Ellen Gilchrist, page 24
After a while he started the car and they went to the sweetshop and ate ham sandwiches and talked to people and then drove over to the Buchanans’ house and he left her there and walked the six blocks home with his hands in his pockets. He was counting the months he might live. He thought it would be twenty-four but it turned out to be a lifetime after all.
THE STARLIGHT EXPRESS
NORA JANE was seven months pregnant when Sandy disappeared again. Dear Baby, the note said. I can’t take it. Here’s all the money that is left. Don’t get mad if you can help it. I love you, Sandy.
She folded up the note and put it in a drawer. Then she made up the bed. Then she went outside and walked along the water’s edge. At least we are living on the water, she was thinking. I always get lucky about things like that. Well, I know one thing. I’m going to have these babies no matter what I have to do and I’m going to keep them alive. They won’t die on me or get drunk or take cocaine. Freddy was right. A decent home is the best thing.
Nora Jane was on a beach fifty miles south of San Francisco, beside a little stucco house Sandy’s old employer had been renting them for next to nothing. Nora Jane had never liked living in that house. Still, it was on the ocean.
The ocean spread out before her now, gray and dark, breaking against the boulders where it turned into a little cove. There were places where people had been making fires. Nora Jane began to pick up all the litter she could find and put it in a pile beside a fire site. She walked around for half an hour picking up cans and barrettes and half-burned pieces of cardboard and piled them up beside a boulder. Then she went back to the house and got some charcoal lighter and a match and lit the mess and watched it burn. It was the middle of October. December the fifteenth was only two months away. I could go to Freddy, she was thinking. He will always love me and forgive me anything. But what will it do to him? Do I have a right to get around him so he’ll only love me more? This was a question Nora Jane was always asking herself about Freddy Harwood. Now she asked it once again.
A cold wind was blowing off the ocean. She picked up a piece of driftwood and added it to the fire. She sank down upon the sand. She was carrying ten pounds of babies but she moved as gracefully as ever. She wiggled around until her back was against the boulder, sitting up very straight, not giving in to the cold or the wind. I’m one of those people that could go to the Himalayas, she decided. Because I never give in to cold. If you hunch over it will get you.
Freddy Harwood stood on the porch of his half-finished house, deep in the woods outside of Willits, California, and thought about Nora Jane. He was thinking about her voice, trying to remember how it sounded when she said his name. If I could remember that sound, he decided. If I could remember what she said that first night it would be enough. If that’s all I get it will have to do.
He looked deep into the woods, past the madrone tree, where once he had seen a bobcat come walking out and stop at the place where the trees ended and the grass began. A huge yellow cat with a muff around its neck and brilliant eyes. A poet had been visiting and they had made up a song about the afternoon called “The Great Bobcat Visit and Other Mysteries of Willits.” If she was here I could teach it to her, Freddy thought. So, there I go again. Everything either reminds me of her or it doesn’t remind me of her, so everything reminds me of her. What good does it do to have six million dollars and two houses and a bookstore if I’m in love with Nora Jane? Freddy left his bobcat lookout and walked around the side of the house toward the road. A man was hurrying up the path.
It was his neighbor, Sam Lyons, who lived a few miles away up an impassable road. Freddy waved and went to meet him. He’s coming to tell me she’s dead, he decided. She died in childbirth in the hands of a midwife in Chinatown and I’m supposed to go on living after that. “What’s happening?” he called out. “What’s going on?”
“You got a call,” Sam said. “Your girlfriend’s coming on the train. I’m getting tired of this, Harwood. You get yourself a phone. That’s twice this week. Two calls in one week! ”
In a small neat room near the Berkeley campus a young Chinese geneticist named Lin Tan Sing packed a change of clothes and his toilet articles, left a note for himself about some things to do when he returned, and walked out into the beautiful fall day. He had been saving his money for a vacation and today was the day it began. As soon as he finished work that afternoon he would ride the subway to the train station and get on board the Starlight Express and travel all the way up the California coast to Puget Sound. He would see the world. My eyes have gone too far inside, Lin Tan told himself. Now I will go outside and see what’s happening at other end. People will look at me and I will look at them. We will learn about each other. Perhaps the train will fall off cliff into the ocean. There will be stories in the newspapers. Young Chinese scientist saves many lives in daring rescues. President of United States invites young Chinese scientist to live in White House and tutor children of politicians. Young Chinese scientist adopted by wealthy man whose life he saves in train wreck. I am only a humble scientist trying to unravel genetic code, young Chinese scientist tells reporters. Did not mean to be hero. Do not know what came over me. I pushed on fallen car and great strength came to me when it was least expected.
Lin Tan entered the Berkeley campus and strolled along a sidewalk leading to the student union. Students were all around. A man in black was playing a piano beneath a tree. The sky was clear with only a few clouds to the west. The Starlight Express, Lin Tan was thinking. All Plexiglas across the top. Stars rolling by while I am inside with something nice to drink. Who knows? Perhaps I will find a girl on the train who wishes to talk with me. I will tell her all things scientific and also of poetry. I will tell her the poetry of my country and also of England. Lin Tan folded his hands before him as he walked, already he was on the train, speeding up the California coast telling some dazzling blonde the story of his life and all about his work. Lin Tan worked at night in the lab of the Berkeley Women’s Clinic. He did chemical analyses on the fluid removed during amniocentesis. So far he had made only one mistake in his work. One time a test had to be repeated because he knocked a petri dish off the table with his sleeve. Except for that his results had proved correct in every single instance. No one else in the lab had such a record. Because of this Lin Tan always kept his head politely bowed in the halls and was extra-nice to the other technicians and generous with advice and help. He had a fellowship in the graduate program in biology and he had this easy part-time job and his sister, Jade Tan Sing, was coming in six months to join him. Only one thing was lacking in Lin Tan’s life and that was a girlfriend. He had what he considered a flaw in his character and wished to be in love with a Western girl with blond hair. It was only fate, the I Ching assured him. A fateful flaw that would cause disaster and ruin but not of his own doing and therefore nothing to worry about.
On this train, he was thinking, I will sit up straight and hold my head high. If she asks where I come from I will say Shanghai or Hong Kong as it is difficult for them to picture village life in China without thinking of rice paddies. I am a businessman, I will say, and have only taken time off to learn science. No, I will say only the truth so she may gaze into my eyes and be at peace. I will buy you jewels and perfume, I will tell her. Robes with silken dragons eating the moon, many pearls. Shoes with flowers embroidered on them for every minute of the day. Look out the Plexiglas ceiling at the stars. They are whirling by and so are we even when we are off the train.
Nora Jane bought her ticket and went outside to get some air while she waited for the train. She was wearing a long gray sweatshirt with a black leather belt riding on top of the twins. On her legs were bright yellow tights and yellow ballet shoes. A yellow and white scarf was tied around her black curls. She looked just about as wonderful as someone carrying ten pounds of babies could ever look in the world. She was deserted and unwed and on her way to find a man whose heart she had broken only four months before and she should have been in a terrible mood but she couldn’t work up much enthusiasm for despair. Whatever chemicals Tammili and Lydia were pumping into her bloodstream were working nicely to keep Nora Jane in a good mood. She stood outside the train station watching a line of cirrus clouds chugging along the horizon, thinking about the outfits she would buy for her babies as soon as they were born. Nora Jane loved clothes. She couldn’t wait until she had three people to dress instead of only one. All her life she had wanted to be able to wear all her favorite colors at one time. Now she would have her chance. She could just see herself walking into a drugstore holding her little girls by the hand. Tammili would be wearing blue. Lydia would be wearing red or pink. Nora Jane would have on peach or mauve or her old standby, yellow. Unless that was too many primaries on one day. I’ll start singing, she decided. That way I can work at night while they’re asleep. I have to have some money of my own. I don’t want anyone supporting us. When I go shopping and buy stuff I don’t want anybody saying why did you get this stuff and you didn’t need that shirt and so forth. As soon as they’re born I’ll be able to work and make some money. Nieman said I could sing anyplace in San Francisco. Nieman should know. After all, he writes for the newspaper. If they don’t like it then I’ll just get a job in a day-care center like I meant to last fall. I’ll do whatever I have to do.
A whistle blew. Nora Jane walked back down the concrete stairs. “Starlight Express,” a black voice was calling out. “Get on board for the long haul to Washington State. Don’t go if you’re scared of stars. Stars all the way to Marin, San Rafael, Petaluma, and Sebastopol. Stars all the way to Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Stars to Alaska and points north. Stars to the North Pole. Get on board this train….”
Nora Jane threw her backpack over her shoulder and ran for the train. Lin Tan caught a glimpse of her yellow stockings and reminded himself not to completely rule out black hair in his search for happiness.
Freddy Harwood was straightening up his house. He moved the wooden table holding his jigsaw puzzle of the suspended whale from the Museum of Natural History. He watered his paper-white narcissus. He got a broom out of a closet and began to sweep the floor. He found a column Nieman did about My Dinner with André and leaned on the broom reading it. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and there was no reason to leave for the station before five. They aren’t my babies, he reminded himself. She’s having someone else’s babies and they aren’t mine and I don’t want them anyway. Why do I want her at all? Because I like to talk to her, that’s why. I like to talk to her more than anyone in the world. That’s that. It’s my business. Mine and only mine. I like to look at her and I like to talk to her. Jesus Christ! Could I have a maid? I mean would it violate every tenet if I had a maid once a week?
He threw the broom into a closet and pulled on his boots and walked out into the yard to look for the bobcat.
The house Freddy was stamping out of was a structure he had been building on and off for years. It was in Mendocino County near the town of Willits and could only be reached by a long winding uphill road that became impassable when it rained. Actually, it was impassable when it didn’t rain but Freddy and his lone neighbor put their four-wheel jeeps in gear and pretended the rock-covered path was a road. Sometimes it even looked like a road, from the right angle and if several trips had been made in a single spell of dry weather.
The house sat on high ground and had several amazing views. To the west lay the coastal ranges of northern California. To the east the state game refuge of the Mendocino National Forest. In any direction were spruce trees and Douglas fir and Northern pine. Freddy had bought the place with the first money he ever earned. That was years ago, during the time when he stopped speaking to his family and smoked dope all day and worked as a chimney sweep. He had lived in a van and saved twelve thousand dollars. Then he had driven up the California coast until he found Douglas fir on land with no roads leading to it. He bought as much as twelve thousand dollars would buy. Two acres, almost three. Then he set up a tent and started building. He built a cistern to catch water and laid pipes to carry it to where the kitchen would later be. He leveled the land and poured a concrete foundation and marked off rooms and hauled stones for a fireplace. He planted fruit trees and a vineyard and put in root plants and an herb garden for medical emergencies. He had been working on the house off and on for twenty-three years. The house was as much a part of Freddy Harwood as his skin. When he was away from Willits for long stretches of time, he thought about the house every day, the red sun of early morning and the redder sun of sundown. The eyes of the bobcat in the woods, the endless lines of mountains in the distance. The taste of the air and the taste of the water. His body sleeping in peace in his own invention.
Now she’s ruined my house for me, he was thinking, leaning against the madrone tree while he waited for the bobcat. She’s slept in all the rooms and sat on the chairs and touched the furniture. She’s used all the forks and spoons and moved the table. I’m putting it back where it goes today. Well, let her come up here and beg for mercy. I don’t care. I’ll give it to her. Let her cry her dumb little Roman Catholic heart out. I guess she looks like hell. I bet she’s as big as a house. Well, shit, not that again.
He turned toward the house. A redbird was throwing itself against the windows. Bird in the house means bad luck. Well, don’t let it get in. I’ll have to put some screens on those windows. Ruin the light.
The house was very tall with many windows. It was a house a child might draw, tall and thin. Inside were six rooms, or areas, filled with books and mattresses and lamps and tables. Everything was white or black or brown or gray. Freddy had made all the furniture himself except for two chairs by Mies van der Rohe. A closet held all of Buiji Dalton’s pottery in case she should come to visit. A shelf held Nieman’s books. On a peg behind the bathroom door was Nora Jane’s yellow silk kimono.
When she comes, Freddy was saying to himself as he trudged back up the hill to do something about the bird, I won’t say a word about anything. I’ll just act like everything is normal. Sam came over and said you’d be on the train and it was getting into Fort Bragg at eight and would I meet you. Well, great. I mean, what brought you here? I thought you and the robber baron had settled down for the duration. I mean, I thought I’d never see you again. I mean, it’s okay with me. It’s not your fault I am an extremely passionate and uncontrollably sensitive personality. I can tell you one thing. It’s not easy being this sensitive. Oh, shit, he concluded. I’ll just go on and get drunk. I’m a match for her when I’m drunk. Drunk, I’m a match for anyone, even Nora Jane. He opened the closet and reached in behind one of Buiji Dalton’s hand-painted Egyptian funeral urns and took out a bottle of Red Aubruch his brother had sent from somewhere. He found a corkscrew and opened it. He passed the cork before his nose, then lifted the bottle and began to drink. “There ain’t no little bottle,” he was thinking. “Like that old bottle of mine.”
At about the same time that Freddy Harwood was resorting to this time-honored method of acquiring courage, Lin Tan Sing was using a similar approach aboard the Starlight Express. He was drinking gin and trying not to stare at the yellow stockings which were all he could see of Nora Jane. She was in a high-backed swivel chair turned around to look out the glassed-in back of the train. She was thinking about whales, how they had their babies in the water, and also about Sandra Draine, who had a baby in a tub of saltwater in Sausalito while her husband videotaped the birth. They had shown the tape at the gallery when Sandra had her fall show. It won’t be like that for me, Nora Jane was thinking. I’m not letting anyone take any pictures or even come in the room except the doctor and maybe Freddy, but no cameras. I know he’ll want to bring a camera, if he’s there. He’s the silliest man I have ever known.
But I love him anyway. And I hate to do this to him but I have to do what I have to do. I can’t be alone now. I have to go somewhere. The train rounded a curve. The wheels screeched. Nora Jane’s chair swiveled around. Her feet flew out and she hit Lin Tan in the knee with a ballet shoe.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “Did I hurt you?”
“It is nothing.”
“We hit a curve. I’m really sorry. I thought the chair was fastened down.”
“You are going to have a baby?” His face was very close to her face. It was the largest oriental face Nora Jane had ever seen. The darkest eyes. She had not known there were eyes that dark in all the world, even in China. She lowered her own.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
“I am geneticist. This interests me very much.”
“It does me too.”
“Would you like to talk with me?”
“Sure. I’d like to have someone to talk to. I was just thinking about the whales. I guess they don’t even know it’s cold, do they?”
“I have gone out in kayak to be near them. It is very mysterious. It was the best experience I have had in California. A friend of mine in lab at Berkeley Women’s Clinic took me with him. He heads a team of volunteers to collect money for whales. Next summer I will go again.”
“Oh, my God. That’s where I go. I mean, that’s my doctor. I’m going to have twin baby girls. I had an amnio at your clinic. That’s how I know what they are.”
“Oh, this is very strange. You are Miss Whittington of 1512 Arch Street, is it not so? Oh, this is very strange meeting. I am head technician at this lab. Head technician for night lab. Yes. I am the one who did the test for you. I was very excited to have these twin girls show up. It was an important day for me. I had just been given great honor at the university. Oh, this is chance meeting like in books.” He stood up and took her hand. “I am Lin Tan Sing, of the province of Suchow, near Beijing, in Central China. I am honored to make your acquaintance.” He stood above her, waiting.
