In the City by the Lake

by Taylor Saracen

  Knowing Cal as well as I did, I had predicted that I would hear from him on Independence Day, and I was pleased as a peach when he proved me right.

  “Is today the day of your Emancipation Proclamation?” Cal asked as soon as I’d picked up the phone.

  “I miss you,” I whispered, allowing my lips to brush the mouthpiece.

  “I miss you too,” he said, but I could hear that his question lingered on the line.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?” he questioned, the sound of his sharp inhale telling me when he got it. “Yes.”

  “I was worried you wouldn’t call.”

  “But you knew I would, didn’t you? What better day to push you toward liberation? What better day than this one to hope for fireworks?”

  “And do you feel them?” I asked as bolts of heat exploded in my chest and tapered into streams of sparks down my arms.

  “I feel mine and I feel yours too,” he promised. “What changed?”

  “Nothing,” I answered. It was a surface response that was anything but. Nothing changing had changed everything.

  “You’ll love it here,” Cal assured me, as if it mattered.

  “I’ll love you there, and that will be enough.”

  “I’m worried you’ll change your mind,” he admitted, and I could hear the tightness in his tone.

  “That’s not like you,” I teased. “You’re still optimistic, aren’t you? Who would you be without hope?”

  “You,” Cal offered. I could hear his smirk through the receiver. “Maybe I’ve become more cautious with time.”

  “Maybe I’ve become less cautious.”

  “Then I’ll be less cautious too. But give me a date. Make it real,” he urged, “and I’ll be who I was before I became who I’m not.”

  “Should I just pick a date out of thin air?”

  “Or choose tomorrow,” Cal laughed. Fuck, I’d missed the sound. “Even then wouldn’t be soon enough.”

  “One month from today. I have a lot of things to get in order. Maybe two,” I corrected. “Can you wait two?”

  “That’s sixty opportunities for you to back out,” he tsked. “Sixty opportunities for me to get my hopes up only for them to be crushed like a stink bug.”

  “You never smelled that bad,” I joked, relishing in another round of laughter. “Tell me your phone number and your address, just in case I can’t get a hold of you.”

  He did, and I jotted it down, thinking it odd that I’d be living at that address in two months, in a place I’d never been, a place I’d never thought I would want to go.

  “I love you,” Cal told me, “and I love that you’re finally loving you too.”

  “I love you enough to try.” To try San Francisco, to try to love myself, to try to live my life at an address I barely knew, to try to travel worlds away from who I was and who I thought I would be.

  It was August when I ventured to tell the Mikhailov men about my move in the most circumspect way. I didn’t want to make the conversation too specific, worried they would ask for more details if they thought I had a solid plan, so I’d attempted to keep it theoretical.

  “I’m thinking of leaving Chicago,” I said as we sat on the balcony off Taros and Sally’s living room, a balcony that was mine before it became foreign and full of fake begonias.

  “Leaving for a vacation?” Igor asked, raising an eyebrow skeptically. “The number game pays you that well?”

  “Believe it or not, Rockefeller, a guy can make a living even if he doesn’t have a degree telling him he deserves to,” I stated, blowing a plume of cigarette smoke in my brother’s direction. “Don’t forget who paid for that paper.”

  “Me,” my dad interjected, guffawing as I gave him a death glare, “and you, of course Viktor.”

  “I don’t need your lip service,” I said, truly feeling as though I didn’t. His acknowledgement didn’t excite me as much as it would have in the past. I was aware of what I’d done for my brother, how for years I’d carried the entirety of the family on my back. My father saying it was so was a useless confirmation of something I already knew.

  “You’re more than welcome to pay my utilities if you have money to burn, Viktor,” Uncle Grygoriy teased. “Come Monday they’ll be late.”

  “Talk to your son about that,” I scoffed. “He’ll be taking over my numbers racket. He should have some clams to toss your way.”

  “You give with one hand and take with the other,” Maks admonished. I caught the gleam in his eye that told me he was proud that I was forewarning my family of my plans, something he’d implored me to do.

  “So, you’re not considering this a vacation then?” Igor attempted to clarify. “It sounds like you’re intending for it to be more permanent. Where are you planning to go?”

  “Anywhere but here.”

  “I will believe it when I see it,” my father tsked. “You’ve been a lot of things in your life but adventurous has never been one. You were made to stay. I know this from when I wished you would go.”

  “That’s a fucked-up thing to say, Uncle Taros,” Maks bristled, earning a look of warning from Grygoriy.

  “I don’t mean it in a dark way,” my dad insisted, “or maybe I do. I don’t know. All I know is that you have always kept your head down so low that you never looked up to see what was ahead of you. It’s just who you are,” he told me, taking a swig of his beer.

  “And you know me so well?” I challenged. For the first time in my life I was empowered by all my father didn’t know about me, like it was a special attribute rather than a source of shame.

  If I hadn't already decided I would go to San Francisco, I would have made the move if only to spite him. How wonderful it was that bettering my circumstances could be both an accomplishment and a monumental “fuck you” to my father. Even though Taros wouldn’t know what I was up to, just the fact that I had the capacity to leave would be enough to shake him. I wanted him to be rattled.

  “I agree with dad,” Igor said.

  “Big surprise there,” I scoffed.

  “I’m saying that I’ll believe it when I see it,” my brother added.

  “You won’t see it because I’ll be gone,” I said matter-of-factly, “and I won’t see you not seeing it because, you know, gone.”

  “I like this,” Grygoriy decided, leaning over in his chair so he could clink his glass against mine. “It’s exciting.”

  “You’re only excited because your boy will take over Viktor’s racket,” my dad razzed his brother. “You will be disappointed when you realize my son will not go.”

  My father’s insistence that I would rot in Chicago alongside them had me more irate than I had been in a while. I scolded myself for having taken so long to come the decision, realizing that every day I didn’t move forward was another day I proved to my father, whether he knew it or not, that I was who he thought I was. For so long, my greatest fear was that my father would recognize that I wasn’t who he thought I was. It seemed the more egregious sin would be to become precisely who he believed me to be.

  “It sounds like we should make a wager,” Grygoriy grinned. “I have fifty on him leaving in a six-month span.”

  “I’ll shake on it,” my dad decided, reaching for his brother’s hand. “I’ll look forward to Viktor watching me receive my funds.” He gave me a playful nudge and I gnawed on the inside of my cheek, trying to contain my desire to knock him out.

  “Are you game?” Igor asked Maks. “Same terms?”

  “I am most definitely game,” Maks replied, giving me a covert wink.

  I was looking forward to hearing about their expressions when they paid up to Grygoriy and Maks, and I knew my cousin would be more than happy to tell me all about it, tangents and all.

  Though I’d tried to remain cool, calm, and collected, summer in Chicago had me the opposite. The August days were long and hot, and I spent much of the month wishing it away. I was glad to have few belongings when I slaved in the sweltering apartment to
pack my things at the end of my term. Waves of unexpected sadness hit me as I stood in the stark space once I was done. There had been a profusion of pain within those walls, but there were happy memories too. Though I hoped Rosie was in a better place, I felt a certain sense of regret as I closed the door to the apartment one last time. It was as though I was leaving Rosie behind, like he was trapped in the only place where he’d truly felt safe, even when it was time to go.

  There was a moment before I boarded the train when I had considered turning around and running back toward my empty life. I’d stood frozen on the platform as people buzzed by, wondering if I’d tricked myself into believing I had the ability to be someone who left on a train, trusting that there was a better life for me in California. Had I been too blinded by the beauty of Cal’s golden smile to realize I was making a mistake? I’d spent the majority of my childhood hating Chicago because I felt like a stranger on its streets. The idea of starting over in a new city where I could end up even more alien was daunting. Thanks to my father’s lack of belief in me and Maks’ abundance, I got on the train and held my breath as it chugged out West.

  It was strange to crane my neck and watch the skyline of the city fade away. I’d spent so much time feeling minuscule in relation to the skyscrapers’ majesty, yet each hulking structure was little more than a speck of dust through my new vantage point.

  To say I was uncomfortable on the train was an understatement. Not only was forty hours on the rails an inordinately long time, I spent it sitting next to an Orthodox rabbi. His name was Shmuel Friedman and I had heard his entire life story by the time we reached Des Moines. I didn’t mind listening to him speak, but when he started to ask me about myself, I became uncomfortable.

  “And what is it that is calling you to California, young man?” he asked, as if it was a simple question to answer, as if it had not taken me nearly a year to decide to make the momentous move.

  Staring out the window at the spread of cornfields blurring yellow beyond the glass, I thought of Cal as a child, kneeling over enormous emerald leaves, fingers blistered from the labor, skin scarlet from the sun. It was effortful to imagine Cal having ever stayed on his family’s farm in Georgia. The loss for the legions of people whose lives he had touched would be immense. Without him, I feared I would have not found a modicum of the might it had taken me to open myself to someone, to experience emotions worth unearthing.

  “Hope,” I answered tentatively.

  Hope. I had seen it as a mark of the weak but had come to realize it was a sign of the strong. To have hope despite the scads of skeptics who were prepared to pulverize it and pull it apart was a triumph. Having hope when the stakes were steep was a challenge I had never taken on. It was second-nature for me to brush myself off and hope again when the Cubs inevitably let me down, but taking a chance on Cal, when the sting of disappointment would not be replaced by the promise of spring training, was scarier than walking a block on the South Side when Capone ran the city.

  “Ah, qawah,” he hummed, like he was rolling the word around on his tongue for long before he spoke it. “He who hopes is never hopeless.” Shmuel laughed lightly and placed his hand on my shoulder. “Baruch Atta … SheNatan MeChachmato LeBasar VeDam. Amen.”

  “What was that?” I asked, taken aback by the act.

  “A blessing for the wise,” he replied, easily. “It’s a mitzvah to have hope, and I pray yours leads you to a fruitful future.”

  Undecided on how to reply, I nodded my head and turned my attention back to flat, changeless landscape.

  I faded in and out of sleep for the remainder of the journey, waking fully only when Shmuel insisted I eat. I wasn’t sure why the man cared about my food intake and hydration, but he consistently woke me for meals and then proceeded to talk my ear off until I fell asleep again. I had expected a sandwich the final time he’d roused me but was pleasantly surprised when he hadn’t handed me a peanut butter on rye and instead announced our arrival in Oakland.

  After an unreasonably long goodbye filled with hugs and Hebrew, I freed myself from Friedman and made my way to the ferry that would carry me over the bay to the beginning of the remainder of my days.

  I had told Cal not to meet me at the Ferry Building, insisting I would walk to his apartment in North Beach, but I was unsurprised when among the faces of passersby, I saw his.

  Though I wished I hadn’t been, I was as nervous as I was elated when Cal picked up his pace, jogging toward me. With crowds of people packing the port, I was terrified he would try to kiss me and just as concerned he would not. I wanted nothing more than to fall into his arms as I had so many times before, but I willed my knees to hold me up, too aware of how people would stare if I let myself go.

  As Cal pressed his palms against the flesh of my burning cheeks and his lips against mine, I squeezed my eyes closed, demanding that my mind allow me that moment in time with the man I had immeasurably missed for my entire life.

  “You don’t even know where North Beach is,” he whispered into my mouth.

  “I don’t know where anything is,” I laughed, daring to glance over his shoulder at all the people who were utterly unfazed by our embrace.

  “You know where I am and where you are now,” he offered. “That’s something.”

  I smiled because I knew it was everything.

  32

  December 1937

  My San Francisco was full of growing pains, sex, and more happiness than I had ever believed I had the right to. Even in the most trying moments of my adjustment period, I never regretted the fact that I had left Chicago, and all it had encompassed, behind for the promise of Cal and the state he decided was named after him—California.

  While I appreciated the weather and culture of my new home, I was the most taken by its proximity to the sea. I thought that since I had grown up by the lake, the ocean would fail to impress me, but I quickly realized how wrong I was. Unlike the lake, which was constrained and finite, the ocean was wide and free.

  I had such an affinity for the sea that once I’d settled into the apartment, I’d asked Cal if he wanted to pour Rosie’s remains into the ocean and let them drift to wherever the chorus moll pleased, rather than keep him in an urn beside the bed.

  “He would never want to be away from me,” Cal answered simply.

  Knowing it was true, I never brought the subject up again, but sometimes, as I watched the waves lick the shore, I thought of Rosie, hoping he came back to Earth as one of the birds that dipped in the breaks for fish before gliding up toward the clouds.

  As we lay in the sand, swathed in sweaters, I admired the plums and pinks blooming from the ocean while the saffron sun descended below the Golden Gate Bridge. Leaning on my elbows, I took a sip from the jar of moonshine I had chided Cal for bringing along. Regardless of how much I loved the taste of his efforts, I worried we were drinking too much of our profits. The small list of clients Cal had built during our time away from one another had provided him with just enough money to pay his rent, but my business sense had taken his operation to the next level. Not only did we provide shine to individuals, we also serviced a queer club around the corner from our studio apartment. The Ferry House’s patrons liked that the backyard brew was cheaper and more potent than beer, and Bernard, the owner, was glad to have something that set The Ferry House apart from the plethora of parlors in North Beach.

  Much like Abraham had done years before, Bernard spoiled us with free drinks, lavished us in kind words, and made sure we didn’t miss any of his big events. Though I didn’t want to attend The Ferry House’s New Year’s Eve Fairy Ball, I knew our time on the beach would be cut short in order to keep the commitment. While my man would never admit it, he loved the attention he garnered in the scene, telling his stories to all who would listen and smiling brightly as he kept them entranced. Though I still didn’t feel comfortable hanging on his arm, I continued to hang on his words, loving the drawl as much as I had the first time I heard it in The Gallery on State.


  I felt Cal’s gaze before I caught it and peered over my shoulder to find he was staring at me rather than at the sky.

  “What?” I grinned, happy to be looked at and actually seen.

  "How does someone get more beautiful every day?" he asked, reaching over to push a lock of windblown hair off my forehead.

  I dropped the drink, letting it saturate the sand as he looped his arms around me. Instead of being enveloped by hurt, I was wrapped in Cal, his long limbs draped around my body, his face buried in the crook of my neck. Loosening the hug, I stayed within his grasp as I rolled over to gaze at the endless expanse of the sea, knowing that we were infinite too.