Ellen Gilchrist, page 12
“I’ll find out who it was,” Dudley said, shaking his fist. “I’ll find out who it was.”
“You don’t know it was anybody,” Joe said. “You don’t even know what happened, Mr. D. Now you got to calm down and in the morning we’ll find out what happened. More than likely she’s just been holed up somewhere trying to scare you.”
“I know what happened,” Dudley said. “I already know what happened.”
“Well, you can find out who it was and you can kill him if you have to,” Joe said. “If it’s true and you still want to in the morning, you can kill him.”
But there would be no killing. By the time the moon was high, Johnny Hazard was halfway between Lexington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio, with a bus ticket he bought with the fifty dollars he’d taken from Rhoda’s pocket. He had called the poetry teacher and told her he was coming. Johnny had decided it was time to see the world. After all, that very afternoon a rich cheerleader had cried in his arms and given him her cherry. There was no telling what might happen next.
Much later that night Rhoda woke up in the small room, hearing the wind come up in the trees. The window was open and the moon, now low in the sky and covered with mist, poured a diffused light upon the bed. Rhoda sat up in the bed and shivered. Why did I do that with him? she thought. Why in the world did I do that? But I couldn’t help it, she decided. He’s so sophisticated and he’s so good-looking and he’s a wonderful driver and he plays a guitar. She moved her hands along her thighs, trying to remember exactly what it was they had done, trying to remember the details, wondering where she could find him in the morning.
But Dudley had other plans for Rhoda in the morning. By noon she was on her way home in a chartered plane. Rhoda had never been on an airplane of any kind before, but she didn’t let on.
“I’m thinking of starting a diary,” she was saying to the pilot, arranging her skirt so her knees would show. “A lot of unusual things have been happening to me lately. The boy I love is dying of cancer in Saint Louis. It’s very sad, but I have to put up with it. He wants me to write a lot of books and dedicate them to his memory.”
The pilot didn’t seem to be paying much attention, so Rhoda gave up on him and went back into her own head.
In her head Bob Rosen was alive after all. He was walking along a street in Greenwich Village and passed a bookstore with a window full of her books, many copies stacked in a pyramid with her picture on every cover. He recognized the photograph, ran into the bookstore, grabbed a book, opened it and saw the dedication. To Bob Rosen, Te Amo Forever, Rhoda.
Then Bob Rosen, or maybe it was Johnny Hazard, or maybe this unfriendly pilot, stood there on that city street, looking up at the sky, holding the book against his chest, crying and broken-hearted because Rhoda was lost to him forever, this famous author, who could have been his, lost to him forever.
Thirty years later Rhoda woke up in a hotel room in New York City. There was a letter lying on the floor where she had thrown it when she went to bed. She picked it up and read it again. Take my name off that book, the letter said. Imagine a girl with your advantages writing a book like that. Your mother is so ashamed of you.
Goddamn you, Rhoda thought. Goddamn you to hell. She climbed back into the bed and pulled the pillows over her head. She lay there for a while feeling sorry for herself. Then she got up and walked across the room and pulled a legal pad out of a briefcase and started writing.
Dear Father,
You take my name off those checks you send those television preachers and those goddamn right-wing politicians. That name has come to me from a hundred generations of men and women… also, in the future let my mother speak for herself about my work.
Love,
Rhoda
P.S. The slate was put there by the second law of thermodynamics. Some folks call it gravity. Other folks call it God.
I guess it was the second law, she thought. It was the second law or the third law or something like that. She leaned back in the chair, looking at the ceiling. Maybe I’d better find out before I mail it.
JADE BUDDHAS, RED BRIDGES, FRUITS OF LOVE
SHE HAD WRITTEN TO HIM, since neither of them had a phone.
I’ll be there Sunday morning at four. It’s called the Night Owl flight in case you forget the number. The number’s 349. If you can’t come get me I’ll get a taxi and come on over. I saw Johnny Vidocovitch last night. He’s got a new bass player. He told Ron he could afford to get married now that he’d found his bass player. Doesn’t that sound just like him? I want to go to that chocolate place in San Francisco the minute I get there. And lie down with you in the dark for a million years. Or in the daylight. I love you. Nora Jane
He wasn’t there. He wasn’t at the gate. Then he wasn’t in the terminal. Then he wasn’t at the baggage carousel. Nora Jane stood by the carousel taking her hat on and off, watching a boy in cowboy boots kiss his girlfriend in front of everyone at the airport. He would run his hands down her flowered skirt and then kiss her again.
Finally the bags came. Nora Jane got her flat shoes out of her backpack and went on out to find a taxi. It’s because I was too cheap to get a phone, she told herself. I knew I should have had a phone.
She found a taxi and was driven off into the hazy early morning light of San Jose. The five hundred and forty dollars she got from the robbery was rolled up in her bag. The hundred and twenty she saved from her job was in her bra. She had been awake all night. And something was wrong. Something had gone wrong.
“You been out here before?” the driver said.
“It’s the first time I’ve been farther west than Alexandria,” she said. “I’ve hardly ever been anywhere.”
“How old are you?” he said. He was in a good mood. He had just gotten a $100 tip from a drunk movie star. Besides, the little black-haired girl in the back seat had the kind of face you can’t help being nice to.
“I’ll be twenty this month,” she said. “I’m a Moonchild. They used to call it Cancer but they changed. Do you believe in that stuff ?”
“I don’t know,” the driver said. “Some days I believe in anything. Look over there. Sun’s coming up behind the mountains.”
“Oh, my,” she said. “I forgot there would be mountains.”
“On a clear day you can see Mount Diablo. You ought to go while you’re out here. You can see eighty percent of California from it. You came out to visit someone?”
“My boyfriend. Well, he’s my fiancé. Sometimes he has to work at night. He wasn’t sure he could meet me. Is it far? To where I’m going?” They were in a neighborhood now, driving past rows of stucco cottages, built close together like houses in the Irish Channel. The yards looked brown and bare as if they needed rain.
“Couple of blocks. These are nice old neighborhoods. My sister used to live out here. It’s called the Lewis tract.” He turned a corner and came to a stop before a small pink house with an overgrown yard.
“Four fifty-one. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“You want me to wait till you see if anyone’s here?”
“No, I’ll just get out.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.” She watched as he backed and turned and went on off down the road, little clouds of dust rising behind the wheels. She stood looking up the path to the door. A red tree peeling like a sunburn shaded the yard. Here and there a few scraggly petunias bloomed in boxes. Get your ass out here and see where the USA is headed, Sandy had written her. I’ve got lots of plans. No phone as yet. Bring some French bread. Everything out here is sourdough. Yours forever, Sandy. He’s here, she thought. I know he’s here.
She walked on up the path. There was a spider’s web across the screen door. They can make one overnight, she told herself. It’s nothing to make one overnight.
She rang the doorbell and waited. Then she walked around to the back and looked in the window. It was a large room with a modern-looking stove and a tile floor. I’m going in, she decided. I’m worn out. I’m going in.
She picked up a rock and broke a pane of glass in the door, then carefully picked out all the broken pieces and put them in a pile under the steps. She reached her hand in the opening, undid the latch and went on in. It was Sandy’s house all right. His old Jazzfest poster of Dr. John and the Mardi Gras Indians was hanging on a wall. A few clothes were in the closets. Not many. Still, Sandy traveled light. He’ll be back, she thought. He’s just gone somewhere.
She walked around the house looking for clues. She found only a map of San Francisco with some circles drawn on it, and a list, on an envelope, from something called the Paris Hotel. Willets, it said. Berkeley, Sebastopol, Ukiah, Petaluma, Occidental.
She walked back into the kitchen looking for something to eat. The refrigerator was propped open with a blue tile. Maybe he’s in jail, she thought. Maybe I got here just in time.
She reached up a fingernail and flipped open a greeting card that was tacked up over the stove. It was a photograph of a snow-covered mountain with purple fields below and blue skies above. A hawk, or perhaps it was a buzzard, was flying over the mountain. FREEDOM IS THE GREATEST GIFT THAT ONE CAN GIVE ANOTHER, the card said. IT IS A GIFT BORN OF LOVE, TRUST, AND UNDERSTANDING. Nora Jane pulled out the pushpin and read the message inside.
Dear Sandy,
I am glad I am going to be away from you during our two weeks of abstinence. You were so supportive once you realized I was freaking out. I want to thank you for being there for me. We have climbed the mountain together now and also the valley. I hope the valley wasn’t too low for you.
I know this has been hard on you. You have had to deal with a lot of new feelings and need time to adjust to them. We will both hopefully grow from this experience. I want us to have many more meaningful experiences together. I love you more than words can say. In deepest friendship.
Pam
I’m hungry, Nora Jane thought. I’m starving. She walked over to a bed in a corner. She guessed it was a bed. It was a mattress on top of a platform made of some kind of green stone. It looked more like a place to sacrifice someone than a place to sleep.
She put her pack up on the bed and began riffling through the pockets for the candy bar she had saved from a snack on the plane. When she found it she tore open the cardboard box and began to eat it, slowly at first, then faster. I don’t know, she thought. I just don’t know. She leaned up against the green stone platform eating the chocolate, watching the light coming in the window through the leaves of the red tree making patches on the mattress. That’s all we are, she decided. Patches of light and darkness. Things that cast shadows.
She ate the rest of the candy, stopping every now and then to lick her fingers. When she was finished she folded the candy box and put it carefully away in her pack. Nora Jane never littered anything. So far in her life she had not thrown down a single gum wrapper.
During the next week there were four earthquakes in the Bay Area. A five point, then a four point, then a two, then a three. The first one woke her in the middle of the night. She was asleep in a room she had rented near the Berkeley campus. At first she thought a cat had walked across the bed. Then she thought the world had come to an end. Then the lights went on. Everyone in the house gathered in the upstairs hall. When the excitement wore down a Chinese mathematician and his wife fixed tea in their room. “Very lucky to be here for that one,” Tam Suyin assured Nora Jane. “Sometimes have to wait long time to experience big one.”
“I was in a hurricane once,” Nora Jane said. “I had to get evacuated when Camille came.”
“Oh,” Tam said to her husband. “Did you hear that? Miss Whittington have to be evacuated during hurricane. Which one you find most interesting experience, Miss Whittington, earthquake or hurricane?”
“I don’t know,” Nora Jane said. She was admiring the room, which was as bare as a nun’s cell. “I guess the hurricane. It lasted longer.”
The next morning she felt better than she had in a week. She was almost glad to be alive. She bought croissants from a little shop on Tamalpais Street, then spent some time decorating her room to look like a nun’s cell. She put everything she owned in the closet. She covered the bed with a white sheet. She took down the drapes. She put the rug away and cleaned the floor. She bought flowers and put them on the dresser.
That afternoon she found a theatrical supply store on Shattuck Avenue and bought a stage pistol. It was time to get to work.
“What are you doing?” the proprietor said.
“Happy Birthday, Nora Jane. Have you ever seen it?”
“The Vonnegut play? The one with the animal heads?”
“No, this is an original script. It’s a new group on the campus.”
“Bring a poster by when you get them ready. We like to advertise our customers.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. “As soon as we get some printed.”
“When’s it scheduled for?”
“Oh, right away. As soon as we can whip it together.”
Freddy Harwood walked down Telegraph Avenue thinking about everyone who adored him. He had just run into Buiji. She had let him buy her a café mocca at the Met. She had let him hold her hand. She had told him all about the horrible time she was having with Dudley. She told him about the au pair girl and the night he threatened her with a gun and the time he choked her and what he said about her friends. It was Freddy she loved, she said. Freddy she adored. Freddy she worshipped. Freddy’s hairy stomach and strong arms and level head she longed for. She was counting the days until she was free.
I ought to run for office, he was thinking. And just to think, I could have thrown it all away. I could have been a wastrel like Augustine. But no, I chose another way. The prince’s way. Noblesse oblige. Ah, duty, sweet mistress.
Freddy Harwood was the founder and owner of the biggest and least profitable bookstore in northern California. He had one each of every book worth reading in the English language. He had everything that was still in print and a lot that was out of print. He knew dozens of writers. Writers adored him. He gave them autograph parties and unlimited credit and kept their books in stock. He even read their books. He went that far. He actually read their books.
In return they were making him famous. Already he was the hero of three short stories and a science fiction film. Last month California Magazine had named him one of the Bay Area’s ten most eligible bachelors. Not that he needed the publicity. He already had more women than he knew what to do with. He had Aline and Rita and Janey and Lila and Barbara Hunnicutt, when she was in between tournaments. Not to mention Buiji. Well, he was thinking about settling down. There are limits, he said to himself. Even to Grandmother’s money. There are perimeters and prices to pay.
He wandered across Blake Street against the light, trying to choose among his women. A man in a baseball cap took him by the arm and led him back to the sidewalk.
“Nieman,” he said. “What are you doing in town?”
“Looking for you. I’ve got to see three films between now and twelve o’clock. Go with me. I’ll let you help write the reviews.”
“I can’t. I’m up to my ass in the IRS. I’ll be working all night.”
“Tomorrow then. I’m at Gautier’s. Call me for breakfast.”
“If I get through. If I can.”
“Holy shit,” Nieman said. “Did you see that?” Nora Jane had just passed them going six miles an hour down the sidewalk. She was wearing black and white striped running shorts and a pair of canvas wedgies with black ankle straps, her hair curling all over her head like a dark cloud.
“This city will kill me,” Freddy said. “I’m moving back to Gualala.”
“Let’s catch her,” Nieman said. “Let’s take her to the movies.”
“I can’t,” Freddy said. “I have to work.”
An hour later his computer broke. He rapped it across the desk several times, then beat it against the chair. Still no light. He laid it down on a pile of papers and decided to take a break. An accountant, he was thinking. They’ve turned me into an accountant. Nora Jane was sitting by a window of the Atelier reading The Bridge of San Luis Rey. She was deep into a description of Uncle Pio. “He possessed the six attributes of an adventurer—a memory for names and faces; with the aptitude for altering his own; the gift of tongues; inexhaustible invention; secrecy; the talent for falling into conversation with strangers; and that freedom from conscience that springs from a contempt for the dozing rich he preyed upon.” That’s just like me, Nora Jane was thinking. She felt in her bag for the gun. It was still there.
Freddy sat down at a table near hers. Your legs are proof of the existence of God. No, not that. What if she’s an atheist? If I could decipher the Rosetta Stone of your anklestraps. My best friend just died. My grandmother owns Sears Roebuck.
“I haven’t seen one of those old Time-Life editions of that book in years,” he said. “I own a bookstore. May I look at that a minute?”
“Sure you can,” she said. “It’s a great book. I bought it in New Orleans. That’s where I’m from.”
“Ah, the crescent city. I know it well. Where did you live? In what part of town?”
“Near the park. Near Tulane.”
“On Exposition?”
“No, on Story Street. Near Calhoun.” She handed him the book. He took it from her and sat down at the table.
“Oh, this is very interesting, finding this,” he said. “This series was so well designed. Look at this cover. You don’t see them like this now.”
“I’ve been looking for a bookstore to go to,” she said. “I haven’t been here long. I don’t know my way around yet.”
“Well, the best bookstore in the world is right down the street. Finish your coffee and I’ll take you there. Clara, I call it. Clara, for light. You know, the patron saint of light.”
