by Stella Duffy
Jake pulled the blinds on the shop window shutting out the direct afternoon sunlight and leaving them in a soft yellow glow. He made them both mint tea, sat Saz down in an old velvet-covered armchair, fed her carrot cake and then settled himself on a massive pile of embroidered cushions opposite. From her chair, Saz asked questions, answered more questions than she asked, drank tea and listened intently to what answers she did get; the only sound other than their voices was the murmur of tourists passing by outside and the Tibetan windchime above the cash register at the desk. Jake had questioned her about her family, her sexuality and her home – all of which Saz answered completely honestly, glad not to have to lie to someone she wasn’t sure she could even trust with the truth. He then explained to Saz that he’d moved into the House at almost twenty and had “grown to a man within the disciplines and freedom of community”. He seemed to have “it” with a vengeance – the fervour, the belief, even more strongly than the people she’d met on the course in London, though perhaps with a slightly clearer sense of the ridiculous than the serious-minded Processors she’d met there. He was a charming, seemingly responsible and very engaging grown-up. Which made sense, given that Maxwell North had left him in charge of the whole operation in San Francisco, but also made her less able to trust his bluff, cheery persona. Saz felt like she was being shown just one half of Jake and that the one she really wanted to talk to was the silent Jake who watched her like a hawk whenever she spoke. Jake had shut up shop and sent Milly home in order to have a “clear space to dialogue” with Saz.
“Well Sarah, Milly told us that Jasmine sent you. Which is really great because I’ve been very concerned about her. Jasmine should have been at ease with us, in the House, you know? I mean, you’ve met Grant and Carla and the others are cool too. But it was very hard for her, for Jasmine. So I thought you and I should spend some time together and maybe you could help me understand what happened, what went wrong.”
Saz plunged in, having decided her best course of action was to tell at least some of the truth and hope Jake would fill in the gaps.
“Actually Jake, I honestly don’t know Jasmine that well. I’ve only just done the weekend Process myself. About a month ago. We met there.”
“She was doing the Group Process?”
Jake’s cool dropped just a little but it was too late for Saz to back out now.
“Ah – yeah.”
“That must have been difficult for Max?”
“He… well, he didn’t seem to have a problem with it. I mean – she was in my group and he was taking one of the others. So they didn’t really do all that much together.”
“Right – but she’s OK?”
It went on for about ten minutes, Jake asking questions about Jasmine and Saz trying to fob him off with answers ranging from the possible to the almost probable, terrified to commit herself in case she got it completely wrong and was found out. Then Jake dropped a bombshell and Saz couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that he had intended to drop it to see which way she would run.
“Whatever. Listen, it’s cool, Sarah. I can see you’re not comfortable answering my questions. I guess if she’d wanted me to know the details of her life she’d have contacted me directly. Perhaps now she’s made her peace with Max she doesn’t need me as an alternative father figure.”
“Father figure?”
“Oh. You don’t know?”
“What?”
“About Max.”
“No,” Saz answered, profoundly relieved to be able to tell the truth for once.
Jake smiled back at her.
“Me and my big mouth. Carla’s always reminding me to shut up – at least occasionally. Jasmine probably doesn’t want any of the London people to know. Max always was hot on treating all the Processees exactly the same. No concessions for blood or bread we used to say.”
“Jasmine is Max’s daughter?”
“Maybe.”
“But you just said she was.”
Jake frowned at her, his smile quickly gone.
“No. Clarity of words, Sarah. Something we’re pretty hot on round here. I was talking about father figures, that’s not the same as fathers.”
“I don’t get it Jake. What do you mean? Is Max her father or not?”
“Who knows? Look, it isn’t a big secret or anything. Jasmine was born in the House – our first House baby. I’d only just arrived then. We were real proud of her. Anita, her mother, and Max were living together, had been for some time, ever since they founded the House and for a while before that too, I believe.”
Saz interrupted him, “So Max was here from the beginning?”
“It’s a matter of public record.”
“Well, it’s just that I’ve read articles where he doesn’t mention it at all.”
Jake smiled.
“Past present problems again.”
“What?”
“Max is hot on keeping the past in the past. We believe in living the Now, now.”
“Yeah, so I gathered, but…”
“So if journalists want to know about the past, Max sometimes feeds them misleading information. If they’re the kind who refuse to talk about the Now.”
“But why?”
“No reason really, just to keep it clear. This is the present. We live now. And anyway, I thought you wanted to know about Jasmine?”
Saz forced a smile, hoping she didn’t look quite as pissed off as she felt.
“Yes, please.”
“Now, I’m only telling you this because the past has a relevance to our present, you do understand the distinction?”
Saz lied and smiled. “Oh sure.”
“OK, Anita was Jasmine’s mother so naturally Max was Jasmine’s dad. Then, a couple years later, Anita revealed she’d been having an occasional affair with this other guy who’d moved into the House – John – since long before she met Max, so you see …”
“Jasmine could have been his baby too?”
“Yeah.”
“Ouch!”
“Well, it certainly upset things for a while. But Max was really sane. Talked to us all about reality being what it was perceived to be and not what it was treated as.”
“There’s a difference?”
“It’s subtle. You’ll come to it.”
“Like Christmas. Then what happened?”
“There’d been some problems in the House. One guy, Michael, had only recently moved away. Then all this stuff with Anita and John. We weren’t used to dealing with … interpersonal problems. We didn’t yet have a system to get on top of them.”
“And now?”
“Sure we do. But at that time, even a year or so into the project, it was all so new – exciting, but really hard work too. So, when Anita said that she and John were moving to Idaho and taking Jasmine with them, whoever’s daughter she was, I think we were all just happy to put it behind us. They left, the House got bigger and better, things changed, people moved on. Chris moved south and then Rose went to Mendocino and took Milly with her. Then when Max went to England, he left Paul in charge and when Paul eventually went to Toronto, I took over – with Carla of course, she’d moved in by then.”
“Max didn’t see any more of Jasmine?”
“I don’t think so. She was brought up by her aunt when Anita and John were killed.”
“Killed?”
“Arson attack on their farm. Poor kid can’t have been more than about seven at the time. I think when she came to stay with us she was hoping to find some sort of family, but I guess we just weren’t quite what she needed. She certainly needs some form of stability.”
“Why?”
“Nothing really. Nothing real I mean. And everyone needs stability, don’t they? I think maybe she needs it more than most. Jasmine was our first baby, she’s a special kid.”
Saz chatted to Jake for a while more but her heart wasn’t in it. She was terrified that she’d shown too much of her ignorance, worried that Jake knew more about her than she
wanted him to and a little suspicious that he’d only told her all about Jasmine for his own ends. Whatever they were. As soon as she could get away without seeming too rude, she left and caught a cab back to the hotel. She lay on her perfectly made bed and felt sick. Sick at having lied to Jake who seemed like he spotted every lie anyway. Sick when she thought that she had to go out and spend the night with Grant who she trusted even less. Sick at being so far away from Molly in a strange city where they should have been together, wandering around Castro, diving head first into a rainbow forest of gay culture, but instead she was alone and spending her time ferreting around in a house of people with uncertain pasts who had been well and truly convinced that looking at the past was a waste of time. But worst of all she felt sick about Jasmine. She was ninety-nine per cent certain now that Jasmine was her employer, and if that was the case, then Jasmine already knew all about Max. So why had she sent Saz here? What else did she expect her to turn up? And most worrying of all, who else was lying?
She called home and left a “miss you” message for Molly and then rang her lawyer friend in London, asking Claire to get her anything she could on arson attacks in Idaho from about 1976 to 1979. Claire Holland was a freshly tattooed, soon-to-be senior partner in a highly reputable and extremely expensive central city law firm. Her company’s offices in Covent Garden always meant good lunches for Saz as long as Claire was buying and Saz’s good ear for juicy tales of Claire’s serial non-monogamy meant that Claire was usually pleased to hear from her, as it gave her a chance to offer blow by blow descriptions of her latest conquests. It was a healthy relationship founded on mutual respect, a history of good clubbing (at least until Saz had discovered the joys of home life with Molly) and a shared liking for vegeburger and champagne lunches, with not a little use of Claire’s contacts thrown in to sweeten up Saz’s side of the friendship.
“Are you even vaguely serious? Just anywhere in the whole state of Idaho?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“America’s not England you know. It’s huge.”
“I know. I’m here.”
“This’ll take forever to find.”
“Maybe not. There must have been a court case, he said they got the guy. And arson must be a fairly big crime even here where they have guns everywhere, it’s treated very seriously at home.”
“I’m the lawyer Saz.”
“And it was part of a ‘spate of attacks’ I believe you’d call them?”
“Only if I still worked for the CPS. In defence mode, that’s a series of completely unrelated incidents you’re talking about, doll. Anything else?”
“Just that there were two dead – one woman called Anita and a man called John. Probably both in their mid-twenties to early thirties.”
“Very specific. It didn’t occur to you to get surnames?”
“These people were living ‘in community’ Claire. I don’t know if they even had them. They probably gave them away as part of a protest about Vietnam or something like that.”
“Great. Sounds like half the dykes we know.”
“Well, I suppose you could see Greenham as a continuation of the United States oppression and world domination…”
“Shut up Saz, some of us have real jobs to get on with. You’re sure it was Idaho?”
“Positive. I owe you.”
“Yeah. I’d say a case of champagne if this works out.”
“Make it a half bottle and you’re less likely to be disappointed. Can you fax it to me here? Soon as?”
“Probably by tomorrow morning, your time. I’ll have to call on some favours of some other friends of mine in the States, and I don’t imagine they’ll like being disturbed in the middle of the night any more than I do.”
“Surely you weren’t sleeping already? It must only be about two in the morning there!”
“Sometimes Saz, I behave like a normal everyday girl. Besides that, I was saving myself for tomorrow, I’ve got a hot date. You know, you should be bloody glad I don’t charge you in six-minute increments like all my other clients.”
“I am babe, I am. Thanks.”
Saz gave her the fax number and then went to have a shower, hoping the harsh water would wash away the threat of unease that was starting to prickle her scalp. There were a whole bunch of things that she didn’t like about all this – not least the fact that her lying skills didn’t seem to be up to much any more. There had to be some good reason that Jasmine had bothered to send her over here to find out about Max – a man she must already know all about – but whatever it was, it wasn’t likely to present itself to her on a plate. She had just five more days to work out what Jasmine wanted her to know and then she had to decide what it might be that Jasmine wanted her to do with that information. And she only had two days after that before Caron North was going to go to Max and the police and tell them all about meeting her and therefore do away with any anonymity Saz might still have. And when she did get back, much too busy and laden with all this information, she’d have a very neglected girlfriend to deal with. Somehow in the next five days she was going to have to do some serious “forgive me” shopping.
By the time she dragged herself from the shower it was just after seven. She dressed in crumpled clothes straight from her suitcase, ran directly out of the hotel into a cab and arrived back at the House with two minutes to spare, a welcoming smile from Grant and the greetings hugs of ten complete strangers.
CHAPTER 24
Max kept in constant, weekly contact with the various Houses throughout the world. Jake had proved to be an excellent deputy, becoming his assistant when Paul went to Canada, and eventually taking over sole charge of the House in North Beach. Jake loved the work, he’d spent the past twenty years working in it and for it. Once a week Max received a three-page report detailing future activities and every month they sent him a ten-paged faxed report on the work from both the San Francisco and the Toronto Houses, the reports detailing the various Process functions – and their successes, no one of course, had any failures. Or any worth reporting. Max’s wrath at an incomplete Process or failed attempt meant that both Houses had devised ways to keep his favour – sins of omission rather than commission. Once a year Max tried to go to each House in person, but with his current research investment, both of time and money, that had been impossible for the past eighteen months. The Houses had managed very well without him, telephone and fax communication being regular and immediate, if not quite as immediate as the presence of the flesh.
Telephones and faxes meant that occasionally things were missed out. People’s names and ages for one thing. Which was how Max never got to hear that Jasmine had briefly been living in San Francisco, back in the House in North Beach where she was born. Jasmine was only there for a few months and most of that time had proved difficult for all concerned. Her hasty departure had her classed as a “no reference needed” and Jake decided it was best not to tell Max. It would not do Max any good and, more to the point, it would not do Jake any good either. As he told Carla, “There’s no point. It will only hurt him.”
“Isn’t Max beyond that?”
“I don’t know if anyone is beyond pain. Even Max. In this case, especially Max. He really believed Jasmine was his daughter.”
“And then Anita made him believe otherwise?”
“The way she told it, didn’t seem like there was much doubt. She was certain Jasmine was John’s daughter.”
“And you believed her?”
“Yeah. Why not? She was the kid’s mother.”
“Nothing really. Just it’s something that comes up in my mothers’ group all the time. It’s not exactly politically correct to say, but for a woman denied power, which from what you’ve told me about the early days was exactly what happened to Anita, annexing the child is a great form of revenge. Sometimes the only revenge possible. Feminism or not, it does happen.”
“Who knows? It was a long time ago and John and Anita are extremely dead. It was just one of those things that ha
ppened back then. We thought we were a family – I guess we thought it was OK to just swap dads.”
“Really?”
“Hey, we were cutting-edge radicals, there were plenty of other things to deal with. It was just the beginning of the Process. Max suffered for a while when they first left and then put it behind him. So did the rest of us.”
“I’m glad I came along after all that. I don’t think I would have been able to cope with such …”
“Indifference?”
“Callousness.”
“We were young. And very excited. We were only just discovering it all. The House, the Process. Nothing else really mattered much.”
“And then you met me.”
“Let’s be clear here. You came to the House to be part of the work like everyone else, you loved it and you dedicated yourself to it…”
“Like everyone else.”
“Exactly, and … well, eventually I realized just how lonely a single-minded dedication to changing the world can be.”
“I love you Jake.”
“I know Dr Epstein, but we don’t have time to go into our sex life right now. The point is that Max’s private life really doesn’t have much to do with us these days and maybe I should have told him when Jasmine first came here anyway. I chose not to and I don’t want to have him – or you – questioning that. OK?”
“Sure. You’re the boss. Now, can we get back to work?”
“If you’re cool with this, then I guess so. I don’t exactly think we can leave our son to run the whole House by himself.”
“He’d love it.”
“Yeah, he’s so much like Max.”