Lucky Turtle, page 28
Dale slid closer to her, attempted a smooch.
She shoved him away violently. He tried again and she laughed—we all laughed—leapt to her feet, backed away from him, from all of us, nearly into the fire. Mr. Drinkins stood, too, and leaned in all puckered up toward her and she punched him square in the nose, not kidding around. He loved that, laughed with us, holding his nose, laughed heartily, his cheek scabbed from Aarto’s boot. I wiped my cheek of Bronco’s kiss, slipped my hand out of his. Lucky up there on the ridge. Francie and Mr. Drinkins at an impasse, but passing the tequila bottle back and forth.
“Come talk to me a minute,” Mr. Drinkins said to Francie.
Cautiously she got up, walked with him into the shadows, no farther, kept him at arm’s length, Mr. Drinkins imprecating, tones we could hear.
Aarto got up and broke sticks. He broke a lot of sticks, added them to the fire, added logs, though it was a warm night.
Francie pushed Mr. Drinkins away—apparently he’d gotten too close. She returned to the fire, Mr. Drinkins following. He searched for something to say, then finally: “You are a good team.”
And Bronco said, “Thankee.”
That struck me as so funny, Francie, too—anyway, we women set in to giggling.
“You’ll miss this girl,” Mr. Drinkins said.
“He got the papers,” Franciella said. “Show the people.”
“We saw,” I said. “They are not impressive.”
Aarto gave me that look: the plan. He said, “That glass looked pretty primo. Clear as.”
At that, Mr. Drinkins fished out an envelope we hadn’t seen. “Now we all got secrets,” he said. He drew out the pages in there, handed them to Aarto, who handed them straight to me.
“A birth certificate?” I said.
“Keep looking.”
“Eleanor Drinkins?”
She’d been born in 1971, whoever she was, so nearly ten years older than Francie and I. A passport, too, dismal crimped photo of a formidable-looking woman, her broad features barely visible, cold stare for the camera.
“Like I told you,” Mr. Drinkins said. “Recently deceased, amen. But these here papers are good. Quite good. The passport was on account we were back and forth to Mexico.”
“And your wife?”
“Oh, she’s hale and hearty, that one. You misunderstand me.”
“He wants to give me a new identity,” Franciella said in just such a way: the plan.
“New identity,” Aarto said, too ironically Bronco. “Now if that don’t beat all.”
“A new identity? Whatever for?” I said.
Mr. Drinkins said, “You kids are on the run. Don’t gas me. No need. But right here is Francie’s keys to the kingdom.”
Franciella was nodding away, as if any of it made sense. She said, “Dale says I can move into Eleanor’s rooms sometime soon.”
Aarto clucked a cowboy cluck.
“Move in, why?” I said.
“Yes, that could use some explanatory phrases,” Aarto drawled, channeling Clay Marvelette.
“Well, maybe this will seal the deal,” Mr. Drinkins said. “A gift from Eleanor to you, Franciella. You’ll have to adjust it some. But it’ll go with your new life down in town.” And he dug in that rucksack and pulled out a large, rolled suede item, spread it across Family Table where we all could see: a kind of gown, stitched in intricate beadwork, gorgeous beyond understanding. “That girl worked on this thing every spare minute going on ten year. It’s a victory robe. Not many victories left for her. That and a headband and Francie’ll pass just fine.”
“Pass,” Francie said.
“Just fine,” Aarto said too unhappily.
Francie was incredulous but managed a light tone: “I’m going to dress up like a cartoon Indian?”
“No, no, like my housekeeper. She’s most real. Or was. She worked hard on this.”
“Yeah, and wait,” I said, too fiery for our game. “How’d Eleanor get the name Drinkins?”
“Well, that’s a long story. We adopted her. She was family.”
“Everyone?” Francie said. She meant Aarto and me, both of us getting edgy, she meant play the game. Trust the plan, is what she meant. Also, trust Francie. And that did soften us.
Bronco went all shocked. “Adopted her, eh?”
Like joking, I said, “You mean you made her family so you didn’t have to pay her?”
He flinched, busted, took a pull of tequila. “Mutually beneficial,” he said, side-eye my direction. Was he trying to look lascivious? He was not good at lascivious, looked lurid instead.
“How’d she die?” I said.
“Plan,” Francie said plainly.
“Sick a long time,” Mr. Drinkins said after some thought. “Never clear what ailed her. She wanted me to have this. Said so. Wanted Francie to have it. Said so. Pass it along to that Black lady on the mountain, she said. Simple as she was.”
Francie stood, unlaced the long gown, and too far into our game for my taste, pulled it over her head, wriggled and hopped and tucked till it was in place, laced it back up, too tight through her broad shoulders, too loose through her narrow hips, hanging to her ankles. She made a turn, girlish for her, looked like victory, all right. Underneath it she pulled her sweatpants off, held the leather up around her stone-sculpted calves. Eleanor, if that was really her name, lived on in that gown, the one true thing about Mr. Drinkins’s story. Beads in the thousands, hundreds of thousands, sewn row by row in undulating waves across the shoulders, yes, easily a decade of fine work, mostly blue in various shades that graduated dark to light to dark again, more colorful at the bust, brown beads on red and ochre and light pink, geometric patterns, earthy colors. And were those birds across the shoulders? And mountain ranges across the belly? Along the hem a jagged but precise green-and-yellow-and-black procession of wapiti, antlers and all, forever migrating. Francie did a twirl, and the wapiti galloped along the ground, kicking up powerful dust.
I felt a chill run from my scalp into my shirt and straight down into my belly. Aarto felt it, too, had visible trouble retaining his bemused smile. Franciella felt it, too, went dark, struggled hastily back into her sweats and out of the gown, laid it again on the table and across the bench between her and Mr. Drinkins, sat seemingly entranced by it, patted the leather, ran her fingernails between the tight rows of beads.
Mr. Drinkins sat close as he could, patted the leather as she did, trying to be natural, hand too close to Francie’s. “Our girl made them beads, too,” he said. “Or a great many of them. You roll clay, you stick a wire through each little tube, slice it up, fire it. I bought her the wire. The clay she dug someplace. She made a kind of Injun oven in the yard.”
“Now not so fast,” Bronco said.
“A Blackfeet oven,” Mr. Drinkins corrected: it wasn’t like he didn’t know his offenses.
I said, “She died and no one took an interest? Died of what, Mr. Drinkins?”
He said, “God don’t watch over all creatures, little lady.”
“God’s plan,” Aarto said. “Plan, plan, plan.” He rose, grabbed the tequila bottle like a pirate, pretended to guzzle but drank nothing, handed the bottle to Mr. Drinkins, who drained it.
Aarto stretched elaborately, then broke the night with a loon call so loud I had to cover my ears. Then another and another, uncanny. So out of place in the near-desert mountains that we laughed. He tugged Drinkins to his feet, and for a long time the two of them did calls across the animal kingdom. Loons and wapiti and moose and eagles, wolf and coyote and even whales—Aarto knew his whales. Mr. Drinkins had a fine marmot and an even better red squirrel, all the rodents. They boisterously built the fire back high, hooted out the various owls, Aarto keeping it going strong: the plan, the plan.
Late, Aarto declared it bedtime. I stood and he took my arm, and we were Mr. and Mrs. Bronco. Francie stood and Mr. Drinkins tried to smooch her. Again she belted him, and he fell back, held that nose, delighted, caught up in our web, might it hold.
Aarto took Mr. Drinkins’s arm and rather forcibly turned him, walked him down the road and out of sight around the corner. You could hear them laughing down there. I drew Francie into the lodge. We decided we weren’t worried about his returning middle of the night looking for more kisses. Like a lot of bad guys, Mr. Drinkins had a kind of chivalry in him, a code of conduct. Murder here, principle there. Anyway, we heard his truck start up and drive off, heard it a long way.
Drunker than he knew, he’d left those preposterously fake divorce papers on the table, but also Eleanor’s startlingly real passport, the sad photos of his home. I stacked it all up and tucked them away with the antique six-shooter. Aarto rolled the gown—Mr. Drinkins had left the gown, too, truly a gift to Francie—and we brought it inside, all its strings attached. The belongings felt like leverage.
“I’ll check on the horses,” Aarto said.
In my room—Lucky’s and my room—I stripped quickly, climbed into bed in my fresh pink underpants from Clay and size giant T-shirt. Outside we heard Aarto’s yodel, neither man nor beast, and Lucky’s reply from up on the ridge.
Aarto came in, all quiet. He stripped to his Swedish skivvies and T, climbed in beside me, my pretend husband, just in case our friend returned in the night. Aarto weighed double what Lucky weighed, a vast presence, the bed of boughs and fragrant pine needles and soft mosses collapsing us together in a trough. He smelled good, too, maybe the sagebrush he was always rubbing on himself, and the chill of the evening was on his skin still, his butt backed up hard against my thighs. I didn’t want to spoon him so rolled away, difficult in the sagging bed, finally pressed my own butt against the long wall of his back.
He said, “Yore wriggling like a tadpole in a bucket.”
“I feel more like a netted whale pulled up against the ship,” I said.
“Well, it’s true you’re fat in the middle,” he drawled, “but you’re doggone cute at each end.”
“Thankee, Bronco,” I said.
“That’s enough in there,” Francie called.
We said our goodnights, Aarto breathing like canyon wind. And I tell you, I felt the greatness of him. I thought of Lucky, sent him a wave of love that I hoped he’d feel, swore I felt the wave return. At last, then, I slept, safe against the rampart of my own personal cowboy, let the monster even try.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Almost forty, and I had no vehicle. But my neighbor Jack let me use his daughter’s college car while she was abroad, an impossibly tiny Fiat, color of a tomato. I visited the laundromat, washing and folding absolutely everything to give to Goodwill, lived on convenience-store groceries, ate up every canned or frozen thing in the house, went to afternoon movies—Walter hated movies, talked all the way through, couldn’t give himself up to them (“They’re just actors, Cindra”). The movies made me cry. They made me laugh. They were my emotional life. One of them gave me the housesitting idea. I got on a website that matched “quality sitters with quality houses,” passed the screening, immediately found a posting in San Francisco, a diplomat’s home, open ended, take care of gardens and pets, to begin March 1. Their houseman and cook were going with them to Asia. Once I was settled in, their housekeeper would come by three afternoons a week to clean in case I’d think no one would be paying attention. The houseman interviewed me, super stern, his English accented and formal, then, my having pleased him, put me on with the lady of the house. She was so interested in Ricky, in Ricky’s heritage. They loved Montana, frequent fishing trips. There were eleven other applications of interest. She liked how I talked dirt—garden dirt, I mean—they liked my biography: widow, thirty-nine, seeks new life. They liked that my son was in school nearby. I suspect they liked that I was white like them yet checked a diversity box or two. For pets they had fish and land crabs and lizards, perfect. For references I had my neighbor Jack and my volunteer lawyer, Carl “Ronnie” Ronson, apparently sufficient: the houseman spoke to both. The last hurdle upon my arrival would be a conversation with their daughter, my age, unlikely to be a problem, said the lady of the house.
“A leap of faith,” I said, meaning for me.
“We have insurance,” the lady replied.
Late January I canceled all utilities as of one month hence and hosted a series of yard sales, the first formal, the last ten cents a bag, shower curtains and all. Neighbor Jack (not a Walter fan after years of petty disputes) let me store twenty boxes and one crate of Legos in his shed, adopted my houseplants. I brought the mailbox in, no forwarding address, left the house echoingly empty, the least I could do, ran through with a mop and a broom, gave Jack the keys so he could take possession of the last thing: my beloved mattress, complete with bedding.
I put everything I wanted—clothes, mostly, one extra pair of shoes, a single precious book, my Felco trimmers and garden apron, my pearl, our wilderness notebook, a ceramic turtle made by Ricky in fourth grade, the odd toiletries—into one medium roller suitcase, the rule I’d made for myself. Jack drove me to the T, the T took me to South Station, and from there it was Amtrak to San Francisco (to fly seemed too quick) and an Uber to my new digs, a seemingly modest stack of glass-and-steel boxes that climbed Telegraph Hill among terraced gardens.
The diplomat’s daughter, lovely woman, let me in the back-side kitchen through a brick archway under vines, small windows to an overgrown but pretty tea garden, vetted me over finger foods, a lot of laughter, thank goodness—I was in. Upstairs she showed me the full-wall fish tanks, like windows in the dark back side of the home, incredibly colored reef fish and fancy shrimp, bright sea anemones waving placidly, reptile terrarium adjacent, big as a room, crawling with lizards and tree crabs and, yes, turtles, all maintained professionally—my job was feeding. The housekeeper would be by a week from Monday to meet me, not too early, ha-ha, “Florita. She’s a lovely woman, Mexico City Mexican and as sweet as pie, but a field marshal, I’m telling you—be sure to tidy up for her!” And then to the front of the house, which hung as if floating, vast windows looking out on the bay and the whole world, Alcatraz out there, the Golden Gate, the Bay Bridge, too, which was the bridge to Ricky. My room was the bottom box, accessed via spirals, a terrarium itself, lots of glass, bathroom black, bed like heaven. When my hostess was gone, I flopped on it, slept through dinner, through the night, woke to the view, slept again till noon, then three.
I loved San Francisco unreservedly, being a lover of views, for one thing, and the ocean, for another, also fog banks, and spring so much further along than back in Massachusetts. I walked everywhere, got myself set up. Maria had said I’d find Lucky the seventh day I arrived. I struggled to believe, to make that mean something. Maybe that I’d find some kind of peace—Maria was ever allusive, one thing meaning another.
Because lest I forget, Lucky was dead.
Ricky came over the third day I arrived, which was a Tuesday, after a busy week for him, bottle of champagne. We sat upstairs in big leather chairs, watching the fish, drinking from the most elegant crystal, Indian takeout. After a couple of flutes and a lot of tikka masala picked up with naan, he said, “I found Donut Dora.”
To which I replied, “Ha-ha.”
“No,” he said, “I really did.”
I don’t think he expected me to be unhappy. “Ricky, no.”
“Momma, yes. She’s my grandmother, for one thing, so I’m well within my rights. She’s here in San Francisco. It’s her town. It’s where she met my grandfather.”
“It’s where she got in trouble.”
“I found her on Instagram. We could DM her.”
“What does that even mean?”
He opened his phone, opened her IG page, as he called it, and there was her reprehensible name on a fancy hardcover memoir, real publisher, dramatic cover, photo of her at thirteen with her index finger through the hole of a spinning donut: The Karter Kids.
He said, “What should we write to her?”
“We should write to her nothing.”
“No. We will say Hello, Grandmother.” He began to type, well within his rights, damn him, narrating all the way. “This is Mountain Turtle, also known as Ricky Zoeller Sing. I am the son of Lucky Turtle and Cindra Zoeller.”
“Better not to mention me!”
“Of course mention you. Let’s see . . . I’m a grad student at Berkeley Engineering, and my mom is here visiting. We’d love to get coffee, maybe, or meet for a walk.”
I was ever rueful: “Coffee and a donut, Dora.”
“Ha-ha,” Ricky said. “It’s sent.”
“What?”
“It is sent.”
“Ricky, goddamn it.”
“You’re angry with me.”
“Exact.”
“But if we don’t do anything, how will we find Lucky on the seventh day you arrive when this is the third day already?”
“Sweetie.”
He filled my glass. The champagne was exactly the thing.
“I’m tired of these fish,” I said. “The constant movement, like they can’t make up their minds and just settle down someplace.”
“Then let’s go look at the view, the static humans, and I’ll tell you about school.”
Downstairs we found two severe chairs that turned out to be perfectly comfortable, perfectly positioned, little table between them, the lights of the Embarcadero starting to twinkle, the lights of the ferries. The champagne, too, twinkle, twinkle.
Ricky checked his phone. He was always checking his phone.
“Ooh, she’s answered,” he said.
“What? I’m not ready.”
“It’s a fast world,” he said. “Okay. It’s all caps, no punctuation, your soul sister.”
And he showed me his screen.
oh goodness gracious how wonderful richard i do
remember your mother she was our little runaway and
ruined everything come see me if you like this friday at
one p.m. much to discuss just you
So, on the sixth day I arrived, as Ricky pointed out, he and I climbed out of a pleasant-smelling Uber, this time in the Presidio, beautiful house perched at the apex of the street, built out in back, the landscape falling away to the thousand rooftops below. He’d been talking a mile a minute, had to be back to campus by ten past three, looked as if he’d been up all night, his clothes like they’d been up all month, beautiful clothes nevertheless, sewn by a friend.
She shoved him away violently. He tried again and she laughed—we all laughed—leapt to her feet, backed away from him, from all of us, nearly into the fire. Mr. Drinkins stood, too, and leaned in all puckered up toward her and she punched him square in the nose, not kidding around. He loved that, laughed with us, holding his nose, laughed heartily, his cheek scabbed from Aarto’s boot. I wiped my cheek of Bronco’s kiss, slipped my hand out of his. Lucky up there on the ridge. Francie and Mr. Drinkins at an impasse, but passing the tequila bottle back and forth.
“Come talk to me a minute,” Mr. Drinkins said to Francie.
Cautiously she got up, walked with him into the shadows, no farther, kept him at arm’s length, Mr. Drinkins imprecating, tones we could hear.
Aarto got up and broke sticks. He broke a lot of sticks, added them to the fire, added logs, though it was a warm night.
Francie pushed Mr. Drinkins away—apparently he’d gotten too close. She returned to the fire, Mr. Drinkins following. He searched for something to say, then finally: “You are a good team.”
And Bronco said, “Thankee.”
That struck me as so funny, Francie, too—anyway, we women set in to giggling.
“You’ll miss this girl,” Mr. Drinkins said.
“He got the papers,” Franciella said. “Show the people.”
“We saw,” I said. “They are not impressive.”
Aarto gave me that look: the plan. He said, “That glass looked pretty primo. Clear as.”
At that, Mr. Drinkins fished out an envelope we hadn’t seen. “Now we all got secrets,” he said. He drew out the pages in there, handed them to Aarto, who handed them straight to me.
“A birth certificate?” I said.
“Keep looking.”
“Eleanor Drinkins?”
She’d been born in 1971, whoever she was, so nearly ten years older than Francie and I. A passport, too, dismal crimped photo of a formidable-looking woman, her broad features barely visible, cold stare for the camera.
“Like I told you,” Mr. Drinkins said. “Recently deceased, amen. But these here papers are good. Quite good. The passport was on account we were back and forth to Mexico.”
“And your wife?”
“Oh, she’s hale and hearty, that one. You misunderstand me.”
“He wants to give me a new identity,” Franciella said in just such a way: the plan.
“New identity,” Aarto said, too ironically Bronco. “Now if that don’t beat all.”
“A new identity? Whatever for?” I said.
Mr. Drinkins said, “You kids are on the run. Don’t gas me. No need. But right here is Francie’s keys to the kingdom.”
Franciella was nodding away, as if any of it made sense. She said, “Dale says I can move into Eleanor’s rooms sometime soon.”
Aarto clucked a cowboy cluck.
“Move in, why?” I said.
“Yes, that could use some explanatory phrases,” Aarto drawled, channeling Clay Marvelette.
“Well, maybe this will seal the deal,” Mr. Drinkins said. “A gift from Eleanor to you, Franciella. You’ll have to adjust it some. But it’ll go with your new life down in town.” And he dug in that rucksack and pulled out a large, rolled suede item, spread it across Family Table where we all could see: a kind of gown, stitched in intricate beadwork, gorgeous beyond understanding. “That girl worked on this thing every spare minute going on ten year. It’s a victory robe. Not many victories left for her. That and a headband and Francie’ll pass just fine.”
“Pass,” Francie said.
“Just fine,” Aarto said too unhappily.
Francie was incredulous but managed a light tone: “I’m going to dress up like a cartoon Indian?”
“No, no, like my housekeeper. She’s most real. Or was. She worked hard on this.”
“Yeah, and wait,” I said, too fiery for our game. “How’d Eleanor get the name Drinkins?”
“Well, that’s a long story. We adopted her. She was family.”
“Everyone?” Francie said. She meant Aarto and me, both of us getting edgy, she meant play the game. Trust the plan, is what she meant. Also, trust Francie. And that did soften us.
Bronco went all shocked. “Adopted her, eh?”
Like joking, I said, “You mean you made her family so you didn’t have to pay her?”
He flinched, busted, took a pull of tequila. “Mutually beneficial,” he said, side-eye my direction. Was he trying to look lascivious? He was not good at lascivious, looked lurid instead.
“How’d she die?” I said.
“Plan,” Francie said plainly.
“Sick a long time,” Mr. Drinkins said after some thought. “Never clear what ailed her. She wanted me to have this. Said so. Wanted Francie to have it. Said so. Pass it along to that Black lady on the mountain, she said. Simple as she was.”
Francie stood, unlaced the long gown, and too far into our game for my taste, pulled it over her head, wriggled and hopped and tucked till it was in place, laced it back up, too tight through her broad shoulders, too loose through her narrow hips, hanging to her ankles. She made a turn, girlish for her, looked like victory, all right. Underneath it she pulled her sweatpants off, held the leather up around her stone-sculpted calves. Eleanor, if that was really her name, lived on in that gown, the one true thing about Mr. Drinkins’s story. Beads in the thousands, hundreds of thousands, sewn row by row in undulating waves across the shoulders, yes, easily a decade of fine work, mostly blue in various shades that graduated dark to light to dark again, more colorful at the bust, brown beads on red and ochre and light pink, geometric patterns, earthy colors. And were those birds across the shoulders? And mountain ranges across the belly? Along the hem a jagged but precise green-and-yellow-and-black procession of wapiti, antlers and all, forever migrating. Francie did a twirl, and the wapiti galloped along the ground, kicking up powerful dust.
I felt a chill run from my scalp into my shirt and straight down into my belly. Aarto felt it, too, had visible trouble retaining his bemused smile. Franciella felt it, too, went dark, struggled hastily back into her sweats and out of the gown, laid it again on the table and across the bench between her and Mr. Drinkins, sat seemingly entranced by it, patted the leather, ran her fingernails between the tight rows of beads.
Mr. Drinkins sat close as he could, patted the leather as she did, trying to be natural, hand too close to Francie’s. “Our girl made them beads, too,” he said. “Or a great many of them. You roll clay, you stick a wire through each little tube, slice it up, fire it. I bought her the wire. The clay she dug someplace. She made a kind of Injun oven in the yard.”
“Now not so fast,” Bronco said.
“A Blackfeet oven,” Mr. Drinkins corrected: it wasn’t like he didn’t know his offenses.
I said, “She died and no one took an interest? Died of what, Mr. Drinkins?”
He said, “God don’t watch over all creatures, little lady.”
“God’s plan,” Aarto said. “Plan, plan, plan.” He rose, grabbed the tequila bottle like a pirate, pretended to guzzle but drank nothing, handed the bottle to Mr. Drinkins, who drained it.
Aarto stretched elaborately, then broke the night with a loon call so loud I had to cover my ears. Then another and another, uncanny. So out of place in the near-desert mountains that we laughed. He tugged Drinkins to his feet, and for a long time the two of them did calls across the animal kingdom. Loons and wapiti and moose and eagles, wolf and coyote and even whales—Aarto knew his whales. Mr. Drinkins had a fine marmot and an even better red squirrel, all the rodents. They boisterously built the fire back high, hooted out the various owls, Aarto keeping it going strong: the plan, the plan.
Late, Aarto declared it bedtime. I stood and he took my arm, and we were Mr. and Mrs. Bronco. Francie stood and Mr. Drinkins tried to smooch her. Again she belted him, and he fell back, held that nose, delighted, caught up in our web, might it hold.
Aarto took Mr. Drinkins’s arm and rather forcibly turned him, walked him down the road and out of sight around the corner. You could hear them laughing down there. I drew Francie into the lodge. We decided we weren’t worried about his returning middle of the night looking for more kisses. Like a lot of bad guys, Mr. Drinkins had a kind of chivalry in him, a code of conduct. Murder here, principle there. Anyway, we heard his truck start up and drive off, heard it a long way.
Drunker than he knew, he’d left those preposterously fake divorce papers on the table, but also Eleanor’s startlingly real passport, the sad photos of his home. I stacked it all up and tucked them away with the antique six-shooter. Aarto rolled the gown—Mr. Drinkins had left the gown, too, truly a gift to Francie—and we brought it inside, all its strings attached. The belongings felt like leverage.
“I’ll check on the horses,” Aarto said.
In my room—Lucky’s and my room—I stripped quickly, climbed into bed in my fresh pink underpants from Clay and size giant T-shirt. Outside we heard Aarto’s yodel, neither man nor beast, and Lucky’s reply from up on the ridge.
Aarto came in, all quiet. He stripped to his Swedish skivvies and T, climbed in beside me, my pretend husband, just in case our friend returned in the night. Aarto weighed double what Lucky weighed, a vast presence, the bed of boughs and fragrant pine needles and soft mosses collapsing us together in a trough. He smelled good, too, maybe the sagebrush he was always rubbing on himself, and the chill of the evening was on his skin still, his butt backed up hard against my thighs. I didn’t want to spoon him so rolled away, difficult in the sagging bed, finally pressed my own butt against the long wall of his back.
He said, “Yore wriggling like a tadpole in a bucket.”
“I feel more like a netted whale pulled up against the ship,” I said.
“Well, it’s true you’re fat in the middle,” he drawled, “but you’re doggone cute at each end.”
“Thankee, Bronco,” I said.
“That’s enough in there,” Francie called.
We said our goodnights, Aarto breathing like canyon wind. And I tell you, I felt the greatness of him. I thought of Lucky, sent him a wave of love that I hoped he’d feel, swore I felt the wave return. At last, then, I slept, safe against the rampart of my own personal cowboy, let the monster even try.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Almost forty, and I had no vehicle. But my neighbor Jack let me use his daughter’s college car while she was abroad, an impossibly tiny Fiat, color of a tomato. I visited the laundromat, washing and folding absolutely everything to give to Goodwill, lived on convenience-store groceries, ate up every canned or frozen thing in the house, went to afternoon movies—Walter hated movies, talked all the way through, couldn’t give himself up to them (“They’re just actors, Cindra”). The movies made me cry. They made me laugh. They were my emotional life. One of them gave me the housesitting idea. I got on a website that matched “quality sitters with quality houses,” passed the screening, immediately found a posting in San Francisco, a diplomat’s home, open ended, take care of gardens and pets, to begin March 1. Their houseman and cook were going with them to Asia. Once I was settled in, their housekeeper would come by three afternoons a week to clean in case I’d think no one would be paying attention. The houseman interviewed me, super stern, his English accented and formal, then, my having pleased him, put me on with the lady of the house. She was so interested in Ricky, in Ricky’s heritage. They loved Montana, frequent fishing trips. There were eleven other applications of interest. She liked how I talked dirt—garden dirt, I mean—they liked my biography: widow, thirty-nine, seeks new life. They liked that my son was in school nearby. I suspect they liked that I was white like them yet checked a diversity box or two. For pets they had fish and land crabs and lizards, perfect. For references I had my neighbor Jack and my volunteer lawyer, Carl “Ronnie” Ronson, apparently sufficient: the houseman spoke to both. The last hurdle upon my arrival would be a conversation with their daughter, my age, unlikely to be a problem, said the lady of the house.
“A leap of faith,” I said, meaning for me.
“We have insurance,” the lady replied.
Late January I canceled all utilities as of one month hence and hosted a series of yard sales, the first formal, the last ten cents a bag, shower curtains and all. Neighbor Jack (not a Walter fan after years of petty disputes) let me store twenty boxes and one crate of Legos in his shed, adopted my houseplants. I brought the mailbox in, no forwarding address, left the house echoingly empty, the least I could do, ran through with a mop and a broom, gave Jack the keys so he could take possession of the last thing: my beloved mattress, complete with bedding.
I put everything I wanted—clothes, mostly, one extra pair of shoes, a single precious book, my Felco trimmers and garden apron, my pearl, our wilderness notebook, a ceramic turtle made by Ricky in fourth grade, the odd toiletries—into one medium roller suitcase, the rule I’d made for myself. Jack drove me to the T, the T took me to South Station, and from there it was Amtrak to San Francisco (to fly seemed too quick) and an Uber to my new digs, a seemingly modest stack of glass-and-steel boxes that climbed Telegraph Hill among terraced gardens.
The diplomat’s daughter, lovely woman, let me in the back-side kitchen through a brick archway under vines, small windows to an overgrown but pretty tea garden, vetted me over finger foods, a lot of laughter, thank goodness—I was in. Upstairs she showed me the full-wall fish tanks, like windows in the dark back side of the home, incredibly colored reef fish and fancy shrimp, bright sea anemones waving placidly, reptile terrarium adjacent, big as a room, crawling with lizards and tree crabs and, yes, turtles, all maintained professionally—my job was feeding. The housekeeper would be by a week from Monday to meet me, not too early, ha-ha, “Florita. She’s a lovely woman, Mexico City Mexican and as sweet as pie, but a field marshal, I’m telling you—be sure to tidy up for her!” And then to the front of the house, which hung as if floating, vast windows looking out on the bay and the whole world, Alcatraz out there, the Golden Gate, the Bay Bridge, too, which was the bridge to Ricky. My room was the bottom box, accessed via spirals, a terrarium itself, lots of glass, bathroom black, bed like heaven. When my hostess was gone, I flopped on it, slept through dinner, through the night, woke to the view, slept again till noon, then three.
I loved San Francisco unreservedly, being a lover of views, for one thing, and the ocean, for another, also fog banks, and spring so much further along than back in Massachusetts. I walked everywhere, got myself set up. Maria had said I’d find Lucky the seventh day I arrived. I struggled to believe, to make that mean something. Maybe that I’d find some kind of peace—Maria was ever allusive, one thing meaning another.
Because lest I forget, Lucky was dead.
Ricky came over the third day I arrived, which was a Tuesday, after a busy week for him, bottle of champagne. We sat upstairs in big leather chairs, watching the fish, drinking from the most elegant crystal, Indian takeout. After a couple of flutes and a lot of tikka masala picked up with naan, he said, “I found Donut Dora.”
To which I replied, “Ha-ha.”
“No,” he said, “I really did.”
I don’t think he expected me to be unhappy. “Ricky, no.”
“Momma, yes. She’s my grandmother, for one thing, so I’m well within my rights. She’s here in San Francisco. It’s her town. It’s where she met my grandfather.”
“It’s where she got in trouble.”
“I found her on Instagram. We could DM her.”
“What does that even mean?”
He opened his phone, opened her IG page, as he called it, and there was her reprehensible name on a fancy hardcover memoir, real publisher, dramatic cover, photo of her at thirteen with her index finger through the hole of a spinning donut: The Karter Kids.
He said, “What should we write to her?”
“We should write to her nothing.”
“No. We will say Hello, Grandmother.” He began to type, well within his rights, damn him, narrating all the way. “This is Mountain Turtle, also known as Ricky Zoeller Sing. I am the son of Lucky Turtle and Cindra Zoeller.”
“Better not to mention me!”
“Of course mention you. Let’s see . . . I’m a grad student at Berkeley Engineering, and my mom is here visiting. We’d love to get coffee, maybe, or meet for a walk.”
I was ever rueful: “Coffee and a donut, Dora.”
“Ha-ha,” Ricky said. “It’s sent.”
“What?”
“It is sent.”
“Ricky, goddamn it.”
“You’re angry with me.”
“Exact.”
“But if we don’t do anything, how will we find Lucky on the seventh day you arrive when this is the third day already?”
“Sweetie.”
He filled my glass. The champagne was exactly the thing.
“I’m tired of these fish,” I said. “The constant movement, like they can’t make up their minds and just settle down someplace.”
“Then let’s go look at the view, the static humans, and I’ll tell you about school.”
Downstairs we found two severe chairs that turned out to be perfectly comfortable, perfectly positioned, little table between them, the lights of the Embarcadero starting to twinkle, the lights of the ferries. The champagne, too, twinkle, twinkle.
Ricky checked his phone. He was always checking his phone.
“Ooh, she’s answered,” he said.
“What? I’m not ready.”
“It’s a fast world,” he said. “Okay. It’s all caps, no punctuation, your soul sister.”
And he showed me his screen.
oh goodness gracious how wonderful richard i do
remember your mother she was our little runaway and
ruined everything come see me if you like this friday at
one p.m. much to discuss just you
So, on the sixth day I arrived, as Ricky pointed out, he and I climbed out of a pleasant-smelling Uber, this time in the Presidio, beautiful house perched at the apex of the street, built out in back, the landscape falling away to the thousand rooftops below. He’d been talking a mile a minute, had to be back to campus by ten past three, looked as if he’d been up all night, his clothes like they’d been up all month, beautiful clothes nevertheless, sewn by a friend.
