever been passionate about.' His whole face lit up, and he called me a fucking nitwit. He said, ‘Indulging your passion is a privilege, not something we do at the expense of our families' well-being. Now stop behaving like a moron who mixes up fantasy and life.'”

“That's terrible, Mom.”

“Well, yes. But usually afraid to confront him…his presence a kind of gag for me and so many people, right?…this time I said, ‘What about you, Ben? You neglect your family.' And he said to me, ‘I slaved for twenty-five years to build myself up from nothing. I had ten million in the bank by the time I was forty. I took care of my family and earned the right to neglect them. What have you done?' I got home that night and I thought,
I've got to get out of here. I have to leave
. I mean, could you imagine me working for
Shout!
”

“I hate to think of anyone working there.”

“And was I supposed to give up on my life and go get run around like some dog by Doris and Sondra? Just to say it makes me shake. See, I'm shaking!” Helen held her arms out at the side so that her daughter could get a good look at her. Then all at once Helen noticed that she'd been talking so much her cigarette had gone out, and she flipped the butt over the railing. She said, “Don't be too hard on your father for spending his whole life tied up with these people. It wasn't easy getting away from them. I had to give it everything to accomplish that.”

Now Rebecca's phone began to ring. She pointed the device in the direction of the ocean. “I'd throw it in the water, but my office might need me.”

“Who's after you now?” said Helen.

Rebecca read the caller's name. “That's odd. It's Julia Raines.”

Helen crossed her arms and angled her head. She said, “I don't think I've seen her for thirty years. She had a Japanese husband, I remember. He could make wonderful sushi. Your dad and I would go to their apartment and all night we would drink sake and he'd make such great food. This was back in the '70s, before you had so many Japanese restaurants in New York and everywhere else, and you hardly ever ate it.”

“I wonder why she's trying to reach me,” Rebecca said. “It's disconcerting. The last time she called, it was to say that my grandfather was dead. She doesn't mind giving bad news. She seems to like doing it. You think my father's okay?”

“Rebecca, yes, your father is fine. Here's your chance. Stop this. Take control.”

Rebecca said, “I know, you're right.” But at the next moment, Jerome was calling. And Rebecca immediately tossed the phone over the railing. They watched it fall into a bush below.

“That must have cost five hundred dollars.”

“I don't care,” said Rebecca. “I spent fifteen hundred on the last-minute ticket here, and I'm throwing that money away by being at the mercy of that thing.”

“All right,” Helen said.

Rebecca frowned. “I'm just sorry you've hurt yourself. Let's go swim in the ocean. It'll help your cuts heal.”

They changed into bikinis. On their way to the beach, they stopped in the hotel lobby to have a cup of coffee and a banana. The hotel proprietors, old and married, stood behind the wicker desk, their tanned, liver-spotted faces peering out from beneath wide-brimmed straw hats.

“How's it going?” they said, in unison.

“Oh, doing just fine,” Helen answered.

“Tell us if we can do anything for you.”

“Thank you,” Rebecca said.

Out on the beach, Helen began to ask why two people who didn't care for hospitality would go into the hotel business. “I mean, did you see how they were looking at us? Like they wanted us to get lost.”

“I didn't get that feeling, Mom.”

“Then what were they staring at?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Really, it makes a person want to get the hell out of here,” Helen said. She pushed her sunglasses up on her face, reclining back onto her towel.

Rebecca lay down too. She thought of her phone now. Was she going to abandon it? But here at the beach, with her mother, the ocean, a warm sun, the phone would continue to interfere. Of course, her office would want to be able to contact her. Moreover, her mother wouldn't stay forever, and then Rebecca would like to drive up the coast, to Big Sur, to San Francisco. To not know her way on any road or street—no, she'd want the phone for the next part of her trip. She should get it. She'd have a use for it.

“I'll be back in a second.”

A moment later, Rebecca was down below the hotel room's cantilevered porch, kneeling on the edge of the manicured loop. She reached in through the lower part of the bush. Her knees hurt against the rough stone ground. She couldn't find the phone. Had someone found and taken it? Or had it fallen into another bush? But she'd seen it go straight in through this very one. She searched through an adjacent bush. She walked her fingers through twigs that poked at her hand. A leaf slid partway underneath her fingernail, touching off a sensitive nerve. And then there it was, the phone, between the coiled branches. To have it back in her hand brought on a feeling of intense joy. Then she looked:

Nine missed calls.

Jerome twice, Julia Raines once, her stepmother three times, Laura, the office, and then a New York number she didn't recognize. She hurried straight back onto the beach, to her mother. Her legs felt ready to give out. She held out the phone for Helen to see. “Mom, they're calling me. All of them.”

Helen was curled up on a white towel. A bottle of white wine sweated in the crook of her arm. She lifted her sunglasses, staring disappointedly at her daughter. “I thought you were done with that thing?”

“No,” said Rebecca.

“So what, then?”

Rebecca kicked at the sand, her balance uneven. “What should I do?”

“You can go and be a part of their ball, or not. It's up to you. But you can't have it both ways.” Her mother sighed. “Maybe you want to think about how these people add to your life. What are they offering? What do you get from knowing them?”

Rebecca took the bottle of wine from her mother's hand, drinking. She got sand on her lips. “I don't know.”

“What do you mean?” her mother said, angrily.

“I mean that I don't know.” She tugged at her earlobe. “It's hard, Mom. I'm not sure if I can eliminate people the way you can.”

Helen said, “You have to practice at it. I already told you it doesn't come easy.”

“I know. I know,” Rebecca said. “But I'm not sure if it's for me.”

“Well,” Helen told her, “you don't have to start now. There's another option. You can get bullied by them for another week or month or year or decade, and then decide.”

“Mom, please.” There was a tube of sunblock at her feet. Rebecca exchanged it for the wine bottle, took a dot of the white cream onto her fingers, and began to rub it into her skin. She said, “Give me a chance. I'm still figuring this out.”